‘And you’ll be far too busy shagging Tarquin this year.’
‘True.’ She smirks and lifts a knee to her chest, presumably to stretch her hamstrings, then pauses, perfectly balanced on one leg. ‘How come you’re up so early, Dais?’
Frankie is always up early. Right now she’s limbering up and is encased in perfectly fitting designer Lycra. If I wore it, I would look like one of those safety-wrapped suitcases you see at the airport, or a vacuum-packed hi-viz pear – either way it would not be a sexy look. I, however, do not get up early to experience the dawn light and bracing unpolluted fresh air. Life is too short to suffer that much. And we all know it can bugger up your knees in old age, don’t we?
‘I’m busy. I’ve got stuff to do before work!’ I grab my granola and head back to my room and stick my Christmas in July list back on the wardrobe door and get another sheet of paper. It’s probably easier to start again.
Then my phone beeps with an incoming email, and I very nearly tip the contents of my coffee mug over it.
I’m a bit jumpy. I’m pinning nearly everything on this interview, and I keep thinking that any second now I’ll be told it is cancelled. That they’ve changed their minds – there are no jobs.
It is not an email from James Masters, it is from Ollie.
Daisy, I’ve had a chat to Uncle T. We’ve got this – forget the party plans, concentrate on your interview. I know how important it is to you!
Oh my God. This is the first completely non-jokey message I’ve had from him for ages, and I’m welling up. Mum’s party really is a distraction I could do without right now, and he’s offering to help!
Apart from the pooch prob. No idea how to stop him eating off the table, sitting on the table, or stealing anything edible or otherwise from the table or from people’s bags or pockets. That dog is a demon, you sort scrounging Stanley, we’ll sort the rest. Is there such a thing as a dog counsellor?
Speak soon – I’ll take you out for a celebratory glass of bubbly, if you fancy it?
Ol x
P.S. Don’t worry about replying, get that interview prep done!
‘Stuff? You never do stuff before work!’I try to ignore a shocked Frankie, who followed me and somehow managed to squeeze into my room unnoticed whilst I was reading my email.
This is nothing short of a miracle. I mean, she is pretty skinny, but I rent the smallest room (I’m probably breaking the trade descriptions act or something calling it a room, it’s more of a cupboard, or even more accurately a very large box, perfectly suited to the term box-room) in the flat. As life choices go, this is marginally better than still living with my parents but means if I want to have a sex life it’s got to be (a) with somebody who is vertically (and horizontally) challenged or (b) with somebody double-jointed or (c) with somebody with their own place. It also means I don’t have room for a bookcase. I think I might be able to cope better with no sex than no books.
‘Oh. You’ve got a lot of lists.’ Luckily, she is distracted by the lists, and doesn’t notice that I have gone all mushy and dewy eyed and am clutching my phone to my chest with relief. Ollie is lovely, as lovely as his mother says. I owe him for this. ‘You really are trying to get your shit together at last, aren’t you?’ Frankie has flopped back on my bed, which makes her hard to ignore.
‘Shouldn’t you be going for your run?’
‘Even a temple gets a day off now and then. So?’
‘Yes, Francesca, this is how I am going to get my shit together.’ I answer in my prim, telephone voice.
‘Awesome, told you that you could do it! Expecting another shitty day at work?’
Frankie is a landlady/counsellor rolled into one. She is scarily good at working out why I’ve had a bad day or am acting out of character. She also swears a lot.
‘Has psycho-boss stand-in been checking your grammar again?’ She knows all about my temporary boss. But has obviously forgotten all about my impending interview, which is tomorrow and worrying me A LOT because it is SO IMPORTANT. So important in fact that I am thinking of it in capitals and feel like it is stamped on my eyeballs.
It is however also making me feel a bit queasy.
‘It’s not just her.’ I squeeze onto the edge of the bed, next to Frankie, and stare at the lists. ‘My whole life’s a mess.’
‘Is it?’ She frowns at me.
