Page 43 of The Wake-Up Call

“She’s saying that she won’t let this guy get involved with her. Whatever happens there stays there.”

I think we’re dancing close until Izzy closes those tiny centimetres between us and I realise whatcloseactually feels like. Her stomach pressed to my hips, her breasts against my chest. The contact sends desire snapping through me. I’m hard, and she must be able to tell, but she just keeps dancing.

“What an interesting idea,” she says, looking me right in the eyes.

I feel her phone buzz in the same moment she does. That’s how close my hand is to the back pocket of her jeans. She looks down and pulls away as she tugs the phone out.

“It’s Ollie,” she says, and just like that, we’re back. Standing in the middle of a makeshift dance floor in a stranger’s living room when we ought to be at work. The room seems smaller, the music wincingly loud.

I can’t hear the phone conversation, but I follow her off the dance floor and watch her body language. The way she stiffens and pulls her hair up in a one-handed ponytail, then lets it drop again as she talks.

When she hangs up, she turns and finds me immediately.

“We have to go back,” she says.

“What’s happened?”

“It’s...” She tugs her bottom lip between her teeth. “Graham’s wife has arrived at the hotel.”

“Your ring owner?”

“No-o,” Izzy says. “Graham’sotherwife.”

Izzy

It seems that Graham has two different-but-similar email addresses for a reason. Because he has two different-but-similar lives.

And when I copied the other address into my email exchange... I gave Wife 1 access to a thread about a wedding ring that belonged to Wife 2, creating some understandable drama. Wife 1 turned up in our lobby, screaming and shouting, demanding answers from poor Ollie, who had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. Apparently, she is now refusing to leave the premises until she “gets some answers from whoever sent that email.”

“We can get as far as Woking.”

Lucas is pacing back and forth along Shannon’s upstairs corridor, oblivious to the people popping up to use the bathroom and having to dodge past him like he’s the Big Bad Boss in an old Game Boy game. He is staring fixedly at his phone, National Rail app open on the screen. I can’t believe that half an hour ago I was grinding up against this man on the dance floor. The thought is completely surreal.

“Right, great,” I say, chewing my thumbnail.

I’ve really messed up here. Well, Graham did most of the messing up. But I’ve brought this whole bigamy drama into the hotel, and now I’m not even there to sort it out—I’m here, sexy-dancing with Lucas. What am Idoing?

“Maybe from Woking there will be a bus,” Lucas says, furiously tapping away at his phone.

I look out of the window over the staircase. The snow is coming fast, caught up in itself, whirling and swooping like one of those Van Gogh paintings of the stars.

“UK roads can’t really do snowstorms,” I tell him, leaning back against the wall as someone emerges from the bathroom and hesitates, then dashes past in the moment before Lucas pivots on his heels to pace back again. “I think the odds of buses running in a couple of hours’ time are pretty low.”

“It is a bit of snow! It is a little bit cold!” Lucas snaps.

“Well, OK, I’m not the bloody transport secretary, am I?” I snap back, nettled.

He’s behaving like all that dancing never happened. Gone is the loose-limbed, half-smiling man who circled his hips against mine half an hour ago; here’s grouchy, uptight Lucas, taking things out on me that aren’t my fault.

“Why did we stay so late?” he says, swiping his thumb down to refresh the outgoing trains again. I watch as the red text blinks, the delays lengthening.

“Because we were having fun. Before you switched back to the usual Lucas, who is incapable of fun and just snaps at me about everything.”

He looks up at me at last, surprised. “I’m not snapping at you.”

I pull a disbelieving face, spreading my arms out. “Hello? You literally just yelled at me about it being only a little bit cold.”

“I wasn’t yellingatyou about it being cold. Why would I yell at you about that? It’s not your fault, is it?”

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