Live a Little by Madeleine Reiss

Author:Madeleine Reiss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

Chapter 20

‘LOOK AT THE VIEW OUT of the window! And the ridiculous carpet and how deep the bath is.’

Lottie was wafting her iPad around the hotel bedroom, showing Dean the magnificence of their suite. Tina was still asleep and Spike had gone out somewhere.

‘You’re making me feel dizzy!’ Dean said. ‘Stop walking around and sit down and talk to me.’

Actually speaking to Dean was something that Lottie had been trying to avoid. It was far easier to enthuse about her surroundings than to engage in conversation, but she settled on the sofa and switched the view round so that she could see him. He was standing in the playground of the school where he worked. She could see the climbing wall in the background, and every now and again a hunched young person in a black blazer would lurch past. She noted that he had had his hair cut and her heart was smitten at the sight of the way the barber had tufted his hair into a mini-quiff. He was wearing his blue checked shirt – the one that would never stay tucked in, but always hung an inch or so below his V-necked jumper.

‘How was your walking weekend?’ she asked.

‘It was exactly the same as it always is. No dog this year and Simon got a stomach upset, but business as usual,’ Dean said, smiling.

Every year Dean went to a cottage in Scotland with the same group of four male friends. They had been going away for the last fifteen years and had developed a raft of traditions. During the day they walked up hills and in the evening they sat in the local pub drinking an exact five rounds. Lottie often teased him about the ritualistic aspect of their trips – the way they always linked hands around standing stones and intoned the same strange song, which was designed to invoke wandering Celtic spirits. After a long walk they would roll up their trousers and sit on the edge of the bath with their feet dipped in a lavender-infused water. As each year came and went there would be new additions and new stories which were embroidered upon – the day the dog ate a whole packet of butter; the Belgian man they had met at the top of a hill who had caught them mid-packed lunch and remarked that he could not understand the British obsession with ‘ze cheese and ze onion’; the year they all got wrecked and hung naked from the beams in the living room. She had always thought of this with a kind of indulgent tenderness – amused by the way these men tied themselves to each other with habit and history, but now she felt a little impatient.

‘Don’t you ever want to go somewhere else?’ she asked.

‘There would be a riot if I even suggested it,’ he replied. His smile faltered. ‘Are you OK? You look a little pale.’

‘I’m fine. Just had a late night, that’s all. I won a load of money playing blackjack.

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