LITMIR.BIZ

       1

      Neve stares up at the nicotine-yellow ceiling and thinks about the long journey between here and her own bed. Or at least, the sofa bed in her sister’s flat.

      She has a fierce longing for ice-cold Diet Coke and paracetamol. Her head is already starting to hurt and she hasn’t been asleep. She needs to pee, badly.

      Squinting at the small travel clock that blinks with neon aggression on the bedside table, she sees it is 03:00. They got here about two. The sex had taken about fifteen minutes, tops. Maybe she had briefly fallen asleep after all.

      Whatsisname sighs and gently farts in his sleep.

       Christ.

      He told her he had his own software company and was in London for a conference. But it didn’t ring true. Surely no one held conferences a few days before Christmas? Plus, he said ‘pacific’ instead of ‘specific’ and smiled in a glazed, uncomprehending way at a couple of her more acerbic comments. He didn’t seem bright enough to have his own company.

      Now she slowly begins to extricate herself from the bed, placing her bare feet down onto the rough, worn carpet. It feels greasy and gritty. She curls her toes with a shudder and spots the squished comma of the condom lying next to the bed.

      The air smells of hot dust from the ferocious radiator that’s within touching distance of the bed, with a base note of damp.

      The outside of the hotel – which was grandly named the Intercontinental, London – had looked alright with its jaunty blue and white awning, potted plants and fairy-lit windows.

      Neve has always been a sucker for fairy lights.

      But the room, with its shabby MDF table and undersized kettle, feels like the kind of place travelling salesmen go to commit suicide. There’s a white extension cable snaking across the middle of the floor and she makes a mental note that she mustn’t trip over it on her way to the bathroom. The wallpaper is the textured sort popular in the 1970s, splashed lumpily with a jaundice-yellow emulsion.

      Whatsisname’s (Greg? Gary? Something like that) wheelie case is sitting open on a chair next to the table. The arm of a jumper hangs languidly towards the carpet. She pictures him getting ready earlier, selecting a shirt that would mean the best chance of getting laid. Well, it had worked.

      Self-disgust puffs through her like hot steam. She has somehow bypassed the numb, unconscious part of this scenario and gone straight to the hangover and guilt. She’s suddenly appalled by the idea of him waking and suggesting she come back to bed. Or, worse, wanting conversation.

      This whole thing had seemed like a good idea at the time.

      Her own office party – dinner in an uninspiring Italian restaurant, followed by drinks in a bar near Waterloo – had ended early because, in her view, her colleagues were a bunch of lightweights, all making excuses about babysitters or night buses or I’ve-had-quite-enough-haven’t-you? Well, no, she hadn’t, clearly.

      Her usual ally and best friend, Miri, was too pregnant to last beyond eight p.m. and Neve’d had to work hard, again, not to make a wistful comment about the fun they’d once had on nights out. She knew that Miri might as well be emigrating to the other side of the world soon. Nothing was ever going to be the same again between them. Watching Miri expand and step tentatively into this new world, she felt jabs of real grief.

      So when someone decent looking had come over and bought her another bucket-glass of Merlot, she hadn’t said no. Plus, she wasn’t wearing her contacts and was drunk enough that everyone looked quite attractive in their own way. And he was Irish and therefore exotic.

      She can almost hear Lou saying, ‘You’re thirty now, Neve,’ in that mouth-like-a-cat’s-arse way she reserves for her only sister.

      A wave of misery washes over her and she carefully gets up and starts to hunt for her knickers among the discarded clothes on the floor. She spots them lying in a forlorn figure of eight where she’d shucked them off earlier.

      She’d already been thinking this was a mistake by then. The kissing – hard up against a doorway outside the bar – hadn’t been that promising. His tongue had been a muscular slug that poked and jabbed at the inside of her mouth as though on a mission to find something.

      Now Neve fumbles for her bra and, once on, reaches for the gold silky top she’d bought especially for the night out. She’d been delighted with it at the time because it was half price, but wearing it she’d discovered that it made her sweat under the arms. She’d spilled red wine down it earlier too. She wrinkles her nose as she rolls the top over her head and down her body.

      ‘You leaving?’

      The voice makes her jump. She turns to see Whatsisname looking up at her from the rumpled bed, propping himself up on pale, muscular arms.

      ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘Um … I’d better get going.’ She smiles as though they’d just had a casual coffee together instead of a joyless, drunken shag. ‘I’ll just …’ she hooks a thumb in the direction of the bathroom and then goes in, closing the door behind her as she pees.

      She quickly washes her hands and avoids her reflection, aware it will only make her feel worse in the circumstances. Maybe she is faster than he expected, because when she comes back into the room a minute later, he’s leaning out of the bed, vigorously checking the pockets of his trousers that are pooled next to it.

      He stops and regards her with a sheepish shrug.

      Realization burns. ‘What the actual fuck?’ she says. ‘Did you think I was going to take your wallet?’

      Her head is far too sore to be speaking this loud. But it’s better than smashing him in the face with the travel kettle, which she might do otherwise.

      ‘I don’t really know you, do I?’ he says, defiantly raising his chin.

      ‘No you don’t,’ she hisses, hunting for her bag and shrugging on her coat. It feels as though these actions take far longer than they should.

      Finally, she is able to take the few paces to the hotel door.

      ‘By the way, you’re shit in bed,’ she says as she wrenches it open. ‘Merry Christmas, arsehole!’

      She wants to slam the door behind her

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