Look at Me!. Felix Baron

what?’

      ‘You know I support you coming out of your shell, a hundred per cent. You’ve transformed yourself and I’m proud of you.’

      ‘With your help.’

      ‘Yeah, well, maybe too much of my help.’

      ‘How do you mean?’

      ‘You don’t go out at night, not to clubs or the like, and the sorts of things you’ve been buying lately are designed for night-time wear. They might be a bit too sexy even for singles bars, unless you want to give people the wrong idea.’ She bit her lower lip. ‘What I’m saying is, there’s talk around the office. You might have crossed the line in some people’s eyes.’

      ‘Crossed what line?’

      ‘The one between “classy-but-sexy” and “scorching”. Not that you look cheap, far from it. You look great – great enough that when you go to the water cooler, every man on our floor suddenly gets thirsty. How many of them have asked you out?’

      ‘A few,’ Constance confessed.

      ‘But you’ve turned them all down? If you went on dates to clubs you’d have a chance to show off all you wanted.’

      ‘I don’t know if I’m ready for clubs and dates yet.’

      ‘Still carrying a torch for Jeff?’

      ‘Not exactly.’

      ‘Then?’

      ‘It’s hard to explain.’

      ‘You want the men to look but not touch, is that it?’

      ‘Shirley, the old me, she isn’t exactly dead yet. There’s still a bit of a puritan inside me. The way I am now, well, I could pull back if I had to, retreat into who I used to be, dressed the way I used to dress. On the other hand, if I got into a relationship the way I am now, that’d make the new me the real me and bury the old me for ever. I’d be burning my bridges. Does that make sense?’

      ‘Do I understand your words? Yes. Do those words make sense? No.’

      ‘Well, I’m buying this suit, anyway.’

      ‘But not to wear for the office, please?’

      ‘OK.’

      ‘Connie, you know what you need, apart from getting fucked good and hard and often?’

      ‘No, what do I need?’

      ‘To give the new Connie a test-run. See if you like her well enough to live with her, and without the old you.’

      ‘How do you mean?’

      ‘Find yourself a place to go where no one knows who you used to be. Be your new self there, complete with steamy relationships, if the right guys come along. Then, if it doesn’t work out for you, you can retreat back here, where I’ll be waiting to help keep you on an even keel.’

      ‘That sounds complicated.’

      ‘Nonsense! Next long weekend, take a mini-vacation somewhere where there’s lots of action. That might be all you need to sort yourself out.’

      ‘What if I fall for some guy who lives a hundred miles away?’

      ‘That’s something we’ll just have to deal with if and when it happens. One problem at a time, please, but if it does happen, ask him if he’s got a friend for me, right?’

      * * *

      On the following Monday morning, Constance got a call from Mrs Carey in HR. ‘Connie, I’m making up the vacation schedules.’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘You didn’t take a single day last year, nor the year before.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘You’ll have accumulated eight weeks, come June the fifteenth.’

      ‘Eight weeks?’

      ‘You’re entitled. If you decided to take it all at once, it’d really make things difficult for me.’

      ‘Sorry about that.’

      ‘So, you have to use some of it up, soon, like two weeks starting almost immediately.’

      ‘I do?’

      ‘I’m telling you that you have to take time off, and you’re upset?’

      ‘No, sorry.’

      ‘Good, then I’ll pencil you in to be off for two weeks, starting Monday next, right?’

      ‘Oh.’ Was it fate? Two whole weeks, in another place, a place where no one knew her? That was exactly the medicine that Shirley had prescribed, except for the size of the dose.

      Constance picked up the phone and got an outside line. Forty minutes later, she was booked for two weeks at Gran Playa Aphrodite, an all-inclusive, adults-only resort on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. Now she’d have to do some serious shopping. The one swimsuit she owned had a Peter Pan collar, legs and sleeves. It had just been worn for her ‘girls only’ segregated swimming lessons. Somehow, she didn’t think it’d go down so well in the Caribbean, particularly the pattern of yellow duckies.

       Chapter Six

      When she alighted from her plane it was dark out. The air was as warm as fresh-squeezed milk. The airport was all grass huts and exotic plants, though the huts had been built out of two-foot-thick timbers that were held together by massive steel bolts.

      A trio of pretty girls in flowery dresses greeted the passengers with weary ‘Ola’s and a few desultory dance steps. Well, it was eleven at night. There’d been headwinds. They were three hours late. The travellers were whisked through customs and into an open area that had buses parked around its perimeter. Hers was clearly labelled. Just twenty minutes after she’d landed, her bus was tunnelling its way between dark green walls of dense foliage. Constance caught glimpses of distant gas stations and fizzing neon signs but for most of the following hour it was just gigantic leaves brushing at the sides and roof of the bus and sharp turns taken too quickly. Then there was an open gateway that would have accommodated King Kong, and she was there, at the resort, in the place where she’d be free to explore her own immodesty to her heart’s content – but not until after a good night’s sleep and a long hot shower.

      Once she’d booked in, a good-looking man in black short-shorts and a white T-shirt loaded her luggage onto a golf cart and whisked her along a many-curved driveway to her room on the ground floor of a three-storey modern pink-brick building. Constance tried to listen while he explained the mysteries of the air conditioning and so on to her. By the time he was done, she only had the energy to wash quickly and crawl into bed stark naked, for just the second time in her young life.

      Constance was woken by happy squeals and splashes. The dappling of light on her ceiling told her there was brilliant sunshine and moving waves just a few feet beyond her gauze-draped French windows.

      It was all waiting for her – people with admiring lascivious eyes – perhaps romance – certainly some sort of adventure.

      And she was terrified.

      Of course, she didn’t have to expose herself to risk and potentially to shame. The room had everything: a lovely onyx-tiled bathroom, a king-sized bed (for one?), a minibar and room service. There were likely to be some English-language programmes available on the 50-inch flat-screen TV. If she decided to chicken out, she could stay in her room for her two weeks, resting, just being idle. If courage came to her tomorrow, she could venture out then. If she never summoned the nerve, well, no one would know or care that she’d been a coward. She could lie to Shirley, make up tales of all sorts of wild adventures.

      And