The Cinderella Reflex (7 page)

“Well, Jack will own the place so I suppose he’s entitled to make his decisions in whatever way he chooses,” Paulina pointed out cheerily.

Helene flushed but pushed on. “There’s something I need to ask you about. I’m sure this is all just rumour, but we have heard that he may want new staff ... who are ... er ... younger?”

“I’m not sure about
young
,” Paulina said pensively. “But if Jack feels that someone’s face doesn’t fit he wouldn’t be long in telling them. Although, he’d be pretty generous with severance payments,” she added reassuringly. She glanced down at her phone just before it bleeped.

“That’s my next meeting, I’m afraid.” She raised her eyebrows in mock panic. “It’s all go these days. But it’s been good to meet you, Helene. And thanks for this.” She waved Helene’s report in the air.

“It’s been good to meet you too,” Helene said automatically. She watched while Paulina gathered her things and got up to leave, and she kept her composure intact until her blonde head had finally disappeared from sight.

Then she slumped in her chair, a feeling of foreboding flooding through her. “
If someone’s face doesn’t fit, Jack wouldn’t be long in telling them
.” That’s what Paulina had said! Suddenly Helene was gripped by panic that it would be her face that didn’t fit into Jack McCabe’s vision for Atlantic 1 FM. What if she ended up unemployed? And alone, after Richard dumped her because she was a visible
failure
? And homeless because she wouldn’t be able to afford the mortgage? What if she ended up on the streets with all her stuff on a supermarket trolley, like a bag lady? What if ...

Stop! A small, saner part of Helene’s mind intervened. She tried hard to obey it. She took deep slow breaths, trying to stop her thoughts from careering out of control. She would be okay. Of course, she would. But she couldn’t stop herself from comparing her circumstances to Paulina’s. While the other woman had appeared to be sure of herself, and contented – fulfilled at work, financially secure, and able to eat huge chunks of cake without giving one thought to its calorie count – she, Helene, was looking at life through a much different lens. Up until now, she had always thought of herself as an independent career woman. She earned her own money. She had bought her own apartment. She even had staff working for her! But now, in the cold light of possible redundancy, Helene realised that in actual fact she only had enough money in the bank to maintain her present lifestyle for a few months at most.

She remembered Paulina had said that Jack would be generous with severance payments but what good was that to Helene? Whatever he paid, it was hardly going to last the rest of her life. And what about her identity? If she wasn’t Helene Harper, executive editor of Atlantic 1 FM, who was she? She was an almost-forty-year-old woman, that was who, in a complicated relationship with her married boss and with very little energy or inclination for starting over.

Helene looked around her, as if for inspiration, and her gaze rested on the bookshelves lining the walls of the Travel Cafe. Out of the blue she remembered a book she
had
read many years ago. Called
The Cinderella Complex
, by an author called Colette Dowling, it was all about how perfectly intelligent women failed to secure their own futures because they were still subconsciously waiting for a man to come and rescue them.

Helene had read it for work and she’d thought it was pretty interesting at the time. But not interesting enough, she thought ruefully, for her to have picked up on any of its tips or suggestions! But of course at that stage she hadn’t felt it held any special resonance for
her
.

It was only now, with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight that she realised that of course it had. Because here she was, a dozen years later, without the savings plan, the pension, the investments that Paulina had so casually listed earlier on.

In fact, Helene thought, panic rising up in her again, all she had to show for years of effort was a wall-to-wall wardrobe bulging with clothes and shoes and products
.
Anti-ageing serums, primers, hair stuff. They all promised miracles and delivered absolutely nothing apart from a short feel-good factor and lots of shiny boxes.

In truth, Helene had always thought Richard was going to be her pension. But was he? Or was she now that walking cliché: a woman having an affair with a married man who was having cold feet about leaving his wife?

The ringing of her phone interrupted her thoughts. She grabbed it out of her pocket, glad of the distraction, and checked caller ID: Richard. No doubt with another few tasks for her to-do list. She watched for several seconds as the phone flashed his name at her, wondering if he had been taking her for a fool all this time.

