The Last Resort (5 page)

I’d spent the ride back deep in thought, clutching my contract in shaking hands. I was stunned. What had just happened? Had I just been given a job that doubled my salary, contract and all, no questions asked? Had all of this actually taken place, or had the space-time continuum been interrupted, and I’d been thrown down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe? “More like I crossed over into the Dark Side for a moment.”

“You what?” she asked, cocking her head.

Then I smiled, the wonderful news dawning on me all over again. I was leaving the dealership. I was going to start living the dream.

“Good news?”

“The best.”

We grinned idiotically at each other, wanting to throw our arms around each others’ necks and do a dance of joy, but obviously that was out of the question.

“I’ve typed up your resignation letter,” she whispered as Victor waddled back in from lunch, a touch of lipstick on his collar, looked red-faced and pleased with himself, completely oblivious to us.

“Thanks.”

After I’d signed it, I picked up my bag and mouthed to her, “Pints on me this Friday.”

“See you there,” she mouthed back.

I walked out of the dealership without looking back.

I wiled away the afternoon in the nearest Topshop, rationalising the splurge by telling myself I’d just jumped too many tax brackets to be concerned about money ever again.

Mum and Mia were clamouring for details by the time I got home. They were so excited to hear how it went that Mum let me turn the sound down on her soap while I gave them a blow-by-blow account of the interview.

“And I fell
face-down
on the carpet. Can you believe it? And then, after all that, it wasn’t even
him.
It was his arsehole brother. Can you believe
that
?”

We all laughed uproariously. After making the initial announcement of my fortuity, I’d cracked open some Lambrusco (purchased that afternoon) for us to have with our dinner. Mum had gone light pink. Mia and I were starting to swear a bit, which we didn’t usually do in front of her, and the evening had the air of high celebration. It was great.

After we’d had a bit more to drink, I managed to convince Mia to let me wear her shoes again the next day, and then she lectured me about making a good impression and not saying stupid, inane things to people, and practicing active listening, and being sure to infiltrate the gossip network as quickly as possible.

“You should start going for interviews, Mia,” I said, wistful. “You’re so good at being employed.”

“Fuck that,” she said jovially.

“Nihilist.”

“Corporate slave.”

“Welfare queen.”

“Capitalist whore.”

“Girls!” barked Mum, horrified. “Now, is this the job with the artist?” she asked me, trying to steer us away from our bickering.

“No, Mum,” Mia said mock-patiently, “he’s a
patron
. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. Ava’s not interested in the
job
.”

“Shut up,” I hissed at her.

“What does she mean?” Mum asked me, in that sweetly dazed way that she’s always had. Mum is one of those endearingly absentminded types, the kind of person who spends the morning looking for her reading glasses only to find them perched on her head after lunch.

“She doesn’t mean anything,” I said, but Mia had already cut me off mid-sentence: “Ava wants to shag her boss!”

“No I don’t.” I thought of Tam and felt nervous.

“Yes you do!” she crowed.

“Do you, darling?” Mum asked, worried. “He’s not married, is he?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “and anyway it doesn’t matter because I
do not
want to sha—sleep with him. I’m excited about this because of my
career
.”

“Psh,” Mia snorted, “let me tell you now, missy, that your career will not bring you fulfilment. I should know.” This was Mia’s current hobby-horse: the Anglo-Saxon obsession with gainful employment was nothing but a source of misery, and we should all be wearing loincloths and living off the land. Mum tried to reason with her once, saying that in England it just wouldn’t be practical on account of the cold winters, but it was all for naught.

“Really?” I snarled, annoyed. “Are you suggesting that shagging around would be a better source of fulfilment? What about marriage? Doesn’t look like it did much for you.”

Mum gasped.
Oh shit,
I thought,
that’s probably going to cost me a limb.

“Cow,” said Mia calmly, examining her nails. “And marriage can be wonderful. Nothing wrong with marriage.”

“WHAAT?” Mum and I chorused.
This
was a changed tune from the weeping, screeching banshee who just a few short days ago was pronouncing doom on the head of Vicky the Goth, while she batted my hands away from the bottle of cheap gin she was hogging.

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” she asked, lightly as you please, sipping her Lambrusco sedately. I noted that she wasn’t bolting it down as quickly as I’d expected. “Marriage is great.”

We stared at her, open-mouthed. “Oh, don’t act so shocked. It’s not as if I ever said it was all Luke’s fault.”

We clamoured to correct her, but she waved her hand in our faces distractedly. “Oh, alright, maybe I did.” Another demure sip. “But I take at least partial responsibility. I mean, if I’d been a little gentler with him, not expected him to be perfect, things would never have gotten to that point.”

Mum and I were reeling by this stage.

“So does this mean—a-are you going to—to take him back?” Mum asked, having managed to locate her voice.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mia scoffed. “He’s cheating scum.”

“Oh,” we both exhaled, relieved. We were back on familiar ground now. And after the Lambrusco was finished, Mia comforted us further by hitting the gin just as hard as before. “If thersh one thing I can tell you, Aves,” she slurred while we were watching a repeat of that stupid celebrity ballroom-dancing show a few hours later, “itsh that you’ve got to take people ash they are. Y’know?”

“Mmm,” I replied, annoyed that she’d talked over the judges’ comments.

“And not ecshpect too much. Y’know? Compassion an’ that.” She took a deep swig of her mostly-gin-and-a-tiny-bit-of-tonic. “You lishtenin’ t’me?”

“Mmm,” I said again, not really meaning it.

“Good,” she said, setting her glass aside with a look of grim urgency on her face. She took hold of my shoulders and turned me to look at her. “Ava, you’ve got to promish me somethin’.”

