You don’t understand. This wasn’t just a towel. It was a blue towel that had been bought from Tesco at least ten years ago and had never let us down. What’s more, it washed well. How many trips to the shower had it serviced? Innumerable. How many washes had it survived without fraying and declining into something rough and unpleasant on the skin? Countless. This was a great towel. A workhorse of a towel. Even if such greatness could never have been predicted all those years ago at the initial point of purchase, now its role in our life was not only appreciated, but cherished. Some people worshipped Gods, we worshipped this blue fucking towel.

I woke neither early nor late. We were on holiday, so how we dealt with time was very much in our own hands. I was ready for a beach day and I knew the blue towel would accompany us. It was a given. The only question; which one of us would get to use it to line their sun lounger? Me, if I got my way, but it would be a point of contention regardless. I won’t deny, this blue towel had been the source of many silent treatments.

I started packing a beach bag. Sun cream. Headphones. Water. The Grapes of Wrath. Cookies. Flip flops. The blue towel… The blue towel? I looked around the room. Where the fuck was the blue towel? Nowhere to be seen. Under the bed? No blue towel. In the bathroom? No blue towel. On the balcony? No blue towel. I sheepishly tried to wake up my pending spouse. I shook her shoulder a little. Waking her was a risky business, but this was about the towel.

“Whaaaat?” She groaned with sleepy disdain.

“Have you seen the blue towel?” I said.

“What?”

“The blue towel? I can’t find it.”

“The balcony?” She asked, barely alive.

“I’ve already checked. I’ve looked everywhere.”

“Look again. I’m having five more minutes.”

I desperately scanned the room and spotted a short tower of pale blue towels in the corner, as neatly arranged by the maid. My heart sank. Oh God. I rushed to the pile. Started checking them. Blue towels, sure. But none of these were made by Tesco. Jesus fucking Christ.

I rushed to my pending spouse and shook her with adequate force in order to wrest her from slumber. Peace time was over.

“The towel. It’s gone.” I said with alarm.

She shot up in bed.

“What? What do you mean it’s gone?”

“The maids must have confused it with the hotel towels… They’re all blue, right?”

“What do you mean?

“I mean they’ve mixed the bastards up!” I exploded. “Anyone could have our towel!”

I could see reality sinking in. Anger, sadness, fear – all in the eyes.

“That’s our best towel,” she said.

“I know.”

That’s when the finger pointing began.

“Why didn’t you put it somewhere safe!” She said.

“Me? Why didn’t you put it somewhere safe?” I retorted.

“Oh, so it’s gonna be like that?”

I looked at her. “Maybe it is. I’ve told you not to fling stuff on the floor. It was inevitable it would end up in disaster.” I knew it would only do me harm to pursue this line of reasoning but I couldn’t stop myself. “You’re always leaving stuff on the floor. Are you a child?” I asked, as if there was a prize to be had for being both correct and condescending.

She looked at me. Those were not happy eyes. “Find the fucking towel!”

I waited at reception. This was the part of Europe that people referred to as ‘continental’. Here, they were never in a rush. I tapped my fingers impatiently on the counter. Is this guy having me on, I thought. He was watching the football with his back to me. It was unprofessional.

“Excuse me,” I asserted eventually. He looked back at me, casually over his shoulder.

“How can I help you sir?”

“I’m looking for a blue towel. It got mixed up in the laundry, I think.”

“Blue towel? Of course.” He raised himself slowly from his chair and headed to a cupboard. Thank God, I thought. They’ve put it aside. He opened the cupboard. Blue towels everywhere. He took one out and approached me with it.

“No, no, no. Sorry. I mean that we’ve lost our blue towel. It’s been mixed in with your blue towels and we’re trying to find it…”

He looked at me. He wanted to watch the football and he didn’t have a clue what I was on about.

“You mean, you don’t want a blue towel?”

“No, I want my blue towel.”

He looked at me, blankly. “Sorry sir, I don’t understand. Let me get my manager.”

When I returned to the room, I was towelless and dispirited. The manager had pinned it on the maids and made vague promises that “word would be put out to find the Tesco towel.”

“Do you have it?” My pending spouse asked. She was sat up on the bed, nervously gnawing on a bar of Milka.

“Does it look like I have it?”

She gave me a dirty look.

“Let’s just go to the beach,” I said. “It’ll turn up. They’re going to keep an eye out for it the manager said.”

“I’m not going anywhere without our towel.”

“What do you want to do, then?”

“Let’s go and find the maids,” she asserted.

“Find the maids?” I said weakly.

She jumped up from the bed. She was ready in a flash. I’d never seen her so motivated. We bounded out of our room, then along the pathways of the hotel grounds we charged. People seemed to be having a wonderfully relaxed time. We were having a fucking nightmare. Unlike them, though, we had purpose.

We arrived at the maid’s quarters. I knocked once. I knocked twice. I looked at my pending spouse. There was a look in her eyes that was unfamiliar to me.

“Kick it down,” she said, calmly.

“What?”

“Kick it down.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Kick it down or we’re calling off the wedding,” she said coldly.

I looked at her. Then I looked at the door. You only live once. Putting all of my force into it, I booted the door with the sole of my shoe. There was a bang and a clatter accompanied by a whimper. I looked down and a maid was flat out on the floor, buried under the door. It would be fair to say, as we exchanged nervous glances, that was the point at which we both realised we had possibly gotten carried away. There are times in life when you wade too far into choppy waters. This was one of them.

That evening, when the police finally released me, we made our way back to the hotel. We could have taken a taxi, but I needed the walk.

“That was good of the maid not to press charges,” I said.

“I think she was too concussed to know what pressing charges means,” said my partner. We wandered on for a few hundred yards in silence. There was much to mull over.

“What happened to the blue towel,” I asked.

My pending spouse looked at me. It was a knowing look. She reached into her bag. She pulled out the blue towel. She smirked at me.

“Touch it,” she said.

I did. There she was. That unmistakable texture. I leaned in close to smell her scent.

“I’ll never misplace you again.” I said softly, before kissing my pending spouse on the cheek.

As we continued our walk back to the hotel, there was no doubt in my mind; ours would be a marriage for the ages.