I’m really looking forward to seeing Mellie. I’ve missed her. She’s not been home for just over two years now and she and I are the closest in age. We were ‘The Little Kids’. That’s the way it always was in our family, Michelle and Dean, the ‘Big Kids’ and Mellie and I, the ‘Little Kids’. I’m the youngest, the baby of the bunch and now there’s just me and Mum left at home.
Mum is already over in England for the summer having left a couple of weeks ago. She’s headed to the UK to see my sisters and spend some time researching her own ancestry and family tree. Apparently, we have a branch of family on her side that originate from Scotland. Not surprising really, being as Mum is originally from Dunedin where half of the European Kiwis are descended from Scottish settlers. Tracing our ancestry and a passion for the English Royal Family are her two main hobbies, paid for by the occasional carers roles she takes on. She’s currently in Kensington in the centre of London, looking after some wealthy but infirm old dude, while his wife has two weeks respite. Yes, I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone again, as well as catching up with my English grandparents, (Dad’s parents), who live in Dorset, and some British cousins, most of whom I’ve never actually met or not seen for years, and that’s only the ones who have ever visited us in New Zealand.
I suppose you could say I have a business of sorts, although ‘business’ is a fairly loose term for how I make my living. I’ve never been afraid of hard yakka, but I’ve never had a formal career of any kind either, just a natural knack for making money. Deals and opportunities just seem to come my way. A property development here or a car deal there. There was a shop for a while on the sea front at Sumner, until the increase in rates made it untenable. I suppose my greatest skill is spotting how to make a profit. You could say I have a natural flair for selling, or you could just call it hustling. Nothing illegal mind you, rather, I seem to have a mind that stays one step ahead of any market and a natural sense of how to use money to create leverage, build assets and generate income. I wouldn’t say I’m real wealthy, well not yet anyway. I have no doubt I will be one day, but I make a living, pay my taxes, and I’m looking forward to taking three months off to travel round Europe and to catch up with loved ones.
It’s not surprising really that I’ve never had what you would consider a ‘proper job’ with a defined career path. Not when you take into account the amount of time I spent in hospital as a child. I was born with a Congenital Ocular Tumour on my left eye. A shock to everyone at the time, meaning my left eye was surgically removed a few hours after I was born. Many years of treatment followed, in order to rebuild my eye socket sufficiently to be able to take a glass eye. Not an easy task when you consider how much a child’s skull changes as they grow. So I’ve been in and out of hospital most of my life, interspersed with a little bit of inconsistent schooling. I’ve never let the fact I only have one good eye ever really bother me. Although kids can be cruel, and I do remember a tough period when I was around seven years or eight years old when some kids at school would tease me relentlessly. At the time, my eye socket was basically being reconstructed and I had only what I can describe as a Meccano set sticking out of my face, so I suppose on some level I must have looked like a monster.
However, having this disability has made me even more determined to grasp every opportunity life throws my way. I never want to take anything for granted. Life is precious, and everything can change in a heartbeat. Despite the way I look, I’ve never really had any insecurities about my appearance, at least not to the outside world. I do however, have a heightened protective awareness over my one good eye. I have no desire to go permanently blind over one silly mishap. If I have had any feelings of insecurity, I’ve never shown them publicly and I do have the advantage of never knowing anything different. I’ve often thought it would be much worse to have had both eyes before losing one later in the life.
I feel I’ve basically had a pretty good life thus far. Filled with lots of laughs, lots of love, and lots and lots of ‘rellies’, my family is massive!
I give Dad a quick hug as I grab my backpack from the boot of the car.
“Have a good time, Son,” he says slapping me on the back. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Really, Dad? That’s your best bit of advice? The man from the Navy, telling me to me behave myself. As if!”
“Well don’t you go falling for any English roses while you’re over there. If anymore of my children end up back in the UK, there will be no one left over here. I may just end up having to re-migrate back, but I sure as hell couldn’t stand the English weather again. Just remember, Christopher, it rains all the time and I mean … all the time!”
He gives me one more quick hug, before I throw my pack over my shoulder and head into the terminal to catch the first flight on my lengthy journey.
Twenty hours, three flights later and I’m sitting outside my favourite backpacker’s hut on the beach, beer in hand, watching the sun split the sky as it throws out its final throngs of light before it slips behind the horizon making way for the stars. I gaze up towards the heavens and drink in the tranquility and peace, noticing how something feels different in the air around me. This trip feels different from all the other trips abroad I’ve made in the past. They were just short hops abroad or holidays in the truest sense of the word. Short breaks or interludes from my normal life. Like I was permanently attached to Aotearoa with an unbreakable bungee cord and no matter how far I travelled I would always rebound back home.
But right now, as I sit on the beach, listening to the sound of the waves breaking gently onto the shore, something feels different. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I feel a fizzing in the pit of my stomach that is not due to the beer I’m drinking. This trip doesn’t just feel like another holiday or interlude in my life. I feel as if something is changing, that a shift is taking place. I don’t know whether it’s something within me, or something in the universe around me, but I feel as if I’m heading towards something. Something exciting, something that is meant to be, but something or someone that I don’t yet know.
