Page 6 of The Winter of Second Chances
‘Oh yes, madam, we have other rooms. We could move you into one of those,’ said the receptionist brightly.
‘No,’ said Annie. ‘I don’t want to move. I’m already here and settled. But if the arriving guests haven’t requested this actual room and all the rooms in the hotel are identical, then you could put them in the room you want me to move into and they will never even know they’ve been allocated a different room.’
‘But we have a system,’ said the receptionist, less brightly.
‘ButI’malready here andtheywon’t know the difference,’ said Annie.
‘Butthisroom is booked out,’ said the receptionist.
‘Look,’ said Annie. ‘I’m a reasonable woman. Ask anyone. Ask my cheating husband! I am the most reasonable woman you could ever hope to meet. But I am not moving from this room; you’ll have to come in here and carry me out.’
‘I’m just going to put you on hold, Mrs Sharpe,’ said the receptionist.
Annie was treated to a tinny rendition of Beethoven’sFifth Symphonydown the line, while the receptionist presumably decided whether to call the police or the psychiatric team. After a few minutes another voice came over the line.
‘Thank you for holding, Mrs Sharpe,’ said the voice. ‘I’m the shift supervisor. That’s another three nights in room 208 booked in for you.’
Annie thanked the patient supervisor and apologised for being a pain in the arse and explained that she had recently found her husband having sex with a waitress half his age on a velvet banquette and it was making her behave rather oddly. When she put the phone down, Annie pulled the duvet back over her greasy head and slept for another nine hours.
When she woke, there was a note pushed under the door, which read:Delivery outside.
Curious, Annie opened the door and found a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates with a small card attached.
Dear Mrs Sharpe,
I thought you might need these. Sorry about your cheating husband.
Best wishes,
Sally (the supervising receptionist you spoke to this morning)
Annie was deeply touched. Her eyes filled with tears. It occurred to her in that moment that she didn’t really have any friends, not of her own; she’d never had time to make any. And if she had, there would have invariably been sharing and she would have had to confess that her husband was a manipulative, serial cheater, and that was a shame she preferred to keep to herself. She spent many hours a day with Marianne and they got on very well, but they’d never met each other outside of work, probably for the reasons above. She had Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, of course, but she couldn’t answer back and was aloof at the best of times. As Annie stood between the compact, windowless bathroom and the built-in wardrobe, trying to ignore the smell of her unwashed body, it occurred to her that Sally, the hotel receptionist, was the closest thing Annie had to a friend and she’d only spoken to her on the phone from beneath her duvet.
Annie began to sob. And once she’d begun, she found it very hard to stop. By the time the late-night movie started, Annie was out of both tissues and tears. She opened the box of chocolates and poured the wine into the glass from the bathroom; she finished the wine before the movie ended and fell asleep with the empty tumbler still in her hand and a dark chocolate coffee cream in her mouth, which melted and dribbled down her chin and onto her stale pyjamas.
Annie woke the next morning with a hangover and yet she felt lighter than she had done for several days.
She peeled off her pyjamas and stuffed them into the waste-paper basket. Then she brushed her teeth – twice – climbed into the shower and let the hot water wash away the despondency of recent days. She imagined the gloom personified, clinging to her skin like a rind which cracked under the shower pressure and peeled off in sheets, slipping down her body before gravity pulled it down the plughole and away.
In the midst of all the uncertainties she now faced, there was one thing of which Annie was clear: she wasn’t ready to let the credits roll on her story yet. She was only forty-four, goddammit! She caught sight of herself in the mirror as she dressed. Certainly, her bottom was rounder than it used to be. And her boobs were more pendulous than pert, but all in all she wasn’t in bad shape. The extra weight acted like a sort of chubby-cheek Botox which helped to plump out wrinkles that might have otherwise appeared on her face, and with a little help from her Warm Russet hair dye, she could easily pass for forty – well, maybe forty-two. Her large round eyes were the colour of warm honey; Peter said they reminded him of one of the rabbits fromWatership Down. She had a pert nose, a heart-shaped face and high cheekbones, and her thick wavy hair hung in soft layers around her face. Annie smiled at her reflection as she pulled on fresh jeans and a jumper that still smelled of fabric softener.Today is not a day to mope, she said to herself.Today is for finding somewhere to live.
She left the hotel at lunchtime with four appointments to see flats booked in that afternoon. As she passed the reception desk, a voice called out, ‘Mrs Sharpe! There’s a delivery for you.’
The receptionist smiled as she produced a huge bouquet of flowers from beneath the desk. Annie smiled back graciously and thanked her. She didn’t need to look at the card to know who they were from; they reeked with the stench of a Max Sharpe charm offensive.
This was how it would start: the wooing. No one did remorse like Max. He could be so utterly woe-filled that anyone would think it was he who had found his spouse bonking the accountant, the jeweller and, in this case, the waitress, and not the other way around.
He would make grand gestures and even grander promises. Alongside these, he would attack her sensibilities: what about the children? The restaurant? The house? He’d kill himself, is that what she wanted?
Their lives and livelihoods were inextricably linked, so that as a younger woman, with small children and a business to keep afloat, Annie was too exhausted to seriously consider all the logistical and emotional untangling that leaving would entail.
The first affair was the worst. After the second one, Annie retaliated with a revenge affair. It didn’t last long and Max never found out about it. She’d thought about telling him, just to hurt him, but that wasn’t really why she’d done it. She’d done it to even the score; it also made it easier to excuse herself for staying if they’d both cheated. The crux of the thing was, she had loved him back then.
Annie had spent long resentful nights trying to decide if a full-blown love affair was worse than a one-night stand. She came to the conclusion that the longevity of the encounters didn’t matter; ultimately there was no time limit that made putting your dick in someone that wasn’t your wife okay.
Though she had allowed herself to be wooed and cajoled into giving things another try, a steady erosion had begun after the first affair, and with each unaccountable lateness, unfeasible excuse or unnecessary errand which followed, the thinning of their marriage became more acute.
Annie met the estate agent outside the first flat. She had been able to pick him out from the crowd as he strode along the street towards her: his grey suit jacket, undone and flying open, tie swept back over one shoulder and the kind of swagger that suggested he’d closed seven deals before breakfast. He shook her hand and introduced himself as Phil. Phil carried a briefcase and wore an earpiece, and would spontaneously burst out the word ‘Mate!’ before holding his hand up to Annie – in the manner of one stopping traffic – and launching into a conversation with the person in his ear.
