Janice Horton - The Backpacking Housewife - Escape around the world with this feel good novel about second chances!

‘Ah, yes. I see you have booked one of our Executive Suites, Miss Anderson.’

I would normally have insisted on being addressed as Mrs Anderson, but I didn’t bother this time.

I just nod, feeling embarrassed at how red-faced and dishevelled I must look, a fact confirmed to me when I catch sight of myself in a mirrored column.

But why should I even care when nobody knows me here?

And sod the expense of the Executive Suite. It might have been the only room available to me at the time I booked, but right now it’s exactly what I need. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a damn sight easier for me to cry myself to sleep in a luxury hotel suite than in a crowded backpacker hostel.

‘Just the one night, madam?’

‘Yes.’ I hand over my credit card and then have a bit of a panic.

I mean, what the hell happens tomorrow?

While fighting tears at check-in at Gatwick, all I’d managed to think about was the here and now. But what happens next? Where I will go? What I will do?

I have absolutely no idea. My life has been turned upside down and I’m in freefall.

It’s as if Lola can read my mind. ‘I can offer you a complimentary late checkout?’

‘Yes, please,’ I stammer gratefully.

And Lola’s lovely long nails tap tap tap on her computer keyboard.

I start shaking and my teeth begin chattering in the chill of the air-conditioned lobby.

She passes me a key card. ‘Enjoy your stay Miss Anderson. Your room is on the fifteenth floor. Suite 1507. Do you need any help with your bags?’

The suite is as decadent as I’d hoped. It has a womb-like ambiance and sumptuous carpets and soft lighting across several interconnecting rooms, all with luxurious furniture and fittings. The bathroom is a dream in marble and glass, with soft white fluffy towels, and there is a vast selection of very nice toiletries. I score a bottle of wine from the not-so-mini mini-bar and take it and a goblet-sized wine glass into the bathroom with me while I take a long soak in a deep bubble bath. In the warm water I lie back and close my eyes, feeling safe at last.

A while later, feeling cleaner and calmer and cosseted in a white fluffy robe, I stand at the bedroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the bright twinkling lights of the busy city below me. I take a long gulp of my wine and then a long and steady deep breath.

On slowly breathing out, I let the feeling of surrealism and distance soothe me.

I tell myself that everything is going to be okay. Here I am, in a city of my dreams, in a country that has always been number one on our travel hitlist. My aching shoulders stiffen when I realise I’ve used the word ‘our’ in my thoughts again. Have I been married for so long that it is impossible to think of myself as one single individual person anymore?

Charles and I had always said we’d explore South East Asia together in our retirement, which we intended to take early, while we were still young and healthy and able-bodied.

It was a retirement for which we had saved meticulously and planned relentlessly.

Suddenly, I find it amusing that I’m in Bangkok with no prior planning whatsoever.

I slug back what’s left in my glass and start to laugh. Hysterically.

Then I crawl into bed, pull the sheet over my head, and cry long shuddering sobs.

How could he do it? How long had it been going on?

What a fool I’d been, thinking we were happily married.

Thinking people actually admired our long successful marriage.

When in fact, it had all been a lie. A joke. A joke on me.

Not only had I been betrayed, I’d been totally humiliated.

I’m suddenly convinced that everyone except stupid, gullible and trusting me had known that my marriage was a sham – that my husband was an adulterous cheat and my best friend was a lying whore. I hadn’t had a freaking clue.

My mind is in a loop replaying the events of yesterday over and over again, in slow motion.

Was it only yesterday?

In hindsight, I realise now that her silver BMW had been parked outside my house.

For heaven’s sake – that was a freaking big clue!

I felt so angry, so betrayed. I’d wanted to kill them both violently. But rather than a knife, for some reason I’d grabbed my passport from the kitchen drawer and saved myself all the hacking and bloodshed by calling an Uber to take me straight to the airport.

And at the airport, a strangely calm and rational part of me had stepped up to take control, logged into our savings account via the banking app on my phone and transferred half the money into my account. Then I’d bought a ticket to the furthest away destination listed on the flight departures board. Normally, in planning for such a trip, I’d have certainly travelled economy and I’d have packed meticulously, choosing at leisure which lightweight stylish outfits to pack in my shiny hard-shell suitcase, that came with TSA approved locks and a lifetime guarantee.

But the little voice of calm and rational thought in my head told me I had no choice but to pay for a business class seat because economy was already full, and that buying a rucksack, a couple of sundresses and a sarong in the duty-free while waiting for my gate to be announced would easily suffice on this occasion.

It’s November and, just like me, London was cold and dark and miserable. Yet at the other side of the airport, in the departures terminal building at Gatwick, it was like being in a parallel universe of blindingly hot tropical colours and ultra-light fabrics and high-factor sunscreen and designer sunglasses. It was the middle of the afternoon, but the champagne and oyster bar was pulling in the revellers. Wine and cocktails and beers were being knocked back in the faux oldie English pub and people were partying in the premium lounges like they were already at their destinations. I felt like a gate-crasher to the party.

I bought a few items of clothing and a squishy travel pillow and a small carry-on size backpack, as I’d come through check-in and security with nothing other than my phone and my handbag.

Then, seeing my gate had already been announced and my plane was boarding, I ran for what must have been half a mile to the gate in such a panic that I hadn’t time for reticent thoughts or last-minute misgivings.

On boarding the plane, I’d planned to have just one glass of wine and then, in my extra-large, extra-comfortable, extra-reclining, extra-expensive seat, to sleep for the whole journey. Then I wouldn’t have to think about what I was doing, where I was going, and what on earth I would do when I got there. But instead, I drank my welcome glass of champagne with gusto and then continued drinking wine while watching back-to-back movies for twelve hours instead, until it felt like my eyes were falling out my head and we were descending into Bangkok.

Early this morning, I was woken by the light of a brand-new day scorching through a gap in the floor-to-ceiling curtains and across the king-sized bed towards me like a hot laser beam.

I was covered in sweat from a nightmare. It was every married woman’s worst nightmare.

In it, I was standing in my bedroom doorway at home with my mouth open but mute and with open eyes that couldn’t blink, watching my husband thrusting himself ecstatically into the naked, voluptuous and pendulous flesh of someone I’d previously called my best friend.

It was horrifying. It was disgusting. It was sickening.

On waking, realising where I was and that it had been real and not just a nightmare, I leapt from the bed to rush to the bathroom to throw up. But I could only dry-retch, as I’d eaten nothing since I could remember. Reeling back into the bedroom, I checked my mobile phone and saw that I had lots of ‘call me back’ messages from my two worried sons.