Finding Dreams by Lauren Westwood (4)

It’s a miracle that the printer in the study even works. It groans and wheezes the paper out line by line, streaked with toner from the nearly empty cartridge:

I check the page for errors, rereading the words that are the job-market equivalent of a death warrant: part-time, career break. Words that don’t convey the real me – the person I was before, am now, and the person I want to be. I glance up at the photos on the wall behind the desk. Most are of the kids, but there are a few with me in them, and a few of us as a family. I’ve kept the photos of Dave up for the kids’ sake, but also to remind me of the dangers of giving away my heart, sharing my life with another person – not something I’m planning to do again. The most recent family photo was taken at half-term just before he died, when we went to visit my mum in Spain. Mum took the photo of all of us on some brightly painted steps in the village. Dave is there, with that cocky grin on his face that he always had in photos. Jack is making a funny face, and Katie’s doing her serious model face. I look a little flustered, my blonde hair blown every which way by the wind, but I look happy – and I was. (We’d just had a nice lunch with a big pitcher of sangria, I recall).

I smile at the memory, then a cloud goes over the sun and the room gets darker, and I can see my own hazy reflection in the glass. On the surface, I haven’t changed that much. My hair needs a trim, my face looks a bit paler and thinner – wiser. And underneath, some of the good qualities are still there, I suppose. I’m intelligent, driven, determined to do the best I can. But what I don’t recognise is the expression in my own bluish-grey eyes. I see no trace of the me who used to laugh a lot, used to have friends, used to enjoy life. Is she gone forever, or simply curled up in hibernation?

I read through the rest of the CV to make sure I’ve captured the positives. That’s what Dave would have advised, were he here. ‘You need to sell your strengths’, he would have said, ‘and downplay the negatives’. He would have told me to ‘make yourself look good on paper’, and ‘save the bad stuff for the interview’. Knowing him as I do now, he’d probably advise me just to lie. But I can’t do that. It’s one thing making my kids happy by telling them that Santa Claus is real, Daddy’s an angel looking down on them from heaven, and of course they won’t have to move house. But it’s against everything I believe in to lie on a CV – and I’m sure people would see right through it.

I toss the paper in the bin and send off an electronic version in response to three new job adverts that are posted on Legal News Online. Tomorrow, I’ll bite the bullet and phone the recruiters who have posted the listings. Listen to their platitudes: ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. You’ve been through a lot. Unfortunately, it’s not a good market for lawyers in your field right now. We don’t have anything on our books that seems quite right for you. But of course, we’ll keep you on file. No, you don’t have to call again. We’ll call you.’

The paper airplane graphic flies away with a whoosh. Email sent. I’ve been applying for jobs for months now. I’ve had two interviews that went well – so I thought, anyway – but I was passed over in favour of candidates with ‘more recent experience’. Each day I check for new listings, and each time, I cross my fingers. Will one of these jobs be the one? Will my CV reach someone who can help me back on my feet? When Dave was alive, I’d talked about going back to work, but he’d never been very encouraging. He’d convinced me that I didn’t need the stress, the childcare issues, the commute. Now, I realise that it was easier for him to lead his double life if I was at home in the suburbs with the kids.

While I know that the logistics won’t be easy, I focus on how much I’d welcome the mental stimulation, adult conversations about something other than Huggies vs Pampers, gymnastic classes, drama exams, and quantities of wine consumed on weekday nights. I’d welcome the confidence I’d regain from being a valued member of society again. (Rightly or wrongly, an unemployed mum of two does not rank high on the scale of social utility.) Confidence I lost the moment I learned that the man I married turned out to be a liar, a cheat, and a profligate.

Most of all, though, I need the money. I sigh. At the far corner of the desk, there’s a stack of unopened bills that have been accumulating from just after Christmas. Each day, the pile gets a little bigger, and I sink a little deeper into the hole.

It’s been that way ever since the meeting at the lawyer’s office. The bottom line is this: while I wasn’t responsible to pay the credit card debts, or the lease on the London flat, I’m responsible for the mortgage repayments on the house. Without a life insurance payout or any income protection insurance (things I vaguely assumed Dave had through work, but to be honest, never gave much thought), and without money coming in from a job, I can’t cover the ever-increasing debt.

I open the top envelope – a water bill with Final Warning stamped in red at the top.

I locate the list I’ve been making of the red-stamp debts and add the amount to the running total. In the months after Dave’s death, I phoned every creditor, had regular visits with the bank manager, contacted debt consolidators, begged free advice off lawyer acquaintances. I liquidated my pension, borrowed money from my mum to buy the kids a few gifts for their birthdays and Christmas. But despite my efforts, it wasn’t enough.