“’Kay.” I could still see the screen from the corner of my eye, so I wasn’t bothered.

“AVA!” she barked suddenly.

“What?” I barked back. I hated her drink-induced fits of philosophy, and Lord knew I’d been subjected to a surfeit of them over those preceding months.

“You’ve got to promish me you—
oh fuck, I feel sick—
promish me you won’t turn out like me.” She started blubbering in that messy alcoholic way that I’d become so familiar with.
Oh dear,
I thought, exasperated. “Not—all alone. You’ve got to love. You’ve got to
love
!”

“OK,” I said, feeling embarrassed for her. Poor Mia. Once she’d been so strong, so in control, and now she was just a mess. I helped her to the downstairs loo, tied her beautiful blonde hair back for her, and leaned against the closed door while she was sick.

While I helped her upstairs, it struck me how easily her life had fallen apart; a house of cards, and one little butterfly just came along and destroyed it all with a single beat of its wing.

I fervently hoped that now that my little butterfly had come along, it would change things for the better, not for the worse.

The next morning, I didn’t so much as commute as waltz to my new place of employment. Being mildly hungover helped; my nerves were under control. I decided on some power words to help me along should I hit some bumps:
competent; intelligent; ready for anything.

I repeated them to myself on the bus ride there. It wasn’t too many stops from Ickenham; I’d long ago become an initiated master in planning extended bus commutes. The overwhelming sense I’d had before—that life was going to work out for me—was even stronger. I closed my eyes and smiled, and the thin light of the morning sun rippled through the trees and danced on the surface of my eyelids.

Competent; intelligent; ready for anything.

This was the beginning of something great. I wasn’t going to be a receptionist for the rest of my life; I was going places. As I wished it, so it would be mine. I opened my eyes, blue sky broke through the clouds, and I smiled again. The old biddy sitting across from me looked disgusted at such obvious cheerfulness, but then I smiled at her, and smiled at the wall-to-wall complement of office drones off to jobs as boring as mine had been at the dealership, and at the mums coming on the bus with their prams, and at the little children trailing in behind, who answered with a middle finger or an expletive. Nothing was going to bother me.

Competent; intelligent; ready for anything.

The address was for a plush address in West London—a converted Georgian townhouse. The concierge directed me to the second floor, and I skipped through the security frontage into the hallowed halls of my new place of employment.

Competent; intelligent; ready for anything.

I wandered the passageways, puzzled. They seemed awfully luxurious, with deep cream carpets and dark wood-panelled walls and deep-set doors that looked understatedly antique; surely an office building would have been a little more utilitarian?

So
! I thought.
New colleagues
. I was always a bit daunted when it came to starting a job and meeting a whole bunch of new people. I felt a little twinge for the dealership. What was Victor up to right at that very moment? Probably screeching with rage over my resignation. And poor Sharon, all alone on the switchboard. Of course they’d get a temp in no time, but still.
It’d be nice to be nibbling Custard Creams with her right now
, I thought wistfully. But I put the thoughts out of my mind: after all, this was a brave new world! Things were changing for little Ava Parkwood.

I stopped in front of the door bearing the designated number—apparently the only place on the floor. I straightened my shirt and jacket and smoothed my hair with the slightly damp palms of my hands, and as I rapped smartly on the door I felt a thrill of butterflies.

It swung open and a slight, dark-skinned woman, in jeans and a vividly patterned headscarf, came into view. Although she was short in stature, she had that unmistakeable bearing that said in a quiet, unruffled voice,
Do not fuck with me.

“Good morning, Miss Parkwood,” she said.

I’m always thrown when strangers know my name. “H-hi,” I stammered.

“Mary Hazel.” She stuck out a tiny, dainty hand that felt rough as a commercial fisherman’s. We shook hands, her looking me dead in the eyes with a penetrating, although not unfriendly, stare—I was unable to meet it for long.

Was this a colleague?
Can’t be
, I decided. Although I knew I couldn’t be accused of being inappropriately dressed (sedate charcoal skirt suit; modest yet crisply feminine white shirt; the lightest touch of neutral makeup), something in the lithe-limbed, Caribbean look of her made me feel hopelessly gawky. I felt like a public schoolgirl who’d run into one of the cool kids from the local state secondary.

Then she broke into an enormous, dazzling smile. “I’ve been waiting for you. You wan’ some tea?”

“Y-yes,” I said, hugely grateful. Now I was the public schoolgirl who was blushing with happiness that the cool kid had offered her a cigarette.

“Well, come on, now,” she said, still smiling at me.

Something weird happened just then.

I don’t know why, exactly, but for a moment I hovered in the doorway, unsure of whether I should follow her. Of course I knew she was expecting me to; but for some reason I felt rooted to the spot. Maybe I was afraid of something—I couldn’t be sure. It was as if there was some kind of magic threshold in front of me, and I needed to know what the consequences would be should I cross it.

She turned back to me and said, “He’s not ‘ere, you know.”

For a moment of a moment, I met her eye.

And then, just like that, I took one step, and then another, and whatever had been holding me back vanished, as if by enchantment.

Soon I was following her down a white corridor, past rooms that were floored with pale wood. Huge, incomprehensible canvases, taller than I was, in red, gold, jade and black, stood against velvety walls. I noted a wicker bubble chair suspended from the ceiling of what appeared to be a sitting room. And there were those transparent Perspex folded-in-on-themselves coffee tables all over the place. (Mia would have been thrilled.)

This wasn’t an office. It was a house. A home. What was going on? I must have been at the right place—after all, I was expected—but something had to be amiss.