Long after they’d gone, the memory of that smile stayed with me. And superimposed over the top of it was the image of a perfect, small bite mark in a little boy’s skin.
28
Ewan
He should just go to bed. That’s what he should do. Ewan could feel the alcohol he’d drunk sloshing around in his system. Normally he stuck to beer, and tonight he’d been drinking wine in almost the same quantities until now he felt awash with it, his stomach bloated, his brain splashing about in an unpleasant sea of Sauvignon blanc and the rich peppercorn sauce in which his steak had been drenched. He should get in the hotel lift and go up to the fourth floor and find his room among all those identical doors and lie down on those crisply laundered sheets and sleep this off.
That’s what he should do. But he wouldn’t. And the reason he wouldn’t was her.
Ewan hadn’t admitted it even to himself, but he’d had high hopes of this weekend. Rachel had been giving out signals – very subtle ones – but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew when women were responding and she had definitely responded. Nothing too obvious. She had her position in the department to think of. But she’d given him a lift here. You wouldn’t do that unless you were just a tiny bit interested. He’d been nervous in case he underperformed in the physical tasks or went blank while they were doing word games or, God forbid, role play. But all of the activities had passed off pretty well.
Yet ever since they’d arrived here, she’d switched off. Suddenly it was as if he was nothing – some bit of lint she’d picked up on the sleeve of her jacket and thought she could just brush off.
The way she’d been flirting with that Will. To be taken in by that airhead in a tracksuit. She’d even been playing up to Mark Hamilton – and after telling him, Ewan, that he should keep away from Chloe as well! The hypocrisy of it took his breath away. He concentrated his thoughts on that to keep out the wave of hurt that ambushed him every time he let down his guard.
‘I’ll have another Scotch,’ he told the barman, who was busy clearing away chairs and glasses.
Turning back, Ewan was discomfited to realize there weren’t as many people left at the table as he’d thought. He could have sworn they’d all been there when he went to the bar, but now there was just Charlie and Amira and Chloe. The place was empty apart from them. His hopes had been raised when Rachel had accompanied them all as far as the bar after dinner, but when Will peeled off, saying he had to be up early the next morning, Rachel had suddenly decided she too needed to turn in. Watching her leave, a little unsteady on her feet, Ewan had felt himself burn with humiliation, feeling that he was being played with. Chloe seemed fed up too. Not surprising, given that the energy she’d been investing in Will all night had just come to nothing. Well, she could join the club. The Mugs Club. Maybe they should have badges made.
‘You’re not still texting, are you?’ he snapped at Charlie as he sat down. ‘Can’t you put that bloody phone down?’
‘Or what? You going to send him to the naughty step?’
That was Chloe, sounding like someone pretending to be more fed up than she actually was. Ewan allowed himself a moment of triumph as it dawned that she hadn’t after all defected from him to Will. She’d been putting on a show to make him jealous. He felt himself softening towards her. She was still such a kid really, hadn’t learned how to be hard and two-faced like the rest of them.
He gulped down his Scotch, wondering why he was even drinking it. It wasn’t as if he was enjoying it. And he already knew he was going to feel like shit in the morning.
‘Bloody Sarah, hey,’ said Amira, apropos of nothing. She was slumped in one of the velvet bucket chairs turning a black cardboard coaster over and over between her fingers. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for her and everything, but seriously, I’m sick of covering for her. She says it was all a mistake, but when you’ve already got two kids under four, I’d say you kind of know how mistakes happen.’
‘Next you’ll be saying kids are a lifestyle choice,’ said Charlie. ‘And then you might have to start wearing a tall pointy white hat and carrying a burning cross over your shoulder.’
‘You can dig all you like, Charlie, but I’m just saying what everyone is thinking.’
‘Are you sure you’re not saying that because you’d secretly like a baby too?’ Chloe blurted out.
Bloody hell, she wasn’t very tactful, was she? Even Ewan wouldn’t have come out and asked that. Some people just couldn’t have kids. You had to be careful.