2. A Possible Change in Fortune

2

A Possible Change in Fortune

Her divorce from Reid Euphrates had not only left Josie financially destitute but it had somehow managed to destroy her reputation at the same time. Once upon a time she had been a respected secondary school geography teacher, but when Reid—a journeyman singer-songwriter who had subsisted on lengthy pub tours for the last twenty years—had decided to drag her name through the mud rather than simply climbing onto his rusty old tour bus and driving away, the fallout had begun to manifest itself wherever Josie looked. She lost her job over a test scores dispute which normally would have been shrugged off, then found herself barred from both her local pub and local supermarket.

Not to worry, she had a car.

Then an article appeared in the local paper claiming she had tried to sabotage her husband’s career, and suddenly her neighbours wouldn’t talk to her, closing ranks around Reid, a Bristol local. She had got by thanks to a handful of loyal private students, and had thought that since she had been paying her and Reid’s mortgage since day one, she might have got to keep her house.

Reid, somehow, had been able to afford an expensive lawyer who claimed he had sacrificed his income in order to be a house husband for Josie and a stay-at-home dad for Tiffany. The reality that he had spent most of their spare money on long and expensive nationwide tours during which he had done god-knows-what and left them owing enough money to promoters that Josie had needed to take a second job private tutoring to pay for, hadn’t mattered when everything was said and done. Reid had suffered; she had sponged.

And now he had taken almost everything, and what he hadn’t taken, she would need to sell to pay for her attempt to fight it.

The final nail in Josie’s coffin had been hammered in by finding out just how Reid had managed to afford to take her legally to the cleaners in the first place.

It turned out that his new fiancée was a wealthy heiress by the name of Lady Evangeline of Suffolk. Fifty-five years old and clearly out of her mind, she had decided to finance the career of her new singer-songwriter boyfriend, and the first thing that entailed was throwing his long-suffering ex-wife into the nearest juicer and squeezing out every last drop.

‘So, have you waited tables before?’ asked Jonathan Able of Pebbles Fine Wine and Dining from his seat across the table, looking up from the clipboard Josie assumed held a copy of her resume and peering over the top of a vase of dried flowers.

‘I helped out at a friend’s wedding once,’ Josie said. ‘I didn’t drop anything.’

‘I should hope not. How are you at working under pressure?’

‘I was a secondary school teacher. Pressure was my middle name.’

‘It says Flora on here.’

‘I didn’t mean literally.’

‘I see.’ Jonathan squinted at the clipboard. ‘There’s no related reference. Was it a job you were fired from?’

‘I took an offered redundancy,’ Josie said, forcing a smile.

Jonathan looked up and smiled, the first time Josie had seen any genuine emotion since the interview had started. ‘That’s what we call it, too,’ he said. ‘So, no experience, and no references.’

‘There’s one from my university.’

‘Yes, but it’s more than twenty years old. The person who wrote it could quite literally be dead.’

‘So?’

‘Have you experienced any changes in your life over the last … generation?’

‘Yes, a few things.’

‘So therefore, it’s no longer relevant.’

‘But—’

Jonathan tapped the clipboard with his pen. ‘So, no experience, no references … I suppose we could consider you for an unpaid internship, just until you learn the ropes.’ He looked up and grinned. ‘Would that work?’

‘You want me to wait tables for free until you’re satisfied that I can carry a plate of food from one corner of a room to another without perhaps managing to throw it up in the air?’

‘Mrs. Roberts, if you have so little respect for the catering industry, why are you applying for a job at my restaurant?’

‘Because I’m desperate?’

‘Mrs. Roberts, waiting tables is so much more than carrying plates of food from, as you say, one corner of a room to another. Good waiters are … artists.’

‘I can believe that, at eleven-fifty an hour.’

Jonathan grimaced and stood up. ‘Well, thank you for coming, Mrs. Roberts. I wish you luck in your continued search for employment. Should you wish to take me up on that offer of an unpaid internship, please do not hesitate to contact me.’

Josie could only sigh as Jonathan turned and walked away towards the kitchens.

‘It’s Ms. Roberts,’ she said, shoulders slumping.

‘So you’re actually thinking about working for some backstreet soup kitchen for free?’ Hilda said. ‘Are you out of your mind? I wish a plague of Japanese knotweed on that place.’

‘I’ve been to three job interviews this week. One told me I was too old to start a career in data entry. The second one said I wasn’t tall enough to clip the tops of park hedges and that they couldn’t afford the additional insurance required for me to use a stepladder. The third wanted me to wait tables for free. I’m desperate, Hilda.’

‘How desperate?’

‘Well, I’m not quite ready for begging outside the bus station, but give it another week and ask again.’

‘If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?’

‘Huh?’

‘Just answer the question.’

Josie frowned. She reached for a cup of coffee she had just made, then took a step backwards as a spider rushed out from under the fridge and raced across the floor. The coffee sloshed; only dipping her face to take the little brown wave in the face stopped it going down the front of her dress.

‘Ah, I’m an oak,’ she said, wiping coffee off the end of her nose with a hem of her sleeve.

‘Why?’

‘I’m old.’

‘Says you, talking to the woman drawing her pension. Why else?’

Josie smiled. ‘I like to think I’m tough. Hard to cut down. And I would make a decent table, or at least a doorstop.’

‘Resilient, that’s good. Stands up in a strong wind. Doesn’t run away.’

‘What most trees do?’

‘I’ve moved beyond the tree analogy now. Listen, I might have something, but I don’t think it’ll be easy, and you’ll have to move out of Bristol.’

‘Where to?’

‘Down here, to where I live.’

‘To Porth Melynos? You want me to come down and live in your little coastal town where rental costs are probably more than my yearly salary?’

‘Technically a can of beans costs more than your current salary.’

‘I take the point, but even so.’

‘Look, it’s not that bad. And not right in the town, but nearby. I’d offer to let you stay at my place but part of the job is that you have to live on-site. It would be rent free, too.’

‘This is for a job? What is it, live-in housekeeper?’

‘I’ll get to the details in a moment. I have a friend who owns a place down here, just up the valley a little ways. The thing is, my friend makes me look like a freshly budding flower, and he’ll take some convincing, but I can slip something herbal into his tea.’ Hilda chuckled. ‘The truth is, it would be lovely to have you a little nearer for the summer. And wouldn’t it be nice for you to put all your troubles behind you? You could even bring Tiffany if she wants to come.’

‘Tiffany? I don’t know—’

‘Didn’t you say she’s finishing up at university in a couple of months? Do you have room for her there?’

Josie looked around the flat. The truth was, she was terrified of Tiffany seeing the hellhole she now called home, to the point where she had planned to encourage her daughter to stay in London. One look at this place with its spiders, dead mice, mould, doors that didn’t shut properly, ripped wallpaper, spiders, grout-covered tiles, cracked windows, and yet more spiders, and she would run off to her father, never to return.

‘I suppose I could ask her. I don’t know what her plans are yet. So … what is this job you said you might have?’

‘Do you trust me?’

‘Well, I suppose with everyone in my life except for you having either pushed me away or taken my ex-husband’s side in everything, that would be a yes.’

‘Good. I’ll make a phone call. It won’t be easy to convince my friend because it’s not really a job he’s aware that he has available, but before I even try, I want you to promise that you’ll take up the offer if it comes.’

‘Can’t you just tell me what it is?’

‘I don’t want you to form a judgement in advance. Every challenge should be met with an open mind, rather than a preformed disposition.’

‘Not even a hint?’

‘Nope. Just trust me.’