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The ticks go blue straight away, and her reply is almost instant.
What’s wrong with Kent? They speak English there, don’t they?
I start to type a reply and then delete it. She’s not going to back down, so I might as well leave it. I know why she’s so keen, though. She thinks it’ll mean the end of my relationship with Lee and, given last night’s argument, she’s probably right. I’m not so worried about Lee, though, I’m more concerned about being so far away from Mum and Dad. Out of interest, I check the train times and I’m surprised to see that the journey from Leeds to the rather grandly named Ashford International station is only three and a half hours. That’s nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be.
I’m not even home when the email arrives. Expecting it to be a ‘thanks but no thanks’, I merely glance at it, but then I realise that they’re offering me the job and the £35,000 salary and my mouth drops open. I can’t believe they actually think I could do this job. There’s no way I could, is there? My mind is flip-flopping madly between emailing straight back to accept, and the more realistic probability that it would be pure madness and I’d be out on my ear by the end of the first week.
‘You look smart. Been somewhere interesting?’ Lee asks as I walk into the flat.
‘I wasn’t expecting to see you. I thought you had a meeting today?’ I reply.
‘It was cancelled so I thought I’d work from home. So, what’s with the outfit?’
‘I’ve been for an interview.’
‘Really? You never mentioned anything.’
‘Well, you know how it is. It’s my professional life, so it’s not really anything to do with you.’ I know it’s a low shot, but I can’t resist it.
‘What do you mean by that?’ he demands. ‘Oh, I get it. You’re still sore about me not telling you I was thinking of moving to Harmony. You need to get over yourself, you really do. So, what’s the job?’
‘Project manager for a construction site.’
‘What? You’re having me on.’
‘No. I’m completely serious.’
‘But you don’t know the first thing about construction! I bet they had a good laugh at your expense when they realised.’
‘They offered me the job, actually.’
‘Really? You’re not going to take it, are you? It’s totally not right for you, Els. Anyone can see that.’
‘I haven’t decided.’ His total lack of support is pissing me off more than a little.
‘Oh, come on. Stop winding me up.’
‘I’m not winding you up. I’ve been offered the job and I’m thinking about whether to accept it.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Kent.’
‘Now I know you’re taking the piss. There’s no way you’re moving to Kent.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because… because you don’t belong in fucking Kent, Ella! Look. I’m having a bit of a stressful day here so I’m not really in the mood to play games with you. I’m very pleased that you got an interview, and I get that it’s good for your ego to have an offer. But we both know you’re not going to accept it, so stop pretending that you’re considering it.’
And with that remark, my decision is made.
14
On the journey south, I try to work out when Lee became such an absolute arse, and I’m irritated to discover that my findings don’t reflect particularly well on me. I think the reality is that he’s always been like this but because I’ve broadly fitted in with his life the way he wants to live it until now, this side of him has been hidden. It’s only when I stopped being ‘compliant Ella’ and started to challenge him that his shortcomings really came to the surface. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, because Leeds to Ashford may be only three and a half hours by train, but it’s much, much longer than that by car. I’ve been on the road for over five hours, and the satnav says I’ve still got an hour and a half to go.
Even after Lee’s outburst convinced me to take the job, I was still plagued with doubts about whether it was the right decision. Ava and Dad kind of ganged up on me, alternating between encouraging remarks about this possibly being a whole new start for me, and dark warnings about not looking gift horses in the mouth. Deborah sounded delighted when I phoned and told her, and she’s arranged for someone called Noah to meet me at the site, show me around and then take me to my accommodation.
I’ll admit that I’ve been avoiding Lee a bit since accepting the job offer just under a month ago. He’s been very snappy and irritable lately; I’m not sure that he’s finding working at Harmony to be quite the dream ticket he first believed but, of course, I’m not very sympathetic about that, so we avoid the subject. I haven’t told him that I’ve accepted this job; he seems to have assumed that I would comply with his wishes like I have in the past, and I couldn’t be bothered to have another argument about it. Instead, I’ve been using the time when he’s been at work to get my CSCS card and compile a list of everything I wanted to take with me. I quickly realised that my clothes alone were going to be more than I could cram into a couple of suitcases on the train, so I used some of my redundancy payment to buy a car earlier this week. It’s nothing fancy, a second-hand Fiat 500 that’s small enough not to make me feel anxious about manoeuvring it, but big enough (just) to get all my clobber in. I picked it up this morning, after waving Lee goodbye. He’s going straight from work to his parents’ and wanted me to come, but I managed to make an excuse about a party Ruth had invited me to. Even though it’s a lie, and I haven’t spoken to Ruth since that day in the coffee shop, I think he’s secretly glad to have a bit of space. What he doesn’t know yet is that he’s about to have all the space in the world.
