Finding Home

by Lauren Westwood

  Dad sets down his ball of twine on the top rung, and it promptly rolls off and unwinds.

  ‘Yes Dad, I’m fine.’ I accept the sudden reversion to infancy that my parents have inflicted on me ever since the night I turned up on their doorstep almost exactly a month ago, tearful and incredulous at having lost my boyfriend, the perfect flat, and my dream job all in less than 24 hours. I pick up the ball of twine. ‘Do you need a hand?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Dutifully, I snip a piece of twine and hold it out to him. He ties the recalcitrant tendril to the trellis. It’s the first time I’ve felt useful all day. I cut two more pieces and hand them to him.

  ‘Have you been out shopping or something?’ Dad asks.

  ‘No, I went to see about a job.’

  ‘A job!’ He comes a few steps down the ladder and shakes my hand like he’s amazed I would do something so grown-up. ‘What is it? No, don’t tell me… Let’s see… Badminton Girls School? Teaching impressionable young ladies about the dangers of corsets?’

  ‘Actually, it was a comprehensive in Bridgwater. And unfortunately, it turns out that they’re not hiring.’ Me. They’re not hiring me. Nor are any of the other colleges and secondary schools within a 30-mile radius of Bristol that I’ve tried over the last month. Not even to teach an evening course.

  ‘Well,’ he scratches his receding hair, ‘chin up. You’ll find something.’

  ‘Yeah, Dad.’ I smile bravely. ‘I will.’ But what? I’ve even started checking the ads on Gumtree twice a day. Everything in the local area seems to involve cleaning toilets at a pub or stacking groceries at Tesco. And just like below-stairs in Victorian times, even those places probably wouldn’t hire a mobile-phone-throwing trouble-maker who’s been sacked without a character reference.

  ‘That should do it.’ Dad ties the last piece of twine and climbs down the ladder. ‘I’ll take it from here.’

  ‘Sure, Dad. I’m going inside to change.’

  The screen door slams behind me as I enter the house and peek inside the kitchen. Mum is standing at the stove wearing a Wallis and Gromit apron that one of her reception kids gave her last Christmas. She’s cooking a huge pan of sausages. The grease sizzles and spits in the pan and splatters against Wallis – or Gromit? – as Mum painstakingly adds the onions and leeks. My stomach roils. Ever since I was little, I’ve hated sausages. But I wouldn’t want to hurt Mum’s feelings by actually saying so.

  ‘Smells good, Mum.’

  Mum glances at me over her shoulder and frowns. ‘The top button on your jacket is hanging by a thread. Do you want me to sew it back on?’

  The top button does seem loose, I notice, as I peer down at my ‘go-to’ black suit jacket. I wish I could blame my failure at the interview on looking bedraggled, but I know that’s just wishful thinking. ‘That’s okay, Mum. I’ll do it later.’ I walk off towards my bedroom.

  ‘How was the interview?’ Mum says.

  I stop and turn back. ‘It wasn’t exactly an interview – it was an informational interview. You know, like an enquiry.’

  ‘Oh.’ She turns over the sausages with a fork. ‘So you didn’t get the job.’

  ‘No.’ I sigh.

  She turns the heat down on the hob and covers the foul-smelling concoction. ‘Well, if you’re as keen to get a job as you say you are, Mrs Harvey from next door might be able to set you up. Her niece is pregnant and her office is looking for a temp.’

  ‘A temp?’

  ‘Just until you get back on your feet.’

  ‘A temp what?’ I practically choke. ‘In an office?’

  ‘It’s in Bath – that’s all I know. But I can get the details from her.’ Mum dishes out the sausages, heaping spoonfuls of congealed grease onto three plates.

  ‘I don’t really think that’s quite the thing I’m looking for. I mean, I spent years at uni getting a first and doing my doctorate…’ The words dissolve on my tongue. I may have been good at doing research and writing clever little essays for scholarly journals – I wrote a thesis on ‘Houses as Characters in 19th Century Fiction’ that won a prize. As a teacher, I prided myself on my ability to bring to life some of the great literary classics for my flock of university-bound students – together we explored every nuance of Mr Darcy’s behaviour through the eyes of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice; studied each fluttering heartbeat of Jane Eyre’s descent into love with her troubled employer, Rochester, in Jane Eyre; jumped at sinister shadows on every page at Manderley along with the second Mrs de Winter in Rebecca. But let’s face it – those aren’t exactly real-world skills.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Mum shrugs.

