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 isnât an ultra-respectable firm of solicitors or an accountancy office. It isnât a doctorâs surgery or a career consultancy. The office where, if Iâm lucky, I might be able to get a temp job, is none other than anâ¦
Estate agent.
Estate agents â the profession that everyone loves to hate. For me, itâs the profession that Iâll forever associate with the scene of my ultimate humiliation. The memory of that look on my estate agentâs face after I threw the mobile phone at Ashley â his fleshy stiff-upper lip, ever so slightly amused â 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: âSo, Miss Wood, can I assume you wonât be putting in an offer?â
I take a deep breath to steel myself as the button on my jacket begins to strain across my chest. The only way Iâm going to get out of the hole Iâve fallen into is to get a job â any job. I have to keep my eye on the prize â moving out of my parentsâ 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 â Mrs Harveyâs niece, I presume â looks up from her computer screen grinning through teeth gritted like a Cheshire Cat. I seem to be the only one who canât make my lips curve upwards.
I approach the niece. Everyone leans in like plants growing towards the sunlight.
âHi, uhh, Iâm Amy Wood. Your aunt was going to ring this morning. About the job for maternity-leave cover?â
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.
âTake a seat. Mr Bowen-Knowles is on a conference call.â
I skulk my way over to the waiting area thatâs, 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 thatâs 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: âtop-quality fixtures and fittings to suitâ â 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 â many of them in âcharming villagesâ (no supermarket for miles); or âeasy commuting distanceâ 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 ânewly reduced!â price. Even if I hadnât been categorically sacked from my teaching job, Iâd still have trouble affording the down payment on even a small flat on my own. My shoulders begin to droopâ
âAmy Wood?â
âYes, thatâs me.â 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