She pressed the reject button and shoved the phone into the bottom of her handbag. Then she ordered another coffee and settled back down to her brooding.

Tess sat on the sofa in the bay window of her living room looking pensively out at the waves breaking on the seashore and wondering what this latest bombshell was going to mean for her. Her laptop was open at a jobs site but it had only taken her a few minutes to see there was nothing suitable on it. And then she had become distracted by the view from the window. One of the silver linings of the recession was that she could afford to rent this apartment at a fraction of what it would have cost in the boom times. It was nicer than anywhere she’d lived over the past decade, but it looked like she might be moving on again sooner rather than later.

Apart from work, there was nothing for her in Killty. She and Andrea had been friends in college but now Andrea was married with two children and a husband who’d recently been made redundant. Socialising with Tess wasn’t high on her list of priorities. And Tess had been so focussed on getting to grips with the new job that it hadn’t bothered her too much. Weekdays flew by in a blur and at night she was too tired to care that she had nothing in her life except work. Her weekends were filled with trying to catch up with the chores she didn’t have time for during the week, and trying to prepare for the coming week.

The prospect of changes at Atlantic was forcing her to reassess her life once more. She could move somewhere else, she supposed. She was used to travelling on a shoestring. But where? Now that she was thirty, a big part of her felt it was time to settle down. To something.

She glanced at her laptop. Maybe she should go to this reunion after all. At the very least it would be a social outlet and who knew – maybe she’d get a job lead there. Of course, it would mean meeting Chris Conroy again. Tess bit her lip. She had stopped thinking about Chris as the One Who Got Away long ago but that didn’t mean she wanted to see him any time soon. She glanced at the clock and saw it was time to go and see Grandma Rosa, the fortune teller. Resolving to look at Chris’s email again later on, she grabbed her coat and bag and set off.

By the time she reached Rose Cottage Tess had cheered up immensely. The walk from her apartment had taken her along by the shore and up a cliff road she had never been on before. It afforded her a ridiculously beautiful view over the sea and the climb made her legs ache and her heart beat faster. With each lungful of air her thoughts cleared a little more and by the time she stood outside the cottage, she had begun to put her work problems in perspective. She was young, she was healthy, and she had friends around the world. How had she allowed herself to get so wrapped up in Helene Harper and Ollie Andrews and their stupid mind games over the last six months?

The house itself was postcard pretty – whitewashed walls, an untidy thatched roof, a crooked wooden fence and the words ‘Rose Cottage’ painted onto a wooden sign in the middle of the garden. Underneath were the words:

Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter!

Let Grandma Rosa foretell your future!

Tea leaves (cup of tea free!), Cards and Crystals.

Tess lifted the heavy brass doorknocker and hopped from one foot to the other until she heard a tinny voice over an intercom.

“Push the door and wait in the kitchen, dear! I’m just finishing a reading.”

Tess stepped tentatively into a small dark hallway. She could hear the rise and fall of voices coming from a room on the right-hand side – presumably that was where the readings went on. She walked to the end of the hall, pushed open the door there and stepped into a room flooded with sunlight.

A shabby floral sofa was angled to get a perfect view of the back garden through white French windows. Fat red tulips sprang upwards in joyous clumps among the fading daffodils. Tess stared at it for a moment overcome with nostalgia. The garden reminded her of her parents’ house in the country with its big rambling back garden.

She sat gingerly on the edge of the sofa, shoving her satchel under the scratched oak coffee table. Something soft brushed against her leg and she looked down into the green eyes of a very black, very fat cat. Tess was delighted to have something to distract her and she felt herself relaxing slightly as she moved her fingers through the black fur.

She wondered what its owner would be like. Her own maternal grandmother had died before Tess was born, but her paternal grandmother, Nan Teresa, had worn her steel-grey hair in a bun pinned back with silver clips and was never seen without her apron with the pots and pans pattern on it. She had baked bread and scones and cooked a dinner for her large family every day of her life. She would have laughed out loud if she’d known Tess was visiting a fortune teller. Tess could almost hear her now “A fool and its money are easily parted” but she would have been smiling when she said it.