The numbers on the paper don’t lie, but still I check for the hundredth time whether or not I might be adding wrong. Wishing that I could magically erase a zero or two from the amount owing column. The money from my pension was wiped out at the end of December. At this point, no amount of paying instalments, paying half of a bill, conveniently ‘losing’ a bill on my desk, or anything else is going to make any difference.

I flip through the rest of the stack of unopened mail. At the bottom of the pile is a plain envelope without a postmark addressed ‘to the resident’ – it must be some kind of political circular that someone dropped off in person at the house.

Automatically I begin to crumple the envelope unopened, but just then a notice from eBay flashes up on my screen with a little bell sound. ‘You’ve sold your Phase Eight striped jersey dress size ten.’ I toss the envelope aside and jiggle the mouse to wake up the computer. I may be broke and on the cusp of losing our family home, but my eBay empire has provided a welcome trickle of funds. I started out by flogging all of Dave’s suits, along with his golf clubs, his skis, his books, his shoes, his cufflinks (and even a lacy women’s nightdress I found in his briefcase). Dave’s stuff made a few hundred quid, so when that was gone, I listed all my clothes from my lawyer days – suits and dresses, cashmere cardigans, high-heeled shoes – anything associated with the woman I had once been.

Clicking on the link, I open the listing. The dress that I once paid eighty-five quid for sold at auction for eight pounds thirty-five plus shipping. I sigh. It’s barely worth the trip to the post office, and yet, it all adds up. As I write down the buyer’s address on the tag, I calculate that I’ve now got enough for the Buy-it-now on the ‘worn once’ Hermione costume that Katie wants for World Book Day. Small victories—

‘Mummy!’ A high voice cries from outside the door. The dog howls and whines in excitement.

I’m surprised to see the time – Katie and Jack are home from school already. I shut the lid of the laptop and go out of the study to greet them. Small victories. I’ve almost made it through one more day.

*

When I open the door, Jack bursts into tears. ‘Mummy!’ he cries, on that particular frequency kids have that can melt a parent’s heart in a single word.

I scoop him into my arms. ‘How’s my big boy?’ I say.

‘Katie hit me!’ He turns his head and sticks his tongue out at his sister. Katie is standing at the doorway with her arms crossed, and that look on her face. The one that means it’s going to be a long, difficult evening chivvying her to do her homework, practise her piano, and eat the beans on toast I’ve planned for supper because they’ve had tuna fish for the last three nights. She glares at her brother, and rushes past me and upstairs to her room. Jammie bounds up the stairs after her.

‘I’m sure Katie’s had a tiring day, pumpkin.’ I try to put him down but immediately his little face screws up again.

‘Up cuggle!’ he demands.

I lift him up again. Hannah comes to the door carrying the school bags. Sometimes I think I might go crazy (crazier?) if I didn’t have her to talk to for a few minutes at the end of the day. Hannah’s daughter, Rebecca, is a high-flying investment banker – one of the few mums who works, and who, like me, never turns up to school events. I’ve often envied Rebecca for having a mother who lives close by and can take care of Flora for her. In fact, I’m lucky that Hannah has become a sort of adopted grandma for Katie too. I do feel guilty that Hannah often does more than her fair share of the afternoon school runs, even though she works part-time at the local farm shop, and I don’t have a job. She never complains about it though – Hannah’s one of those ‘water off a duck’s back’ kind of people. I wish I could be more like her.

‘I hope Katie wasn’t too awful for you,’ I say, rolling my eyes in the direction of the upstairs.

‘Nope, they were perfect little angels in the car. I gave them Pom-Bears.’

‘Thanks, Hannah.’ I’m sure she’s lying about the perfect little angel part, but I read somewhere that it’s a good sign that Katie’s doing most of her acting out at home rather than elsewhere. Lucky me. ‘Do you have time for a cuppa?’ I say.

‘’Fraid not. I’m going out with the girls from work after Flora has her tea.’

‘OK.’ Her answer leads me to another guilty thought – I’ve been meaning to ask her to get me a job application, but somehow I’ve never got round to it. It’s not that I think I’m too good to work at a shop – far from it. It’s just that right now, I’ve put my eggs in the basket of trying to return to my old profession, like I always intended to when the kids were old enough. That basket, though, seems to have a hole in the bottom. ‘Another time, then.’

‘Sure. Maybe next week. Oh, and just so you know, Katie’s got science homework. It’s in her bag – I checked.’

‘Thanks.’

Hannah lingers for a moment longer. I can see that it’s on the tip of her tongue to ask me if I’m all right. And there’s a part of me that wants to scream out ‘No!’ She seems to grasp that on a subliminal level.

‘If you need me to do a few extra days, just let me know. I’m sure Flora would love having Katie over for tea.’

‘Thanks, Hannah. I feel like it’s me who should be offering. But I might be busy in the next few weeks.’ I take a breath. ‘I’m putting the house on the market.’

