The Hotel Restaurant

The woman took a mouthful of tea wincing immediately. It was too hot, would she ever learn? She looked up from her phone for a moment to take in her surroundings. She hated these bleak hotel restaurants; tables set out hopefully for two or four people but all occupied by single, white men in their forties with mobile phones and hotel burgers for company. She counted them, 14 of them, not a woman in sight, even the two waiters were male. She suddenly felt uncomfortable being the only woman in the place. Were they looking at her? Were they preening and priming themselves thinking that it would be them who would save this damsel in distress? Or did they think she was there on business? Working? Waiting for a lonely businessman to become a paying customer. She looked at her skirt and tights - maybe she looked the part.

She tried to concentrate on her emails, meetings all day meant a backlog of stupid, bloody emails that couldn’t wait until tomorrow because if they did, they would be joined by more and more and more and more until she was driving up the wrong lane of the information superhighway. But despite the pressing need to answer the nonsense she couldn’t concentrate. Instead she felt the eyes of the 16 men on her. She looked around the room again. If the men were staring, then they were doing a good job of hiding it. Of course they weren’t all looking at her, she was just being paranoid, just being silly. She was tired and headachy. She’d eat her dinner, finish the wine and then go to her room. She just hoped these creepy men would leave her alone until then.

She poked at the cannelloni in the dish in front of her. It was steaming hot, like it had just come out of a nuclear reactor. She’d leave it to cool down for a year or two, she’d already burnt her mouth once that evening, she didn’t want to do it again. It didn’t look too appetising anyway, it looked like they’d used toilet roll tubes instead of pasta and the cheese looked like it had been used once before. She looked down at her phone but as she did so she felt a shadow fall over her. She could see suit trousers in front of her, a purple tie and white shirt.

‘Excuse me’ the voice said. She didn’t want to look up, she just wanted to be left in peace. She continued typing. How dare men just think they can hit on you just because you are sitting alone?

‘Mel’ he’d used her name, how did the creep know her name? Had he heard her check-in? She felt nervous now. Did she dare look at him?

In the end she had no choice, he was stubbornly standing there, not going anywhere. She looked up to see a face she knew oh so well. That loveable, gormless face she’d wished she’d kissed in college instead of wasting time with that idiot Danny.

‘Craig?’ she said in a state of disbelief.