ONE

 A seven o’clock start in the conference room of a drab hotel was the epitome of everything that was crap in my life right now. 

My alarm had gone off at home at six in the morning, and if I hadn’t left my work clothes out the night before, I would have been sorely tempted to just head off into the dark, rainy morning still wearing my dressing gown and slippers. At least I didn’t have to worry about waking Alex up as I stumbled around the bedroom. He was away on yet another glamorous work trip to who knows where. 

I’ve never been a morning person, and weeks ago when my boss had strongly suggested that I might like to go along to the local small business networking group as a representative of Pasternacki & Co, Solicitors, I had tried my hardest to talk him out of it. I was a lowly PA; wouldn’t it be better to send a solicitor? Someone who actually knew what they were talking about? Who’d drum up business more ably for the firm?

Unfortunately, he was having none of it and try as I might, he’d just raised an eyebrow and told me to sign up before striding back to his office and closing his door behind him. I was the cheapest option for the weekly event as I didn’t have billable hours to waste. The discussion was over – as was the open-door policy.

And so, I now found myself ensconced in a bland hotel meeting room, as I did every Tuesday morning, with several other cheaply suited individuals, all wearing curling name badges along with an air of tired acceptance of their fate. The only slightly redeeming feature was a long table dressed in a starched white tablecloth, bearing what claimed to be breakfast. 

My stomach rumbled, so I surreptitiously wandered over and selected a lukewarm bacon bap and an equally lukewarm glass of orange juice. Even the lure of breakfast was a letdown. 

After a good five minutes of chewing and regretfully swallowing, followed by twenty minutes of uncomfortable conversation with various accountants and electricians, we were shepherded towards some seating which had been laid out, ready for the main event. Ten short rows of bright blue fabric-covered chairs all faced forwards to a lonely-looking flip chart and a balding man who was dressed entirely in beige. 

No doubt he was really passionate about his topic, but he was no David Attenborough, and bearing in mind the early hour and my lack of attention span when it came to anything involving numbers, it didn’t bode well for me being able to stay awake for the entire session. All in all, it was a blessing that the chairs were so uncomfortable, as it meant I had to keep shifting position before I could drift off.  

At least I’d managed to secure a seat towards the back of the room behind a tall man, so our speaker couldn’t see when my eyes did eventually start to droop after an in-depth break down of turnover versus profit. I’ll just close my eyes for a bit, I thought. Just for five minutes. 

A sharp poke on my left arm made me realise that maybe I actually had lost consciousness for a little while, and I turned, startled, to the man seated next to me, who had a look of amusement on his face.

“You were snoring,” he stage-whispered at me. 

I whipped my head around at the rest of the audience, none of whom seemed to be in the least disturbed by any unwitting noises that I might have made. I turned back to my neighbour who was now silently laughing, his shoulders shaking while no sound came from his mouth whatsoever. 

“Oh my God! I was not snoring!” I mouthed at him. He carried on chortling under his breath, and I had no choice but to join in. “You git!” 

I hadn’t seen him at the networking group on the previous occasions that I’d dragged myself along. He was undoubtedly one of the handfuls of visitors that ventured along every so often to see if the group would be beneficial to join. Although of course, there were a lot of members who rarely even made it to the early morning breakfast meetings at all, choosing instead to stay in the sanctity of their beds. I didn’t really blame them, as the food wasn’t worth getting up for and the small talk was often exactly that…small. 

I would definitely have remembered this guy though. He was around my age, maybe a little bit older, perhaps forty-ish. Tousled brown hair with a fair amount of grey peppering. Actually, on closer inspection, it was more grey with a peppering of brown. But it was nice, and it suited him, as did the designer reading glasses that he pushed up his nose when he bent over his notepad to write something down. 

Yes, yes…I knew I was married, for what it was worth lately, but it didn’t hurt to look, did it? A bit of harmless window shopping. This particular shop window did make me consider what my own reflection might be, though, and it kind of made me wish that I’d made a bit more effort in getting dressed that morning. In fact, any effort would have been good.

After another twenty minutes of mind-numbing accounting rhetoric, during which time I mentally picked out the outfit from my wardrobe that I should have worn this morning, and taking lots of furtive glances to my left, the group was blessed with a ten-minute comfort break so that we could either dose up on coffee at the back of the room or make a bid for freedom through the toilet window. 

Leaving my coat on the back of my chair, I shuffled over to the caffeine station along the back wall of the room with the rest of the pack, where we battled with pots of coffee and those stupid flimsy wooden sticks that you get given to stir hot drinks with. 

“God forbid they should trust us with spoons,” came a voice from over my shoulder, as my wooden stick buckled like an over-dunked rich tea biscuit. I knew it was him before I even turned round. 

Laughing, I replied, “Well at least I can use these to prop my eyes open.” 

He grinned at me, one side of his mouth lifting slightly higher than the other, giving him a wry laconic look. “I’m Saul,” he told me, holding out his cardboard coffee cup. “Cheers!”

