‘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 fairylights. 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?’
‘Hi,’ I said, pulling my handbag high up on my shoulder and kicking my travel bag towards the reception desk. ‘I was wondering if you had a room available?’
She smiled serenely and began clicking away on a keyboard. As she tapped, her glossy spiral curls bounced away behind her. ‘OK, we are a little busy but … I have a junior suite at $800 a night?’ She looked up. My expression apparently suggested that was a little bit out of my price range. ‘Or I have a single at $350. But it only sleeps one.’
‘Oh, OK,’ I fished around in my battered old bag for a credit card and tried not to work out the cost of the room in real money, ‘it’s just me. Well, I just found out my boyfriend was cheating on me and we broke up and I had to leave home and I thought, well, where’s better to get away to than New York? And,’ I paused and looked up. She was still smiling at me, but with a healthy dose of terror in her eyes. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry. A single would be fine.’
‘And how long would you be staying with us?’ she asked, tapping away again. I guessed she was alerting everyone to the fact that there was a desperate woman checking in. My photo was probably being distributed to the whole staff with a ‘do not engage in conversation’ note.
‘Sorry?’ I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
‘When will you be going home?’ she said slowly.
‘I – I don’t have a home,’ I said, equally slowly. ‘So, I don’t know.’ I was dangerously close to tears and really didn’t want to let them go in the reception of the swankiest hotel I’d ever stepped in. But, wow, I really didn’t have a home.
‘Well, I kinda just wanted to know when you would be checking out, but the room is free for the next week, shall I put you in for seven nights and see where we go from there?’ she suggested. I nodded and handed over my credit card. Jennifer exchanged it for a sexy black room pass key, emblazoned with a silver U. ‘Room 1126 on floor eleven, take the elevator and then turn left. It’s at the end of the corridor.’
I nodded numbly and took the key, tripping over my own bag as I turned.
‘Do you need anything at all, Miss Clark?’ Jennifer asked. I turned and tried to smile, shaking my head.
‘Head check?’ I could only make jokes for so long before I evaporated.
‘Just phone down if you want anything at all,’ I heard her call. Hopefully, she wouldn’t send up a therapist, I had always been warned that Americans didn’t always get sarcasm.
If the room was a single, Mark’s house was a mansion. A huge, white bed dominated the tastefully painted cream bedroom, topped off by a dramatic brown leather headboard. Past the bed, a floor to ceiling window with beautiful views of Union Square Park below. A walk-in wardrobe was tucked away to my left, and to my right was the bathroom. I dropped my travel bag and opened the door. It was beautiful. White tiled walls, black slate floor. The toilet and sink were tucked neatly away against the wall, while the rest of the room was completely taken over by a glass encased bath and shower. Two chrome showerheads jutted out from opposite walls, and a glass shelf held small but perfectly formed designer toiletries. A chrome shelf by the sink groaned under the weight of fluffy towels, and a thick waffle robe hung behind the bathroom door.
I backed back into the bedroom and looked out at the window, but paused before I got there. This was just what I’d been looking for, but between being completely exhausted and suddenly incredibly hungry, I just couldn’t bring myself to look outside and see a strange city. Instead, I headed back into the bathroom, via the well-stocked mini bar, and ran a bath, using the whole bottle of bubbles. Stripping off my clothes, I stepped into the bath, wishing that my brain would stop ticking over for just a second. Using the edge of the bath as a makeshift bar, I mixed a $15 vodka and coke in the toothbrush glass and poured half a packet of $8 peanut butter M&Ms into my mouth. It was less than twenty-four hours since I was in that shower back in the UK, thinking how badly I needed to get away, and here I was. Away.
I lay back and sighed deeply, letting the ends of my hair soak through. Gradually the sigh turned into a whimper, and the whimper became a sob. I was allowed to cry, wasn’t I? I’d been cheated on by my fiancé, deceived by my best friend, and humiliated in front of all my friends and family. Reaching for the M&Ms, I managed to polish them off in one go, washing them down with a large swig of my drink. What