Dan takes another mouthful of his godforsaken vomit in a cup and then heads to the garage, whistling something out of tune.
He has become anything but a typical deputy headteacher. When I was at school a long time ago, the men in charge – for it was always men – were strict grey-haired or balding old-timers. Dan’s in his early forties and the gym is his midlife crisis. For some, it’s motorbikes or cars, travelling or women. With Dan, it’s running, weights, and those protein shakes. It’s measuring out his meals, chronicling every fitness session to see if he’s improving. It’s organised races and crack-of-dawn departures. I thought it might be a phase but that was eighteen months ago and, if anything, he’s more obsessed now. He exercises every day, sometimes twice a day. He did one of those Tough Mudder events the other month, heaving himself over barriers through the sodden earth for no reason other than to prove that he could. He’s done 10ks and the Great North Run; next he’s talking about entering the ballot to run the London Marathon. If he misses out on that, he said he might try Amsterdam or somewhere else.
Jealousy is the wrong word. I’m not jealous of him, but I suppose there is a part of me that admires the changes he’s made. He had a goal and he stuck at it – and that’s something I grudgingly respect. Grudgingly because I’ve been left behind. His previous doughy physique is now taut and lean, not that I go anywhere near it. I’m not sure when we stopped doing that, either. Our waistlines were growing old together, but now he is going backwards, leaving me by myself. I know I shouldn’t, but I resent him for that.
He does all that as well as continue to work his way up through the education system. It’s all cuts this and academy that nowadays. Government targets here, league tables there. Despite all that, he’s thriving in a career he enjoys.
I probably resent that, too.
The garage doors grind open and then closed, leaving me alone in what suddenly feels like a very empty house.
With the room to myself, I check the news websites again. After that, it’s the police feeds – but there’s no mention of a hit-and-run. It’s still early, not long after seven, but would some sort of incident be there by now?
It’s almost as if the garage is calling me and I head through the double doors and down the stairs until I’m staring at my car, hoping it’ll somehow give me answers. There are none, of course. The car is swabbed clean of anything incriminating.
Tampering with evidence.
In the daylight, last night feels like a weird dream. It’s only the fact I’m here instead of a hundred miles away from where I’m supposed to be that’s wrong.
I suppose that’s a good place to start.
I’d never heard of The Grand Ol’ Royal Hotel before Graham offered to put me up there for the night. My boss is hardly known for his generosity, which was another reason not to turn him down when a meeting with a potential new client was arranged there.
I fiddle around with my phone’s calendar until I find the details – and then I dial.
It’s one of those annoying systems that every business seems to have nowadays. Press one for reservations, press two for the spa, press three to kick the crap out of the person who invented these automated messages. Talking to another person is too much of a chore, even though they apparently ‘value your call’. If you value it so much, try answering the damned phone!
I jab a series of numbers until the line eventually rings again and then there’s the voice of a youngish man who sounds far too sprightly for this time of the morning. He tells me I’m through to the front desk.
I can hear his fingers clacking on a keyboard as I tell him my name, explaining that I had to leave in a hurry.
‘I wanted to make sure everything was all right with the checkout,’ I add.
There’s a pause and I can hear my heart beating. It feels important.
‘Everything’s fine, Ms Denton,’ he replies. ‘I can mark you as checked out on our system.’
‘So I hadn’t checked out before?’
Another pause, a bit longer than the previous one. He must be wondering if I’m a nutter.
‘No, but, as I say, I can mark you as checked out now. Thank you for your call – most guests wouldn’t do so. It’s very highly appreciated.’
I wait for a ‘but’, though there is none, so all I can do is hang up. I suppose it clears up one thing – whenever I left the hotel, I simply left. No fuss about checking out. My overnight bag containing my belongings was in the back of the car, so I must have taken that with me. I don’t think I even unpacked.
If the hotel is a dead end, then I suppose that new client is another place to start. He’s stored in my phone under ‘Luke’, but there’s no answer when I call. There is a lot I don’t recall about last night – but I do remember his final text and it’s still there on my phone anyway.
Sry. Things got out of control and I’m not going to make it. Will hv 2 rearrange 4 another time
After driving a hundred miles and checking into a hotel for an evening meeting, it’s fair to say I wasn’t best pleased. Still, he could turn out to be a client at some point, so there’s little point in being anything other than perfectly polite. My previous reply from last night was:
No worries. These things happen.
That got no reply, so I tap out:
Hope everything is well from last night. When would you like to try again?
It’s professional and to the point. Really, I’d like to tell him what I think of his late notice. I was sitting in the hotel bar when his text arrived. My real concern is my boss, Graham. He said I can claim expenses for the hotel room but he’ll be expecting a sale.
It really has come to something when one of the highlights of my week is being able to claim something on expenses.
I give the car a final once-over and then head back into the house. Another web search for hit-and-runs proves fruitless and the part of me that believes this is all a strange, unexplained misunderstanding is starting to swell.
Graham isn’t expecting me at work until late morning but it can’t do any harm to get in early, especially as I have no sale to show for myself. I retrieve my overnight bag from the back of the car and unpack, then take time checking myself over properly in the mirror in case the blood could have somehow come from me. There’s nothing, of course. No little cuts, no unexplained bruises. I knew there wouldn’t be.
The shower makes everything feel better, the water pummelling and pounding, washing away my indiscretions – the ones I know of, and, hopefully, the ones I don’t.
There are two types of people in the world: those who attack a problem and those who try to ignore it. I’ve often fallen into that second category, hoping things will go away rather than making myself do something about it. I guess that’s why things between Dan and myself have got so bad. Neither of us particularly wanted to address the obvious and now it is probably too late.
I towel myself dry, making one final check that there are no marks or scrapes I could be missing. Still nothing. I blow-dry my hair and then dress for work, before sending one more text to Olivia, saying I’ll see her later.
There’s no reply – and also no response from Luke. I’m a pariah.
It’s only when I’m checking I have everything before I head out that I realise I’m missing my work swipe pass. It’s the shape and size of a credit card – and I usually keep it attached to my keys. Ironically, I detached it because I didn’t want to lose it at the hotel.
Losing it is probably my own fault for that cheeky remark towards Dan when he asked about his missing gym fob. I left it in the kitchen drawer yesterday before leaving for the hotel… or at least I thought I did. It isn’t there now. I even empty the entire drawer onto the countertop.