A Bad Bride's Tale (13 page)

“welcome to phuket.” a
pretty Thai woman in a pale pink skirt-suit and corporate flecked silk neck-scarf bowed quickly, palms together, smile neat and impenetrable. She ushered them through the gleaming airport, with its armed patrols and faint echoes of cautionary drug-trafficking films, toward the taxi rank. “We will take your bags, thank you. Our private bus is this way. It will passage you to the Blue Blossom. Thank you very much, sir.”

Jez glanced at Stevie for approval. She smiled. Jez looked re- lieved. He was nervous about the honeymoon. He knew she could be oversensitive and annoyingly right-on about certain things, but felt that a decent enough amount of time had passed since the tsunami. Besides, the best way to support a nation in crisis is by spending money there, he’d rationalized to Stevie earlier. What he hadn’t mentioned, however, was that he’d gotten a whopping great dis- count on the trip from YR-Brand clients and that it was this, rather than altruism, that had decided the destination. But luxury costs. He wanted her to have the best, just for once. He didn’t share her love of authentic accommodation, i.e., cheap and not temperature- controlled. They’d done enough of that. They were married now. Married people did things properly.

“Blimey.” Jez’s mouth dropped as he stared out of the minibus window, hangover pickling in the tropical heat. He pointed his fin- ger on the glass, leaving a milky smudge. “Check it out, babe!”

Emerging through perfectly coiffed palm trees and foliage, ablaze with saffron-colored flowers, was a traditional square build- ing, all open-air columns and gleaming marble, with a low red roof that turned up at the corners like a handkerchief.

Stevie stepped out of the bus into a wall of wet heat. Goodness. She’d never been anywhere quite so posh before. It was almost over- whelmingly luxurious. Bleary-eyed and a little uncertain as to what to do next, she followed Jez as he strode nonchalantly through the lobby, scratching the small of his back above the waistband of his three-quarter-length trousers.

The receptionist was beautiful. She offered her a complimen- tary hibiscus flower, pink and fragrant, its stalk wound with green silk ribbon. Another Thai woman crept up—silent on her silk flip-flops—offering small bowls of steaming scented jasmine tea and a list of all the spa treatments. She politely gestured for them to take a seat.

“Fabulous,” Stevie sighed, leaning tentatively into the snowy linen and gold silk cushions on a lobby sofa, keeping her arms pressed to her sides. She felt like she smelled of plane and wished she hadn’t worn her sleeveless black Zara dress, as its linen was now crumpled like a newspaper. “This is amazing, Jez.”

“Isn’t it?” Jez grinned, his shoulders dropped, and he widened the gap between his sprawled legs. “Glad it suits.” He squeezed her knee. “I want you to be happy.”

“I know.” Stevie smiled, touched. Jez would push the boat out for her, she knew that. He excelled at the big romantic gestures, it

suited the largesse of personality. She’d always loved him for that. “Oh, look, ah . . .”

Rectangular ponds, full of tropical fish, long and colorful as ties, were cut into the floor of the lobby, mounds of pale gray pebbles artfully placed around the sides. Palms, perky with care, sat with perfectly postured trunks in tasteful black pots. Stevie noticed tiny birds, orange and green, dart around the lobby, quick as fireworks. Okay. She was seduced.

And the other guests? It seemed that they came two by two. It was a resort of couples: a thin slim girl in a sarong on the arm of a guy with a huge video camera in chinos, asking about tours of the island at the front desk; a shy Japanese couple, sitting a foot apart on the ad- jacent sofa, reading magazines; a loved-up sunburned British couple, overpoweringly underdressed in their thong swimwear and expensive hippie jewelry.

“I know it’s not a typical Stevie kind of place,” Jez burst out, scratching the fuzz of orange hairs on his forearm, “but I thought we deserved some luxury after the last few fucking nightmare weeks. I know I’ve been a bit of a bear with a sore head—well, a complete fucking pain in the arse, actually. And I’m sorry, Stevie. I’m really sorry.”

Stevie smiled, feeling tender. “You’re forgiven.”

Jez grinned. “And I thought you’d prefer to relax, you know, rather than go on some mad trip to the Galápagos Islands or some- thing.”

Stevie swallowed the undeniable knowledge that she would have
much
preferred a trip to the Galápagos Islands. “Don’t worry, it’s perfect.”

Jez shrugged a heavy, thick arm around her shoulders. “You see,

I already know you better than you know yourself, and we’ve only been married a day. Hey . . .” He looked up. “Oh, right, this is us. Come on, pumpkin.”

