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“Sorry,” I said.
He frowned again and pursed his lips, muttering something about young people and no manners, before returning to reading his newspaper. Embarrassed about being caught acting like a child, I squirmed.
I hated conflict and tried to avoid it whenever I could, so I often apologised for things I didn’t need to. True to form, I felt the word “Sorry” on the tip of my tongue again but bit it back and turned to stare out the window instead. It wasn’t as if I had been talking to the old guy. He didn’t need to listen or take offence at my ramblings. I definitely wouldn’t apologise again.
I smirked. It felt empowering not to give in to the urge to apologise again. Claire would be proud. She always told me I needed to be more confident and stand up for myself. Of course, that was easy for her to say. Claire had always been confident and outgoing and had what she liked to call a sassy nature, although some might call it aggressive, and indeed do! It was what made her good at her job. Claire was a lawyer in her fourth year since qualifying, so she was now a mid-level associate at a renowned law firm in the City and doing well.
I, on the other hand, lacked confidence and hated confrontation. I could also be painfully shy, mostly with members of the opposite sex, especially if they were young and hot.
I put it down to having been a child carer for my mother during her long battle with a brain tumour. I had no siblings or other family to help. Unlike my few friends at the all-girls school I attended in Glasgow before moving to London, I hardly ever got to socialise or mix with boys. I never got to have sleepovers or friends around to visit. It was just too tricky, especially when Mum was feeling poorly and had headaches and couldn’t bear a lot of noise.
I did get a few hours of respite each week when I went to a charity-run programme for young carers like me, but it was not enough to“bring me out of my shell,”as Claire would say. The rest of the time, when I wasn’t at school, I was needed at home to help Mum.
She rarely well enough to leave the house. Mainly, when we did, if the weather was dry, we went for walks in the park, or I pushed her along in her wheelchair if she found keeping her balance hard. We would chat about anything and everything, and Mum would tell me funny stories about growing up in the countryside with her wild sister, my aunt Carole, and the mischief they got up to.
They were always getting themselves into trouble, usually at my aunt Carole’s suggestion, like when they snuck into the local farmer’s greenhouse and stole the tomato plant he was cultivating for the annualBest Local Growercompetition. Aunt Carole loved tomatoes, and these were apparently huge, so she decided she just had to have them!
So, with my mum acting as a lookout, she sneaked into the greenhouse and stole them. Who would have guessed she would turn out to be a police officer?
The farmer realised who the culprits were when he found one of my aunt Carole’s ladybird hair clips near his precious plant, and he turned up at my grandparents’ house, furious. My mum and aunt Carole were grounded for a whole week after that and then had to muck out the farm stables for another week to make up for it.
Aunt Carole wasn’t sorry; she loved eating those tomatoes.
Tomatoes were her absolute favourite snack growing up. My mum and most of their friends loved to snack on sweets or even rhubarb dipped in sugar. Aunt Carole loved tomatoes. She cut them in half, sprinkled them with some salt, and munched on them like apples.
She still often ate them that way as an adult. Every time I saw her eating one, it reminded me of my mum telling me that story and it made me smile.
Mum and I also spent a lot of time people-watching. We often made up stories about who they were and what kind of life they lived. One man sitting in the park reading a newspaper might be a Russian spy, while another was an undercover agent for Interpol. A woman in a beautiful dress would be on her way to meet her secret lover. Another woman would be a real witch disguised as an ordinary woman, like in Roald Dahl’s bookThe Witches,looking for a child to spirit away. We would laugh at all the lives we created for the people we saw. It was a great game. I loved it, which was probably why I developed such a creative imagination.
We read book after book together, too. My mother knew she couldn’t give me much of a life in a physical way, so whenever she was up to it, she did her best to make up for that by stretching the bounds of my imagination. That’s where my love of reading came from and why I did a degree in English and Literature.
Reading also helped entertain me when my mum was too ill. Escaping into a world of make-believe helped me cope with those times and her eventual loss. I lived vicariously through the characters in the books I read and while I don’t regret that, it didn’t make for being a confident person in real life. I often wish I was as confident as the female characters I read about. If I were, I could write those types of characters myself! I’d always wanted to be a writer. I’d wanted to write romance novels since I was a teenager, but so far, I hadn’t even managed to start one.
I sighed loudly, disappointed in myself. I had lots of ideas in my head, but I kept procrastinating. I felt like my characters and story ideas were not good enough to be published, so I had yet to begin anything. One day, I promised myself I would do it. One day! In the meantime, I was stuck selling advertising space for a small local newspaper. A far cry from my dream job.
The tinny voice over the tannoy brought me out of my reverie as the train slowed to a stop. There was a slight delay due to a broken-down train at the station which needed to be moved.
Oh, bloody heck,that was all I needed!
Served me right for counting my chickens too soon. My mum always said, “You should never count your chickens before they hatch,”and I did. Bugger!
Twelve minutes later, I jumped off the train when the door opened.
I sprinted to the building that housed my newspaper’s office and raced up the stairs to the third floor, praying I got there before Mr MacGrumpy arrived.
I hoped he would be delayed getting into the office, too. Or someone from HR would want to see him and he’d head there first, if I were lucky.
“Please let him be late. Please let him be late,”I chanted, hoping by doing so I could somehow circumvent the inevitable as I took the stairs two at a time, moving faster than I had in years.
As I threw myself through the door to the landing where the offices were located, panting hard from the exertion, my heart plummeted when I saw him standing outside his office door with a scowl.
He wasn’t late, and I was so screwed!
“My office, now, Miss Jamieson!” he bellowed.
Sacked? I had been sacked!I stared at my nemesis, unable to comprehend what he was saying.
Shit, what was I going to do now?
