Chapter 3

3

T here had been a glorious week in 2019 when Sol's two major preoccupations had been finding a new cleaning person who suited her arbitrary standards, after the retirement of her previous housekeeper, and succeeding in scheduling an elusive interview with the tremendously busy Zoe Salda?a.

For years, Sol had been the epitome of first-world problems: shopping for the right party gown for an awards ceremony, finding the appropriate way to phrase a question about a possible return to William Shakespeare adaptations while chatting with Kenneth Branagh, remembering never to ask Harrison Ford about Star Wars during an interview (but only pre–2015's The Force Awakens ) and making sure to be invited to all advanced movie press screenings even if she wasn't planning on always attending.

Yet during the last three years, luck and meaningless problems had been more elusive. First, she'd realized she no longer loved—or even liked—the man she'd been married to. He'd actively contributed to that dislike. So she left him and decided she needed to put the whole American continent and the Atlantic Ocean between the two of them.

There was also the matter that she'd been homesick for Europe in a way that living in California could not appease. So she moved to London in the run-up to a global pandemic that made her realize she liked herself a lot but perhaps not that much . She had moved to London after all, not to Barcelona, and the number of people she knew in the British capital was limited. But she couldn't find a way to move back to her hometown and salvage her career as an entertainment journo. London had been the compromise.

In the end, she'd managed a divorce, an international move, career survival, and isolation. But now came this.

She was starting the day in the worst possible way: opening her email and realizing there was no need to go over the transcription of the interview she'd done with Melanie Lynskey a couple of days before. Or to shoot a third email to the Supreme Video publicist who'd been ignoring her requests of access to press screeners of their latest YA paranormal show.

Sol had been fired. Again .

It wasn't as if she hadn't seen the looming signs of layoffs coming. This was her second time being "impacted" (the euphemistic corporate lingo of media conglomerates) by restructuring, re-strategizing, or simple bad luck. It stank and it happened at the worst possible moment. She loved her work and (most of) her colleagues. She had finally been able to carve a position as a critic and to write (mostly) about what she liked. And she was supposed to finally interview Emma Thompson the following week!

Now she wasn't. Her former micromanager and over-editor-in-chief had made sure to send her one last and very ironically thoughtful email assuring her she shouldn't worry about Emma Thompson. They'd take care of the interview in-house. If she could only send them the contact information for the PR people who made it possible and remind him where and when it was supposed to happen…

"Al igual," she yelled at her computer's screen in her native Spanish—the language that came more naturally to her when she was in a mood. She had no intention of surrendering any of her contacts.

She was on the verge of being officially not okay. She was forty-two, almost forty-three really. Here came the world of freelancing, pitching to unknowns, and looking for work. Again .

There were not that many positions in her line of work, let alone ones that paid well and were meant for people with her experience. Plus, she'd seen colleagues laid off left and right for the previous months. And rumor had it that all those jobs would be taken by AI robots soon.

Her industry was imploding just when her father had finally stopped asking her to quit the masochistic path of entertainment journalism and join the family business. And now she'd proved that he was right all along. Here it was: the moment in which she'd have to dip into her squandered fund. Again .

…

That night, Sol was meeting Laia at 5:30 p.m. at the bar of their favorite Italian restaurant in Soho. They had bought tickets to see James McAvoy at the nearby Trafalgar Theatre weeks before, and Sol had decided to keep the date with her friend and tell her all about the layoff during dinner. It would help her unwind.

She'd been dealing with the fallout of her newly found unemployment for most of the day. On top of being the most vexing of things, layoffs always implied a lot of tiresome paperwork.

The play Laia and Sol were seeing started at 7:30 sharp—as plays do, Sol had made sure to instill that idea into her friend's mind—and it was an eleven-minute walk from the restaurant to the theater, hence the unseasonably early dinner reservation for a couple of Barcelona natives.

It was 5:35 p.m. and Sol checked her messages and waited alone at the bar of Bocca di Lupo, a glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc in hand. Laia hadn't notified her yet of a late arrival, but Sol had no intention of keeping McAvoy waiting.

She decided she'd start ordering food if her friend didn't get there in five minutes. She'd go as far as eating alone if necessary. Laia was notorious for her chronic tardiness. It was one of her only flaws. But Sol hoped there would be no need to dine by herself. She really needed to vent and pour her insecurities into her friend.

Having one of her best friends move to London at around the same time Sol had chosen the British city as a home destination was the best thing that had happened to her in the last decade. Plus, Laia had always been unabashedly reassured in herself and her friends. A bit of her friend's uncompromising certainty was what Sol needed most at the moment.

"No hi havia forma que acabéssim la pe?a d'avui," Laia told Sol when she finally rushed into the restaurant.

Being the newly minted correspondent in London for the biggest Catalan public TV channel came with strings attached, and Laia had been working until that very moment. She'd been delayed more than expected because she was shooting a feature on Catalan businesspeople working in the city.

Sol knew she had rushed there. Laia's hair was a bit disheveled. But she was still in full camera makeup and she only remembered to say hello and greet Sol with the customary two kisses on the cheeks after detailing the reason for her late arrival at 5:37.

Had they been in their hometown, Laia wouldn't have given such a reasonable explanation, Sol thought. It was a mere seven-minute delay! But they were in London now—and they had tickets to see McAvoy.

"Who's with the kid?" Sol asked Laia in Catalan as her friend sat on a stool next to her at the bar and checked the menu.

It wasn't lost on Sol that her own move from Los Angeles to London had been easy in comparison to her friend's. The Californian phase of Sol's life had run its course and nothing was binding her to a city she'd called home for more than a decade—other than a few friends she missed dearly. She'd grabbed her clothes, some of her books, and her vintage cerise-colored Le Creuset kettle, and left.

For Laia, things had been different. She'd been offered the kind of position she should have gotten years earlier—an opportunity hard to get in the small, nepotist-ridden, sexist market they both knew so well. Yet she was a single mom and moving to London from Barcelona meant being far from most of her friends and her family, who more often than not pitched in when someone had to stay with Laia's three-year-old if she was working.

"Paula is with the new nanny. Wish us luck," Laia said, making eye contact with one of the waiters and alerting them that they were ready to order.

The last few months had seen a coming and going of nannies, none resilient enough for the demands of the capricious but adorable Paula.

"We know what we want, right?" Laia asked Sol when the waiter approached. They'd been meeting regularly enough at the place. It was one of their newfound routines in the city and a habit that made them feel more at home.

"Absolutely yes. McAvoy is waiting! But I need to tell you something," Sol said.

They ordered first and then Sol detailed her news to Laia.

"How could this have happened to me again ? When they offered me the job, they guaranteed me their finances were in order. At the end of last year, we were swimming in money apparently. Not that the editorial team saw any of it. And all of a sudden, poof!"

"Don't worry. You'll find something else," Laia said in her most reassuring tone.

"I wish I could be so certain. And I'm a bit terrified of the search, to be honest. Shouldn't things be easier by now? We're in our forties! We struggled through our twenties taking the most hideous jobs, and in our thirties things never completely got comfortable. You know how it is. I was at a point in my career where it looked like I was finally able to settle down and enjoy the journey. But no. Here I am, treading water again."

"We're constantly treading water, Sol," Laia told her in all seriousness. "With every new story, every deadline, and every fight with our editors. That's why we chose this job. It wouldn't be fun otherwise."

"Not sure I have the energy to keep having so much fun with this profession. Thinking about turning to a boring one."

"Are you sure about that?" Laia asked, and Sol couldn't help but smile. She knew her friend would lift the burden on her shoulders, if only a little.