by Hazel Osmond
‘Could I please check in and go up to his room?’
‘You want to go up too?’ said the woman, the look of consternation in her eyes intensifying.
Ellie sighed. ‘As well as Mr Bulstrode? Yes.’
The woman’s brow furrowed, but she indicated to the porter to take Ellie’s bag, telling him to go to Room 27. The porter gave Ellie a strange look as well, and she began to wonder whether they were very religious and upset by the fact that she obviously wasn’t Mrs Bulstrode. That suspicion was confirmed as Ellie got into the lift and the woman called out after her, ‘We’re a family hotel, you know.’
Ellie tried not to look at the porter as the lift rose and instead studied the rather faded pictures of Barcelona. The photographer had managed to achieve the impossible and make the place look like Croyden.
Soon they were outside Sam’s room and Ellie knocked on the door, pulled in her stomach and put on her best seductive look. There was a slight pause and the door opened a fraction. Sam peered out and she saw a look of panic cross his face.
‘Ellie, what …?’ he said.
The porter looked at her and looked at Sam.
‘Aren’t you going to let me in, Sam?’ Ellie purred. ‘This was a lovely idea.’
Sam did not move and so Ellie gently pushed the door. Sam held on to it tightly and she noticed how his breathing seemed to have speeded up.
‘Are you all right, Sam?’ she asked, worried that he might be feeling ill. She noticed that he only had a towel round his waist and was sweating a lot. His hair was plastered to his forehead. Perhaps he had a fever.
‘Ellie,’ Sam started to say, ‘I’m … I …’
Ellie was definitely worried now. He couldn’t even speak properly.
And then a voice sounded from inside the room. A female voice.
‘Sam, was ist los? Wer ist da?’
Ellie felt as though somebody with an icy hand had reached into her chest and squeezed her heart.
She gave the door a hearty push. Sam backed out of the way and then she understood everything. All the late nights. Those new clothes. The torrent of mobile-phone calls he got at home but never answered in front of her.
Lying naked and dishevelled on the bed was a blonde woman, her long, tanned legs culminating in a pair of killer heels.
Ellie heard herself say, ‘One of your German colleagues, Sam?’ and Sam said something like, ‘Yes. Lotte.’
And then she was back down in the reception area, but this time in the little office. The Spanish lady was pouring her a glass of wine and rubbing her hand and jabbering away in Catalan to the porter with such vehemence that Ellie knew it was something along the lines of ‘All men are bastards and Englishmen are the worst.’ The unsympathetic look on the porter’s face told Ellie that however Catalans thought ‘this is priceless’, he was thinking it.
Ellie felt as if she were acting in a very bad farce and that soon somebody would leap through some French windows dressed as a vicar. Things like this did not happen to people like her. Except they did and they had, and now she was sitting in a Spanish hotel wondering how she could have been so deaf, dumb and pigging blind.
CHAPTER 9
Ellie could not remember much about the plane journey back from Barcelona. She knew the woman in the hotel had booked the flight for her and she had some recollection of the taxi drive to the airport, but after that it was as if somebody else was doing all the talking and sitting, while Ellie herself was limping along behind, unable to think about anything except how Sam had acted when he had opened the door to his room.
Somehow she found herself sitting on the sofa in their flat. It was dark outside, and she must have been sitting there for a while because she had pins and needles in her feet. Next to her, on the table, there appeared to be an empty bottle of wine and a pile of damp tissues. Everything else in the flat looked the same as it had when she had left on Friday, but she had no idea how that could be, as her whole life was different now.
None of this was possible. Sam and Ellie, Ellie and Sam, they were a couple. They’d been through university together, the thrill and fear of getting their first jobs. She’d stood on the touchline at hundreds of rugby matches for him; he’d dragged himself round art galleries for her. He’d supported her through the death of her parents; she’d comforted him when his best mate had been killed. He understood she couldn’t get started in the morning without a cup of tea; she understood how much he hated peanut butter. Big things, little things. It was Ellie and Sam against the world, for God’s sake.
