Page 2 of The Winter of Second Chances
‘Well, yes,’ said Marianne. ‘You sound a bit too okay. A bit manic. Like you’ve taken speed or something.’
Annie laughed. The sound was high-pitched and she heard a note of hysteria in her voice.
‘I’m fine!’ Annie said, a little too brightly. ‘Really! Absolutely fine!’
She looked around her hotel room knowing that every room in the building would be identical: generic ‘modern art’ canvas above the bed, satin silver bed runner to break the expanse of white linen, a brown faux leather chair in one corner and walls painted in a pale grey, which would no doubt be called something ridiculous like Husky Shimmer. There was a desk along one wall with a hairdryer, a travel kettle and two cups on a plastic tray, and above it a flat-screen TV. It was the travelling salesman’s home from home, the hen party haven, and now a wronged wife’s bolt-hole.
‘Do you want me to come over?’ asked Marianne.
‘No, no. Don’t be silly. Somebody’s got to run the kitchen.’
And then, almost as if her voice was speaking without her brain’s permission, she found herself saying, ‘They were on table nine, you see. I chose that sofa. I picked the colour out of a book of swatches. And the weird thing is, when I caught them, I kept thinking,What about the velvet?Semen is a hell of a stain to get out.That’s mad, isn’t it? What kind of a woman worries about semen stains when she walks in on her husband screwing another woman?’
There was silence on the line for a moment.
‘Your silence suggests you think I’m bonkers,’ said Annie.
‘Sorry,’ said Marianne. ‘I got sidetracked there. I was trying to remember which supermarket sells a product that claims to remove semen.’
‘From velvet?’
‘From anything, I think.’
‘Good Lord!’ said Annie.
‘And if it doesn’t work, we can always get it reupholstered.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at table nine without feeling completely humiliated.’
‘Then we’ll skip reupholstering and go straight to burning!’ said Marianne. ‘We’ll have a ceremonial burning of table nine in the street.’
‘I’m not sure burning sofas is very environmentally friendly,’ said Annie.
‘We could build effigies of Max and Ellie and burn them along with it. Like the ultimate closure!’
‘You’ve got a dark side, Marianne,’ said Annie. ‘My kitchen is in good hands. The staff will never dare to cross you.’
As she ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant she complimented herself on how well she was handling everything. She felt fine, she really did. And then she got back to the hotel room and found ten missed calls, seven texts, a dozen messages on Facebook Messenger and an email, all from Max. Annie didn’t read them. She was suddenly very tired. She didn’t want to think about all the things she was supposed to be thinking about: the business, finances, the twins, Max, Ellie, the end of her life as she knew it. Annie turned the volume on her phone down low, and got back into bed, where she stayed for the next two days.
Her phone buzzed on the bedside table. She let it buzz until it died away. And then it buzzed again immediately. Annie sighed and reached languidly over and looked at the screen. It was Peter. She answered it.
‘Hello, love,’ she said.
‘Hey, Mum,’ said Peter. ‘Alex is here with me. We’ve got you on loud speaker.’
‘Hi, Mum,’ said Alex.
‘Hello, darling. Where are you?’
‘At mine,’ said Peter.
‘I came down after work,’ said Alex. ‘I can work from here tomorrow.’
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said Annie.
‘Well, we heard we’d become the product of a broken home, so—’
His sentence was cut short by a scuffling sound followed by an aggrieved ‘Ouch!’