She smiled at the memory of her departed grandmother. Of course, she was right. Tess didn’t believe in fortune tellers – this visit was light relief from all her problems at work. She had spent the last few nights studying the agony aunt columns of newspapers and magazines and as far as she could see the problems all boiled down to three basic dilemmas: dysfunctional families, unrequited love and meeting and finding the One. But how could she turn that into a radio slot?

“That’s odd, Millie likes you – she never likes strangers.”

Tess turned to see where the voice was coming from and started at the sight of the woman strolling into the kitchen. Grandma Rosa looked to be in her seventies but any similarity between her and Nan Teresa ended there. Her hair was a strange shade of plum, with huge chunks of grey peeking through a very badly done home-dye. She was wearing denim jeans, a white frilly blouse – and were they Ugg boots? The only thing that looked remotely like Tess’s notions of what a fortune teller might wear were the enormous pair of silver rings dangling out of her ears.

Rosa caught her staring and looked down at her boots.

“What do you think?” she demanded. “Do the boots work?”

“Er ... work for what?” Tess asked uncertainly.

“I’m aiming for a funkier, younger image. This is what young people wear, isn’t it? Uggs?”

Dear God, did the whole world want to look younger? Tess wondered wildly, thinking of Helene and her ten years younger project. And what would Grandma Rosa say if she heard Sara’s rumour that anyone over thirty might be getting booted out of Atlantic 1 FM?

“Young people wear Uggs.” Tess nodded. “But er ... why do you want a new image?”

“It’s to do with my career. I’m trying to diversify and
this
is part of it,” Rosa pointed her hands vaguely towards her hair. “You’re a young person. What do you think?”

“You look ... fine. But isn’t a fortune teller meant to look ... well, old ... and wise?”

“That was the old way all right.” The older woman rubbed her hands together. “But at the psychic club night all they ever talk about are the new ‘in’ things. Aura readings. Angel card therapy. Coffee cup readings.” The woman’s mouth curled with derision. “Coffee readings? Seriously? And that last client who was in with me? That was Mrs O’Brien. She’s been coming to me for over twenty years for readings. I was the one who told her that Alfie, her late husband, would never come out of the hospital and that she should find a new direction for herself for when he’d gone. I told her that her son would go off to Australia and meet an Aussie girl and settle down there. All came true. But now! Now Mrs O’Brien thinks traditional fortune telling is over. Passé. And it’s all because of this!” She placed the magazine she was carrying on the table and indicated an article underscored with red biro. Tess scanned it curiously. It was a New Age story about Cosmic Ordering – how you simply placed your order and waited for it to be delivered. There was a story about it in some magazine or book every other week as far as Tess could tell. She glanced up.

“So what does Cosmic Ordering have to do with Mrs O’Brien getting her fortune told?” she asked.

“Well, why does she need to pay me to find out what the future holds if she can just ask the cosmos for anything she wants? Make up her own future?” Rosa threw her eyes heavenwards. “No wonder my business is going down the tubes.”

“So this Mrs O’Brien. Does she think Cosmic Ordering really works?” Tess asked.

“She says she
knows
it does. She doesn’t see how gullible that makes her. She can’t see it’s just another fad. As I said to her, ‘Mrs O’Brien, if Cosmic Ordering worked why would the vast majority of people spend their days beating their way through gridlocked traffic to spend ten hours a day at work when they could be asking the Universe for a new life somewhere warm and interesting? But she wouldn’t listen. Said she asked the Universe for a surprise and she won a hundred euro on a scratch card.”

“One hundred euro?” Tess protested. She thought of what she’d ask for. For Ollie to disappear, for Helene to stop being a bully, for Jack McCabe not to take over the radio station and throw her out of her job. To be back in Bali. Or to have a different job altogether, a fantastic high profile career so she could swan into the reunion Chris Conroy was organising with her head held high. Tess was jolted back to the present by Grandma Rosa.