Page 12 of The Wrong Suitcase

This woman is the woman who ignored all my knocking, and the phone calls to her room, and she’s here, looking like a Bond girl, whilst I’m in trainers with no socks, telling me … telling me she’s the reason I’m in trainers with no socks?

‘You do,’ I say. ‘You do have my whole wedding outfit. Look at me.’ I let go of her hand and pull my own back, taking my body with it. I get it now – she was flirting a minute ago because she knows she did a bad thing. How manipulative! She didn’t like my reading, the piece of my soul I bared because that’s how much I love Adriano and Sarah. She just wanted to keep me sweet so I didn’t fly off the handle for HAVING TO GIVE A WEDDING READING IN TRAINERS AND NO FREAKIN’ SOCKS!

‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, colour flushing her cheeks again, but it’s 90 per cent less attractive because I now understand she’s an idiot. ‘Do you want to come up and get it now? I think we’ve got time before dinner?’

I blink.

Okay, she’s notninetyper cent less attractive, but she’s definitely way less hot now I know she’s selfish, and ignorant, and, and … and is that the faint trace of asmileacross that full and luscious pout?

‘Sorry,’ I say, and my voice is a louder than I mean it to be. ‘It’s just – I came up to your room. Twice, actually.’

I’d love for her to explain why she isn’t an idiot.

‘Oh. Maybe I’d already come down for the ceremony? I did pop down the hall to get something from my friend’s room, but I was only gone a second.’

Pretty idiotic to me.

‘And why didn’t you just leave it at reception, with the porter?’ I press.

She starts to shift her weight from one foot to the other.

‘I don’t know,’ she admits. ‘I didn’t think. Look, let’s just go and get it now.’

‘I just stood in front of two hundred people looking like … looking like …’

I can’t believe this woman. She held my bag hostage! What kind of person does that? Good-looking people think they can do what they like. Good-lookingwomenthink they can do what they like. Just like Ella, dropping me at the last minute and acting as if she was doing me the favour. It’s hard not to think that all women are the same when all the evidence that mounts up against them is that they’ll always put themselves first.

‘… Looking like you’re a bum bag short for a trip to Vegas?’ she supplies, and she’s outwardly smirking now.

‘You don’t get to make jokes,’ I say. I think I might wag my finger at her. I can’t be sure because I’m seeing red and my actions aren’t my own. ‘I’m dead serious,’ I say.

I can’t believe she’s being so flippant. It’s one thing to try and lighten the mood, but I’m obviously mortified and she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care! Why don’t women care?!

‘Just give me your room key and I’ll go and get it,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll be five minutes.’

She eyes me suspiciously. ‘Not being funny,’ she says, ‘but no way. I’ll take you up there. I don’t want to get back later to find you’ve poured all my perfume down the loo as payback.’

‘I would never …’

She rolls her eyes.

‘Oh,’ I say. My voice has levelled out now. My heart is still racing, but I’m calmer. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘I’m learning the joke’s lost on you,’ she quips, one eyebrow arching. ‘So I think I’ll stop now. Let’s just get you your stuff so we can get back to the party. Come on.’

Wordlessly, she leads the way. She walks like Marilyn Monroe, her hips swaying intensely from side to side, like she’s trying to hypnotise whoever might be looking. If she wasn’t so brain-dead from a lack of common sense, I’d sort myself out and throw a few more compliments her way. But I can’t. I can’t get over the fact that I wore New Balances to watch Adriano say his vows whilst I had the good manners to leave her stuff with her – even though she ignored the door not once buttwice– and so she gets to strut around the place like it’s the Grammy’s afterparty.

‘Crap,’ she says. ‘I thought we could get up to the rooms this way, but now I’m not so sure …’

I look around.

‘You’ve got us lost,’ I say.

‘If you had been paying attention instead of looking at my arse, you might have been able to course-correct us,’ she retorts. It’s a fair comment.

It’s getting dark now, and the long corridors feel dim and all very similar to one another. We walk to where one corridor meets the next, but instead of ending up where I thought I’d been earlier, to get to the pool, we spill out into another courtyard.

‘Woah,’ she says.

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