With my poor employment history and lack of higher education my options were strictly limited. However, I managed to stumble over a job in another hotel. Not as nice as the Old Shillayleagh, not of course that the Old Shillayleagh was nice. My new place of work was called the Barbados Motel. I had no idea why. It was nothing like Barbados, unless people pay for their time in Barbados by the hour.

My boss, Eric, was one of the fattest men I’d ever seen, and was called The Head Hauncho on account of his colossal love-handles. Most of the other staff were illegal immigrants because of the management’s penchant for paying below the minimum wage.

However, it was a job.

In other words, hard labour, misery and tedium all rolled into one.

After my first day there I staggered home, exhausted and depressed, and as I got in the phone was ringing.

‘Yes?’ I demanded, none-too-civil, keen to work off my filthy humour on whoever was on the other end.

There was a brief – loaded – pause, then Luke’s voice, like a caress, said ‘Rachel?’ And my charcoal world sparked into blazing light.

Instinctively I knew that this was no enquiries phone call along the lines of ‘I can’t find my Beavis and Butthead jocks and I’m wondering if I left them at your place. Any chance you’d give them a wash and drop them round to me?’

On the contrary.

From the tone of his voice, just from the way he’d said ‘Rachel?’ – as if he was stroking me – I knew everything was going to be all right.

Better than all right.

I’d been certain I’d never hear from him again. I almost wept with relief, with joy, with deliverance, with gratitude for my second chance.

‘Luke?’ I said. See the way I didn’t go ‘Daryl?’ or ‘Frederick?’ or ‘Beelzebub?’ or some other man’s name, the way I would have if I’d still been playing games with him?

‘How are you?’ he asked.

Call me babe, I yearned.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Well, I was sacked from my job and I’ve got a new one but it’s in a horrible place and I think it’s used by prostitutes and the money is poxy, but I’m fine. And how are you?’

He gave a little laugh, a warm, friendly, I-think-you’re-great laugh and I felt as if I loved him.

‘Any chance I could take you out for dinner?’ he asked.

Take you out for dinner. Take you for dinner. So much is conveyed with that one word. It means, I like you. I’ll take care of you. And, most importantly of all, I’ll pay for you.

I wanted to say, ‘But what about Anya?’ and for once in my self-destructive life I managed to do the right thing and kept my fool mouth shut. ‘When?’ I asked. Now, now, now!

‘Tonight?’

I suppose I should have pretended I was busy. Isn’t that one of the golden rules to make sure you snare your man? But I had no intention of letting him slip through the net again.

‘Tonight would be lovely,’ I said sweetly.

‘Oh, and sorry I didn’t come over to you and Brigit the other night,’ he added. ‘Anya’s fella had just ditched her and I was trying to cheer her up.’

My cup spilleth over.

44

It was a date, a proper one.

He said he’d collect me at eight-thirty and take me to a French restaurant. I felt a slight frisson of alarm at his talk of French restaurants because only hicks and out-of-towners went to French restaurants and Turkmenistanian was the thing to impress a girl. But then I thought, so what.

I got ready slowly and calmly. The kind of churning excitement that I usually associated with Luke was absent. Instead a steady quiet anticipation hummed within me.

I had butterflies in my stomach, but they were asleep. They stretched and turned occasionally, just to remind me that they were there.

Of course, I reminded myself, Luke could be stringing along me and Anya and God knows how many others. But I just knew he wasn’t. I didn’t know where such deep abiding certainty came from, but I didn’t doubt it.

We’d gone through so many twists and turns; sleeping with each other after the Rickshaw Rooms, him asking me out, me refusing, me coming onto him at my party, him refusing, him looking out for me everywhere, meeting him in the Llama Lounge, having mind-blowing sex, Daryl arriving and Luke leaving in a huff. After all of that, the mutual overtures and rejections, for him to still want to take me out and for me to still want to go, it meant there was some little glimmer of understanding.

We’d arrived at a plateau, where we both knew enough about the other, even the bad bits, especially the bad bits, and still wanted to proceed.

In preparation for my free French meal, I dressed demurely.

On the outside at least.

I wore what I called my grown-up dress. I called it that because it wasn’t black, it wasn’t made of lycra and you couldn’t see the line of my knickers under it. It was a dark grey, nun-like shift. Because of these qualities I’d thought it was a total waste, but Brigit had bullied me into buying it. She’d said it would come in very handy one day. I’d said I wasn’t planning on dying, entering a convent or being up in court on a murder charge. But, as I admired my demure, yet strangely unrevolting reflection, I admitted she’d been right.

It got better. I wore high heels and I put my hair up. Normally I could only do one or the other, not both, not unless I enjoyed towering over people like the Incredible Hulk. But Luke was man enough for me at my zenith.

Underneath my cassock I had struggled into black stockings and a suspender belt. A sure sign that I was mad about Luke. Because surely no one could wear such underwear if they weren’t planning on taking it off very shortly? Uncomfortable and unnatural, that’s what it was. I felt as ridiculous as a drag artist.

Eight-thirty arrived and so did Luke. I took one look at him, dark-eyed, clean-shaven and citrus-fragranced, and my butterflies woke up en masse and started bickering over whose turn it was to make the coffee.

He looked a lot sleeker than I’d ever seen him before. Acres less hair and denim than was usually in evidence. I realized it meant he was taking me seriously and I brimmed with pleasure.

As he crossed the threshold, I braced myself to be snogged to within an inch of my life. But, to my surprise, he didn’t kiss me. Momentarily startled, I rallied gamely and declined to descend into the pit of depression that beckoned so warmly. I didn’t think, He doesn’t fancy me. I knew he fancied me, I would have staked my life on it.