Perhaps it is simply the thought of seeing so many members of my extended family or travelling in a part of the world that I’ve longed to see, or perhaps it is something new, something completely different, something that is meant to happen and something that is going to change my life forever. Whatever it is, I have no idea, but I feel it deep in my gut. It doesn’t scare me, rather I welcome it and simply allow the feelings to wash over me. I happily surrender to the sense of this different awareness within me and whatever it means, or wherever it leads me - I know I will follow willingly.
Chapter 4
Victoria
England
12 months earlier
Up with the larks on Monday morning, partly because I haven’t had a chance to do a dry run and time the 20 or so mile commute from Steve’s in Chippenham up to Swindon and I don’t want to be late on my first day, and partly because it takes at least 30 minutes to run what lukewarm water there is available from the clapped out old boiler, into the old metal bath, in Steve’s archaic bathroom which, judging by the disgusting avocado coloured bath suite, looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 1970s, I finally arrive at my new office.
It wasn’t difficult to arrange a transfer at work as my company were expanding in Swindon, just up the road from here and they were looking for candidates with my qualifications to join their team. So, although technically this is a sideways move in my career, it is for a new office ‘implant’, where a small team from our company are to be based inside our client’s UK headquarters. Working within a smaller team, I’m expecting to have more autonomy, more responsibility, a greater opportunity to shine and if all goes well, I intend to use this move as a springboard upwards in my future career.
The building is an enormous glass and steel structure on the outskirts of Swindon, on one of the newer business parks, only two minutes from Junction 16 of the M4 motorway. I’m very p
leased to discover it only takes me 30 minutes to drive there. The perfect commuting time. Any longer is a real drag. I sign in at reception before being collected by my company’s Area Manager, the guy responsible for recruiting me to this new office.
“Good morning, Victoria. It’s nice to see you again,” he says shaking my hand warmly.
“Likewise,” I reply politely, taking his hand as it’s offered.
“Everything work out OK with your move down south over the weekend?”
“Absolutely. Still a few boxes to sort. You know how it is, but essentially all settled in.” I leave out the fact that Steve, I’ve realised, is a complete and utter slob. How could I have not realised before now? How fogged up were my rose-tinted glasses? I was clearly blind or choosing to see only what I’d wanted to see in those early hedonistic days of our relationship. I also refrain from telling him about the blazing row we had yesterday where Steve told me to basically “bugger off back north” or that only after I apologised for being so unreasonable and demanding - even though I felt I was not being unreasonable or demanding to expect to live in basic standards of cleanliness, did we finally reach an uncomfortable truce. Eventually falling asleep facing away from each other again, in another heavy silence.
“Great, well let’s get you settled in and I’m sure you’ll want to meet your other colleagues,” he says before escorting me through the large open-plan glass pyramid of the building’s atrium and round the corridor to where our own open-plan office is being prepared. The IT guys only just visible from underneath our sparkly new desks as they crawl around the floor connecting up our new telephone system and massive computer monitors. Judging by the size of the screens, which look like huge televisions, it’s nice to see we are to be given the latest most up to date equipment. These screens, I can see, are in colour unlike the old black and green DOS screens in my previous office back in Newcastle.
My supervisor is called Mark a local guy, middle-aged and with a couple of grown-up kids. He is to split his time between this implant office and a further couple of offices in other clients’ headquarters dotted in and around Swindon and my other colleague is a girl more or less my own age.
“Melanie Williams,” the girl says as way of introduction, extending her hand.
“Victoria Turnbull,” I reply, shaking her hand firmly.
I can tell immediately that we’re going to get along. She’s one of the bubbliest and friendliest people I’ve ever met. She reminds me of some of my Geordie friends back home, as us ‘Geordies’ as people from in and around Newcastle are known, are also renowned for our open and friendly persona.
I incorrectly assume her antipodean accent is from Australia, but she politely corrects me.
“No, actually. I’m from Christchurch in New Zealand.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” worried that I’ve offended her. Similar to mistaking Canadians for Americans I know how sensitive Kiwis can be if you mistake them for Aussies.
“Don’t be. It’s a common mistake,” she says warmly, a wide smile on her face.
“I’ve never been to New Zealand, but I hear it’s beautiful.”
“Yes, it is. Both the people and the place. You should go one day.”
“Well now I’ve met you, perhaps one day I will,” I reply lightly, not appreciating the future prediction or the gravitas of my response.
