Page 17 of The First Time I Saw You
I rush to the window just in time to see the taxi pull away, the blue sky reflecting back at me from the rear window. I bang on the window with my fists. The sound is angry and urgent inside this room, but outside, I know, it will not even drown out the insistent tapping of the woodpecker in the large conifer across the road. ‘Shit,’ I say as I push my feet through my jeans.
Optimism instructs my eyes to look for clues around the house. Maybe she has just left to go and grab us a coffee? Groceries for a romantic breakfast in bed? Hope fills me until I see the note left on the table.
How can she possibly know? And what does she think she understands?
I have no idea where she is or where she would be going, but as I leave the house, I hope against all the odds that she’s at the same hotel as last time.
‘Feck sake,’ I groan as I stand in front of the hotel. Rotating doors: my nemesis. My eyes narrow at them as I take a confident step towards the slow-moving glass rectangles. They have hindered my path many times before, but today is not going to be one of those days. Here are the reasons that this is not going to happen to me today:
1. I am not carrying an oversized bag over my shoulder that could get myself and said bag trapped.
2.I have not drunk a bottle of ten-year-old ouzo and felt confused enough to do three whole rotations before my sister pulls me out (after she has recorded it to upload to YouTube).
3.I am the only person about to enter the revolving doors, therefore reducing my chances of being trapped once again while Sarah jams the doors and films my inability to escape for yet more YouTube uploads.
I take a deep breath, loosen my shoulders and walk into the gilded chamber to be deposited into the hotel lobby without incident. I straighten myself and give my glassy-eyed opponent a nod of respect.
I follow my feet, which are encased in pale-blue baseball Converse, in a fashion probably more suited to younger soles; slightly worn on the inside because I always walk – according to my sister – like I’m deliberately trying to trip myself up. Their hastened steps stop at the desk; I face a small receptionist with caterpillar-like eyebrows – no, not caterpillar-like . . . It takes me a moment to place where I have seen such beasts before, then it dawns on me: the tail of my childhood pet cat, Marmalade. I’m mesmerised as they arch up and down, in the same way that Marmalade’s tail would swish and curl at the sound of the tin opener, and wonder what the deal is with women and their thick eyebrows at the moment. She is talking to a tall, unkempt man in a crumpled black suit. It is much travelled, that suit, I can’t help but observe.
‘Excuse me?’ I interject. In my head, an image pops up of Marmalade’s tail shooting up in fear as I squirted water at him with a home-made water pistol: the latest in the highest end of the Fairy washing-up bottle range. ‘Please could you tell me which room Sophie Williams is staying in? I’m her, um, brother.’
I have no idea why I said that, when clearly we both have very different appearances and our accents are nothing like the same. ‘Half-brother.’ Shite. That would still probably give us the same accents. ‘I mean, step-brother, um, twice removed.’ I look at the eyebrows, unfurling above two amused-looking eyes. The transatlantic suit wrinkles and shifts.
‘Is she expecting you?’
‘Yes.’ I nod convincingly. I watch as the minute hand on the clock above the desk clicks onwards.
‘Four-Five-Four.’ The eyebrows reward me for my hard work. I grasp the information, run towards the lift and press the up button. And press it again. And press it again. Until the doors finally open.
I hurry out of the lift, looking to the left, to the right, taking in the Jackson Pollock-esque prints, the emergency exit posters, the cleaning trolley, the arguing couple – their middle-aged faces showing to the world that they’ve had this argument before and their relationship is over even if they don’t know it themselves yet. I walk past the doors; each room is hidden and each occupant a mystery. Only one room’s secrets escape, as the hymn ‘Lord of the Dance’ spills under the doors: one moment of its notes climbing higher and higher and I am thirteen again, standing in our church, pretending to look at the hymn book and not down the top of the girl in the pew in front of me; she always missed a button on her blouse, revealing a glimpse – a promise – of a lacy bra. The sound stops just as I arrive in front of her room:454.
My fist hammers against the door. ‘Sophie!’ I yell, my hand becoming sore. The couple quieten, their argument forgotten, foreheads touching: a compromise met. ‘Sophie!’ I shout again.
‘She’s just left,’ the woman tells me. The husband puts a protective hand on her shoulder, guiding her into their room.
The lift announces its unexpected arrival and I quickly step inside, urging it to descend faster. I rush to the desk and interrupt the receptionist and the crumpled-suit man again, asking if she has checked out.
‘She’s just left,’ Marmalade explains.
I run out on to the kerb, scanning up and down the street: the people, the buildings, the traffic, the homeless man counting the change in his hat. All of this has blurred edges because all I can see is the back of her head through the taxi window, and indicator lights blinking as it edges away.
My feet chase, my mouth shouts her name over and over again, my hands pull at the back of my hair, but the taxi is already picking up speed.
I run back into the hotel.
‘Where was she going?’ I ask marmalade brows.
‘The airport,’ she answers, looking irritated as I interrupt her hair-swishing and furtive conversation with crumpled-suit man.
‘Which one?’ I ask. Something about my desperation must soften her opinion of me.
‘Reagan National.’
The traffic is slow. My eyes fill with tears of frustration and I pound the steering wheel.
Tock, tock, tock . . . time stands over my shoulder as I park the car and escape the seat belt. Tock, tock, tock . . . I push my way past excited groups of travellers, through the doors, and scan the screens for the next flight to London: it’s boarding. I sprint to the gate, but the air steward tells me that I can’t go through. No, he says, I can’t buy a ticket: the flight is full.
Actions that I have been performing all my life become difficult. I find that I’m having to concentrate on sucking in air and releasing it. I’m having to tell my legs to support my body, having to tell my hands to not respond to the heavy grasp of the security guard as he pulls me away. I have lost her, again.