They held hands as they walked through the hub of the Blue Blossom, following the exquisite Thai lady, along walkways sand- wiched between lily-padded pools, passing three restaurants, all with slightly different specialties—as signified by the variation of chairs, from upholstered, high-backed to light, cane buckets—and all with varying brochure-worthy views. A few people—all couples—picked at food, slurped chilled French white wine with their Italian salads, and spoke sparingly in hushed tones. Birdsong was only just audible over the light eastern music tinkling down from invisible speakers. Stevie felt a strange heaviness in her feet, as if the flight had suddenly caught up with her. Was it meant to be morning or night? The transition, like that from girlfriend to wife, was fundamental but strangely arbitrary.

“Love it!” Jez nudged Stevie. “Check out that pool.”

The showpiece pool was a huge ring of water, like Stevie’s blue garter. It was divided into zones: an Eden-style loop with palms and flowers; a stretch with bridges and tumbling white-peaked waves; a waterfall, a sheet of bubbles; a Jacuzzi area of violently spurting jets against which tanned men with white teeth massaged their backs. Brown slim bodies arranged themselves into different stomach-flattering positions on the pool terrace’s loungers. Thighs glistened. Cocktails clinked. All the bodies ignored each other, marked their space with little cluttered tables and low walls of backs, and yet chose to position their loungers within a towel’s throw away from each other, facing the water, as if jostling for space at an outdoor show. Stevie wondered what it was about the sight of dozens of tanned postcoital couples that made her want to run away

to wet, muddy hills, preferably somewhere in North Wales, safely clad in an anorak and walking boots.

“If you would just like to step into the resortmobile, sir, it will take you to your villa,” fluttered the Thai lady who’d been showing them around. “Thank you.”

Stevie clambered into a glorified electric golf cart and tried not to feel a little irritated that she’d become invisible in the company of “sir.” She was in paradise. She must enjoy it.

After a few minutes buzzing along in the cart, it struck her that the resort resembled nothing so much as a vast golf course, all man- icured slopes and grass as stiff and green as AstroTurf. It was also eerily empty, apart from the maids and staff, dressed in traditional black and white, but with large paddyfield-style straw hats, pre- sumably to add cultural flavor. They stood outside villas, banging down rugs or hauling white bags of laundry behind them like ants with egg sacs. As the cart chugged past, they’d stop their activity and stand up to attention quickly, wave and smile, as if their job depended on it, which it probably did. Stevie waved back, apolo- getically.

The cart stopped with a jolt outside a villa that looked the same as all the others. A short man with gleaming petrol-black hair scut- tled out: another greeter, with more restricted English. He escorted them into the house, smiling and nodding and offering hard-to- decipher chat about keys. He would, they gathered, be their per- sonal “resort facilitator,” should they need any facilitating. The key crunched in the lock as he turned it.

Gosh, it was cold inside. Freezing. The air conditioning was ex- cessive. Stevie folded her arms tight across her chest and gazed around her. White slithers of sunlight thrummed through the blinds, casting stripes of shadow across the creamy wood floor and a

glorious, very low bed, mountainous with silk cushions. The facili- tator proudly pointed to the hi-tech details—flat-screen television, stereo, laptop ports—discreetly hidden among the acres of taupe and limestone. Decorative Buddhas and tortoise stone ornaments were dotted about the room on horizontal surfaces.

“Oh, fuck me.” Jez opened the doors onto the terrace at the back of the villa, his wide back silhouetted against the sunshine. “We can have some fun with this, babe.”

Stevie peeked through the glass doors: a large, humming Jacuzzi, a deep square trough of a bath scattered with pink petals, set within a small well-tended garden with just enough shrubs to ensure pri- vacy from the neighbors but not enough to scare with its potential for housing exotic wildlife. For a fleeting moment, she had the sense that she shouldn’t be here, that Jez should be with the kind of woman who liked to lie around the swimming pool, burnished and lithe, or the women who tripped across the spa treatment brochures in white crocheted bikinis. It was a special kind of luxury, this, al- most embarrassingly up-front about the fact it was designed for sex and relaxation. This made her feel strangely stressed.

“Cool, don’t you think, babe? You’ve gone all silent on me.” Jez’s nose was already pinking in the violent Thai sun, although the skin on the back of his neck, where he’d remembered to put sunscreen, remained as pale and stodgy as a noodle.