“Cheers!” We clinked. “I’m Ellie.” 

“So, Ellie, what’s a nice girl like you doing sleeping in a place like this?” 

“Hmmm. Well, I wasn’t actually given a choice. I’m here at the behest of my boss.” I swallowed some rapidly cooling coffee. “How about you?”

He gazed down at his cup. “Oh, well, I’m here to practice my meditation technique. There’s nothing more calming than listening to the soothing muttering of words and numbers to allow one to drift into a place of Nirvana.” 

I can thoroughly recommend never to try and snort coffee. It hurts, and it doesn’t look attractive, but unfortunately, it’s the byproduct of someone making you laugh, mid-sip. Luckily for me, Saul had chosen that moment to close his eyes and give me an ‘Om’ for emphasis. I swallowed the coffee and gave my nose a quick swipe with the back of my hand. Good God, I was like the love child of Bridget Jones and Stan Laurel. 

Saul clicked his fingers in front of his face. “And I’m back in the room. What did I miss?” 

“Absolutely nothing,” I told him, my nostrils reeking of Nescafe. 

From behind me came a sharp clapping of hands followed by an instruction from our esteemed leader to reclaim our seats. The second half of the show was about to start.

“Here.” Saul handed me two wooden stirrers. “Just in case.” 

I giggled girlishly. Well, as girlishly as you can as a tired thirty-seven-year-old. I  swatted at him with the stirrers, while he ducked out of reach. 

Back in our seats, I settled in to accept my fate of sixty more minutes of hell, albeit this time with a compadre to suffer alongside me. I’d noticed that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, which meant that either he wasn’t married, or he was just one of those men who ‘didn’t like jewellery’ – in other words, they wanted other women to think they were single. 

I had also clocked the fact that he was wearing what looked like a decent suit. Not that I recognised things like that. Suits to me are pretty much like cars…grey ones, blue ones, black ones…This was a dark grey one and it fitted him well, as did the shirt underneath, I noticed, when he took his jacket off. 

I knew it was morally wrong, but I had to fill my mind with something to stay awake. The lecture certainly wasn’t going to do it and I had been spending so much time on my own lately that it was fun to have someone to giggle with. My best friend Helen wasn’t around anymore after moving away to be with Christine; and Alex…well, these days he was what you would call ‘married to the job’. 

I wasn’t even sure what his job was anymore. It had morphed so many times over the last few months. All I knew was that it was with a big multinational bicycle manufacturer that had offices all over the world. Offices that he frequently got to visit. Without me.

He never used to travel for work when we first met. In fact, he helped out in a bicycle shop down the road from my flat and was the only man I had ever known who didn’t look like a complete fool in a bike helmet. It was lucky, bearing in mind he was a professional mountain biker. Sadly, the same could not be said for me, but fortunately, he’d managed to look past that flaw, or maybe he just never even saw it.

I twisted the pendant which graced my neck round and round on its chain as I remembered the first time I’d visited that shop eight years ago to buy a cycle bell as a stocking filler for a friend. By the time Alex and I finally got together, I had bought myself a bike, helmet, pump, lock, hi-vis jacket, shoes and a second bell, most of which now lay under a fine sheen of dust in the garage. The things we do for love, eh?

These days, though, we had become more like housemates than husband and wife. Somehow it had become safer to pretend nothing bad was happening. I was sad and he was sad, but it was easier to be sad apart than together. 

And here we were, Alex in some country or other promoting a great new product for the big corporate conglomerate he worked for, and me in some soulless hotel meeting room amongst a group of strangers who couldn’t give a damn if I was there or not. Other than one, it seemed. The only one who had shown an interest in me as an individual as opposed to the slightly grumpy face of Pasternacki & Co. 

I realised I hadn’t asked who Saul worked for and took a sneaky peak at the lapel of his jacket as he leaned forward to put his coffee cup on the garish carpet between his feet. One of the rules of the group was that we all had to wear a sticker which announced to all and sundry who we were and what company we worked for. Helpful, when you couldn’t remember someone’s name, but it did mean you had to keep taking sideways glances at their chest which at best, was awkward, or at worst, could land you a sexual harassment charge.  

He wore the obligatory sticker, but all it offered was the word ‘Visitor’. Oh well. I’d probably never see him again anyway if he had any sense. 

By the time the onerous session came to an end, I had been monopolised by Melanie who was sitting on the other side of me. She ran a small marketing company and needed some advice about how to get one of her clients to pay up. Advice which I couldn’t offer whatsoever due to my status within my firm. That, and the fact that I worked in the conveyancing department.  

Rudely staring over her shoulder, I could see Saul manoeuvering himself towards the exit without even a second glance in my direction. Stupidly, I felt disappointed. God alone knows why. I was married! Happily married. OK, that was a lie. I used to be happily married and now I was just co-existing. It had been nice to get some attention for a change. A moment of pretending I was someone else. Someone worth being with. 

“Cute, isn’t he?” Melanie had followed my line of sight.

“What? Oh, him. I hadn’t noticed.”

Sherry x