The Holiday Cruise: The feel-good heart-warming romance you need to read this year. Victoria Cooke
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Chapter Two
The familiar sight taunted me and pounded at my stomach. Apprehensively, I knocked on the window, startling him as he read something on his phone. He held a finger up to indicate he’d be a minute, and for a lingering second, I looked at it – the finger that belonged to a hand that used to enclose my hand. A hand I’d felt was as much my own as it was his. A hand that now held another hand. A stranger’s hand. A hand I had no right to touch any more.
Forcing myself away, I went inside, leaving the door ajar. My forehead started to throb as I held back hot, prickly tears. As I passed the mirror in the hallway, I quickly ran my fingers through my hair, tidying it as much as possible. Something I would never have felt the urge to do in the past, but I wasn’t under scrutiny before. I wasn’t to be compared to another woman as if I were a card in a game of Top Trumps, and not a particularly great one either. As I reached the kitchen, I sensed him come in behind me, and I turned. My heart stopped as I saw him.
‘Daniel.’ He looked as handsome as ever. His chestnut hair with the sprinkle of grey that I loved was cut short, the way I liked it. The shock of confusion stung – such familiarity, such homeliness in this man who was now a stranger to me. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to feel him take me in his arms and remember how I was his number one and that he was mine. I stood there, frozen.
‘What did you want to go through?’ he said coldly, piercing my thoughts. None of the emotion I was experiencing imprinted on him. How could he not feel it?
Pulling myself together, I forced out the words with as little feeling as I could manage. ‘It’s the house, Daniel; we’ve defaulted on the mortgage.’ Even though I wanted to curl up in a ball and sob or beg him to come back to me, I wouldn’t allow myself to crumble before him. Not again.
‘We?’ He raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Hannah, I moved out. The house is your responsibility. You wanted to keep it,’ he added, as if it were some kind of favour. It was true. I loved the house and couldn’t lose that too.
‘Daniel, I can’t afford it alone. You must have known that.’ I managed to stop a pleading tone from creeping into my voice.
He threw up his arms in exasperation. ‘I don’t know what you want from me. I gave you the house. I’m paying rent on another place now.’ My chest tightened as he spoke, and out of habit, I moved around the breakfast bar towards him. If I could just touch him, maybe I could remind him of what we had. He moved away – the gesture stabbed at my chest.
I couldn’t keep it in any longer. I had to get it off my chest, ‘Daniel, I’ve lost my customers because of you. I have no business, because you left me for another woman and I had to deal with that. I couldn’t just carry on like nothing had happened.’ My body shook as I fought back the flood of tears. It took the strength of the Hoover Dam, but somehow I managed.
The closer I got, the more he backed away. ‘You can’t keep blaming me. You need to get a job or whatever. The house is your responsibility if you want to keep it.’ Keep blaming him? I hadn’t even spoken to him. How could he accuse me of that and just disregard our past? Why didn’t he care about the house, where all our memories, love, and laughter had absorbed so deeply into the walls that I could feel it as I walked in?
‘I … I need time,’ I stuttered, defeated. ‘I can’t just build my business back up like that – my customers have all gone to Glam Shack and I can’t keep afloat waiting for if and when they return,’ I pleaded. ‘Can’t you just help me out for a month or two?’
He checked his watch. ‘No, I can’t. I’m sorry.’ There it was: the apology I’d longed for, only there was no empathy, heart, or sincerity in it. Instead, it reeked of an attempt to shut me up and end the conversation. Like a big, fat full stop. When did he become so cold? ‘Also, Hannah,’ he said, moving towards the door, ‘just a heads-up. I’ve started divorce proceedings. Judging by the pile of post on the worktop over there, you probably aren’t aware.’ I glanced over to several weeks’ worth of unopened mail and spotted a large, thick, cream envelope.
‘Right,’ was all I could manage, clamping my jaw tightly to suppress its tremor.
The door closed behind him. My body sagged against the kitchen counter, and my tears fell. It was his coldness towards me that had hurt the most, and I couldn’t shake the pain. My shoulders bounced uncontrollably as my body synced up with the tears.
By the time I composed myself, the daylight had faded, leaving me wrapped in a murky twilight. It felt comforting – the silence, the darkness, and the solitude – and so I sat for a while. The salty tear residue stung my face and I let it; it was what I deserved for being so worthless.
Eventually, I made it to the cupboard and pulled out an oversized red-wine glass, perfect for breathing ‘they’ say, which was ironic since I could barely manage to. I filled it to the brim with white wine from the fridge and trudged up to the bathroom. When I turned on the light, the stark brightness seared my eyes, momentarily blinding me. The pain brought me back and forced me to run the bath. I added bubbles and lit some candles before turning the light back out. Slowly, I peeled off my clothes, letting them slump to the floor, and slid into the hot soapy water, keeping my glass close by.
I took a long, cold gulp of wine and closed my eyes, letting my head rest on the edge of the bath. I’d suffered a setback. I’d thought I might be ready to start to build my life back up, but that was before I’d seen Daniel. It had been as though he’d just been working away or something. Deep down, I think I’d expected he’d come back with his tail between his legs, begging for my forgiveness. I probably would have forgiven him too, after making him work for it, at least. I wasn’t prepared to see him move on. I wasn’t prepared for him treating me like a nobody.
***
I woke the next morning in bed, naked under my dressing gown, with an empty wine bottle by my side and no recollection of finishing it or going to bed. Feeling groggy, I contemplated going back to sleep, but as I snuggled back under the duvet the doorbell rang. Daniel? I dashed over to the window for a look, but of course it wasn’t him. It was my sister. I thought about ignoring her and going back to bed, but she started hammering on the door and there was a good chance she’d call the emergency services if I didn’t answer.
‘Hannah, open the door. It’s bloody freezing out here,’ she yelled through the letterbox. I groaned and dragged myself downstairs.
‘Morning, Jen,’ I grumbled as I opened the door.
‘Well that’s not a nice way to speak to your sister, especially one who’s just arrived with coffee and pastries.’ She looked me up and down. ‘You look like shit.’
‘Thanks. Listen, Jen, I’m not really in the mood for visitors. I’m probably just going to have a quiet day today,’ I said, barely able to lift my gaze from the floor. I noticed a new pile of mail on the mat so bent down to scoop it up before she had chance to comment.
‘Hannah, what’s happened? You were doing okay the other night.’
‘I can’t talk about it.’ The nausea began its ascent, re-emerging up through my body. Jen lifted a hand to my chin and gently raised it, forcing my eyes to meet hers.
‘Hannah, what’s going on? Come on.’ She took my hand, led me into my immaculate cream lounge, and sat me down on the sofa before placing a hot polystyrene cup in my hand. ‘Drink this,’ she said softly.
I dropped the mail onto the sofa beside me, trying to organize the words in my head and string together a sentence that summed up those few minutes I’d had with Daniel the previous day, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound trivial. I considered the options:
Daniel came round.
Daniel said I should get a job if I can’t afford the house.
Daniel doesn’t care about me any more.