Page 62 of The Lucky Escape

He held out a hand for me. ‘Come on, up you get. We’ve definitely earned those massages now. I think we’re going to have to leave them a very big tip, by the way. When Fernanda and Charles paid for all this I doubt they budgeted for willy-gate.’

He helped me up and I straightened out the massage table.

‘Turn around as I get on this,’ I instructed. ‘That’s enough boob-gate for now, too.’

He turned and faced the wall as I got settled, lying back down on my front and covering my bum with the towel.

Still facing the wall, Patrick said, ‘Annie?’

‘Yes?’ I replied.

‘Just to be clear – they’re bloody great boobs.’

There’s nowhere much you can go once you’ve seen the junk of the man you’re on your non-honeymoon with. The massages went on for ninety minutes and we both madenoises as humiliating as each other, and once Leslie and John had gone we drank another glass of water and then popped open the bottle of champagne and took it out to the hot tub in our swimwear. We weren’t ready for the communal naked areas.

‘I don’t know if I can face a naked sauna,’ Patrick said as he lowered himself into the tub. ‘I know I’m supposed to be a sort of male manic pixie dream girl, all carefree and daring, but I’m afraid we’ve just found out where my boundaries are.’

‘Manic pixie dream girl?’ I said, stepping down to join him in the tub.

He held out a hand for me to grab in case I slipped. ‘Manic pixie dream girl,’ he repeated.

I stared at him blankly.

‘How do I explain it? Urm, in a movie, the manic pixie dream girl is the eccentric, crazy love interest designed to spark a renewed desire for living. Like Kate Winslet in that film about erasing memories –Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.’

‘Patrick – oh my God. That is so true! That’s so you!’

‘Thank you, thank you,’ he replied, taking a pretend bow.

‘That’s how you were at drama camp. You’ve always been that way.’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe not.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, exhaling in satisfaction. ‘There’s no maybe about it.’

I sipped at my flute full of bubbles then lay my head back to enjoy the sensation of being a tiny bit tipsy and also so tranquil I was basically horizontal anyway.

‘I was pretty messed up after Mala died,’ he said. ‘I went off the rails a bit. Definitely wasn’t much fun to be around then …’

‘I like hearing about her,’ I said. ‘You know you can talk about her as much as you want, don’t you?’

He nodded. ‘She’d have loved it here,’ he offered. ‘I don’t know why I got so mad when you talked about Alexander, because Mala has been on my mind like crazy. I’m starting to wonder if that’s just part of moving on.’

I stayed quiet, careful to let his train of thought keep going.

‘I suppose you have to kind of look back to where you’ve come from to understand how to get where you’re going or something,’ he continued. ‘I can feel myself moving on and it’s like I’m cheating on her. And that makes me so sad. How can I feel so happy and so sad, both at the same time?’

I considered it. ‘There’s something my grandma used to say – my dad’s mum. I’ve not thought about this in ages actually, and I’m probably going to get this all muddled up but … she said that life’s highs and life’s lows are so entwined, the happiness and sorrow is so interconnected, that it’s impossible to ever just be totally happy or totally sad. It’s good and bad, light and dark. We want there to be a right thing, an ultimate happiness, a sort of destination where we’ve escaped all the crappy things in life. Like passing a test. But that’s not living. We can’t outrun crappy, awful, horrible stuff. So the job of our lives is to let it exist alongside the good stuff, making the good stuff so much sweeter. Does that make sense?’

Still looking out over the gardens he nodded. ‘It does,’ he admitted.

The jet of the jacuzzi gurgled like a feeding baby.

‘Being a widower isn’t fun,’ he said. ‘And the person I want to tell me how to deal with all this is the one person who can’t. I wish I could have her permission.’

‘Her permission?’

Softly, he said, ‘You know what I mean.’

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