Except it wasn’t any more. Some other woman had taken her place and all those little milestones of sharing, all those signs of infinite caring for each other, had been discarded. They’d been examined and found not to be enough. And she’d been lied to, for weeks, even months. Lied to and cheated on like some sad sap.
She should have known. She should have seen that the steam was going out of the relationship. Why hadn’t she read the signs? Not just Sam’s late nights and more frequent absences, but also the way she herself had reacted to them. What had been behind that failure of perception, her almost suicidal lack of effort?
Ellie hauled herself up from the sofa and collapsed on the bed with her clothes still on. She slept very little, relentlessly going over in her mind where she had gone wrong and how stupid she felt and how sad she was that someone who had loved her and whom she had loved back could have travelled so far away from her without her even noticing.
When Ellie got into work on Monday morning, she sat at her computer and scrolled through email after email asking her how her weekend had gone. She heard Lesley say, ‘Ellie, are you feeling OK? I mean, I know you’re not OK … but … is there anything I can do? Anything I can get you?’
She shook her head. Lesley had done enough yesterday when Ellie had finally got out of bed and telephoned her. She had listened to Ellie’s barely coherent account of what had happened, made all the right, sympathetic noises and then come round and made her eat something and have a bath and wash her hair.
It was simple love, given without a fuss, and it had been in evidence again this morning when she had arranged to meet Ellie outside the agency and walk in with her. Fielding Rachel’s questions, she had got Ellie upstairs without her having to talk to anyone else. She would have to face them soon, of course, but this little breather was what she needed before the real and the mock sympathy started.
Ellie stopped looking through her emails and felt as if she wasn’t really sitting in the chair; it all seemed like a nightmare that was happening to someone else. Not to her and Sam.
With a sharp little pain in her chest, she realised there was no more her and Sam.
She leaned forward and started to type.
Thanks for asking about my weekend with Sam in Barcelona.
Well, in a word it was ‘crap’.
Got there to find Sam in bed with Lotte from Dortmund. And I guess from the sweat they had worked up, they hadn’t been doing much sleeping.
Seems he’s been teaching her English, she’s been teaching him German, and I’ve been learning how to be a stupid, blind idiot. It’s been going on for months evidently, right under my nose. Now he’s leaving me to live with her.
To those of you who didn’t know, join the club … and please, please don’t ring me. I know you will want to be nice and supportive, but I really don’t feel that I want to talk about this at the moment.
And to those of you who did know, thanks, appreciate it. You’ve made me look a tit in two countries.
Well, three, if you count Germany.
Not to mention adding another layer of humiliation to the whole thing.
Ellie
Then she sent the email to everyone Sam knew, including his dentist, the Tesco grocery delivery service and his stuck-up ruddy sister.
CHAPTER 10
Ellie sat in the Creative Department meeting and marvelled that Gavin didn’t bore himself to death. On and on he went about his wonderful sunta
n lotion ad and how it was nearly ready for its very first viewing by the agency.
Jack was saying nothing. Every now and again he took a deep breath in, held it for a while as he lifted his chin and glared at the ceiling, and then let his breath out slowly. It was perhaps some kind of testosterone yoga that was just about stopping him from grabbing Gavin by the throat and squeezing him until he stopped talking.
Ellie could see that everyone was losing interest, apart from Zak and Jon, who were like little nodding dogs, hanging on Gavin’s every word.
She closed her eyes and went back to pick, pick, picking away at Sam’s betrayal and all that had happened in the three weeks since she’d pushed open that bedroom door in Barcelona.
It had all been horrible, starting with the tearful phone call from Sam’s mother. She and Ellie had promised each other that they’d always make time to meet up and keep in touch, but they both knew that a leggy German blonde was now firmly wedged between them.
The absolute gut-wrenching low point, though, had been Sam’s visit.
