Wedding Night

TV?” I chime in with a wince. “It’s unbearable.” Every time there’s a pause in the banging, the Teletubbies blare out. Is it my imagination, or are they even louder than before?
    “Sir, madame, my humblest of apologies. We are working on the bed with all haste. And as for the TV …” Nico is holding a remote, which he jabs at the wall. Immediately the volume doubles.
    “No!” I clap my hands to my ears. “Too loud! Wrong way!”
    “Apologies!” shouts Nico over the racket. “I try again!”
    He zaps the remote several times, but nothing happens. He bangs it against his head and shakes it. “It has jammed!” he says in tones of astonishment. “I call an engineer.”
    “Excuse me.” Another man in a braided jacket has appeared out of nowhere. “The door was open. I have here some fresh juice courtesy of the management. Madame, where would you like me to place the juice?”
    “I … I …” I’m almost gibbering. I want to scream. I wantto erupt. This is supposed to be our wedding night. Our
wedding night
. And we’re standing in a hotel suite, surrounded by hammering workmen, butlers with salvers, and the noise of
Teletubbies
drilling into my brain.
    “Madame,” says Nico gently. “I am mortified that we are inconveniencing you. Please may I offer you again a complimentary cocktail in the bar?”

11

FLISS
    I almost can’t look at the texts. It’s like spying. It’s like rubbernecking a car crash. But I have to, even though they make me want to clap my hands over my eyes.
    Lottie and Ben are having the worst wedding night known to man. No other way to put it. It’s horrendous. It’s ghastly. And it’s all my fault. My stomach is one big guilty, acidy twinge. With every bulletin I feel worse. But it’s all in a good cause, I tell myself sternly, already clicking on the new text.
    Another round of margaritas. This fellow can certainly hold his drink. N
    Nico’s been keeping me updated all evening with every development. His latest four texts have been reports on all the complimentary cocktails that Lottie and Ben have consumed. It’s an eye-watering amount. They started drinking at ten, local time. It’s midnight there now. Lottie
has
to be blotto.
    But what about Ben? I pause a moment, tapping my phone thoughtfully against my palm. Something Lorcan said about Ben is coming back to me:
He’s a natural gambler but he lacks judgment
.
    A natural gambler. Hmm. I fire a text back to Nico:
    He likes to gamble.…
    I’ll leave it at that. Nico will know what to do with the information.
    I press
send
, then briskly shut my suitcase, trying to calm my unsettled mind. But conflicting thoughts are shooting back and forth like arrows, each landing with a piercing little stab:
    I’m sabotaging my sister’s honeymoon. I’m a horrible person
.
    But it’s only because I care about her happiness
.
    Exactly
.
    Exactly!
    I mean, what if I decided not to interfere and she got pregnant and they split up and she regretted the whole thing? What then? Wouldn’t I regret NOT doing something? Would I be like the people who kept their heads down and pretended not to see when the Nazis invaded?
    Not that Ben is a Nazi. As far as I know
.
    I feel bad about the whole
Teletubbies
thing. That was cruel. Lottie’s almost phobic about that program
.
    I wheel my suitcase out to the hall and put it next to Noah’s. He’s asleep in his room, clasping Monkey and breathing peacefully, and I pop in for a moment to watch him. He took the news of our trip with utter calmness and went straightawayto pack his little case, asking only how many pairs of pants he needed. He’s going to run the world one day, Noah.
    I head into the bathroom and run a bath, sloshing in one of the many duty-free bath fragrances cluttering my bathroom. I shop almost exclusively at airports, I’ve realized. I try on clothes before boarding and pick them up on my return. I pick up Clarins sets on the plane. I have enough cured Spanish sausage and hunks of Parmesan to last me a year. And Toblerones.
    I hesitate. I have Toblerone on my mind now. A Toblerone in the bath, with a glass of wine …
    After only a millisecond’s internal debate, I head to the treats cupboard in the kitchen. Six outsize Toblerones are nestling next to a ridiculously large duty-free box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates, which I give to Noah three at a time, every Saturday. He thinks they come in threes. It has never occurred to him that they might be