‘It is. I’m over thirty—’
‘Only just!’
‘I will be thirty-two soon! And, One’ – I tick it off on my forefinger – ‘I haven’t got my own place—’
‘You live here! Without you, I’d have to let Tarquin move in.’ She does a pretend grumpy-face. ‘Don’t make me let Tarquin move in. Per-lease!’
Every time Tarquin, her boyfriend, stays over he tries to leave something behind – move in by stealth – Frankie always spots things, puts them in a carrier bag and hangs them on his ‘peg’. The only thing he’s allowed is a coat peg, Frankie reckons that schools let kids have them so it can’t do any harm, it’s not permanent.
I ignore her and carry on ticking things off on my fingers. ‘And, Two, I haven’t got a career—’
‘You have! You’re a journalist!’
We both know that this is stretching the truth a bit. ‘Writing ad copy for the Hunslip and Over Widgley Local Guardian doesn’t exactly qualify me for a roving reporter of the year job.’ I shoot her my serious look.
‘It’s a start, you’ll work your way up in the new place.’
‘It was an accident.’ It was. It is the truth. I didn’t exactly decide to be a journalist. I had sent the newspaper what I thought was a witty advert in a last-ditch attempt to re-home Gerald, the ugliest and smelliest dog at the re-homing centre that my friend Carrie runs.
Somebody at the paper had majorly cocked up. My witty prose and the more sombre words that had been submitted in remembrance of the dearly departed Gerald Jones, late of this parish, had been mixed up. I mean, how? Not even I can cock up on that scale.
The ‘Obit.’ column had described the deceased as toothless, balding, with a bark worse than his bite but with unique charm, and ‘Pets and Livestock – Home wanted’ had declared that a short service would be held for Gerald at the local crematorium on Wednesday.
Luckily (or not for him), Gerald the deceased did not have any living family, and his friends managed to see the funny side once a full apology had been printed and a free wake (all the pies you can eat and pints you can drink) offered at the village pub. Most of them had actually thought it was a real obituary, because it did fit Gerald quite well. They’d just been confused about the ‘re-homing’ bit and wondered if the crematorium had a new policy.
There was one positive side to the story – the re-homing centre was inundated with callers keen to save Gerald from imminent death.
Anyway, the editor had rung me to ask, ‘you don’t fancy a few hours work fiddling with the classified ads each week do you?’ And I have been fiddling ever since.
I mean, it is a positive that they thought I was smart and had initiative, but bad because I really do not want to spend the rest of my life writing ads for the occupants of what is not much more than an overgrown village. I have known for a long time that I need to develop a proper career, with a proper salary and prospects. Or at least something challenging and enjoyable. What do I do if James Masters only offers me a role doing much the same? Fiddling. Demanding something better is all well and good, but what if he says no? I will have lost my chance of a very nice redundancy package and be even worse off than before – as I’ll have to travel miles to work. What if I don’t get the chance to ‘work my way up’?
I need to be positive. Definitely. If he is not prepared to recognise my skills, I will look elsewhere.
‘But you’ve reported on stuff as well.’ Frankie prods me. ‘You’ll be fine once you start the new job. There’ll be more opportunities.’
This is easy for her to say. I am petrified and excited in equal measures. The last week has been lik
e living on the big dipper, one moment all I can think about is what will happen if I don’t get offered a position, the next I’m wondering what will happen if I do. My looming interview has taken on an importance out of all proportion – it is the first day of the rest of my (much better) life.
It is not just the fact that all I do is write small ads that is bothering me. I know I’m earning way less than my male equivalent because some fool left the salary list on the printer the other day, so I nicked it and took a photo on my phone. And I am going to demand equal rights, equal pay. I hate confrontation, and bigging myself up does not come naturally so I am going to have to practise this bit in front of the mirror at least one zillion times (which I don’t have time to do – though handing over my party planning will allow me to do it at least ten times more). I’ve also been studying the pay grades for other jobs at the newspaper, jobs I know I could do if I buckled down. Jobs with salaries that could change my life. Maybe only in a minor way, but it would be a start.
