Stripping myself of everything, earrings, necklace, engagement ring, I stepped into the giant shower and just let the water run. How had this happened? Destroying my best friend’s wedding aside, how had I not noticed that my boyfriend was cheating on me and had been doing so for so long and so openly that my friends all knew? It wasn’t just a quick shag, it was clearly serious. What would I do? Where would I go? As the shower stall steamed up and I lathered, rinsed and repeated, I tried to be rational. Keep a clear head in any situation. Mum always said it was one of our strengths.
I’d have to go home and get my stuff. Home. I supposed it wasn’t even my home any more. He’d probably move her in tomorrow. ‘Katie,’ said a little pixie-ish voice in my head. ‘Not “her,” it’s Katie.’
‘This shower feels amazing,’ I said out loud, pushing that voice out of my head as the hot, hot water streamed down from three different jets. It was as if none of it was real. If only I could live in a hotel. Not having to go back to that shit heap and rummage through my stuff like I was the one that had done something wrong. Jesus, the splitting of the CDs. I just couldn’t face it. A couple of renegade tears started to seep out of my eyes. If only I could stay in this hotel for ever and pretend none of it had happened.
Why not stay in a hotel?
Not this hotel, clearly. I had a strange feeling I wasn’t going to be terribly welcome at breakfast, but another hotel. Somewhere impersonal and wonderful where the staff’s only concern would be keeping me happy rather than whether or not I was going to ruin another gala event. I had a little bit of money, we’d been saving for my non-existent wedding for years, and it seemed fairly appropriate to tax Mark his share of the cash for shitting on me. My work was freelance, I had my passport, credit cards, driver’s license (no burglar was stealing my identity while I was away at a wedding for almost a week!) enough clothes, my favourite shoes, what else would I need? I definitely had enough stuff not to need to go home for a while. Screw the CDs even, I had my iPod. There was really no reason not to go, and God knows, I am the queen of talking myself out of anything even vaguely confrontational.
I forced myself out of the shower and into the bathroom. For a second my gaze rested on Mark’s wash bag, next to my engagement ring. A lovely leather piece I’d bought him last Christmas. He’s bound to want to come back for that, I thought as I slipped on my earrings, my necklace, it’s full of all his fancy shaving stuff his mum buys him for his birthday. For a moment I thought about filling it with shaving foam, but froze with a flashback as I picked up the can. Him, hunched over that cow, all sweaty and confused. Maybe I should throw it out of the window. Then I remembered him smiling at her. Smiling at her, in front of me, in those scummy boxer shorts.
And so I sat on the loo and pissed in the bag. It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever done, and I was so so proud. Once it was nicely ruined, I dropped in my engagement ring, zipped up the bag and left the bathroom.
‘Mum,’ I whispered, sitting beside her on the bed. ‘Mum, I’m off.’
She opened her eyes and looked a bit confused as she remembered everything, and then she looked at me as though she was going to commit me to the same home where she had stashed my nan.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, sitting up, looking even more confused at the sight of her nightwear. ‘You don’t have to go anywhere because of that shit.’
It was the first time I’d heard her call Mark anything other than ‘darling boy’ or ‘that lovely Mark’, and I was quite touched.
‘I know,’ I nodded towards my packed travel bag. ‘But with the wedding and everything, I think I’d better get off early. Thing is, I thought I might nip off for a few days to sort myself out.’
‘Oh no,’ she said, taking my hand. ‘You’re just coming home with me and your father, he’s going to come and collect us later. You’ve done nothing wrong, you know. Well …’
‘I know, Mum,’ I said. ‘But I think it would do me good to get away. I’ve booked a taxi to the airport.’
She looked at me slightly oddly. ‘Really?’ she asked. ‘You’re really going somewhere on a plane?’
‘Yes,’ I said, standing up, clutching my bag.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, looking at the clock. ‘Wouldn’t you rather just come home with me and your dad?’
‘Hmm,’ I pecked her on the cheek. ‘I think I’m actually going to go with my first idea.’
Mum shook her head. ‘But where is better than home at a time like this?’
The plane landed at JFK without a hitch and, while the homeland security guard didn’t seem that interested in my break-up (business or pleasure didn’t seem to cover why I was there), he did let me into the country. Good start. Once I stepped out into the sunshine, everything began to feel real. The cabs were yellow, they were on the wrong side of the road, and my taxi driver even swore a blue streak tossing my bag into the boot of his car. Man alive, it was warm. If women glow, men perspire, and horses sweat, right at that moment, I was one sweaty bloody horse.
‘Where to?’ the driver asked.
‘Erm, a hotel?’ I asked, plugging in my seatbelt as we took off. ‘I need a hotel.’
‘You fuckin’ serious?’ he asked, swerving onto the highway before I could even reply. ‘Which fuckin’ hotel? There are fuckin’ millions of hotels.’
‘Oh, yeah, I–well–I—’ before I could finish my sentence, I started to tear up. ‘I don’t know anywhere. I just sort of got here.’
‘Well, guess what lady?’ the driver yelled back at me, ‘I’m a fuckin’ taxi driver, not tourist information. You want me to fuckin’ drop you here in the middle of Queens or you want to give me the name of a hotel?’
In response, I burst into tears. Witty comeback, thy name is Angela.
‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ. I’m dropping you off at the first fuckin’ hotel we pass,’ he muttered, turning the radio all the way up.
Twenty minutes of talk radio later, I was hanging out of the window like a dog in a bandana, and I had just about stopped crying when I spotted it.
The New York City skyline. Manhattan. The Empire State Building. The beautiful, beautiful Chrysler Building. The Woolworth Building with its big old churchy steeple. And I fell in love. It hit me so hard that I stopped crying, stopped thinking, stopped breathing. I felt as if I’d been winded. Winding the cab window all the way down, I breathed in the skyscrapers, the giant billboards, the industrial riverside stretches and the sweaty, steamy air. I was in New York. Not at home in London, not at Louisa’s wedding, and nowhere near my filthy, cheating fiancé. And so, for the want of something else to do, as we disappeared down into the midtown tunnel, I burst into tears again.
The first hotel we passed turned out to be the last hotel the cabbie had dropped off at, and it was beautiful. The Union was set just off Union Square Park, with a lobby dimly lit to the point of a power cut, and filled with the overpowering scent of Diptyque candles that smelled like fresh washing on the line. Overstuffed sofas and ancient leather armchairs filled the space, and the reception was picked out in fairy lights. Suddenly finding myself in such perfect surroundings, I was very aware of the state of my hair, my dehydrated skin and my rumpled clothes. I really, really did look like complete crap, but this place couldn’t be further from a two-bedroomed terrace in south west London. It was just what I needed.
‘Welcome to The Union,’ said the incredibly beautiful woman behind the counter. ‘My name is Jennifer, how can we help you today?’