She’d sent it an hour ago. He phoned Reception. Had she checked out? No Mr Emerson, she has not.
He left his room on the fifth floor and walked along the corridor to hers. Funny how he hadn’t wanted her to know he was on the same floor, that first night. Yes, his heart had pounded in the elevator, the air between them thick and heady with attraction and desire. But something had told him to slow down, to give grace to what was growing so fast. He hadn’t wanted the premature pressure of your room or mine; for the first time in a long time, his head was steady over his heart, his cock. That night had been too good, had had such a novel impact, he hadn’t wanted to sully it with how things used to be. Standing there, outside her door, he thought back to how he’d let her leave then had to ride up before returning down to the fifth.
Quiet Please.
She’d hung the sign on the door. He could do quiet. It was a trait of his personality that most saw as a quality though it frustrated the hell out of all his exes. He knocked gently.
And Frankie thought, Scott?
The door opened and Scott thought Christ alive, the sun really does come out when that girl smiles. And Frankie simply thought it’s him, he came.
‘Good morning sir.’
‘Morning.’
‘Did you want to come in? It’s a bit of a mess.’
No it wasn’t. Her room was tidier than his. Funny how rooms which are identical can be so different. Same curtains, same furniture, same orchid, same grainy black-and-white artsy photographs, same background whir from the minibar. Yet Frankie’s room was distinct; it was the same when Jenna was at home with him – a space personalized and warmed, made smaller yet fuller by a feminine energy. He glanced around. Perhaps it was the Converse trainers placed neatly just under the chair. Or the way her belongings were in a tidy pile on the coffee table. A drift of perfume, maybe. He didn’t know, really, and it didn’t matter anyway because as he sat on the sofa he felt this was as good as being in her living room in Norfolk.
‘Coffee? Does your room have a Nespresso machine?’
He laughed. ‘Think you’re special?’
‘Aren’t I?’
‘No – I mean yes. And yes – to coffee.’
‘Have you had breakfast?’
‘No.’
‘You can have the rest of the jelly beans from the minibar.’
Scott laughed. ‘Makes a change from granola.’
As Frankie made coffee, she thought about how Scott laughed so easily. She didn’t think herself a particularly funny person, it wasn’t any staggering wit on her part that made it happen. A gentle sound, deep and genuine, like an oversized soft chuckle. It struck her that Scott was a man who was alert for the happy in life and it was a quality that had its attractive physical manifestation in the laughter lines around his eyes.
‘Here you are.’
‘Thank you.’
‘When are you leaving for work?’ she asked.
‘Well – soon, really.’ He looked at her, sitting in the armchair just like the one in his room; hugging a scatter cushion, not drinking the coffee she’d made, her legs curled under, her hair loose with a bedhead kink to one side. ‘And you? When do you check out?’
‘In about an hour.’
They thought about that.
‘That’s too bad,’ said Scott.
‘I know,’ she said quietly.
‘I fly home Sunday.’
‘I know.’
And she thought to herself, over the sea and far, far away. Insanity. She stood up and crossed over to the window, gazing down on the irritable heave of rush hour outside, mercifully silent five floors up.
‘So glad I don’t work in a job like that in a place like this.’ He was behind her. Right behind her. His chin just perceptible against the top of her head, his body very nearly against hers.
‘Me too,’ said Frankie and she leant back just slightly until she felt him there. His arms encircled her, his lips pressed against her neck; she had only to turn just a little to kiss him.
‘Is this just crazy?’ she whispered.
‘Crazy not to,’ he whispered back and kissed her again, deeper and for longer.
On the train to King’s Lynn, just pulling out of Liverpool Street station, her head against the window, Frankie’s journey back to her life began. As the train moved, a completely new emotion swept through her; a swirl of euphoria and desolation. She was on her way home and soon, he would be too. To Canada. Would that she had never met him?
The train jolted and stopped. Started, slunk along, juddered, stopped again. Eventually, the tannoy crackled then went quiet, hissed again – then nothing. It was as if the driver had thought better of it. Now at a standstill in nondescript countryside, Frankie recalled how it was a journey like this when she’d first met Ruth. They’d been sitting opposite each other. Tall and elegant with her hair in the sleekest bobbed haircut, like varnished ebony. On looks alone, Frankie had the idea for a character, even more so when the woman called the train line bastards and buggers and for fuck’s sake just bloody get a move on you sods.
‘You speak my language,’ Frankie had said and when it transpired Ruth had a son Annabel’s age and a younger daughter and lived not too far from Frankie, the basis for friendship was formed
‘What do you do? That you travel from London to Lynn?’
‘I write,’ said Frankie. ‘And you?’
‘I teach Alexander Technique.’
‘Is that when you’re meant to walk with a penny between your bum-cheeks and a pile of books on your head?’
How Ruth had laughed. ‘No – but that’s how our grandmas were taught to walk, nice and ladylike,’ she’d said. Somehow, she’d detected that Frankie suffered headaches. ‘Come to me for a few sessions,’ she said. ‘Mate’s rates.’
Scott. What just happened? And what could happen next? Suddenly it struck Frankie that she wanted Ruth to know.
I met a man. Like no other.
Ruth phoned her immediately.
‘There are only clichés to describe it. What he’s like. I’m a bloody writer and I can’t do better than Love at first sight.’
‘But actually, you can’t do better than Love at first sight,’ Ruth laughed down the phone. ‘What could beat that? I have to see you!’
Frankie gazed out of the window again. The landscape was now passing by fast in a blur. When did the train pick up speed? When did the points change? When did they get so far from London, so close to King’s Lynn? Reality felt suddenly distorted. However present and alert, alive and sentient she’d felt in London, actually she was hurtling back to the real Frankie – Norfolk and children, the house that leaked and page after page of bare paper devoid of all trace of Alice.
‘Don’t let him leave before you’ve seen him again,’ Ruth said. ‘You can’t let him go just because of clichés and complications.’
‘Canada is a pretty big complication,’ Frankie said.
‘Rubbish,’ said Ruth so passionately that it struck Frankie she ought to believe her.
‘I have to go – the train is pulling in to Lynn.’
‘I’ll be phoning you later,’ said Ruth.
Her mother had cleaned the fridge though Frankie had cleaned it the day before she left. Her mother had