Frankie props her chin on her fists. ‘So, what would you do if you weren’t at the paper? What if … you don’t get the job you are after at this interview?’ Frankie is kind, and has a way with words, but this is something I’m too scared to think about.
I do think I need to compile a list though, so that failing at this particular obstacle does not completely derail my life again. I need a Plan B. This time round things have to be different. One failure cannot be allowed to ruin my future.
I need a list of all the things I am good at, all the things I want to do. Books and dogs are top of the list, but as I have no plan to write a book about a dog (though A Street Dog Called Stanley would surely be a best seller), I need more to go at.
I frown at her.
‘Why are you frowning?’
‘I’m thinking.’ I’ve always frowned when I think.
When I was at school, I’d always planned on being a vet. I hadn’t even considered an alternative, I just knew that was what I would become. It was all going to plan until a skeletal, scared horse was dumped in the field behind our house and I had to hand feed it grass and practically sleep with it, which screwed up my schedule and cut back on revision time more than it should have. I was in the middle of working out how to make up for lost time when Josh happened. Josh (slug boy), who I did actually sleep with (big mistake), and who was supposed to be a casual boyfriend but who turned out to be something much more complicated. Josh impacted my revision time far more than the horse did.
Josh left me with a void in my life and a feeling that I’d never be able to do anything right ever again.
Even thinking his name is making me feel sick.
I try not to sigh, sighing will make Frankie suspicious and I don’t want to talk about Josh. But things took a drastic downturn just around then, not long after my festive lip-smacking with Ollie. And, I couldn’t find a way back, a way to make things right. In fact, I don’t think I’ve really wanted to until now.
Anyway, I flunked my ‘A’ levels, my parents were ‘disappointed’ (ballistic would have been so much easier to deal with, disappointed is just plain cruel), and I accepted a place on a biology course, because biology was the only exam that I’d got a remotely good grade in. My dreams of going to veterinary college were completely screwed, I was going to study for a degree that prepared me for absolutely nothing I wanted to do in life.
I think that I have recently hit upon the crux of my problem. Since leaving school after everything went horribly wrong with Josh, I have let things happen to me, I haven’t chosen them. I have been acting like a victim.
I really need to pull my big girls’ pants up and take control, don’t I? The old, confident me never let insecurities hold her back.
I’m not exactly sure what has made me realise this, but I think a lot of it had to do with seeing Ollie after all these years. He wasn’t the cardboard cut-out I’d invented in my head, based on the stories his and my mother told me. He was real. The real I was supposed to be, and it made me realise just how much I’ve let things drift.
The Josh thing will be something I can never forget, but it was a mistake. It is something I can’t change, that was never meant to happen, but did. Just because I’d spent days wishing it would all go away, doesn’t mean I made it happen. It wasn’t my fault.
Shit, as they say, happens. Now deal with it.
I’m going to. Mum has never stopped believing in me, and I shouldn’t have done.
Moving on doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten. I think it means I’m finally coming to terms with it.
No more accidents, no more things just happening to me. I’m going to make sure I’m in control.
To be honest, even my name was an accident. I didn’t have any say in that particular part of my life, obviously, but I was going to be called Heather. Then I was born with a bad case of jaundice, and when I was passed to my mother, swaddled in a white blanket with just my little yellow face visible, she (delirious from gas and air she claims) shrieked out, ‘She’s the colour of Daisy! It’s a sign – we’ll call her Daisy!’ Despite my father’s best attempts to persuade her to sleep on it, she’d waited until he’d gone then sneaked off to the registrar, who was visiting the hospital that day, and insisted that was what went on my birth certificate.
‘I’m not quite sure exactly what I do want to do for the rest of my life.’ Doesn’t that sound far too long a time to commit to something, a whole life? But I do know that I am determined that my immediate future is going to look very different to the last ten years.
