Page 7 of Autumn at the Willow River Guesthouse
‘Uh.’ Lily nodded.
‘You weren’t answering the phone. I’m afraid a serious breach of safety regulations has been discovered, so we’ve had to clear you all out while we sort it. Should only be a few weeks.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little booklet of what looked like coupons. ‘These are for the City Lodge up the street. And you’ll be compensated, don’t worry.’
Lily stared at him. ‘I don’t need money,’ she muttered. ‘I need a soul.’
‘Have you tried the Tesco Metro up on St John’s Road?’
‘Huh?’ Lily shook her head.
‘Listen, I’m about to go and get sausage and chips, but I can hang on five minutes if you want to go inside and get some stuff. Don’t worry about any kind of contamination. Anything you leave behind will be safe.’ He clapped his hands together and grinned. ‘A bit like a free holiday, isn’t it? I heard they have a great buffet breakfast up at the City Lodge.’
‘Breakfast….’
‘Yeah, you can get your usual cornflakes or whatever but they’ve got all this weird foreign stuff too, like bagels and things.’
Lily just nodded. ‘I’ll just be five minutes,’ she said, but when she tried to step out into the road, her feet wouldn’t move. She still had her hands in her pockets, and she squeezed the little pig for comfort, trying not to cry.
‘Are you all right about all this?’ the council worker said.
Lily gave a dumb shake of her head.
‘I imagine it must come as a bit of a shock.’ He chuckled. ‘It did to us too. I know it’s an inconvenience, but it won’t be for long. If the City Lodge isn’t up to your liking, perhaps you could go and stay with some family or something?’
Lily tried to muster the strength to reply, but all she really wanted right now was to sleep. Finally she managed to force her feet to move, taking her across the street, into the narrow entrance and up the stairs to her second floor flat. Number four of six on three floors, she had lived here since graduating from university, paying the expensive deposit with her first salary from Davidson’s.
She had thought she was happy. The advertisement listed it as a three-room studio apartment, but now that she looked at it, she realised it was a glorified bedsit. Her bed was tucked in behind a sofa that faced a rented TV she could have just bought straight out, but had by now paid two or three times over its face value. The little kitchenette was connected by a couple of paces to where she slept, and one of the three “rooms” was the bathroom. The other she guessed had to be the hall or a walk-in closet beside the front door.
Her one suitcase sat inside, half concealed by several expensive coats. She chose one just in case it got chilly later, then quickly filled the suitcase with her belongings. To her surprise and no little worry, almost everything she actually owned fitted neatly inside. She had never really gone crazy with clothes, and most of her other “stuff” was electronic: a laptop, a phone, and a spare tablet she mostly used for watching Netflix or Amazon Prime when she was on a train or bus, or stuck in traffic.
As she stood by the door, looking back at the bare bones of her flat, she wondered if she would ever be back.
The council worker was still waiting outside.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I … ah, had a lot of things.’
‘No problem, Miss. If you give that number on your phone a call back in the morning, you can get more details. Do you need a lift up to the City Lodge?’
The hotel was close enough that its upper floors were visible over the top of the trees at the end of the street.
‘No, I’ll walk,’ she said, then didn’t walk, just stood and stared as the council worker picked up his bag. He headed for his van, but just before he got there, he stopped, glanced at Old Len, who was sitting on the bench by the edge of the park, muttering to himself, then wandered over.
‘Hey mate, you hungry?’ Lily heard him say. ‘You want to go and get sausage and chips?’
She couldn’t hear Old Len’s reply, or even if there was one, but the council worker nodded. ‘No probs. I’ll bring you back a takeaway. You want peas or beans?’
Again, the old tramp’s reply was lost, but the council worker nodded, then went back to his van. Lily watched it pull away, glanced at Old Len, still muttering to himself on the bench, then slowly began to walk up the street.
5
Deflated
The City Lodge was comfortable—if bland—and her room actually had a better view than the one from her solitary flat window. The breakfast—included, thankfully; dropping nearly twenty quid every morning would have certainly got to work on her savings pretty fast—was as good as the council worker had said, although Lily found she had little appetite. Sitting in the lobby afterwards, however, she watched the business travellers marching back and forth, and decided she needed to be positive.
Headhunted by Davidon’s through a university careers programme, she had never actually had to apply for a job, but although it was a depressingly bland process, by the time she was four coffees deep out of the hotel’s daytime cafeteria, she had put applications in at more than a dozen financial institutions. Something was missing though, and it was only as she applied for yet another financial advisory management position that she began to wonder what had happened to the colour in her life.
She got up, intending to refill her coffee cup for a fifth time, and caught a glimpse of herself in one of the reflective pillars that presumably prevented the hotel from crashing down on her head.
Grey from head to toe. Even her hair—light brown—seemed to reflect the grey business suit she had worn out of habit. She looked pretty enough, she supposed, but could have walked onto the set of a black and white movie without any complaint.
