4

Wednesday 31 December

Nicola Taylor was wondering when this night of hell would end, little knowing that the hell had not yet even begun.

‘Hell is other people’, Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote, and she was with him on that. And right now hell was the drunken man with the wonky bow tie on her right who was crushing every bone in her hand, and the even drunker man on her left, in a green tuxedo jacket, whose sweaty hand felt as slimy as pre-packed bacon.

And all the other 350 noisy, drunken people around her.

Both men were jerking her arms up and down, damned nearly pulling them out of their sockets as the band in the Metropole Hotel function room struck up ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on the stroke of midnight. The man on her right had a plastic Groucho Marx moustache clipped to the inside of his nostrils and the one on her left, whose slimy hand had spent much of the evening trying to work its way up her thigh, kept blowing a whistle that sounded like a duck farting.

She so totally did not want to be here. So wished to hell she had stuck to her guns and stayed home, in her comfort zone, with a bottle of wine and the television – the way she had most evenings this past year, since her husband had dumped her in favour of his twenty-four-year-old secretary.

But oh no, her friends Olivia and Becky and Deanne had all insisted there was no way they were going to allow her to get away with spending New Year’s Eve moping at home on her own. Nigel was not coming back, they assured her. The slapper was pregnant. Forget him, kiddo. There were plenty more fish in the sea. Time to get a life.

This was getting a life?

Both her arms were jerked up in the air at the same time. Then she was dragged forward in a huge surge, her feet almost falling out of her insanely expensive Marc Jacobs heels. Moments later she found herself being dragged, tripping, backwards.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot … the band played.

Yes, they bloody well should. And current ones too!

Except she could not forget. Not all those midnights on New Year’s Eve when she had stared into Nigel’s eyes and told him she loved him, and he’d told her he loved her as well. Her heart was heavy, too damned heavy. She wasn’t ready for this. Not now, not yet.

The song finally ended and Mr Pre-packed Bacon now spat his whistle out, gripped both her cheeks and planted a slobbery, lingering kiss on her lips. ‘Happy New Year!’ he burbled.

Then balloons fell from the ceiling. Paper streamers rained down on her. Jolly smiling faces surrounded her. She was hugged, kissed, fondled from every direction she turned. It went on and on and on.

Nobody would notice, she thought, if she escaped now.

She struggled across the room, weaving through the sea of people, and slipped out into the corridor. She felt a cold draught of air and smelt sweet cigarette smoke. God, how she could do with a fag right now!

She headed along the corridor, which was almost deserted, turned right and walked along into the hotel foyer, then crossed over to the lifts. She pressed the button and, when the door opened, stepped in and pressed the button for the fifth floor.

Hopefully, they’d all be too drunk to notice her absence. Maybe she should have drunk more too and then she’d have been in a better party mood. She was feeling stone cold sober and could easily have driven home, but she’d paid for a room for the night and her stuff was in there. Perhaps she’d call up some champagne from room service, watch a movie and get quietly smashed on her own.

As she stepped out of the lift, she pulled her plastic room key-card out of her silver lamé Chanel evening bag – a copy she’d bought in Dubai on a trip there with Nigel two years ago – and made her way along the corridor.

She noticed a slender blonde woman – in her forties, she guessed – a short distance ahead. She was wearing a full-length, high-necked evening dress with long sleeves and appeared to be struggling to open her door. As she drew level with her, the woman, who was extremely drunk, turned to her and slurred, ‘I can’t get this sodding thing in. Do you know how they work?’ She held out her key-card.

‘I think you have to slip it in and then out quite quickly,’ Nicola said.

‘I’ve tried that.’

‘Let me try for you.’

Nicola, helpfully, took the card and slipped it into the slot. As she pulled it out, she saw a green light and heard a click.

Almost instantaneously, she felt something damp pressed across her face. There was a sweet smell in her nostrils and her eyes felt as if they were burning. She felt a crashing blow on the back of her neck. Felt herself stumbling forward. Then the carpet slammed into her face.