I’m hoping she’ll act shocked – tell me that I absolutely shouldn’t be doing that. Give me another speech about time and hanging on. But she nods with sympathy rather than surprise. ‘That’s hard, Lizzie. I know how much you love this place.’

‘Yeah,’ I say in answer to both. ‘I don’t think I have a choice, though. Unless I happen to find hidden treasure in the garden, or something.’

She laughs. ‘I hope you do.’

We arrange collection for the next few days, and Hannah goes back to her car. As soon as she’s gone, I try to put Jack down again. He protests and clings to me like a koala, but I manage to get him sitting on the stairs. ‘Let’s get those boots off,’ I say.

I bend down to pull them off and Katie skulks past me. I reach out to give her a hug but she ducks out of the way.

‘God Mum, can you just, like, go away!’ She tosses her brown plait over her shoulder.

I feel a tremor of panic. I thought Katie was in her room, but what if she overheard me telling Hannah about selling the house? Of course, she’ll find out eventually, but it would have been better if I’d sat her down, woman to woman, and told her the truth.

‘Say sorry!’ Jack shouts after her.

‘I hate you!’ Katie yells back, in what has lately become her mantra and final word on everything. She runs out of the house without shutting the door. I watch her as she goes and climbs up into her old playhouse in the corner of the front garden next to the trampoline and a fenced-off area with the dog house. Right now, I don’t even blame her for how she feels.

Jammie pads downstairs, and I have the urge to squeeze her like a soft toy and cry, but I resist it. Instead, I put her outside with Katie, and send Jack upstairs to get his Spiderman onesie. I go back into the study and sink down in the chair in front of the desk, head in my hands. Wondering when, if ever, I’ll stop feeling like everything is my fault.

I turn on my computer again to check my eBay auctions and my emails. Already, I’ve got a message back from one of the recruiters I sent my CV to earlier today – a rejection. One less person that I’ll have to phone tomorrow. I have to keep my chin up. Eventually, something will come along. If only in the meantime there was some way to keep the wolf – in this case, Spiky-hair and his fellow estate agents – from the door.

As I’m sitting there, my eye snags on the plain envelope with no postmark that I’d tossed aside earlier. To the resident. I pick it up and tear it open, if only to stall for a minute or two before facing tea time.

Inside the envelope is a single piece of paper. I skim over the words, my hand moving automatically to throw it in the bin. And then, I stop, the air backing up in my lungs.

‘Oh God, no!’ I murmur, checking the date. January 3^rd – more than three weeks ago. And it’s sat here unopened all that time. Talk about my ship coming in while I was at the airport – or, in this case, probably the post office, mailing off clothing and shoes bought for a fiver by a total stranger.

Quickly, I open up a new email message. Outside the study door I can hear Jack rustling a pack of mini cheddars, looking for me. ‘Just a minute, love,’ I say. ‘Mummy’s working.’

‘Open!’ he calls out, banging on the door.

My fingers fly like lightning over the keys.

‘Mummy!’

I hit send just as Jack bursts into the room, his face smeared with tears and salt. ‘Come here darling.’ I open my arms to scoop him up again and twirl him around in the desk chair – which he loves. As we twirl, I keep eyeing the screen, willing a response to pop up instantaneously. It doesn’t. Of course not. I’m too late. Three weeks is like an eternity for these kinds of things. On the other hand, I think, feeling dizzy as we spin, with Jack laughing in my arms, maybe it was a good move not to appear too keen. Like I want – or need – this that much.

We’re spinning so fast that the air current knocks the letter to the floor and the wheels crunch over it. I swear to the god of junk mail and post that if this can somehow work out – that somehow I haven’t made a huge mistake through my head-in-the-sand attitude towards dealing with the huge stack of bills and post – that I’ll never leave another envelope unopened, another email not responded to; even if they’re titled ‘OMG I’m so sorry for your loss!’

If only —

My phone number. We stop spinning and I whack myself on the head, making Jack laugh. I check the sent message – I’d told the man, Theo Weston, to phone me. Then forgot to include my phone number.

‘I’m such an idiot!’ I say.

‘What’s an id’jet?’ Jack says.

I look down at his round, earnest little face. I have the urge to squeeze it, kiss it, and send it packing all at the same time.

‘Nothing. It means I’m a nice mummy.’ I open up another new message and type in – Sorry – Ha! Forgot to include my phone number. I add the number and press send.

‘Can I have a sweetie?’ Jack says, pushing his luck. He knows he’s only allowed one after dinner. ‘Some Haribos?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ I cave. ‘Go to the kitchen.’

His little three-foot frame waddles off and I swallow hard, trying to rid myself of the panic, the fear that I’m too late, and the blind hope. Before leaving the study, I read over the letter one more time, my fingers crossed behind my back: