Page 1 of New Beginnings on Railway Lane

1

Dear Miss Smith,

Thank you for your recent application for the position of Hotel Manager. Unfortunately…

Katy Smith slammed down the lid on her laptop. Another day, another rejected job application. It was a disaster. She was no longer in control and everything was falling apart. Her worst fears had come true and she felt ill to her stomach with the anxiety of it all.

‘I think that’s everything.’

She looked up at her ex-boyfriend, Gerard, someone who she had dated for two years. Someone, as it turned out, she didn’t know very well at all.

He was hovering near the front door of the apartment, holding the last bag of possessions that he had spent the past hour packing up. He had moved in almost exactly a year ago and she could briefly recall the excitement that she had felt at not being alone any more. She swiftly dismissed the memory.

‘And the front door key?’ she asked, deliberately keeping her voice in a level tone.

‘I’ll leave it here,’ he said, placing it on the sideboard nearby.

Katy turned away, unable to bear to look at him any longer. Instead she stared out across the lounge from her vantage point at the dining table.

It was a modern one-bedroom apartment in a newly built block with a view over Clapham Common. It was only five minutes from the nearest tube station and therefore only half an hour’s commute from the hotel where she had worked until one week ago.

Of course, now that she was unemployed, perhaps she would have to forgo the desirable address without Gerard’s share of the expensive rent. She didn’t care about having to move, though. It was just four walls. It didn’t mean anything to her, just like anywhere else she had ever lived since her family life had come to an abrupt halt all those years ago.

‘Yeah, well, sorry again,’ she heard Gerard say.

Katy shrugged her shoulders in response and kept looking away until she heard the front door close with a click.

Finally, she sagged back against the dining-room chair and let her emotions rush in for a moment. She wouldn’t cry, of course. Gerard didn’t deserve any tears and she certainly wouldn’t waste them on someone like him. But she did let her arms wrap around her trembling body, willing herself to find the inner strength that had got her through life so far. She could overcome this. After all, she had got through far worse. What was one lousy cheating boyfriend compared to that?

Still feeling shaky, she got up to wander into the kitchen and opened up a bottle of white wine before pouring herself a much-needed large glass.

The kitchen was also very modern but barely used, with only an empty Pot Noodle in the bin next to the sink. Not exactly a well-rounded meal, but it was either that or toast or takeout again for dinner. Gerard hadn’t been any kind of cook either. On the rare occasions that they were both at home at the same time, they had ordered takeout. Normally they were at their different offices, of course, busy climbing the career ladder or socialising at working dinners with business colleagues.

There would be no more working dinners while she was unemployed though, which didn’t bode well because Katy had absolutely no culinary skills – something she shared with her father, although that hadn’t stopped him investing heavily over and over in the restaurant trade in her childhood. But his business acumen was just as poor as his cooking as the many failed businesses had proved. It had finally come to a head with the bankruptcy that had abruptly ended their secure, happy family life.

She took a sip of wine from the glass and headed back into the lounge. Would it seem odd without Gerard living there? She looked around the apartment in a daze. In all honesty, she would barely notice. He was a workaholic like her. He worked long hours at an exclusive law firm and she, until a week ago, had worked even longer hours at an upmarket hotel on Park Lane in central London, where she had been deputy hotel manager.

She had hoped that by the end of the year she would have been promoted to the top job as manager within the high-end hotel chain. She had worked so hard over the years, as well as taking many business courses in her limited spare time. But wide-sweeping job losses had suddenly been announced and she had been stunned to learn that she was on the list for an immediate redundancy. It had upset her terribly and she had been reeling from the shock ever since.

She didn’t even care much about the generous severance package she had received. As far as she was concerned, it was a matter of pride. She had never been made redundant before. She had worked her way up the career ladder almost all the way to the top. Each job, just like her whole adult life, had been under total control. To be without control was to attract failure and heartache and that would never, ever, happen again.

She lived by such a strict code of control that everything had to be in order, even the apartment that she had chosen to rent. The lines of the walls and ceilings were straight, the decor white and clean. There was a lack of anything personal and that was just the way she liked it. Apart from the photographs on the sideboard, there was nothing to make anyone aware that it was even her apartment at all.

She had earned a decent wage over the years and had managed to build up a healthy savings account but had never bothered to spend it on anything for the apartment or anywhere else where she had lived. It was just bricks and mortar. What was the point?

Her only luxury, the only time she felt that small thrill of self-indulgence, was her love of expensive shoes – the higher the heel, the better. It was daft and ridiculous, but they always made her feel powerful and, she rarely admitted to herself, a tiny bit wild as well. Those boxes full of designer leather in her wardrobe made her feel alive, as if she really wasn’t missing out on an exciting life despite working all the hours in the day. In her bare feet, she felt small and ever so slightly worthless.

Taking another, much larger, drink from her wine glass, she went over to the sideboard. She barely looked at the photo frames these days, always rushing past or busy working on her laptop at the table. This time though she looked a little closer at the two photos. The frame on the left was a faded photo of her parents on either side of her, both holding her hands, when she was six or so years old. Her mum looked a little weary, as she always did in those days. Living with a force of nature like her husband would do that to a woman. He was always striving for the bigger and better adventure. Until it had all come to a crashing halt that Christmas Eve, fourteen years ago.

They had all just settled down with a mug of hot chocolate and a mince pie to watchThe Muppet’s Christmas Carolwhen the knock on the front door had come. In retrospect, only Katy and her mum had been shocked at the sight of the bailiffs at the threshold. Her dad hadn’t been at all surprised, having hidden the large amount of letters demanding payment for the ever-increasing business debts over many months.

In the early days of the business, ever the optimist, Katy’s dad had signed off a personal guarantee to start up a brand-new restaurant. But it had failed, meaning that all assets, such as the family home, would have to be used to pay off the substantial debt. They would lose everything.

Having already shut down the restaurant, the bailiffs swiftly cleared out most things from the house to repay some more of the debts. Katy and her mum could only stare on in horror as the television and even the Christmas presents had been taken away.

‘It’ll be okay,’ her dad kept telling them both. But even his usual charming smile was a little less vibrant that evening. ‘We’ll be fine,’ he had carried on. ‘We’ll find somewhere else to live. What’s life without a bit of adventure, eh?’

It was the same excuse that he had always used, which had meant that she had spent her childhood being dragged from one city to the next, Katy and her mum trailing behind her dad as he searched for his next dream. Over and over, he had told them that the next place would be different. That the next adventure wouldn’t end in failure. But it always had.