  I hang my head. ‘I guess it couldn’t hurt to have the details – just in case nothing else comes along.’

  Mum smiles a little too smugly. ‘That’s my girl. When the going gets tough, the tough get going…’

  ‘Yeah, Mum.’ I give her a half-hearted high five. ‘Stiff upper lip and all that.’

  Mum seems almost gleeful as she phones Mrs Harvey next door and gets the details. The details consist only of an address and the name of a firm in Bath: Tetherington Bowen Knowles. As soon as I hear the name, I take heart. It sounds like an ultra-respectable firm of solicitors, or maybe an accountancy office. Someplace with comfortable sofas and brass lamps with green glass shades that smells of ancient cigar smoke, leather-bound books and yellowing papers. My parents don’t have internet access, so I can’t find out for sure.

  ‘She says you should go tomorrow,’ Mum says. ‘Apparently her niece is “about to pop”.’

  I grimace at the image. ‘Okay, I will.’

  *

  At dinner, I douse the sausages with mustard and pick at them, half-listening to Mum and Dad gossiping about their neighbours, the church-roof fundraiser, and the merits of Aldi vs Lidl. Afterwards, we spend a quiet evening in front of the television watching Celebrity Antiques Road Trip, and Mastermind. When Dad puts on a recording of Autumnwatch, I excuse myself on the grounds that I want to ‘see about the temp job’ first thing the next morning. Dad looks impressed. ‘Okay Princess,’ he says. ‘We’ll be here cheering for you.’

  ‘Great Dad,’ I say. ‘That’s nice to know.’

  ‘And make sure you sew on that button,’ Mum says as I leave the sitting room.

  I go into the bathroom, rub on my five-minute facial mud mask, and stick cucumber slices over my eyes. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, the more I try not to think about the past, the clearer it is in my mind. Simon is there in vivid colour – sitting two rows behind me in the lecture hall where we first met. We got to talking and found that we shared the same night bus home. Great love stories through the ages are built on less, I suppose. One thing led to another, and pretty soon, Simon was over at my little basement flat so often that, in his words, it was ‘mad to throw away money renting two flats’. Not, admittedly, the most romantic reason ever given for moving in together. Still, I dutifully moved my books, my clothing, and myself into his bachelor pad in Docklands – that was already complete with free weight set, Xbox, nose-hair trimmer, and trouser press. I always felt slightly out of place there – like I never truly made my mark. At night, I used to dream about the day when we could finally afford a real ‘together home’.

  Although the living situation wasn’t perfect, Simon was a model boyfriend. I could always count on the odd token of affection: a bouquet of 50% off flowers from the Whistlestop at Waterloo Station; my favourite falafel wrap with no onions brought home when he was working late; text messages that he was sitting in another boring meeting with Saudi investors and would rather be home with me watching University Challenge. After a year or so, the tokens dwindled, and the lean years began: me working round the clock on my thesis; him working round the clock at the investment bank. But we still had the weekends, mostly spent curled up together on the orange crush velvet sofa that we found in a skip in Wapping and together managed to upend through the window of the flat. We ate a lot of takeaways, drank a lot of
wine, watched a fair few films, and when we weren’t too tired, had sex in the narrow double bed decorated with the crocheted duvet cover I bought at Petticoat Lane market. All in all, it was a nice existence rather than a great love story – but in the real world, there’s nothing wrong with nice. And in the last few months, things had been looking up: I began teaching English literature at the college, and the bank promoted Simon to vice president of emerging markets. My life, signed, sealed and delivered. My life…

  I pick off one of the cucumber slices and eat it. Around me, the sight of wall-to-wall Artex and avocado bathroom suite make my stomach give a little lurch. Why am I here when I should be standing at the head of a table filled with clever and interested students, engaging in intelligent debate about ‘The myth of feminist identity in Jane Austen’? What happened to the future that ‘might have been’: a scene in a romantic restaurant, wine and candles; Simon taking something from his pocket, down on one knee, everyone else stopping their conversations and turning to watch. I imagine the ring – he knows I like antiques, so maybe it will be something vintage – Victorian with seed pearls and tiny diamonds. And instantly, I will have joined the sisterhood of women who, after going through toil and hardship, finally get a happy ending.