‘Oh sugar.’ Frankie suddenly spots the time. ‘I’ve got a breakfast meeting, and I need to go and collect my Amazon delivery from the locker in the supermarket.’ She waves a finger at me as she rolls off the bed. ‘We’ll talk about this later!’
‘Do you want me to collect your Amazon stuff?’
‘Oh wow, that would be brill—’ She stops, and glares at me. ‘Have you got time?’
‘Well, no, I’ve got to get ready for my interview, and have my—’
‘Exactly! Daisy, how the hell are you going to sort your life if you keep offering to do stuff for people?’ She holds a hand up to stop me interrupting. ‘You need to be assertive, you need to be less nice and helpful. You need to not let yourself be distracted!’
‘Aren’t you going to be late, Miss Biggest Distraction of All?’
Frankie laughs. Frankie is never late. ‘Aren’t you?’
I just smile. This morning, for the first time in ages, I got up super early. This morning I have accomplished everything I intended to, and I have my plan ready for the rest of the day. I am leaving nothing to chance. In fact, I think I am even more on the ball than Frankie!
Chapter 10
3 p.m., 5 April
Bugger and double bugger. I was supposed to finish work at 12 p.m. sharp, but I had call from a bereaved relative who wanted to know how much it would be to put a notice in the obituary column. Before I knew it, I was discussing poor dead Alice with her sister Mary, and was weeping buckets as she asked me how she was going to cope, knowing that the lamb she ordered for Easter Sunday would be far too big for her to eat on her own, and she had far too many hot cross buns in the freezer.
It was all so tragic, the thought of her eating dinner all alone on Easter Sunday. I searched out the telephone number of the village community group for her (they advertise a lot with us), promised I’d pop in and see her soon, and advised her to take it one day at a time.
It was 2 p.m. before I put the phone down, and everybody else was out on late lunch – apart my stand-in boss who I think was stuck in her wheelie chair and so refused to meet my eye when I waved goodbye. She was probably waiting for the office to be empty then would try to upturn herself so she could escape.
I am definitely going to face up to my new permanent boss, if I ever get one. I am going to demand equal pay, and the chance to contribute articles on a regular basis. This will be my number one priority once I have a contract; point one on my
life list.
Not that I’m having much luck with my current lists. I had to text and cancel my 1 p.m. hair appointment whilst I was on the phone to Mary. This is bad news.
My hair needs professional help. Unfortunately, a quick iron on a low setting is going to have to suffice.
Things have got even worse now. All my pratting around with finding phone numbers for Alice, plus helping out a woman in the pound shop who had lost her mobile phone (it was not lost, it was in her coat pocket where she never puts it) has meant I am late for my appointment at the beauty spa and now have a choice. According to the cross girl on reception desk, I can’t have ‘artistic varnish’ and my eyebrows done.
Beetle eyebrows are a very bad look, mine are verging on slugs. Mum always says I should do them myself, but I’m one of those people who can’t colour in between the lines, or trace around things without getting bored halfway through and going all wobbly. If I pluck my own eyebrows, they will have holes in and be a total mismatch. I tried it once and if I covered up one eye with my hand I had a slightly surprised look, if I covered up the other side I looked like a mangy squirrel.
I can’t not have my eyebrows done. My interviewer will be staring me in the eye, interrogation style, and they will be inescapable. I will look unprofessional. I will also feel shit, and I am determined never to feel that way again.
Cross girl is tapping her very artistic nails on the desk and gazing at her tablet pointedly.
‘Well?’
‘Eyebrows!’
‘Fine. Sit down and I’ll tell Eloisa you’re …’
‘But nails are important, aren’t they?’ How can I not have my nails done? Mum is bound to add it to her ‘reasons you can’t get a well-paid job’ and ‘reasons why you can’t keep a man’ lists. ‘I need my nails doing!’ I need to look polished, and I can’t wear gloves in April. Unless I wear surgical gloves and say I have a skin problem? No, definitely not. Totally not. What am I thinking?
Four Christmases and a Secret Page 8