Ellie opened her eyes to check on how the meeting was going. Gavin was still talking; Jack was still doing his deep breathing. Next to her, Lesley was drawing a picture of Gavin with one large testicle and one very small one.
Ellie closed her eyes and steeled herself to go back over the way Sam had looked and sounded the last time she’d seen him. As he’d stood there on the doorstep, Ellie could see everything had shifted. He hadn’t even smelled like Sam any more. She’d kept it together pretty well at the start, but then he had said that Lotte was in the car waiting for him and Ellie had felt like she’d been jabbed in the ribs.
Her intention to be calm had evaporated and she’d shouted, ‘Why, Sam? Give me one good reason why.’
He’d proceeded to give her loads of reasons.
Ellie suddenly became aware that Gavin had shut up and Juliette was talking. Probably a good idea to open her eyes again. Juliette was giving a round-up of what she and Mike had been up to in the last week, starting with the e-book account.
Ellie should really listen to this – she was interested in e-books – but very soon she had tuned out Juliette’s voice and was thinking about Sam’s visit again.
‘Look, Ellie, I didn’t plan this,’ Sam had said. ‘It was … Lotte just came along and we, you and me, we seemed … stale.’
‘Stale?’
He nodded and wouldn’t look at her. ‘We … well … we were set in our ways. It began to feel like we were only doing things out of habit.’
‘It didn’t to me.’
‘Oh, come on, Ellie. You never suggested anything new. When was the last time we did something totally off the wall?’ He fumbled with the zip on his jumper. ‘Especially in bed. Lotte and I, well, let’s just say she’s not as timid as you.’
Another jab in the ribs. She sat down on the sofa, the tears running down her face.
‘Timid? But we still had fun, didn’t we?’ she said between sobs.
‘We got into a rut, Ellie. I hadn’t been having fun for a long time. And, you, well, you’d given up making any kind of effort as far as I could see.’
‘What do you mean? What kind of effort?’
In reply Sam looked her up and down.
He started to move around the flat, putting things into black bin liners. Ellie saw the little wooden box she had bought him for Christmas go in, the book she’d got signed by the author.
When he’d finished, he came and sat beside her. ‘I’m sorry, Ellie, I’m going now. I’ll give you a call about the flat, about the mortgage and everything … Don’t suppose you feel like talking about it now.’ He reached out to hold her hand and she let him. ‘I’m genuinely sorry, Ellie. I should have had the guts to tell you earlier, not keep lying to you. It’s a rubbish way to treat a friend. I wish you hadn’t found out like that.’
‘You mean you wish I hadn’t found out at all,’ she said, pulling her hand free.
Sam didn’t answer and Ellie couldn’t say anything for a while. She had a horrible, cramping pain in her chest, and when Sam got up to go, she just sat there. She was battling to retain some dignity, let him see what he’d chucked away, but then he’d said something about having to rush and before she could stop herself she had spat out, ‘Yeah, better run. If you leave Lotte alone in the car too long, she might chew the upholstery.’
If only at that point Sam had got angry, instead of giving her a ‘you sad little person’ look, she might not have added, ‘Still, at least you should be thankful that she’s housetrained.’
It had given Sam the perfect excuse to slam out of the flat, probably feeling like the injured party.
Funny how having the last word had felt so unsatisfying and so final.
The sound of Mike’s voice cut into her thoughts. He was outlining some initiative that major book retailers were piloting involving child-friendly e-books.
She watched Mike’s arms waving around like windmill sails for a while and then asked herself why she hadn’t become angry with Sam after he had gone. There was still some of his stuff left in the flat. She’d read about women trashing their ex-boyfriend’s suits, even their cars.
But perhaps there was a set sequence to betrayal and loss. Perhaps anger came after sorrow, and sorrow came after shock. She figured she was in the ‘mooching around feeling numb’ stage and—
‘I said, Ellie, what do you think of that?’
It was Jack’s voice.
