Carnival of Light || Paul McCartney/Beatles

15. Two Blocked Heart Chakras at the Dorchester Hotel

Carnival of Light (Part 2)

15.

The first direct flight to Los Angeles was in three days via Pan Am. I booked myself a first class ticket, but there was no overwhelming sense of relief like I'd hoped.

I wasn't sure Paul would try to convince me to stay. Perhaps all these weeks of avoiding me and now shoving Stash under my nose was his way of pushing me away so I would have to end it for him. This was a thought that lingered with me more and more intensely as I tried to decide what to do about him. Maybe he didn't even realise he was doing it. Maybe he would make me force him to see it.

With my flight booked, my escape plan hatched, I had a look around the suite. The Dorchester fancies itself the hotel of royalty and aristocrats, disgraced or otherwise, and the concierge correctly pegged me as the latter the moment I stepped into the lobby. The floors were polished cherry wood covered in plush carpets, the furniture all rococo style antique pieces including a scroll-armed settee upholstered in pale pink velvet. There was an awful lot of pink, I thought, examining one of the elaborate arrangements of blush-coloured Dorchester roses.

Being a wealthy guest who tips well means you can request just about anything, no matter how outrageous. The only marginally scandalous thing I asked for was sleeping tablets, but they sorted those out with no questions asked.

I took one before bed that evening and the next morning I woke up groggy and sluggish, my brain in a fog. I ordered breakfast and drank three cups of tea to shake it off. I pushed the sitting room furniture up against the walls and practised my yoga. I sat on the terrace smoking and looking out at Hyde Park. From this high up you could see above the treetops, a feathery green canopy of sycamores and London planes beneath a brilliant almost-summer sun.

I fantasised about my quiet bungalow on a hillside in Laurel Canyon and smoggy amber sunsets over the Pacific. I cried and had a bath and then I rang Poppy, and thirty minutes later she was sitting across from me on the bed listening to me sob utter nonsense because I was so conflicted and lost.

"You're leaving?" Was what she managed to extract from my blubbering. "But why?"

"I feel like I'm going mad here," I hiccuped. "I don't know what else to do."

"Why Los Angeles?" Poppy looked crestfallen. "Why not somewhere closer like... like Brighton or Margate? Or what about Lisemore? You could just go home—"

I started crying fresh lakes of tears as I told her I'd been cut off because I was an embarrassment. My family weren't speaking to me and I wasn't welcome at home anymore.

Poppy was aghast. "Even Barney?"

I nodded, wiping my eyes even though the tears kept coming, making my face hot and itchy the more I tried to push them away.

Then Poppy asked what I dearly did not want to answer.

"What about Paul?"

"I don't think it's working out," I croaked before I broke down again.

How could it when we didn't seem to understand each other anymore?

***

My second day at the Dorchester began very much like my first. I woke up in a daze, the heaviest kind of lethargy pinning me to an uncomfortably soft feather bed. I had a brief sense of drowning that sent a bolt of panic through me, propelling me up to sit up. I shoved my hair back off my face and took a few steadying breaths, looking sideways at the arrangement of blush-coloured Dorchester roses already dying in a vase on the bedside table, their pungent, cloying smell filling my nose and mouth.