to pick up the keys to my flat as soon as the agency opened.
I handed over my credit card.
“That’s okay, Mrs. Sheridan.” When the receptionist called me by that name, it was as though she was rubbing salt into my wounds. “Mr. Sheridan has paid for the room.”
My heart thumped. “Is he here?”
She looked surprised. “No. The payment was made in advance. Haven’t you seen him?”
I flushed and muttered something about him being delayed. “I’ll pay for room service separately.” I handed over my card. The last thing I needed was for Harry to receive the bill for all the alcohol and snacks I’d had. I pictured him casting an eye over the list, judging me.
I thought back to the day when Harry had booked the room online for a week. “Are you sure about this, Ruby? Dead certain?”
My stomach had tightened with nerves as I said, “Yes. Yes, of course!”
“Promise?”
“Yes! I promise.”
He’d beamed at me and entered his card details. “Me, too,” he’d said, and then he’d kissed me.
* * *
? ? ?
I was deep in thought as I drove from the letting agency to my new flat. I couldn’t stop thinking about that Friday evening when I left work, believing that Harry and I would be together that night. It tormented me. He’d grinned at me as I left. Who would do that to someone they were going to let down? He knew I was going to leave my marriage for him and he knew he wouldn’t be there for me. I couldn’t forgive him. And I thought of Emma, at home with her pregnancy, knowing nothing of this, not realizing the man she’d chosen to be the father of her child was promising to move out to be with another woman. How had we both got it so wrong?
I managed to find a parking space outside my new home. Seeing it afresh didn’t exactly make my heart sing. It was scruffier than I’d remembered, with peeling paint and bare wooden window frames. Inside, the hallway floor was littered with junk mail. I picked it up and separated out a couple of bills for the previous tenant. There was nothing for me, of course.
I jammed the front door open and carried everything from my car into the empty hallway, then made several long slow journeys up to my flat, dragging my bags and boxes with me. The first thing I did was to open all the windows. I could hear the sound of customers chatting on the sidewalk below. It was comforting, somehow. As though I had company. I planned to go down to the florist’s later to introduce myself and buy some flowers for my living room. It had been so long since I’d had to consider close neighbors; my house with Tom was detached and although Oliver lived only a short distance from us, we never had to worry about disturbing him. It would be different here, I knew.
Looking around the flat, I realized I should have brought more things with me. But Harry and I had decided on a new life together. We’d said we wanted to choose everything together, to start again, without reminders from our previous lives. I could see now how stupid that had been, as though a lamp or a bookcase would remind us of our spouses, when our own thoughts didn’t.
Without thinking, I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea before I unpacked. Of course there wasn’t anything there. I’d have to start again and buy a kettle and some mugs. Even teaspoons. I thought of my kitchen at home, crammed with food processors and three sets of cutlery, the cleaners and scrubbers under the sink, the tea towels neatly arranged in the cupboards, the copper-bottomed pans that hung from the hooks on the wall, the knife sets, the recipe books, and the china, the lovely china I’d collected over the years. The happiest days of my marriage had been spent in that room, alone.
This small grubby flat was so far from where I thought I’d be living that I could hardly make sense of it. I should be with Harry today, looking at apartments