  A happy ending. Was I so wrong to want one?

  I wash the mud off my face and look in the mirror. The woman who stares back is a little thinner than a month ago, with what a novelist might glibly describe as a heart-shaped face and porcelain skin. Her shoulder-length hair is thick and dark, and cut in a long bob. Only her eyes seem to have lost a little of their sparkle. While the sting of being usurped by the perfect ‘Ashley’ (‘I’m really sorry, Amy, but when I met her at that little “do” for new teachers, I just knew it was destiny’) has begun to numb slightly, the ache of what the hell I’m going to do now lingers on. A temp job is not what I had in mind. But I have to do something – anything – to get back on my feet, even though my knees still feel like jelly. I do a few facial exercises in the mirror and practice my best ‘interview’ smile. It’s always nerve-wracking trying for a new job, but really, how bad can it be?

  I brush my teeth and don my fuzzy slippers. Before leaving the bathroom, I poke my head into the hallway to check that the coast is clear. The TV is off and there’s a light on under my parents’ door. I venture down the hall to the airing cupboard in search of Mum’s sewing kit, but it isn’t there. Hurrying back to my own bedroom, I pop in a pair of blue foam earplugs bought last week following a nocturnal emergency – noises coming from my parents’ room in the middle of the night. I cross my fingers that I’ll get a job quickly, earn some money, and soon be able to afford ‘a room of my own’.

  But until then, all I can do is lie down in the narrow bed, crawl under the duvet, and pull the pillow tightly around my ears.

  - 2 -

  Two little words.

  My heart plummets as I stand on the pavement outside the golden Bath-stone office of Tetherington Bowen Knowles, debating whether to go inside or jump back on the train never to return. This isn’t an ultra-respectable firm of solicitors or an accountancy office. It isn’t a doctor’s surgery or a career consultancy. The office where, if I’m lucky, I might be able to get a temp job, is none other than an…

  Estate agent.

  Estate agents – the profession that everyone loves to hate. For me, it’s the profession that I’ll forever associate with the scene of my ultimate humiliation. The memory of that look on my estate agent’s face after I threw the mobile phone at Ashley – his fleshy stiff-upper lip, ever so slightly amused – is permanently etched onto my brain. The unfurling of a spotty silk handkerchief when he came to the rescue of the damsel with the bloody nose. His parting words to me as I ran down the stairs to the street, my dreams in tatters, my face puffy and tear-streaked: ‘So, Miss Wood, can I assume you won’t be putting in an offer?’

  I take a deep breath to steel myself as the button on my jacket begins to strain across my chest. The only way I’m going to get out of the hole I’ve fallen into is to get a job – any job. I have to keep my eye on the prize – moving out of my parents’ house and into a flat that I can make my own. I have to go inside.

  A little bell tinkles as I push open the door. Instantly, everyone inside the open-plan space is abuzz with activity and energy. At one desk, a spiky-haired man in an impeccable suit is laughing into a phone cradled on his shoulder and gesturing with a pen. At the back of the room, an older woman in tweed flashes me a coral-lipped smile as she pours milk into her coffee cup, and even the heavily pregnant woman at the first desk as I enter – Mrs Harvey’s niece, I presume – looks up from her computer screen grinning through teeth gritted like a Cheshire Cat. I seem to be the only one who can’t make my lips curve upwards.

  I approach the niece. Everyone leans in like plants growing towards the sunlight.

  ‘Hi, uhh, I’m Amy Wood. Your aunt was going to ring this morning. About the job for maternity-leave cover?’

  Instantly, the electricity in the room fizzles out. Everyone falls back into their various tasks like marionettes with broken strings. The niece looks at me with disdain.

  ‘Take a seat. Mr Bowen-Knowles is on a conference call.’

