Chapter 5 #2
It is a challenge not to. In front of Mebel is the smallest, dingiest room she has ever seen in real life.
It reminds Mebel of a prison cell, except without a personal toilet in the corner.
Instead, there is, inexplicably, a sink in one corner of the room.
Why is there a random sink inside this bedroom?
Why is the window so tiny? Why is the bed so narrow?
Why is she here instead of being home in her luxurious mansion, ordering air-fried truffle fries from Wendy?
Mebel steps gingerly inside, pushing her suitcase in front of her.
There is just about enough space for the remaining suitcases to fit inside the room, but once she’s pulled them all in from the hallway, she finds that there’s no way she can lay them down and open them up.
Agatha stands in the doorway, smiling in a way that can only be described as “silently shrill.”
“Right!” she says, her hands clasped in front of her bosom. “Well, I’ll let you settle in then, shall I? It’s rather late, so get some rest. Classes start bright and early tomorrow. Cheerio!” With that, she backs out and closes the door gently behind her.
Mebel’s phone buzzes then, and she pounces on it. Maybe it’s Henk? Maybe he’s finally realized what a huge mistake he’s made and he’s begging her to come back? But it turns out to be Meimei, one of her friends from the country club.
The message reads:
Mebel, where have you been? You’ve missed our monthly luncheon.
The theme was “citrus,” just awful. Look at these photos.
We all had to wear citrus-themed outfits, and that shameless Natalia wore a see-through yellow top with lemon-printed bra underneath.
Just look at that! You can see the bra! If you’d been there, she would never have dared to wear something like that.
How are you? Where are you? I saw Henk at the club yesterday, but when I asked him where you were, he said you were away. Are you traveling?
Heart pounding, Mebel types out a reply.
It takes her a long while to do it, as she keeps deleting and rewriting her message.
She’s dying to know if her friends have heard by now about Henk leaving her, and the problem is, they would never come out and ask her straight up about it.
They’d hint and beat around the bush and ask questions skirting it, like Meimei has just done.
She finally settles on:
Oh my goodness, I can’t believe she wore that thing! I would’ve loved to see that in person. I’ve been really busy traveling and can’t wait to catch up soon!
She adds a few laughing emojis to really hammer home that she’s totally fine, then she turns the phone off and places it face down on the table.
Then, finally, what little strength Mebel has leaks out of her, and she slumps down onto the single bed.
It creaks, and the mattress sags so much that Mebel almost falls backward.
She cries out as her feet leave the floor.
There is a moment of struggle as Mebel kicks and flails like an upturned turtle, then she finally manages to heave herself back up.
The tears that had threatened to fall ever since Alain Moreau said the word “Cowley” are unleashed.
Covering her face with her hands, Mebel begins to cry.
She has never felt so far away from home, so alone, and so frightened.
What is this awful damp space? She’d comforted herself on the Eurostar by looking on Google Maps and telling herself that Cowley seems to be part of Oxfordshire, which she’d mistakenly thought meant that it’s as good as being in Oxford, and how bad can Oxford be, given that it’s where the most prestigious university in the world is?
But here she is now in Cowley, and it is most definitely not as good as being in Oxford.
It’s like saying that Bintan is as good as being in Singapore, or Staten Island is as good as being in Manhattan, or—or—oh, what’s the point of it all?
For a while, the only sounds in the room are Mebel’s sniffles.
They don’t last long. They never do. Mebel doesn’t have the kind of attention span that a good, prolonged crying session requires.
After a few minutes, her tears dry up, and though she tries her best to will more to come, she starts to feel silly, so she dabs at her face and pushes herself off the bed.
What she needs to do right now, she thinks, is to come up with a plan of attack.
Right. Taking a deep breath, Mebel makes a mental list.
1. Make the best of my situation.
She looks around her. What she needs is an attitude adjustment. Yes. She needs to look on the bright side of things.
Downside: The room is small and miserable.
Upside: The room does not have rats or mold.
Downside: The bed feels like it’s older than she is.
Upside: The bed does not have a random naked man in it.
Hmm, maybe that upside isn’t really much of an upside.
Well, no use moping about. One of the skills that Mebel has honed as a trophy wife is maintaining an upbeat attitude during the worst situations.
Like that one time Henk was fined for being “tax efficient,” i.e.
, evading taxes. They’d been in Santorini when his accountant called with the bad news, and Henk had been so grumpy it almost ruined their entire trip, but Mebel managed to cheer him up by surprising him with a new yacht.
Mebel tilts her head to one side, deep in thought.
Unfortunately, this does not seem like a situation that would be helped by the purchase of a shiny yacht.
Maybe she should consider staying in a hotel instead, as Sammy had suggested.
But is that making the best of the situation or is that running away?
It feels a lot like running away, and Mebel is not the type to run away from a problem, more the type that would run straight into it.
Just like how she’s decided to tackle Henk leaving her by grabbing life by the neck and squeezing until it admits that it’s made a mistake.
With that thought in mind, she grabs hold of the nearest LV suitcase, and in a burst of strength that her knees will no doubt regret later, she flings it onto the bed.
Opening it, Mebel releases a sigh of relief.
This is the bag that contains her clothes.
Well, thank goodness she won’t have to ask Agatha for clean underwear, after all.
She removes a few choice outfits, closes the suitcase, and opens the other one, which contains her makeup.
That means the suitcases containing her handbags and her shoes are now gone.
Once again, Mebel fights the tears back.
She’s going to make it through this ordeal.
Even so, her brain can’t help filing through all the handbags she has now lost. The Gucci Jackie 1961 shoulder bag in cuir leather that she’d bought in Seoul.
The Garden Party 49 voyage bag that she’d bought in Singapore.
The Fendi baguette chain bag Henk had bought her as a souvenir from New York.
Okay, stop this right now, she tells herself. It’s neither productive nor helpful. And don’t even start thinking about the shoes. Oh, the shoes!
Mebel forces herself to unpack as much as she can and put the clothes into the small wooden cupboard, then she undresses, shivering as the cold, damp English air touches her bare skin.
Wrapping herself in a robe, she creeps out of her room and into the—oh my—shared bathroom, where she takes a long scalding shower.
As she lathers her hair, Mebel closes her eyes and tells herself her new mantra: Everything will be better in the morning.
Every bad, no-good, awful day has its bright side, which is that things can only look up from here.