When he nods at my laptop I have a horrible feeling he saw the tellingly blank page on it before I closed the lid. I’m not stuck. I’m just… in a bit of an inspiration lull. Food will help.
Food does help. I don’t want to admit Matt’s right, but being away from the house does wonders for the script. It helps that my old schoolmate Nish works at the buffet place and doesn’t care if I work while I eat. An hour turns into two and before I know it, it’s almost one in the morning. Nish grins at me as I apologise on my way out.
By the time I get back to the house, sleep and a full belly are conspiring against me. Heading to bed with every intention of working there till the birds start singing, I crash out as soon as I get in.
Which is why, when I jump awake in brave sunlight and grab my phone, I’m sick to discover it’s 6 a.m. I’d planned to get into Ensign Media early this morning to be there before the new intake arrives. Cursing, I throw on fresh clothes and drag my fingers through my hair in a lame attempt to tame it before I dash downstairs.
It’s only when I’m waiting for my grumpy old filter coffee machine to do its stuff that I notice the note.
A bright pink sticky note, its edges curling, weighed down with a butter knife in the sea of crumbs on the breadboard.
Sorry, mate.
Moved out.
Matt
What?
I snatch the note from its crumby resting place and blink hard to clear sleep from my eyes. Moved out? When?
And then I let my gaze travel through the open kitchen door to the hallway. No shoes. No horrible shoe rack. Matt’s wretched shoe rack he insisted on having there, stinking out the space. I walk through to the empty hall, turn left into the living room and see more evidence: the four empty shelves in the large bookcase where Matt’s games and terrible sports biographies always lived. By the TV, no jumble of games console wires and controllers, no Xbox and Wii. I don’t have to check his room to work out that the books and his desk will be missing from there, too.
He bloody moved out. A week before the rent is due.
Slowly, it hits me.
He owes me three weeks’ rent. Money I don’t have.
I can feel panic rising and make myself breathe against the assault. I still have a week. I need to regroup, work out a plan. Matt is an utter dick for doing this to me but I have more important things to do than waste any brain-time on it today – like making sure my boss sees me before everyone else.
Everything else can wait.
Chapter Three
OTTY
Sixteen boxes of books.
Sixteen.
And no furniture – unless you count the threadbare folding chair covered in flamingos I’ve had since university.
Clothes, yes. Shoes, not as many as people think a woman of my age should own. But the two suitcases in which they are currently hiding are barely visible beneath Mount Book Box.
‘What am I supposed to do with them?’ I ask my suddenly ex-landlord.
He shrugs and does that half-screwed-up expression of his that could mean anything from amusement to bemusement to agitation, but always looks like trapped wind. At least my eviction means I won’t have to see his gurning anymore. Right now I’ll take any silver lining I can get.
‘I don’t care what you do. Get them off my premises by 5 p.m. or I’m burning them.’
Never one for moderation, Barry Theopolis.
I won’t argue with him. And I won’t let him win. Today is the day my life changes and this nasty little man is not going to spoil it.
‘Fine,’ I say, my chin high.
He was halfway down the stairs anyway, but I see it register in a shake of his shoulders as he disappears back to his stupid big American car parked on the double-yellows outside. Why is there never a traffic warden around when you want one? He has parked illegally every time he’s visited in the past eighteen months and not even a whisper of a parking ticket. How is that fair?
The slam of the front door reverberates through my shoes.
At least I have my deposit back. Grubby notes stuffed angrily into an envelope, shoved into my hands like I’d just demanded Barry’s kidney. It will help me move on, even if right now all I want to do is curl up on the doormat that’s no longer mine and sleep this all away.
I rub my eyes, the effects of my frantic, tearful all-night packing session setting in. Thank goodness the guys in Diamond Balti had a stack of empty boxes to give me when I hurried over there sobbing. If they hadn’t, I don’t know how I would have packed everything. I take one last longing look at the locked door of my flat, only now seeing the scuffs and scratches in its tired paintwork, the dark smudges around the Yale lock. Have those always been there? I don’t know. But then how often do you closely inspect the outside of your front door when you have a key?
I really can’t go back to Dad’s. I won that argument – to go back would be to admit Dad was right. And if he’s right about that, he’ll think it makes him right about everything else, including my new job.
Because it isn’t just working for Russell Styles that Dad disagreed with. There’s another, bigger decision he still doesn’t accept, over a year since I made it. I can’t let him think for a moment that I was mistaken, then or now. I have to move on.
The thought twists my guts and my grumbling stomach reminds me it hasn’t yet been fed. I check my watch. Just over an hour to spare. Is it enough? The book box mountain stares at me and I consider the three flights of stairs between here and the tiny car park. Sixteen journeys there and back are going to take a while. I consider knocking on my neighbour Stan’s door at Flat 7, across the box-strewn landing. If he’s up he might help me, but when I saw him yesterday he told me he was on nights again. It’s barely 7.30 a.m.: I can’t wake him.
Stuff it. I’ll just have to shift them myself and pray that Monty’s aged suspension is up to the task of carrying all my worldly goods. I grab the first box, whelp a little at its weight, and stagger down the stairs.
Forty minutes later, I’m squeezed into the minuscule amount of box-free space inside Monty, wishing I’d fallen for a bigger car eight years ago. A Fiat 500 seemed lovely back then, when I was still in my room at Dad’s house and the dream of my own place seemed about as likely as me being headhunted by Disney. There must be some world record for the greatest number of boxes packed into a tiny yellow car. If so, I am the clear winner.
Monty creaks and groans around the roads on the way to West One, a brand-new skyscraper of offices and studios in the heart of the city. A dozen media and production companies have recently moved here, with more set to follow, boosting the city’s bid to become the creative hub of the country outside London.
Russell Styles’ production company is Ensign Media, on the eleventh floor of West One, as stated in the letter I have read and reread, which is currently lying open and slightly crumpled on the passenger seat, one corner crushed by my suitcase. The entry details to the building made my head spin. There’s a barrier and a code and first-come-first-served parking – and that’s before the coded entry and ID-swipe at reception, the airport-style metal detectors and the pass-operated lifts. What if I fail at the first hurdle and never reach the eleventh floor?
That’s if I make it into the building at all. Car park security might take one look at me and think I’m a squatter trying to move in. Who arrives for the first day of their dream job with the entire contents of their home in their car?