The New Mrs D Read Free Page B

and Mrs Holdy-Hands. That was all I needed now, to witness someone else’s marital bliss in an enclosed space. Just great!
    ‘Hi,’ I said, almost unable to bear the stab of pain their happy togetherness brought me. As they both nodded a reply, I shook it off, repeating in my head, ‘I am strong’ ‘I am confident’ ‘I look amazing in my beautiful, new dress.’ I had to get through this one night. All I had to do to begin was put one foot in front of the other.
    Stepping out to the moonlit, open-air restaurant, I breathed in, brushed my fringe from my eyes and strode into the middle of the busy restaurant to find a seat. It was then I realised I was surrounded. There was a reason David and I had chosen to stay here and not with the rest of the adventure tour group we’d booked with. This was a romantic, honeymoon hotel.
    Everywhere couples were gazing into each other’s eyes, clinking glasses and toasting their successful, loving relationships, almost as if they knew mine was in the toilet. Could this evening get any harder, God?
    Yes, it could.
    Just as I was beginning to refocus on finding a table, a man moved a chair for his wife just in front of me, kissing her shoulder as she passed him to sit down. I turned in another direction, swallowing hard as I took in the scene before me − this hotel was a lovers’ paradise. Everyone was still going about their normal, happy lives and most likely looking forward to having rampant, holiday sex tonight – even with each other! This place had no tables for one, or an uneven three. I was all alone, in honeymoon central.
    Just three nights earlier, David had looked into my eyes across one of these very candlelit tables, telling me how much he couldn’t wait to get me back to our room. We were ecstatic newly-weds, giggling like teenagers as we rushed away early, having guzzled a bottle of champagne. And later, out on the balcony of our honeymoon suite, in the warm night air and under the romantic, Greek moonlight . . . I’d beat him twice at gin rummy. It was all I could do to keep my mind off all the sex we weren’t having.
    ‘Waitress?’
    The Shoulder-Kisser was waving my way. I moved back, turning to let whoever he was calling past. There was no-one behind me.
    ‘Hello? Waitress?’ he shouted again, snapping his fingers.
    ‘Excuse me?’ I laughed, pointing to my chest in a ‘surely you don’t mean me’ way. Even though he wasn’t smiling, I threw him a quizzical smile and turned away – only to see a woman in an identical dress to mine weaving in and out of tables with a tray full of drinks. I looked around and spotted another identically-dressed woman. And another. Finally, a waitress brushed past to take the man’s order, but not before stopping to give me a sympathetic smile.
    Maybe it was a congratulatory one. ‘Well done, Binnie,’ it said. ‘Your sexy, new dress is hotel waiting staff standard issue.’
    Suddenly my head hurt again. What was I thinking, coming down here all by myself without David? What had I done?
    I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t.
    Face flushed and heart racing, I grabbed hold of the waitress’s shoulder as she was rushing away to collect the man’s order and whispered, ‘Is it possible to get wine . . .er . . . lots of wine − and dinner − sent to my room?

Chapter Three
    One of the local dishes is called Stifado. Tried not to stare at him too much whilst at dinner with Mr D.

    I posted my ‘everything-is-normal’ Facebook status, attached a picture of some nameless Greek hunk I could do with meeting right now, and sighed. By the looks of the newly pebble-dashed toilet in my hotel room, Mrs D had drunk this tiny island dry last night. Any thought of Greek beef stew made me feel like rushing back in for another round of vomiting. The absence of Mr D was something to be left out of my updates for now, so my family back home would believe everything was rosy, if only for Sally and Beth’s sake.
    Despite my