Ellie was aware that nobody else was moving. The room had gone completely quiet. One look at Jack’s eyes told her that he knew she hadn’t been listening. The way they were boring into her, she wouldn’t be surprised if he knew exactly what she had been thinking about.
‘Well?’ The little word snapped out into the silence.
Lesley was furiously scribbling some words on her pad, but Ellie couldn’t make out what they said.
It didn’t matter, though; she knew where the meeting had got up to, and she had done a bit of homework on the e-book market.
‘Well, Jack,’ she said, ‘I think we could work with the libraries on this one. They needn’t see this as a threat. They could in fact open up a whole new market for themselves by acting as the access point.’ She stopped, aware that Jack’s face was looking more and more granite-like and that Zak was making an unsuccessful attempt not to snigger.
‘The libraries act as the access point?’ Jack repeated slowly, dangerously.
‘Uh-huh.’ Ellie had a horrible feeling that she was about to walk over the edge of a cliff.
‘Well, that’s brilliant, quite brilliant, Ellie,’ Jack said, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head. ‘What a fantastic idea … if only we hadn’t actually moved on from e-books to the new morning-after pill being trialled by Liphook Masters. Still, I’m sure that local government will leap at the idea of their libraries handing out contraceptives along with Harry Potter and Tracy Beaker.’
Ellie expected Jack to rip her head off there and then, but he didn’t. He carried on with the meeting and then asked her to stay behind afterwards.
‘It’s not as though it’s the first time, Ellie. You’ve been acting like you’re on a different planet for weeks now,’ he said, scowling at her. ‘Look, we all have personal problems from time to time, but they should stay just that, personal. And private. And. At. Home.’
Ellie looked at the floor.
‘I mean, how long is this sick bloody cat routine going to go on for?’
Ellie kept looking at the floor.
‘Will you stop looking at the bloody floor?’ Jack shouted, and brought his hand down on the desk.
Ellie looked up and purposely focused on the sky outside the window. She was fed up with this, with him picking on her. Fed up with his horrible hard eyes and that glower. What a bully. Next he’d be speaking ruddy German and pointing out how boring and stale she was.
‘Look, this is a business, not a sodding bus,’ Jack continued. ‘We can’t afford to
carry passengers. God knows there are enough of them around here already.’ He pushed a piece of paper over the desk towards her, his eyes almost colourless. ‘Read that.’
Ellie read, recognising a piece of work she’d done last week. It was terrible: clunky, incomprehensible in places, clichéd. She’d rushed to get it done for Hugo. The swine could have told her it was rubbish, not handed it on to Jack.
‘This belongs here.’ Jack tore the paper from her hands and threw it into his wastepaper basket. ‘I wouldn’t accept that pile of rubbish from a student, let alone somebody who is meant to be one of the agency’s best copywriters.’
‘Right. I’ll go away and write it again,’ Ellie said, standing up. ‘I’ll go and polish it to Zak’s high standards.’ She was aware her voice was getting more and more strident with every word. ‘And while I’m about it, I’ll go and put on a goth T-shirt and black nail varnish so I can match his extremely high standards of sartorial elegance as well.’
‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, it seems there’s one rule for some and one rule for me. I’m slightly off my game for a couple of weeks—’
‘Slightly off your game? You’re not even on the pitch. And this isn’t about Zak, it’s about you. Stop trying to take attention away from yourself by pointing out other people’s shortcomings.’
Ellie felt hot and put upon. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot nobody’s allowed to have emotions. We’re all supposed to be carved out of Yorkshire granite like you.’
Jack had suddenly gone incredibly still, but Ellie didn’t really register it. She was on a roll. ‘Why am I bothering? You have no idea how I feel. How could you, Mr Interchangeable Girlfriend for Every Day of the Week? It’s like talking a foreign lang—’ Ellie stopped. She hadn’t actually passed that last bit through her brain before she said it. She felt her stomach go into freefall as Jack got to his feet.
