‘Put my father on.’
‘What?’
‘Put my father on,’ she’d screamed furiously.
‘Not till I finish talking to you.’
She had put the phone down on him, she remembered now as she walked across to the small grimy window and looked out into the rainy street below, and nothing had given her so much pleasure for years.
Then, in case he tried to trace the call, she had gathered her things together and gone quickly down to Reception to pay the bill; she had been out of the hotel in minutes, only to find the gloomy wet morning was not conducive to walking the streets of London.
After boarding a bus without having the slightest idea of where it was going she had found herself in Hackney, and, having spied a small café, she had bought herself a breakfast she couldn’t eat. But in the café’s steamy window there had been cards advertising all manner of things, one of them being a bedsit a few streets away above a charity shop.
Thirty minutes later and here she was.
She turned from the window and surveyed the dismal room again. It held a two-seater sofa which converted to a bed of sorts, a tiny table and two somewhat battered straight-backed chairs, and a small single wardrobe, all of which stood on a large square of faded carpet.
One corner of the room was sectioned off by a free-standing, dilapidated bamboo screen, behind which stood an old gas stove, an ancient square sink, two feet of work-top with a cracked bin underneath and a rickety old mustard-yellow six-foot cupboard, containing odds and ends of crockery and kitchen utensils, a kettle and two saucepans, with shelves below for storage of tins and suchlike.
But it was cheap by London standards and that was the main thing, Marianne told herself bracingly, as she walked across and turned on the small spluttering gas fire on the wall in front of the sofa. She still had an old bank account in her maiden name she had never bothered to close after she had married Zeke and which contained a few hundred pounds, but other than that she was virtually destitute.
Of course she could go back to live with her father, but somehow, after being a married woman and living her own life for two years, that was not an option she would consider. Besides which, this way she was truly independent and Zeke didn’t know where she was. Which suited her just fine.
The lump in her throat threatened to choke her, and she blinked furiously. No more crying, not now; that could come later, in the still of the night. For now she had to see about finding work—any work: waitressing, retail sales, whatever. She needed something to tide her over the next few weeks while she licked her wounds and decided how best to proceed.
She could do this; she could. She wasn’t going to crumple; she wouldn’t give Zeke and Liliana the satisfaction. Zeke and Liliana… Just coupling their names together in her head made her feel sick, and she took several deep, steadying breaths before turning off the fire in preparation for going out.
Essential groceries and hunting for work—they were the only things to concentrate on at the moment, she told herself firmly. Thinking of Zeke made her feel weak when she needed to be strong, so she wouldn’t think of him.
That resolve was sorely tested over the next two weeks.
Marianne had found work almost immediately in a small family supermarket at the end of the street in which her bedsit was situated.
The supermarket seemed to be run on the lines of a corner shop, with everyone who entered it being greeted as an old friend by the Polish family who owned it, and much gossiping and setting the world to rights being done over the fresh fruit and cold meat counters.
On Marianne’s first visit on the day she’d arrived at the bedsit the matriarch of the family had winkled out of her that she’d just moved in to number seventeen and was looking for work, and the next day, when Marianne had called in for a pint of milk and admitted she’d found nothing, Mrs Polinkski had offered her a temporary job in the supermarket for a few weeks while her married daughter was away visiting her husband’s family in Poland.
Marianne had accepted gratefully; buying a few modestly priced clothes and items of underwear to supplement the basic survival amount she’d left with, plus the first month’s rent for the bedsit and setting up with groceries and so on, had eaten into the bank account alarmingly.
The Polinkskis were kind and friendly, and the work was not difficult, but the first two or three days had been a nightmare Marianne wouldn’t have wished on her worst enemy. Every moment, whatever she was doing, there had been a separate part of her mind that was mourning and grieving for what had gone.
Part of her hated Zeke and another part ached for him so much it was a physical pain, but on the Sunday morning—her day off from the supermarket, which had occurred three days after she had started work—she’d awoken and realised the whole day stretched before her and she was alone. It had felt so alien, being alone. Not having had a period of self-sufficiency and independence at university, she had gone straight from caring for her father in the family home into a marriage with Zeke, and again she had been giving incessantly.
Suddenly the only person she had to care about was herself. There was no one to look after, no one to share with and cook for, just…her. Marianne Buchanan. And she didn’t even have a TV to serve as an opiate against the constant longing for Zeke.
She’d sat up in bed as that thought hit, furious with herself. Wouldn’t Zeke just love it if he thought she was mopey and miserable! Well, she wasn’t—she wouldn’t let herself be.
She had forced herself to get dressed and eat some breakfast and then she had cleaned the bedsit from top to bottom, which had taken most of the day. She didn’t think it had ever been really cleaned since the house had been converted to the charity shop, with the bedsit and a storage area for the shop’s excess stock—plus a small bathroom—above.
When she had finished the bedsit was squeaky clean and sanitary and she’d been exhausted, but she had made herself go to the cinema while the curtains dried in front of the gas fire; when she’d got home she’d put them up again—hoping the creases would drop out by themselves—and then had fallen into bed and was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
She had written to her father the first evening at the bedsit—just a short note, telling him not to worry and that she was fine, but giving no address—and on the Monday evening she’d written a longer letter, which had been reassuring and warm, but she still hadn’t disclosed her whereabouts.
She wasn’t quite sure how she had come by the knowledge, but she was certain in her own mind that her father’s sympathies were more with Zeke than his daughter, and she found she didn’t trust her father not to give Zeke the address if he asked. It would be well meant, she had
no doubt about that, but disastrous as far as she was concerned, and she couldn’t risk it. In a week or two, when she was thinking straighter, she would contact Zeke herself with regard to the divorce, but for now just getting through each day was enough.
But she was managing—she was coping well, she assured herself as she walked home to the bedsit at the end of her second week of working for the Polinkskis. She still had a great lead weight where her heart should be but she wasn’t crying herself to sleep every night now, so that was an improvement overall. Definitely. And in spite of her misery one thing had clarified in her mind. She was going to go to university and get that degree she’d put on hold.