Maestra by L. S. Hilton

towels.
    ‘I knocked on his door, but he didn’t answer. Let’s go swimming!’

9
    It might sound funny, but I knew there was something wrong when James didn’t appear for lunch. Mercedes had immediately fallen back asleep in the sun, the strings of her bikini top trailing untied across her back, and I had passed the time reading a biography of Chagall that I’d brought in case we had the chance to go up to Saint-Paul de Vence. At half past twelve, I started to worry, and though I tried for a few minutes more to concentrate on the book, I knew something was strange. What if he was ill? He had been going on about his gruesome diarrhoea. He might need a doctor. The last thing we needed was bother. I tied my robe and went back up across the lawn, too impatient when I got inside to wait for the lift. On the second floor I barrelled down the corridor, muttering ‘ Désolée ’ at a maid who was bent over a vacuum cleaner. I went straight to James’s room and as soon as I saw him, I knew.
    I had never seen a dead body before. But there was a vacant immobility to the flesh, a strange hollowness to the features, which signalled a total absence of vitality. James didn’t look as though he was sleeping. He just looked dead. His huge body in the white sheets was covered in a cotton nightshirt; with his rinded, thick-nailed feet sticking out he resembled a grotesque elderly putto . I knew, but still I went through some motions I had learned from films – I went and fetched a blusher compact from my make-up bag and cautiously held the unsnapped mirror over his face. Nothing. I couldn’t bring myself to try to open his eyes, but I gingerly lifted the ham of his arm and tried to feel for a pulse.
    ‘James?’ I hissed urgently, trying to control a gulping scream. ‘James!’ Nothing.
    I walked round the bed to pick up the phone and call reception, but I checked myself. I felt dizzy and like I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t lose control. He’d been drinking – he didn’t usually drink, maybe he couldn’t. I took a huge, shuddering breath. I saw it all, the swift, discreet staff, the ambulance, the police station. If they did an autopsy they would find whatever stupid cocktail of tranqs Mercedes had given him, and it would be manslaughter. I saw the newspapers, our names, my mother’s face. The unimaginable impossibility of prison. I suddenly heard the sound of the vacuum getting closer. The maid was on her way to clean the room. I jogged to the main door, fumbled with the hangers of breakfast and safety cards, dropped them, scrabbled for the ‘Do Not Disturb’. In a place like this, that would give us hours. I sat slowly on one of the white sofas. Breathe, Judith. Think.
    I had never sent our passports to reception; I had just forgotten. I had scrawled LJ on the breakfast tab, just notional initials. We had called each other by our club names, worn sunglasses most of the time. The staff had seen us coming and going, but this was the South of France – they would simply assume we were whores, rented as a double act for a weekend. If we could get out, they had no way of tracing us beyond our descriptions, and this was a major hotel, with staff who were trained not to be too observant, I guessed. Fingerprints? I had no idea, really, how that worked, but I certainly had no criminal record and to my knowledge nor did Leanne. Didn’t they have some bureau where they were held? Some mega-tech international DNA databank?
    I couldn’t think that. I’d often dipped into my roommates’ medical textbooks but I wasn’t sure if there were any visible signs of sudden cardiac arrest. He was obese, it was hot and he’d had sex – surely that would be the obvious conclusion? I thanked God for the fact that nice girls always swallow: there wouldn’t be much evidence of me on the sheets. By the time anyone worked out there was more to it than that, we would be back in our lives. And if anyone came looking . . .
    The night