Melanie and I are to be the engine room of the office, actually doing the day to day work required to service our client’s complex and busy travel needs. The value of the account isn’t big enough to justify Mark’s presence full-time, which means on a day to day basis Melanie and I will be left largely to our own devices. I love the fact that for the first time in my career I won’t be micro-managed. Between Melanie and I, we are to have full responsibility for the security of the office, the safe, the foreign currency and travellers’ cheques we hold on site as well as all the blank airline tickets we will use to print out airplane tickets for our clients. They maybe blank when we put them into our specialist printer, but with one stroke of the keyboard you can easily print out a first-class return air ticket to anywhere in the world, so they need to be kept safe. It feels good to be given this amount of responsibility and trust.
Our client is a global energy company with offices and investments all around the world and therefore many of their board members and senior managers spend a large proportion of their time globetrotting. It’s our job to ensure they arrive in the right country, with the right visa, the right currency in their pocket and in time for their meetings that are packed into their ridiculously tight work schedules.
Our office is to be open for business from 8.30am until 5.30pm five days a week, so Melanie and I agree our work pattern of split shifts starting at 8.15am and 9am respectively, swapping on alternate weeks, with an agreement that we can be flexible if either one of us has something pressing that conflicts with our scheduled shift that particular day.
Much of the rest of our first day is spent setting up the office, testing the IT systems and pro-actively introducing ourselves to as many of the personal assistants in the building as we can get round. Although their bosses are the people who do the majority of the travelling, the army of personal assistants are essentially our front-line customers and the people we must impress the most. Experience tells me if you can build your relationship with the PAs, your life becomes a million times easier. Most people are very pleasant and appreciate the cupcakes that Melanie and I dish out as we walk past people’s desks explaining who we are and what we’re there to help with, but I’m not surprised to hear a couple of murmurs of discontent from some. Our company has recently taken over this client from one of our industry competitors, so I suppose it’s only natural that a few of the PAs or business travellers would have preferred things to have stayed the same, which only makes me even more determined to deliver a brilliant service and win everyone over. Needing to be liked, is a feeling I strive for constantly, I don’t know why but I do.
Despite meeting so many new people in one day, I feel re-energised by the end of it. Meeting Melanie, some of our new clients and seeing the new office set-up has reconfirmed that taking the risk to uproot my life and try something new, at least in my professional life, was the right move, even if I still need to figure out the best way forward in my relationship with Steve.
Over the next few months my life settles into a dichotomy of two polar opposites. Unremarkable domesticity living with Steve and fun challenging work with Melanie. Each morning my energy levels lift as I drive up the M4 and I anticipate the yet unknown complex travel itineraries that will be waiting on my desk, together with the friendly and humorous banter that snaps between Melanie and I throughout the day. Our friendship has already developed to a place where we feel comfortable taking the mickey out of each other. Neither of us takes offence as we lightly rib each other as we plough through our work.
As my working day ends my energy flattens once again as I drive in the opposite direction where all I have to look forward to is a night in front of the telly watching the soaps, making Steve and I something to eat, followed by the odd episode of perfunctory sex. Each morning after my alarm goes off, I drag myself downstairs to the freezing cold lean-to bathroom beyond the kitchen and turn on the hot tap before climbing back into bed for another 30 minutes while the bath fills with lukewarm water. Weekends are only marginally better but at least I get out of the house, sometimes. I miss Melanie’s company, but Steve and I fill our spare time walking in the countryside or visiting local landmarks. We’ve joined The Natural Trust so spend lots of Saturdays visiting impressive and preserved National Trust properties and although pleasant, it’s hardly rock ’n’ roll. When we’re not out walking I seem to spend my time cleaning, doing the washing, ironing Steve’s shirts for the following week, or doing the weekly food shop. Occasionally, we’ll spend a weekend catching up with friends or visiting family. A lot of my friends are turning 21 this year, so we have a couple of weekends pencilled in for
parties and get-togethers which helps to break up the monotony.
Each Monday I return to the office and listen to the crazy stories that Melanie has to share about her weekend antics. She packs as much into her time off as is humanly possible. To her, weekends are precious and should be filled with adventure, new experiences and shared with important people. So she spends every spare minute either nipping away for city breaks with her older sister Michelle who’s currently living up in London or travelling round the country catching up with friends or distant relatives. Every Monday she’s always just about recovered from yet another hangover, so although she may be physically tired she’s always so full of life, full of stories and full of good craic.
I always dread it when she turns to me and asks me what I’ve been up to over the previous weekend.
“Oh, not much. You know. Just the usual. Cleaning. Shopping. Ironing. What about you?”
“Victoria, you’re old before your time. You should be out having fun, getting pissed, running naked across someone’s lawn and not caring where you’re going to crash that evening. Not worrying about whether or not you’ve got milk in the fridge for breakfast the next morning, or whether Steve has enough clean shirts for the week.”
I know she’s right. Melanie is only 18 months older than I, but sometimes it feels like I’m 30 years older than her.
“I’d make Steve sort his own bloody shirts out,” she murmurs under her breath.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Oh nothing. I just think you should live a little, Vicky, but hey, it’s not my place to say how you should be living your life.”
Belonging: Two hearts, two continents, one all-consuming passion. (Victoria in Love Book 1) Page 3
