‘Dammit!’
Straightening up from his stooping position, he’d brushed against the cistern lid, and it had tottered for a moment and then fallen from the edge of the bath and broken into half a dozen pieces on the tiled floor below.
‘Dammit!!!’
The noise must have woken Milly as she had instantly started barking to warn off the suspected but unseen intruder. Trevor had raced into the bedroom to find her standing on the bed, directing her attentions fixedly at the main door and in exactly the opposite direction to the bathroom.
He had hissed at her to be quiet, and for once, she had obeyed, turning towards him with a quizzical expression, which might have been interpreted as: So no intruder then?
After another half an hour of struggling, cursing and fiddling, the job was done. Gingerly pressing down the lever with one hand whilst simultaneously holding the bolt in place with the other, a gush of water had finally dispatched the contents of the toilet bowl on their long delayed journey.
So, what to do about the broken lid? One solution would be to leave the hotel early in the morning before anyone noticed the damage, but Trevor was one of those people to whom guilt came easily, and he was always keen to avoid it whenever possible. The logical answer would be simply to own up and pay for the damage when he checked out, but the room was already costing him a small fortune, and he was reluctant to shell out any more of his redundancy cash.
He had lain awake for most of the night, wrestling with the problem until a plan of sorts eventually began to evolve. But even when he was as satisfied as he could be that it might actually work, he had slept only fitfully. This was partly due to Milly’s snoring, but mostly to the Richter Scale grumblings from his empty stomach.
Now, as he stood with his ear to the door, the women’s voices in the corridor reappeared, and this time he could begin to recognise occasional words and phrases:
VOICE 1: … said to ‘im… think you’re… in ‘ere with… bloody joking…
VOICE 2: … always… daft booger…
VOICE 1: … shove it where…
Trevor estimated that the sound of laughter which followed couldn’t have been more than a dozen yards away before it dissolved into silence. It was time to make his move.
He checked that Milly was still curled nose-to-bum on the bed. The nose was twitching a fraction out of time with her lip, more rhythmically accompanied by a sotto voce whimpering, and judging by the spasmodic jittering of her feet, she was chasing rabbits or – more likely – a rapidly escaping cordon bleu cowpat. But whatever the object of her subconscious quest, the important thing was that she was deeply asleep and therefore less likely to wake up and howl like a maniac when she realised he’d gone. So far, so good.
With his eyes fixed on Milly, he picked up his navy blue holdall and crept out into the corridor. He eased the door shut behind him and listened. He could no longer hear whimpering, but he breathed again when the expected shrieks of abandonment didn’t materialise.
He looked to his left. Nothing. To his right, he could see one of those tall wire cages on wheels like they use in supermarkets, stacked with clean white towels and bed sheets. It was parked outside a room three along from his own. All was still quiet on the Milly front, so he advanced towards the cage, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to check whether anyone was watching. It occurred to him that this was faintly ridiculous since he hadn’t done anything wrong yet, but he carried on doing it anyway.
As he came closer, the women’s voices became more distinct:
VOICE 1: You think so?
VOICE 2: No doubt about it.
VOICE 1: Sharon?
VOICE 2: Sharon.
VOICE 1: Well, who’d have thought it?
VOICE 2: Eee, there’s nowt so queer as folk.
VOICE 1: ‘Cept thee and me.
VOICE 2: And I’m not so sure about thee.
The two women exploded into laughter, and Trevor hesitated for a moment outside the open door. He practised a smile, assumed what he hoped might resemble an air of confidence, and then strode into the room.
‘Oh,’ he said in feigned surprise as he set down his holdall and took in the view of the two women bent low over either side of the single bed.
Neither of them missed a beat. They went on with their tucking and smoothing, and the older one with the badly peroxided hair said, ‘Sorry, duck. Thought you’d still be at breakfast. Won’t be a tick.’
‘No problemo,’ said Trevor and immediately thought: No problemo? No problemo? I’ve never said that to anyone in my life.
At the same time, he caught the glance that the slimmer, dark haired one gave to Peroxide and it read “prat”.
‘No problemo, ladies.’ He couldn’t believe he’d said it again, and for want of something better to do, he wandered over to the window and looked out on the street below. In a shop doorway opposite, a dog was casually relieving himself over the prone body of some poor sod who clearly couldn’t afford these hotel prices.