Page 4 of Autumn at the Willow River Guesthouse
‘You know, sir, what would look nice in here?’
‘What?’
‘A house plant or two.’
Jonas chuckled. ‘Plants don’t grow fast enough for my liking,’ he said. ‘Not like investments. That’s real life, right there. Do I need to call security?’
Lily shook her head. ‘No. I’m going.’
The lift took her back down. She stared at the plaque by the controls, wanting to rip it off the wall, but certain that it was either fitted too tight, or alarmed. The Davidson financial empire took no chances.
It took her only a few minutes to collect her things. As she packed away her personal items—a photo of her family taken on a camping trip in Cornwall a few years ago, a little pink pig toy her nephew had given her for her last birthday, and a small ceramic house she had bought in Quimbeck in the Lake District on a trip with her university friends—she could only frown at how little actual stuff she had used in her job. Davidson Financial Services was a paperless company, and only the shiny laptop on her desk remained behind. Remembering the work phone, she took it out of her pocket and set it down on top of the closed laptop. Then, she looked up and around to see if anyone had noticed her departure.
An engineer was standing by the coffee machine, the control panel open. A couple of other consultants were standing nearby, looking frustrated, but otherwise, all heads were down, the cubicle walls cutting off any possibility of contact.
Buried in her work, this sanitised, soulless place had been her home from home the last four years. In a moment it had been pulled out from under her.
Lily gulped. Then, without warning, the tears began to come. She stood there, her hands in her pockets, one hand encircling the toy pig, the other the ceramic house, tears streaming down her cheeks. No one looked up, no one said a word.
After a couple of minutes, the sobbing stopped. As anonymously as she had worked, Lily headed for the exit, wondering what on earth she was going to do now.
3
Rejection
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m at a café on Holder Street. Finchley’s. Can you come and meet me?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’
‘That’s just it. I got fired. My car broke down yesterday, and I missed an important meeting.’
The other end of the line went quiet for a few seconds. Steve was on the Underground, and Lily hoped he had gone into a tunnel.
‘Oh, well, I suppose that could be a problem,’ he said at last.
‘I got a decent pay off,’ Lily said. ‘And they gave me a reference, which was a surprise. I’m not going to starve.’ She smiled. The sacking still hurt, but she was trying to look on the bright side, something her dad had always taught her.
Life could always get worse.
‘And … we could even see each other more. I could come around to the studio and watch you work.’
Again, a long pause. Another tunnel perhaps. The Underground really needed to put a few signal masts in.
‘Well, I mean, you could. That would be great.’
‘I wouldn’t get in the way—’
‘But I do need silence when I work.’
‘You’re always playing music.’
‘That gets me in the zone. So, does this mean I’m going to have to put in a government grant application? You are going to look for another job, aren’t you?’
‘Well, of course.’
‘Phew. So I can hold off the application for now?’
