Page 4 of Summer in Sunset Harbour
‘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.’
3
Reduced to Scraps
‘I was really hopingto get three hundred.’
The rotund bearded man with the glass eye sighed. ‘I understand your situation,’ he said, in a private school accent that defied the horror of his appearance. ‘But I need a car for my ill mother. You know, it wouldn’t be just that you were doing me a deal, you would be potentially adding a couple of years to someone’s life. Wouldn’t that make you feel like you had some kind of purpose?’
Josie gave the man a resigned smile. ‘All right. Two-fifty.’
‘Could you not just go to two-twenty?’ He winced. ‘I just felt a twinge in my hip, and remembered that I need to get a replacement.’
‘Come on, they’re free on the NHS.’
‘Yeah, but the extra money could be spent on installing bars in my toilet, or go towards a stairlift. Wouldn’t that make you feel proud?’
Josie rolled her eyes. ‘All right. Two-twenty.’
‘Do you think you could go down to a clean two-hundred?’
‘No!’
In the end,Josie walked away from her beloved Volvo with two hundred and twenty in used banknotes. With a jovial grin, the man had offered her a lift to the bus stop, but Josie refused, walking there herself with her head down, clutching in one hand the thank-you letter from a student which she had managed to find in the pocket behind the driver’s seat. On the way, she had deposited all but ten pounds into her bank account, a day before the lawyer’s payment was due to go out by direct debit, essentially completing the clean-up job that Reid had begun when he had decided to finalise their divorce.
Still, once the house was sold, she would at least have some money. The dust of her humiliating divorce hadn’t yet settled and he was already causing her trouble, hassling her by email about house prices, wanting a quick sale, wanting to reduce the asking price to something that would leave Josie with little more than a handful of spare change. Enough to replace her car, maybe take a holiday, but without any chance of ever getting back on the property ladder.
To celebrate cutting off another limb of her former life—and because the gas burner in the flat’s kitchen made a worrying hissing noise—she bought fish ‘n’ chips on the way home. Then, because she really didn’t want to sit in the flat on the threadbare sofa that may or may not house a mouse colony, staring at the wall with the last wreckage of her life in boxes around her, she took her package of food to a little park on the corner. There, she sat on a bench in front of a small pond, where a handful of ducks glided gently around a half-submerged sofa someone had thrown in, leaving it sticking out of the water at an angle like a sinking orange ocean liner. As she watched a duck hop from one armrest into the water, Josie wondered about pulling it out; after all, that part of it she could see was in better repair than the sofa in her flat.
