Page 82 of Just for the Season

So when I think about it like that I do have to tell him my plans, but also I really, really don’t want him to find a replacement for me until I’m ready to go.

My phone buzzes.

For a moment I’m hoping that it’s Marcus saying that it was all a big mistake and Ruby loves the idea of him and me together.

But no, obviously not. It’s Simon:

You okay? Want to come down?

Apparently he’s a mind reader.

I’m going to go and see him; it’s too miserable sitting here by myself.

Ten minutes later Simon is saying all the right things and I’ve discovered that I was not in fact out of tears, because I’m crying enormous, gulpy, snotty ones all over his new, lime green Ralph Lauren shirt.

‘Don’t worry,’ he says when I momentarily raise my head and look at the mangled shirt front. ‘It’ll all wash out.’

In the end, I tell him everything, including the fact that I wanted to stay because I love it here but that I just can’t.

‘Don’t accept the wrong job,’ Simon says. ‘Don’t just leap into something. You can keep your head down here surrounded by your friends and family. Marcus will stay away. We can’t fire Ruby, obviously, but we can arrange the shifts so that I work with her and you don’t. Oh.’ He pauses. ‘It’s just that next Saturday I have to go to a design fair near Yeovil.’

‘I’ll be fine. By next Saturday I can be in the same room as Ruby. It isn’t like we have to talk. And it isn’t like she hates me—’ I hope it isn’t specifically me, anyway ‘—it’s that she hates the idea of her father having a relationship with anyone. I’m sure a lot of it’s to do with the fact that her mother left her. And I do understand that. Fourteen is still very young. She’s a child. It’s Marcus I can’t bear to see at the moment. And not because I’m angry with him, because I’m not, but because I love him too much.’ I do another one of my deeply attractive honking sniffs, and Simon pulls me into another hug.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘You weren’t like this after Rick.’

‘I know. I think Marcus is – was – my One.’

‘There isn’t just one One,’ Simon says. ‘There are lots of Ones. You just need to meet your next one.’ Simon reaches for a tissue and hands it to me. ‘What I’m trying to say is, it’s true that there are plenty more fish in the sea.’

‘I don’t want to go fishing, though.’

‘Well, not right now. But in due course.’

I just cry again.

* * *

The week is not fun, but Simon and Ellie do their best to keep me extremely busy, and I make myself even busier beginning to apply for jobs in London and keeping an eye on the rental market for when (if) I get a job and move back. I don’t lay eyes on Marcus once, so I begin to feel that I can cope with staying in the village for as long as it takes to get a job that I’d actually like.

Ruby turns up bright and early for work on Saturday morning, and I tell myself firmly that she is only fourteen and that I need to be the adult here, because clearly she is not happy.

I am polite to her. I ask her a polite question about once an hour. I ask her if she’s had a good week at school. I tell her I like her top. I ask her if she’s looking forward to her Christmas holidays. I ask her what her favourite cake is. I don’t want to have to work in silence and on frigid terms with someone, and I also don’t think it can be good for her to be full of so much negative emotion. Around lunchtime, she cracks and actually smiles at me. Which is good, because so far my London job hunt is going slowly.

She eats her lunch in the kitchen while I carry on serving.

I pop in at one point and see her with her back to me, hunched round something in the corner.

‘Ruby?’ I ask, because her posture is odd, like she’s hiding something.

‘Nothing,’ she says, making herself sound very guilty since I didn’t ask anything that that might be the answer to.

I assume that she’s probably doing something with cigarettes or a vape or something similar, and decide that right now I should turn a blind eye. I mean, I’m not a meaningful part of her life in the slightest, obviously, and what can I do? I’ll maybe mention it to her in a week or two. But only vaguely. I mean, all teenagers do the occasional thing their parents wish they wouldn’t. We all did and we’re all fine. She seems overall like a great kid (even if she has been the source of my current misery).

I suddenly notice that her phone is on the side, face up, with the screen lit up, and allow my eyes to slide to it to check that there’s nothing bad there. And, no, there is nothing bad – she’s just on Skyscanner looking at flights – so I just feel rude and intrusive.

‘I’d better get back outside,’ I say, and she nods and gives me a tight smile.

She’s okay with me in the afternoon, and by the end of the day, when she actually looks me in the eye and gives me a nice smile when she says goodbye, I feel that I can do this; I can carry on working with her once a week and not seeing Marcus at all, and I don’t need to rush to leave the village. Although I am still going to leave. I’m going up to London this week for a couple of job interviews, in fact.