The Morning After

There was a sledgehammer in his head, in front of the room or on Tom's bloody building site. Sidney tentatively opened one eye and saw a seagull observing him. He closed his eye again. The hammering continued.

"Show some mercy. It's rudely early!"," he groaned, lifting his head. Not a good idea. It weighed a ton. The seagull kept watching him. He laid his head down again. Oh, those wonderfully soft pillows of the Sanditon Grand Hotel!

But the hammering continued, then suddenly stopped.

"Housekeeping!" someone chirped, there was the short "woosh" of the electronic door lock being opened, and then: "Oh, Mr Parker… oh, I'm so sorry…"

He opened his eyes again, ignoring the lightning strokes that shot through his head. One of his brother's chambermaids was standing in front of him, staring at him in horror. He was not in his attic room, but in one of the hotel rooms, sprawled across the bed in yesterday's sportswear. A seagull was sitting on the bedside table. And as he moved, something clinked under his belly.

"I'm so sorry," the chambermaid said once more and moved back to the open door, where she crashed right into Babington and Crowe.

"Look at the state of him, Babbers!", Crowe said with visible delight. "Cannot help but scare young girls away, can he?" His more chivalrous friend took care of the chambermaid.

Somehow, Sidney managed to hoist himself in an upright position. There was more clinking as empty minibar bottles fell from the bed. Babington, who had forwarded the chambermaid to the next room, picked them up. "Don't you remember anything about last night, old man?"

Sidney closed his eyes and tried to. He had been swimming, down at the cove. He had dived for the sea serpent and found a siren instead. No. Something else. Someone else. Oh, God. He rubbed his temples. "Did I tell you that…"

"… you exposed yourself to little Charlotte Heywood in all your manly beauty? – Yes, you did," Crowe said with that malicious grin of his. "You were quite sober, but then you insisted we go down to the Crown. Unfortunately, we met this architect chap and his plumber friend, and it turned out your Miss Heywood never runs away when she sees either of them."

Sidney groaned. Vaguely, he did remember James Stringer's complacent face, as well as something about shared lunches and shared salads bowls. The young architect was just the kind of man who never mistook trainees for babysitters and never dispensed tongue lashings to presumptuous girls. The kind of man decent enough to turn away when ambushed on the beach by a siren. The boring kind of man.

And Crowe was not done yet.

"I lost count of your drinks after your encounter with Stringer, but at some stage, you convinced the landlord to sell you that thing, and you gave it to Babington so that Esther does not escape him anymore." He pointed at the seagull that was, in fact, a wooden model – a slightly worn-out wooden model that had probably graced the walls of the Crown for centuries.

Sidney shook his head. The sledgehammer returned. The only thing he remembered clearly was Charlotte Heywood, staring at him as he rose from the water.

"After last orders, you insisted we take a nightcap from Babbers' minibar," Crowe continued. "And after the fifth bottle, you slumbered off into sweet dreams of sweet Charlotte."

"I should never have told you," Sidney said. He could bear their teasing, but Miss Heywood – Charlotte… deserved better.

"Never mind that now," Babington said, nudging him towards the bathroom. "You have a shower, and a shave, and breakfast, and then we'll say good-bye to Sanditon."

x

At around the same time that Sidney was fighting his hangover under the shower and vowing never to touch a drop of alcohol again, Charlotte walked down the staircase of the hotel, clutching a pile of delivery notes from the F&B manager's office to her breast, and vowing silently never – never – and under no circumstances to speak a single word with the man again.

Not Manoel, of course, who was quite nice and definitely gay, but Sidney Parker. She had endured many embarrassing situations during her teenage years. Sharing a flat in Bristol with three other girls during her studies had also… well, included some less desirable encounters.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, came even close to watching Sidney Parker emerge from the sea as if he was Poseidon's son himself. For she had watched him, had been watching him several seconds before turning around. He did look like a Greek god. And he certainly knew that she had been watching him.

"Good morning, Charlotte!" Charlotte, close to the bottom of the stairs, gasped, clutched her delivery notes with one hand and grabbed for the handrail with the other. It was only Mary Parker.

"Oh. Good morning, Mary."

"Did you enjoy your time off yesterday? We never saw you all evening."

"Yes. No. – I went down to the beach to gather shells. I think time… ran away with me."

"Anything impressive catch your eye?"

"What?" Charlotte felt her colour rise again. Impressive? That was one word to describe what she had seen.

"Shell-wise?" Mary Parker was all friendliness. Surely, she had no idea-

"Oh. No. I – I came back empty-handed."

"How disappointing," Mary said. "I hope you'll have more luck next time."

"Yes," Charlotte said and quickly walked over to Mr Parker's office, dumping the delivery notes on his desk. Mr Parker was not there, giving her some space to breathe until her cheeks had returned to their normal colour. She overheard Esther have another conversation with her staunch admirer at the reception desk, and that took her mind off other topics for a moment.

"What's that, Babington?"

"That's your namesake. Esther, the wooden seagull. I thought I'd leave her with you, as a constant reminder of my honest affection, until we meet again."

"Babington, that is about the ugliest thing I've ever seen. It looks as if it's been catching dust in a dingy corner for two hundred years, with nothing but woodworms for company."

"Excellent. Then it will make you remember that love never sees the ugly, but only the beauty in the beloved. As I see in you." The man was such a romantic; it was a mystery to Charlotte why Esther did not melt right away across the reception desk and into his arms.

"Don't even think of hope, Babington," she said instead, and Charlotte heard the sound of something wooden being dumped into the bin.

For the next hour, she managed to concentrate on checking delivery notes against bills, ticking off each position and signing them. It was an excellent occupation to keep her mind distracted from-

"Sidney!" That was Tom Parker, out on the corridor. "I relied on you."

"I cannot force them. They are leaving today."

Surely they would not come to the office? Sidney Parker had never been to the office before, at least not as long as she was inside. She heard footsteps just in front of the door, and with one decisive move, dived under the desk. Squinting past some folders stacked in front of her on the floor, she saw two pairs of legs appear.

"How am I to sell these apartments, Sidney?" Mr Parker said. "I must admit I was relying on…" He paused, blinked, then bent his head. It was inevitable. "Charlotte?"

"There it is!" she exclaimed, dramatically clutching a random paper from the bin and emerging from behind the desk.

"Miss Heywood," Sidney Parker said, all calmness and serenity. "Always popping up when least expected."

Damn the man! "I – I need to show this to the F&B manager," she said and rushed out of the office with her head held down and her cheeks flaming up again.

She was actually standing right in front of Manoel's office when she remembered to have a look at the paper she had retrieved from the bin. It was a letter from Unesta Business Insurers, and once she read the subject line, she realised that she had been quite lucky to have plucked it from the bin, for it must have landed there by accident.

Final reminder, it said. Your insurance cover is about to be terminated.

Notes:

The next chapter's title is... oh well, it's very long and very German, so I won't bother you with it today.