A Spanish Lover by Joanna Trollope Page A

night, she wasn’t tired, but she appeared to be under an obligation – which was worse.
    She sat down on one of the unfriendly beds and pulled off her boots. It would have been a relief to ring Lizzie. Under ordinary circumstances, and particularly with the wretched Gómez Morenos paying, she would have rung Lizzie at once, to tell her how dreadful the hotel was, and make a joke of the egg-box bathroom and the poor, gloomy bulls’ heads and the pretend Spanish ladies, frozen in vivacious mid-flamenco for evermore. But in the current circumstances, she couldn’t ring unless – unless it was to say look, I’ve made a really bad mistake, backed quite the wrong hunch, and I’m coming home for Christmas after all.
    â€˜And that,’ Frances said out loud, ‘I can’t do. At least—’ She looked at her watch, it said eight-forty-five, ‘at least, not yet.’
    At nine o’clock, having brushed her hair and put on more lipstick, but having decided against the tepid trickle that came from the shower head, Frances went down to the foyer and stationed herself between a lady in royal-blue ruffles with a fan and castanets painted with panniered donkeys, and a bull who had lost his nearest glass eye. She watched the doors. Ten minutes passed, and no-one came in or out. A stout couple emerged from the lift and sat as far away from Frances as possible, speaking in some Scandinavian language and studying a guide book. Frances got up and asked the grave young man behind the reception desk for some red wine. He said he was afraid the bar was closed. Frances said then she was afraid that someone from the hotel was going to have to go all the way to the Bar El Nido for her and bring some back. The young man looked at her for a long, long time and then said he would make enquiries.
    â€˜Please do,’ Frances said. ‘And quickly.’
    The young man picked up the nearest telephone and spoke a great deal of rapid, quiet, nimble Spanish into it. Then he replaced the receiver and said to Frances, as if he were a doctor speaking to the anxious relation of an extremely ill patient, ‘We will do all we can.’
    â€˜Good,’ Frances said. She went back to her chair. ‘This is a dump,’ she said to the one-eyed bull. The Scandinavian couple stared at her.
    â€˜Good evening,’ she said. ‘Do you think this hotel is comfortable?’
    â€˜No,’ the man said in clear English. ‘But it is cheap.’ Then he went back to his guide book and his Nordic mutterings.
    Frances went on waiting. The telephone rang once or twice, a boy in motor-bike leathers came in with a parcel, a handful of depressed-looking guests crossed the foyer on their way out to dinner, but no wine came, nor did young Señor Gómez Moreno.
    â€˜Where is my wine, please?’ Frances called.
    â€˜One moment, Miss Shore,’ the young man said.
    An elderly telex machine behind the desk began to chatter out a message, claiming his attention. Frances looked at her nails – clean, unpolished – at the heels of her boots, at the Spanish lady’s bright, fixed, painted face, at the darkly gilded depths of the ceiling, at her watch. At half-past nine, she marched back to the reception desk. The young man saw her coming, and melted, without hurrying, into an inner cubicle, obscured by a curtain. There was a brass bell on the reception desk, shaped – oh my God, I can’t stand it, Frances thought – like a flamenco dancer. She picked it up and rang it ferociously.
    â€˜Where is my wine?’
    A cold blast of air swirled into the foyer as the doors were pushed open. A young man came in, a tall, attractive young man in an English-looking camel-hair overcoat and a long plaid scarf.
    â€˜Miss Shore?’
    Frances turned, still holding the bell.
    â€˜I am José Gómez Moreno.’ He held out his hand and smiled with enormous warmth. ‘Welcome to