The Rooms

Some one recently called me "The Resourceful One"...

Saving money is a bit like a game to me. I relish in the challenge of finding a good discount, a random promotion, or a last minute deal. And who wants to spend money they don't need to? Right?

So after a late train from Europe, I scoured the web for an affordable host with a little privacy for three weary travellers.

Introducing: The Rooms.

Not a hostel, not a hotel, not an Airbnb, but simply a Room.

2 beds. A shared bathroom. £23 each. Let's go for this!

"Hello! This is Hannah, just letting you know we'll be there by 11". I call from the station platform.

"OK". Two syllables that seem to see me as well as speak to me. Two syllables that last two seconds. They hang up.

It's dark as we transfer from train to the car. I plug the postcode into google maps, and mindlessly follow my phone's orders.

"Your destination is on the right."

A gate, tall and formidable, stops us in our tracks. I look again at the map on my phone, and as my eyes leave the road, a low, electric buzz underscores the silence, pushing back the gate.

We are wordlessly permitted entry.

The front door is open and our feet carry us and our bags into a carpeted stairwell. Dim light casts a shadow from a grand piano, illuminates bookshelves, and silhouettes piles of Bibles, but no people are to be seen.

"Hello?" My voice is quieter than I intended it to be.

A door cracks open opposite us, creating just enough space for a head to lean out of it, straight and aligned, like a clock-hand. Two wide eyes bulge out of a young woman's solemn face.

"Hannah?"

I nod and try to smile, but that only heightens the tension. A hand drops a set of keys into mine, and she retreats, closing the door.

The only way is up. We climb the wide stairs, past a sharp, gold-framed mirror, and find a room numbered 2. The big, ornate bed reminds me of the film Bed-knobs on Broomsticks. Instant coffee and lotus biscuits sit beside an empty kettle, and a heavy arm chair, is reflected in a long thin mirror.

In the corridor, we turn right, and right and left to find the bathroom, with an open window, dim lights and locked cupboards. There is a tree outside, joltingly reminding me of a dream where I was watched by a pair of wide, bulging eyes.

Back in the room, we lock the door, and nervously laugh.

"Goodnight..."

Silence....

3am. I'm dreaming of eyeballs rolling down a flight of stairs and wake to hear suitcase wheels dragged down the steps. Murmurings of children's voices slip through the gap beneath the door. The curtains are open but there are no stars in the sky, only faint silhouettes of a sharp metal fence, and a rigid, centurion tree, somehow darker than the night sky around them.

We survive the night, although the toilet paper does not. Downstairs, the door to the woman with the wide eyes is locked. There is no-one to be found.

A power cut summons a deeper layer of silence, and we hurry to leave. 10AM on a Sunday morning and still no-one to be found - so the key is left on the piano, beside the bookshelf and the Bibles in the carpeted stairwell.

As I reverse the car, the curtains in the window of the locked room open.

Our escape is watched silently by a pair of wide, bulging eyes.

Resourcefulness comes with some consequences... but frugality always leads to adventure!