Just Last Night(66)

I laugh. Fin humor is delivered with a curt precision, and so straight-faced that I only realize it is humor a second or two after he finishes speaking.

I’m all of a sudden awash with curiosity about Fin’s side of their war, while simultaneously certain it’ll be a heavily biased fiction.

No one gets a reputation by accident, a favorite truism of Justin’s. (I seem to recall I once argued against this, from a general vague sense of injustice, and Justin retorted: “When you can show me the exception, I’ll start making exceptions.” I have yet to show him an exception.)

Fin steps forward to the reception desk and I fidget while he checks in, feeling very scruffy in the surroundings.

“Do you know if your dad’s staying here?” I say, under my breath, as Finlay hands me my key card in its paper sleeve, room number written on it.

“No, but there’s no point asking. I’ll get Data Protection, blah blah.”

“Hmm.” I rub my chin. “They won’t tell you if he is here, but I bet with some light wheedling they’ll tell you if he isn’t.”

“How do you mean?”

“Let me try,” I say. I move forward to the available person behind reception, who, probably helpfully, is a man around Fin’s father’s age.

“Hi, I wonder if you could help me. Myself and my brother”—I nod back at Fin, in earshot, looking perplexed—“are here to surprise my dad for his seventieth birthday. I don’t suppose you could call up to his room for us, and tell him there’s someone down here to see him? Please don’t say who we are though!” I flap my hands nerdily at the two of us, make a mouth-zipping gesture.

“What’s his name?” says the man, smiling indulgently.

“Iain Hart,” I say. “That’s Iain spelled I-A-I-N.”

The man taps a keyboard and looks at his screen. “I’m afraid we don’t have a guest at the moment under that name.”

“Oh! That’s fine, he’s maybe arriving later tonight then?” I turn and address Finlay who mutters: “Yes, must be.”

“Thank you anyway,” I say.

“I shouldn’t strictly do this”—the man leans toward me—“but if you give me your room number, I can let you know if anyone does arrive with that name. I wouldn’t be able to tell you his room number but I could contact him on your behalf, once he’s settled in?”

“Oh sure yes, definitely,” I say. “Thank you! I’m Evelyn Harris in Room 166 and this is Finlay Hart. Room . . . ?”

“312,” Fin supplies.

“Got it.” The man beams, marking it down on a notepad. “Have a lovely stay.”

As we walk to the lifts, Finlay says: “That was genuinely impressive. I’m impressed.”

“I used to be a reporter at the local paper. The base machinations and grubby audacity never leave you.”

“Probably helps to have charm too,” Finlay says.

“Oh . . .” I startle a little at an unexpected compliment. He thinks I’m a presumptuous irritant, doesn’t he? “All part of the . . . routine.”

“If it’s an art, I’ve never mastered it,” he says, with a twitch of lips, as we step into the lift. He punches the first and third floor buttons respectively.

“Thing is,” Fin says, after a short silence, “I’m not criticizing your methods. To me this makes it even more impressive. But why would you turn up for your dad’s seventieth as a surprise, and then have a receptionist tell him you’re in the lobby? That’d ruin it, no? You do the big reveal when dinging a champagne glass with a fork, in some restaurant, surely?”

“Aha, any card sharp could answer this. Cons don’t work because they’re clever, they work because they’re fast.”

The lift doors slide open at my floor.

“You’re full of surprises, Evelyn Harris,” Fin says, as I step out, and I wonder what the other ones were.

MY ROOM IS the size of a London flat, a tundra of cornflower-colored carpet and milky coffee-colored expensively hewn fabrics, a bed the size of Italy with starchy, crease-free, snow-white pillows in upright rows. When I twitch the curtains, I have a plum view of the illuminated castle. It’s Instagram brag crack cocaine, except I’m not minded to advertise this online and be asked why I’m here.

I try not to be so vulgar as to dwell on the cost, but I have a sense that consecutive nights here, multiplied by two, must be six months of my mortgage payments.

I must remember to text Ed. But . . . on reflection, what right does Ed have to make me feel, albeit subtly, with the cover of good intentions, as if he has some sort of ownership of me? He’s engaged to his long-term horror and he slept with my late best friend.

Late best friend. I stare at the remote controls lined up on the walnut side table and, for once, I’m shocked at these words, not because they are surprising to me, but because they aren’t.

Susie’s deadness has crossed an invisible line, passed into an unexceptional fact I can rehearse as part of my mental furniture, as much prosaic scenery as the mini fridge and the safe for valuables over there.

I know this is only true right now, in this particular moment. It’ll astound me again, at another time in the near future. But gradually that will happen less and less, and this will happen more and more, until it’s simply always ordinary.