  I skulk my way over to the waiting area that’s, in a word, beige. Needless to say, there are no leather-bound books or cheery brass lamps. I sit down on the edge of a firm beige sofa with chrome arms that’s flanked with potted palms. The beige-wood coffee table is covered with piles of property particulars. One pile is an advertisement of available properties in an estate of new-build mansions. I recognise some of the mysterious lexicon: ‘top-quality fixtures and fittings to suit’ – referring, I surmise, to the fake marble pilasters, white carpet, and shiny black kitchens in the photo. The other pile contains a mixture of one-bed flats and village semis in the greater Somerset area – many of them in ‘charming villages’ (no supermarket for miles); or ‘easy commuting distance’ to places as far away as London and Cardiff. I peruse the particulars for a one-bed flat in a newly gentrified part of Bristol, and gasp at the ‘newly reduced!’ price. Even if I hadn’t been categorically sacked from my teaching job, I’d still have trouble affording the down payment on even a small flat on my own. My shoulders begin to droop—

  ‘Amy Wood?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’ As I stand up, the button on my jacket heralds my grand entrance by popping off onto the floor and bouncing like a flat rock skimming the surface of a placid lake. And unfortunately, the man standing at the door of a tiny beige-walled office is not smiling. His eyes follow the progress of the button until it lands petulantly under the niece’s desk.

  His gaze moves to the tiny wrinkle of black lace at the top of my bra that I’m aware is now peeking out of the V of my blouse. All I can do is wait – for his eyes to reach my face just as my cheeks flush bright red.

  ‘Come into my office. I’m Alistair Bowen-Knowles.’

  He ushers me inside. The large desk that takes up most of the office is unnaturally tidy. On the walls are architects’ drawings of modern houses and six framed ‘Salesman of the Year’ certificates, all arranged to the millimetre. Mr Bowen-Knowles is wearing a starched pink shirt with cufflinks, pin-striped trousers and a purple and silver tie. His eyes are set too closely together, his nose long and wolf-like.

  Mr Bowen-Knowles steeples his fingers. ‘So, Miss Wood. What can I do for you?’

  Smiling, I launch into my prepared answer. ‘I understand you might have a job opening in your office. I’m looking for work and I thought I’d make a good… uhh… fit.’ I hand him my one-page CV (highlighting my education, and downplaying the fact that I have absolutely no relevant experience). He takes it from me and scans it, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘Are you sure you’re in the right place?’ His lip twists in disdain. ‘The bookstore’s down the street.’

  I shift in my chair, ready to make a dignified exit. Things have been hard enough without adding Mr Salesman-of-the-Year to
my woes. My eyes settle on the white business cards neatly displayed in a Links of London holder. Beneath the script words Tetherington Bowen Knowles is a line of small print that I hadn’t noticed before: ‘Specialists in unique and historic properties.’ I take one of the cards from the holder.

  Unique. Historic. Two little words...

  And just like that, the noxious mist clears from my mind.

  ‘You may look at my CV and think that I’m overqualified.’ I sit up a little straighter. His right eyebrow twitches upwards like he’d had no such notion.

  ‘But the truth is, academia was a bit stodgy. I’ve read a lot of classic English books that feature “unique and historic properties”. And I think I’d be the perfect person to sell them. Your agency’s speciality is right “up my street” – so to speak.’ I smile, really warming up now.

  The niece waddles in, her smile now looking more like a grimace, and puts a cup of coffee on the desk in front of me. I ignore it.

  ‘In fact, I’ve loved old properties ever since I was a girl and my dad did up our cottage. It was full of character and quirks – just like a person. I adored it – and was gutted when they moved.’ I lean forward. ‘I’m sure I’ll be able to sell lots of unique and historic properties and find lots of people their perfect home. Maybe be… uhh… Salesman of the Year – like you.’ I laugh nervously. ‘Saleswoman, I mean.’

  Satisfied with my ‘pitch’, I sit back. Instead of looking duly impressed, Mr Bowen-Knowles is fiddling with his right cufflink.

  ‘Are you finished?’ he says curtly.

  ‘Yes.’ I shrink in the chair.

  ‘Good.’

  He picks up his BlackBerry and frowns at the screen. The silence is painful as he begins tapping a message on the tiny keys.