Maya - chapter seven/possible ending

The last memory slots into place like coins in a phone booth and my mind settles finally. I know what I have to do now. Now the bitterness I felt before from the clouding confusion has solidified into a clear, direct purpose.
I cannot just go and buzz on the door. I cannot be seen to be me until the last possible moment. He wouldn’t let me in anyway. I must pull myself together and appear professional. I rummage under the passenger car seat for the black leather bag I somehow grabbed along with the car keys as I stumbled from the house. I remove a compact and begin to smear it onto my pale face, concentrating on the red puffy areas around my eyes. I look pale, a little ill perhaps but see a pair of dark sunglasses nestled in amongst the chewing gum wrappers dumped in the driver’s door tray and place them over my manic, darting eyes. Looking in the mirror I recognise that I appear lost but zipping up my coat to conceal my stained grey t-shirt, I can pass for a tired city worker, perhaps returning from the gym.
Opportunity arrives at the building now in the form of a young man, hauling a pair of Dunlop tennis rackets over his left shoulder. He beeps his car closed and chucks his keys into his pockets. Quickly I climb out of the driver’s seat, slam the door behind me and hurry after him.
“Hi,” I huff as I near the door.
“Hey,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at me.
“I’m glad you turned up. I’ve been trying to call my boyfriend to let me in but he’s not answering which means he has his music on too loud again and I’ve forgotten my key card.”
“That’s a bugger eh?” he says, sliding his over the black plastic pad on the left hand side of the door.
“Yeah,” I sigh. “I’ll just follow you in and knock as loud as I can when I’m at his the door. Break it down if I have to,” I laugh.
“No worries,” he says as he holds the door open for me and I enter the building, throwing him a sheepish smile. It was almost too easy.
It’s cold inside and echoes like empty school corridors. I read the sign next to the lift. Flats 9-12, floor 3. Pressing the grey arrow, I wait, my heart pounding into my chest, each time making me feel I’m going to heave. I swallow and breathe as slowly as possible. Count to ten they said. Think of a good place. All I can think of when I close my eyes is his face and my hand striking it again and again.
I pull my shades onto my head as the lift pings and the doors open slowly. Mirrors surround 3 sides of the interior but I avoid looking at myself as I am pulled upwards. I say the lines in my head over and over, anticipating as many reactions as I can. He will accept my terms. He won’t dismiss me this time.
The doors open and my heart stops, my breath cut short. A tall glossy haired woman in a cream trench coat is followed by a 6ft tall, dark haired man. I cannot breathe as she steps to one side to let me exit, blocking his face from my view. I wasn’t expecting this; for someone else to be present; for her to be here! I knew he was married but I had researched her work. She was a fashion buyer for a large high street chain. It was almost guaranteed that she would be oversees. Her firm had said she was due at their factory in Asia late summer. It won’t work if she’s here. It won’t work if I see them now, not now, I’m not ready.
“Excuse me? Are you getting out here?” the woman asks and pierces her brown, perfectly kohl rimmed eyes in my direction whilst he waits behind her with a heavy, long sigh escaping his bristle-coated mouth. The air in the lift seems to have suddenly evaporated and sand has now coated the insides of my throat. I am unable to speak, to formulate any human utterance; that function of my brain has simply short-circuited. She taps the wall on the outside of the lift with French manicured nails. I can hear the distant sounds of a vacuum cleaner start up in one of the flats beyond. A Chinese meal is being cooked close-by. I remain mute; there is an invisible hand enclosing my mouth. “Excuse me,” she repeats and goes to step into the lift, next to where I am standing like a freeze frame. I’m not ready, the voice inside my head screams. I can’t see him like this! My head buzzes and my vision blurs and somehow I stumble past them, brushing the cotton of her soft coat on the way.
“Thank you,” she says with the sharpness of a bitter lemon, sweeping herself away from my moronic figure who stands, bewildered, on the other side of a thin metal track. As the lift doors begin to obscure them from my sight, I flick my head up with a surge of life and see his dark, tanned face reflected by the harsh lighting. The tanned skin too dark, the Roman nose too long and the treacherous lips too thin; it is not him.
Like a diver devoid of oxygen bursting to the surface of the water, I exhale a sudden, violent breath. I lean my hands onto the stark white walls of the passageway and try to steady myself, my breath coming and going rapidly. One or two poorly framed paintings hang on the walls, some unevenly. One is of an ample woman, sitting just next to the door of a white bandstand at the foreground of the picture. Her fair hair gently blows in the implicit breeze. She is wearing a white Victorian style dress, tied high at the neck. She appears impassive at first but there is a sadness painted in the dark brown of her eyes, in the way they look downward slightly and the manner in which she holds a cup and saucer, resting on her lap although seeming as if the slightest noise would send it crashing to the ground.
I tear myself away from her longing and try to focus. A sign to the left of the painting seems to call to me and points the way to flat 10. The corridor appears like a tunnel as I make my way along, past a series of firm, heavy doors, each embossed with a different silver number, the only differences between these identikit boxes.