We stayed as we were for what felt like a long time. I watched the angle of light that I could see beyond the bottom of the cubicle door, looking for any change. I could feel my heart beat, and hers, and sense the thud-thud-thud of the disco. The continual hiss of what sounded like a faulty cistern made it hard to be sure, but I didn’t think there were any suspicious sounds, either in the cubicles on either side or out in the main part of the loo.
She started doing that pelvic floor thing, squeezing me from inside, even while the rest of her body stayed perfectly still and poised. She was grinning down at me. Af ter maybe a minute there had been no further noise from outside and no change in the light.
‘Somebody looking in and leaving again,’ I whispered. ‘Another false alarm.’
Jel raised herself a little higher, then let go of the side walls, raising both gloved hands high over her head as she sank further down on to me, so tight and hot I nearly came there and then. ‘Fuck it,’ she said, ‘just
I stood, lifting her, producing a gasp, thudding her back against the door and the partition wall to the side, her right shoulder just avoiding the coat hook protruding from the door. I took her weight while she grasped my shoulders. A little later, with her legs wrapped tight around my waist, she raised her gloved arms straight and high above her head.
Half an hour later I was standing, trying hard not to grin my face off, talking to Ferg in the hotel foyer. He looked pretty happy too, though whether this was for similar reasons I hadn’t yet enquired. Part of me felt guilty, of course, but another part of me — a more influential part of my head-space, it has to be said — was already writing off the whole experience and doing its best to ignore both the strange, tight, balled feeling in my guts and the troublesome minority of my neurons, protesting loudly with stuff like, You just did
It was — it had been, I was in the process of deciding — a line-drawing-under fling, a last and very much final hurrah that meant I had kissed goodbye to the delights of other women with a fine, decisive flourish: a bittersweet, never-again moment that would remain my secret and Jel’s for ever more. In the end, after all, I wasn’t yet married to Ellie, I hadn’t taken any vows in public, before any congregation or gathering of friends and family, and so technically no trust had been betrayed, no binding agreement breached.
And Ellie had had her little snog in the gardens, after all. There had probably been no more, either during this night or in the recent past, though of course there might have been the odd straying at university; there was a sort of tacit acknowledgement between us that a few things might have happened we’d rather the other one didn’t know about: nothing relationship-threatening — maybe in the end relationship-strengthening, getting stuff out of the system, tried, sampled, enjoyed but, having been enjoyed, found to be sufficient just in that one evaluation — but still things that were best confined to the memories in our own heads.
So that was all right then.
There was no warning, no hubbub or sort of raised general level of noise coming from the ballroom, just Ellie striding up to me, taking me by the arm.
‘El,’ I said. There was just the faintest of trembles inside me, like I thought there might be something wrong, but probably not; just a guilty conscience.
‘El, how are—’ Ferg started.
‘You need to get out, now,’ she told me, her voice flat. She looked at Ferg.‘Ferg, get the desk clerk to order a taxi for Dyce, name of Gilmour. Urgent. Find a way to let my brothers know about the booking.’
Ferg’s mouth clacked shut. Ellie gripped my upper arm hard. She had her blue sequinned purse in her other hand. ‘Come on,’ she said.
She made to move, as if she was going to drag me with her. I tried to stay standing where I was, wondering what the hell all the panic was about and unwilling to be manhandled — womanhandled — like this in front of friends.
‘El, what the—’
She put her mouth to my ear. ‘Come
‘—cking
