Lessons in Love. Kate Lawson
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pack was entitled ‘So You’ve Lost Your Job? What Next?’. Inside the front cover in a flowery font that was probably meant to look like it was handwritten from a favourite aunt, it read, ‘You know, it really helps to look at this as a positive step. We have to see this as a fresh start, a chance to explore our potential, rather than taking a negative attitude.’
‘Bollocks we do,’ said Jane darkly, stuffing the shiny plastic folder into the fish tank as she marched out.
By the lift Jane stopped to pick up three empty cardboard cartons from the janitor’s cupboard and then headed back up to the fourth floor. She didn’t cry, she couldn’t find the way into any more tears, adrenalin and shock holding everything tight inside her. In fact, Jane felt so numb that she wondered if she might be dreaming.
It took around fifteen minutes to clear her desk and sort the last year of her life into neat piles and a couple of rubbish bags. Jane looked at her pot plant and the boxes. There was no way she was going to get home on the bus with all this lot, so when she’d done, Jane stacked everything onto a book trolley, picked up the phone, pressed 9 for an outside line and called a cab on the library account, booking it down to Lucy Stroud.
Bad news travels fast. No one looked her in the eye as she walked back out through the office, no one spoke in the lift on the way down to the foyer, or offered to help her on the long walk through to the main front doors. It was almost as if she had the plague and they might catch it if they stood too close.
She was barely at the kerb when the cab rolled up. ‘Creswell Close?’ said the driver, leaning over towards the open passenger-side window.
‘Road,’ she said firmly.
‘Right you are.’ He nodded and got out to help load her possessions into the boot.
‘Jane?’
She swung round. Heading across the pedestrianised area in front of the library was Lizzie, who had worked with her, and Cal from the office next door, and two or three others, all looking slightly uncomfortable and—it had to be said—shifty, every few seconds gazing back over their shoulders in case there was some chance they were being watched.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Lizzie, putting her arms around Jane. ‘I was in a meeting. We didn’t know, we had no idea. Are you OK?’
Jane nodded. ‘Bit shell-shocked but I’ll survive. And don’t look so worried. There’s nothing you could do, was there?’
Lizzie stared glumly at the boxes. ‘I thought it was going really well. I like working with you. I didn’t realise that we had to leave straight away.’
Jane looked at her; the ‘we’ sounded too prophetic for her liking. ‘We? Do you think you’ll be going too?’
Lizzie shrugged. ‘Who knows? It’s a bit like Russian roulette, isn’t it? I mean, how are they choosing who goes and who stays? One minute you’re busy planning what sandwich you’re going to have for lunch and then Bang. Out. Karen Marshall’s ended up on the mobile out at Fleetley on the sink estates. She’d been working in the library twenty-eight years. It’s too expensive to make her redundant so they’re hoping if they give her something horrible to do she’ll fall on her own sword. I feel like one of those baby penguins on an ice floe with the killer whales circling. I mean, if they can get rid of you just like that and move Karen…Christ, Karen was an institution.’ She let the implication hang between them. ‘And I didn’t think there was any chance they’d get rid of you—you were doing really well. I thought Findlay was considering promoting you, or giving you a big project, or at least congratulating you.’
Jane handed the taxi driver the pot plant. ‘Oh, she did congratulate me, about thirty seconds before she gave me the push.’
Lizzie shook her head. ‘It’s crazy. People were talking about you.’
Jane sighed. ‘That may have been the problem. Keep your head down, don’t call attention to yourself-isn’t that the first rule of working in a big organisation? Don’t draw their fire. But then again, probably none of that counts as long as you’re not screwing Steve Burney Presumably you’re not on Lucy’s hit list of women who coveted her neighbour’s oxen?’
Lizzie stared at her. ‘Lucy? Not Lucy Stroud? Steve Burney? You are joking.’ But even as she said it Jane could see her colour rising. Surely not Lizzie as well? Had the man got no shame?
Jane sighed. ‘Not you?’
Lizzie’s colour deepened. ‘It was before you started going out with him. He always used to flirt—I mean, I just thought he flirted with everyone.’
Jane nodded. ‘He probably does. Fishing expedition.’
The cab driver sighed. ‘Meter’s running,’ he said bleakly.
‘Not a problem,’ said Jane. ‘It’s on the account. And don’t forget to add a decent tip. All this loading and unloading. I’d stick a tenner on if I were you.’
‘Did they say you had to get out straight away?’ asked Lizzie nervously.
‘No, that was my choice,’ Jane said, hugging her and then Cal, and then the others. ‘Watch your back,’ whispered Jane as she gave Lizzie one last hug. ‘Especially if you have to work with Lucy.’
‘I’ll phone you,’ called Lizzie as the cab pulled away.
Jane was home at Creswell Road by eleven o’clock.
In her absence Gladstone had found himself a deck chair from somewhere and was sitting—in his overcoat, boa, mittens and woolly hat—in the shade of the skip, eating a fruit pie. He waved graciously as she pulled up in front of the house. She got the cabby to help carry the boxes inside.
The cats were in the sitting room on the sofa, both a little miffed at being disturbed mid-morning. Some people had no consideration.
While the driver struggled in with the plant, Jane picked up the post, went into the kitchen and plugged in the kettle. The minute the front door was closed and there was no one there to see, Jane burst into tears.
Bastards, now what the hell was she going to do? Her emotions swung backwards and forwards like a pendulum, ranging from gutted, hurt, horrified and scared, through fury to despair and back again, she sobbed and swore until the kettle boiled.
How could they do this to her? Lucy bloody Stroud. Christ, if Jane had known the trouble it would cause she would have gift-wrapped Steve Burney and sent him Special Delivery. He wasn’t that special, was he? Was he? She sobbed again. Yes, he was. A bastard maybe, but charming, and tall and presentable and—and bloody man—she loved him. Bastard. Jane grabbed a handful of tissues out of the box on the counter top and blew her nose.
She had worked so hard to get this far. Steve had seemed like the icing on the cake. This was supposed to be her fresh new start. And how come bloody Lucy had ended up with her man and her job? It wasn’t fair.
The cats, Boris and Milo, ambled in, obviously hoping to pick up a little something for their trouble. They knew there was tuna in the cupboard, they’d seen her unpacking the tins, but as soon as they saw crying they backed out. No good in a crisis, cats.
Jane, meanwhile, picked up the paper knife. God, what the hell had happened to her life? She needed to get a grip and now she needed to get a job. Still sniffing, Jane opened the letters one by one. The kettle reboiled, she made tea and sat down to read them.
‘Dear Ms J. Mills, we are delighted to inform you…’ Bugger. Jane Mills read the letter and groaned. Oh, no, not again. Apparently she had won an all-expenses-paid trip-of-a-lifetime for two to a destination of her choice from one of the following…
Or at least she would have done if the letter had been delivered to the right Ms J. Mills at the right address. If there was one Ms Mills who needed a free holiday it was her; the other Ms Mills looked as if she could afford to go exactly where she liked when she liked.
Double bugger. Jane was very tempted to throw the