Heartbreak Hotel (36 page)

Monica gazed at the crowd of people. The party was taking place in Voda’s cottage. The room was heavily beamed and strung with fairy lights; somebody played the fiddle. This was all so new to her, this being sort of family. During the years with Malcolm, of course, it was the very thing from which she had been excluded.
A bit on the side
. She herself had no children and no siblings; her life had been the solitary one of the professional woman. Now she felt currents pulling in all directions, too deep for her to comprehend. Penny was right; her feelings of jealousy had all but evaporated when faced with Buffy’s living, breathing exes, all of advanced years. What remained was far more complicated.

For despite Buffy’s best efforts to include her, she felt an alien species in this ramshackle cottage high up in the hills. Was she really more at ease in a roomful of bankers? She couldn’t connect the two halves of her life together – her weekends with Buffy, the mess and muddle of it, and her corporate week in hotels where the ceiling didn’t leak and there was constant hot water. She watched Voda and India dancing together, bumping into people, daffodils falling out of their hair, and she thought: Both halves have one thing in common – everyone gets roaring drunk.

Yet again, glasses were raised to the happy couple. Despite her confusion Monica was becoming fond of them all. They were Buffy’s history, the story of his life. What part was she going to play? She loved him dearly but she couldn’t see a place for herself here. Did she really have the courage to up sticks and move to Knockton like Harold, like Penny? Like Andy and Amy who were also jammed in this room somewhere?

Where were they? Monica tried to make out the faces but it all seemed to be getting darker. For a moment she thought that her eyesight was failing. The table lamps grew dimmer; the fairy lights shrank to pinpricks and then disappeared.

The room was plunged into darkness. There was a general murmur of surprise.

Voda’s voice said: ‘Fuck fuck
fuck
!’

‘What’s happened?’ somebody asked.

‘The electricity’s run out. It’s Conor’s
fucking
solar panels.’

Monica leaned against the dresser. It was rather a relief, not having to talk. Her eyes were wide open but she could see nothing. This was curiously liberating and for the first time she relaxed.

Buffy and his family had been swallowed into the blackness. In their place, a vision swam into view – a vision so precise, so exhilaratingly bright in every detail that Monica nearly laughed out loud. Everything fell into place. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? It really couldn’t be simpler. By the time the candles were lit, her plan was fully formed.

Buffy pushed his way through the crowd, the baby on his hip. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

‘I’m here.’

‘In this novel I read, the lights went out and when they came on again somebody had died.’

‘I’m not going to die yet,’ Monica said.

He gazed at her. ‘God, you’re beautiful. Please don’t ever leave me.’

He wore his blue velvet waistcoat. Even in the candlelight she could see a pale smear of sick down the front. She had never liked babies but for some reason this touched her heart.

‘I’ve got an idea for your hotel,’ she said.

‘Not the boutique thing. I know it’s going to rack and ruin but please not that.’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s something quite different.’

Over that summer the people of Knockton grew used to the fleet of cars parked outside Myrtle House. Ferraris, 7 Series BMWs, top-of-the-range Range Rovers, spattered with mud from passing tractors.

They also became used to their occupants. A banker is easily recognised in a town like Knockton. Besides, they all wore green boiler suits – ‘like a chain gang’, as Connie from Costcutter’s observed.

And like a chain gang they toiled from dawn to dusk. Panting and perspiring, they filled the potholes down the high street, they mended the swings in the recreation ground, they cleared the uncollected rubbish, they renovated the bus shelter, they painted and reopened the public toilets, they restored the flower beds in the municipal garden. As Jill, of Jill’s Things, said to her husband: ‘We bailed them out so it’s only fair, isn’t it, that they do the same for us?’

As word got round, people came from far and wide to witness the spectacle. This was more fun than morris dancers. During the weekends the Coffee Cup was crammed with customers; the local shops did a thriving business. ‘Watching the Bankers’ made Knockton, in Monica’s words, a Destination Town. What were they watching – an act of penance? a comedy routine?

For some, the toiling figures were a source of derision; for some, a focus for their anger. ‘Give us a mortgage, mister!’ young men shouted as they walked past.

Others were kinder, and engaged them in conversation. Old Mrs Bevan-Jones gave a cup of tea to an RBS Divisional Manager who was mending the paving stones outside her house. Her grandson filmed it on his mobile.
Where Did My Pension Go?
became a YouTube sensation.

And for the first time Myrtle House was making a profit. Its lack of facilities was part of the deal. So you queue for the bathroom? Join the real world! As Buffy watched his guests, aching and exhausted, driving off one Sunday night he said to Monica: ‘My kids called this Heartbreak Hotel. The lovelorn and abandoned would come here and learn the skill their partners had, but it didn’t quite turn out like that.’

‘More like Backbreak Hotel now,’ she said.

He put his arms around her. ‘Do you love me?’

Monica rubbed her face against his beard. ‘Of course.’ She paused. ‘Besides, at our age one can’t be choosy.’

Want to actually learn something from one of these courses? Go to my website,
www.deborahmoggach.com
, click on the link to ‘Courses for Divorces’ and find some short but highly instructive films. You might even meet somebody from the novel.

DEBORAH MOGGACH
is the author of many successful novels including
Tulip Fever
, for which a film adaptation is in the works, and
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
, which was made into the very popular movie starring Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, and Maggie Smith. Her screenplays include the film of
Pride & Prejudice
, which was nominated for a BAFTA.

JACKET DESIGN BY ANTHONY MORAIS

JACKET PHOTOGRAPHS: DOG AND HOTEL BY SHUTTERSTOCK;

HAT AND CHICKEN BY ISTOCKPHOTO

AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH © URSZULA SOLTYS

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