Chapter Four
1268 Words
Chapter Four
Cara arrived at the hotel the next morning with her normal uniform and a heavy heart.
She walked to her post greeting her colleagues the way she always did. They smiled back. Asked how she was. Complained about the weather and the new cleaning schedule and the guest in room 209 who had left an absolute disaster behind.
Everything was completely normal.
But Cara wasn't convinced. She kept waiting for someone to pull her aside. For her supervisor to call her name with that particular tone.
For the man from room 114 to have called down to reception and reported her before she even arrived.
Nothing happened.
The colleagues who had done the overnight shift were already packing up to go home, laughing about something at the far end of the corridor. Nobody looked at her twice. Nobody knew anything.
She let out a slow breath and got to work.
She did not go near room 114 the entire day.
………..
A week passed. Then two.
The fear reduced gradually the way fear does when nothing comes of it. She stopped walking into the hotel every morning bracing herself.
Stopped checking her manager's face for signs.
Stopped replaying the mistake of a night.
She convinced herself she would never cross paths with him again.
And even if she did …. would either of them even recognise each other? The room had been dim. He had been drugged. She had been terrified and overwhelmed and completely unprepared.
She let it go.
………
She came home one evening to find Helen sitting at the kitchen table with the particular expression she wore when she had already made a decision and was only now informing Cara of it.
"Sit down." Helen said.
Cara set her bag down and remained standing. "What happened?"
"Nothing happened. Sit down Cara."
She sat.
Helen folded her hands on the table. "Sandra's husband has a friend.
His name is Richard. He is successful, he has his own business and he is looking to settle down." She looked at Cara directly. "I told Sandra you would have dinner with him on Friday."
Cara stared at her. "You told her what?"
"Dinner, friday at seven o'clock."
"Mumm." Cara said carefully. "You cannot just arrange my life without telling me."
"I am your mother."
"That does not mean you can…"
"You have no man Cara." Helen cut in, her voice rising slightly.
"You have no degree. You are working in a hotel folding other people's sheets.
What exactly are you waiting for? A miracle?"
"I am not waiting for anything. I am working. I am keeping this house running…." She explained.
"Keeping this house running???." Helen repeated with a short laugh.
"You want a medal for that? That is the bare minimum Cara. The bare minimum. While you are here celebrating yourself for paying bills other women your age are building lives.
Getting married to rich men, having children. Moving forward."
Cara felt the familiar heat rise in her chest. She pressed it down.
"I will not go on a date with a man I have never met just because you arranged it without asking me." She said quietly.
Helen looked at her. "You will go."
"I won't."
"Then what is your plan?" Helen spread her hands. "Tell me. What is the great plan? Keep folding sheets until you are forty?
Hope someone walks through that hotel and falls in love with you in your uniform?" She shook her head. "I am trying to help you Cara. I am the only one trying to help you."
"This is not help." Cara said. "This is you being embarrassed by me."
The kitchen went very quiet.
Helen's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me." Cara said. At this point she was tired of everything.
"You are not doing this for me. You are doing this because you are embarrassed to tell your friends that your daughter works in a hotel. Because Rebecca's daughter got promoted and Sandra's daughter is getting married and you cannot stand that I am not keeping up."
"How dare you…." She said slowly pointing her index finger at her.
"I work every single day." Cara's voice was steady but her hands were not.
"Every single day I come home and there is food on this table and the lights are on and the rent is paid and you have never once …not once …said thank you. Not once." She stood up from the table.
"But you can arrange a date with a stranger because that is the kind of help that makes you look good."
Helen stood up too. "Everything I do is for this family…"
"Then let me live my life mum." Cara said. "Let me make my own choices. Let me make my own mistakes."
"You have already made enough of those." Helen snapped.
The words landed the way they were meant to.
Cara picked up her bag from the floor.
"I will go on the date." She said quietly. "Not because you told me to. Because I am tired of fighting with you about it."
She went to her room and closed the door.
She sat on the edge of her bed and pressed her fingers to her temples and breathed.
………….
Richard was already at the table when she arrived Friday evening.
Well dressed. He stood when he saw her and smiled and pulled out her chair.
Cara thought … maybe. Maybe this will be fine.
"So you work in a hotel." He said, barely ten minutes in.
"Yes." Cara said.
"Housekeeping?"
"Yes."
He nodded slowly. "My mother always said you can tell everything about a person by what they do for work."
Cara looked at him. "And what does housekeeping tell you?"
He smiled the smile of a man who thought he was being charming.
"I just think ambition is important. Especially in a woman."
The rest of the dinner passed like a slow puncture.
He talked about himself , his company, his car, his apartment, his last holiday. He asked her nothing.
He looked at her the way people look at something they are deciding whether to keep or put back.
She did not order dessert.
She went home.
………
Helen was waiting.
"Well?" She said the moment the door opened.
"No." Cara said simply.
Helen's face tightened. "What do you mean no?"
"I mean no. He was arrogant and rude and he spent the whole evening talking about himself. No."
"Cara……"
"He talked about ambition mum." She turned to face her mother fully.
"He sat across from me and talked about ambition and what it says about a person. Like I am less than because of what I do." She shook her head.
"I will not be with someone who makes me feel like that. I already come home to that for free."
The words were out before she could stop them.
Helen's face went very still.
Cara walked to her room.
She closed the door. Sat on the bed. Pressed her hands flat on her knees and stared at the floor.
She had said too much. She knew she had said too much.
But she was so tired.
So deeply, completely tired.
She lay back and closed her eyes.
She would feel better tomorrow.
She didn't feel better tomorrow. Or the day after. She felt strange and heavy
and tired in a way that was different from her usual tired. She put it down to the long shifts and the argument with Helen and the disaster of a date.
She ignored it.
For exactly one more week.
- Writer