“It’s amazing. I’m just a little stunned.”

“And you see those two beds?” Jez pointed to two flat mattresses on the terrace, each annotated with neatly folded taupe towels and a blue silk pillow. “His-and-her massages . . .” He winked.

Stevie grinned, pleased that Jez’s schoolboyish enthusiasm had cleared the complex frowns crosshatched by his father’s death. Did

this mean he’d return more to his former self? Was his oafish behavior just a symptom of his grief, nothing more? Oh, she hoped so.

“The towels infused with ginger,” recited the Thai man, beam- ing blankly. “And here, sir . . .” A grand pause. “. . . we have the light switch dimmer.” Stevie and Jez nodded. Nobody spoke. Guest and host waited for the other to make the next move. It made Stevie feel uncomfortable. Was the facilitator about to leave? Should they tip him?

Jez took the lead. “Well, thanks very much, er . . .” He leaned toward the man’s name badge. “Lin. Thanks, Lin.” The man smiled expectantly. He didn’t move. Jez dug his hand into his tight trouser pocket and squirmed around for some change. “A fiver any use, mate? Didn’t think so. Oh, here we go. Baht.” He handed the man a few crumpled notes which could have been worth anything, two pence or £100. Jez slapped him on the back.

If the note was worthless, the man was gracious about it and ex- ited with a small bow. The atmosphere in the villa immediately re- laxed. Privacy at last.

With a large gorilla thump of the chest, Jez squatted down and gripped Stevie around the waist so firmly she could feel each of his fingers. “You are gorgeous.”

“Jez? What are you doing?”

He scooped her into his arms, Stevie laughing, screaming, legs kicking out.

“And I’m going to carry you over the threshold if it kills me,” growled Jez, lifting Stevie’s nine-and-a-half-stone frame over the terrace, through the glass double door. “Argh!” he shouted, stag- gering. He dropped her on the bed. “Me, Tarzan!”

Stevie laughed, her head falling into the crunchy fresh linen, strands of brown hair spilling across the pillow like rays.

Jez threw himself on top, half-winding Stevie. “A fuck in Phuket, Mrs. Lewis?”

It was the third time in a week Jez appeared to forget that Stevie had decided not to change her name—well, not for the foreseeable future. But now wasn’t the time to mention it. Jez’s hands writhed beneath her T-shirt toward her bra, filling her mouth with his tongue. Stevie fought jetlag’s downward tug: She would feel hap- pier if they made love, more married somehow. She just wished she’d had a shower first. Jez’s breathing began to slow, each pant warm and damp, his jaw pumice against her cheek. She combed one hand into his hair, avoiding his bald patch. With the other hand she unbuckled his trousers. This was more like it. They were behaving like newlyweds at last.

SEVENTEEN
Æ

as always, katy norris made sure she got up from
her siesta before Sebastian awoke so that he wouldn’t see her rap- idly maturing face, without makeup, crumpled and swollen with sleep. (Seb had never seen her without makeup.) For some reason, on a foreign bed, on foreign pillows, she could not remain sleeping on her back, as she’d trained herself to do in order to reduce the de- pressing phenomena of compression wrinkles. Still, Katy supposed, a couple of weeks on her right-hand side wouldn’t cause permanent damage—only a little temporary puffiness first thing in the morn- ing. She walked along the beach, which curved into the horizon like a banana, dispassionately wondering when she’d become the kind of woman who worried about whether she slept on her side or her back.

Katy tilted her face toward the afternoon sun, soaking up its promise of an even, natural tan. Wrinkles-wise, she knew she should probably cover up, but this final blast of afternoon sun would give her a gentle sun-kissed J-Lo glow this evening. The air felt heavy and full of skin-plumping moisture as it pressed against

her exposed body, so sparely packaged in her microscopic bronze Heidi Klein bikini.

Katy sighed. Today could be
the
day, she sensed—the day when something might
actually
happen. Just that morning, Seb had mentioned “they’d have a good chat at dinner,” and she’d felt like cartwheeling along the side of the infinity pool. (She also knew that Seb had no idea who Charmaine was. He was just sleep-talking.) To reassure herself, she’d mentally measured the length of the ring fin- ger on his right hand as he’d slept. The longer it was, the more testosterone, the more chances of being unfaithful, according to a health snippet she’d read in a magazine. And Seb’s finger was reas- suringly on the stout side. Katy licked her lips, tasting sea salt.