It’s not every day you get replaced by a coffee machine. Not even an expensive one, that was the thing that got to me when I was walking home afterwards. A cheap, nasty, coffee machine had just stolen my job.

It might help if you know a little bit about me, that way you can decide if you think I deserve to be swapped for a Burghini Express with separate steamer.

My name is Rosa Harper. I’m twenty-one and I live here in York. I’m not a student. I did go to university. For an open day back when I was eighteen. Since that one off glance at the world of academia, I’ve worked in a succession of low paid and under-appreciated jobs. But in all the careers I’ve had, leaflet hander-outer, charity shop blanket folder, call-centre abuse receiver, I’ve never undergone the humiliation I underwent this morning.

More on that in a moment. First, let me tell you about where I’m heading now. It’s nine o’clock, I’ve just been fired, and I’m going home.

Home is a Victorian terraced house with four housemates, one of whom is my best friend, Emma. She’s the one who in a couple of minutes is going to change my life without even realising. We’ve shared a house for the last three years. She’s never changed my life before, changed my hairstyle a few times but that’s it.

The reason I share a home with four people is the same reason I was walking home when this story began. Money. I have none. To buy a house around here or even to rent a place on your own takes the kind of stable career and healthy income that is as likely as seeing a tartan unicorn. No, less likely. A unicorn? I might spot one some day, sporran flapping in the wind as it whinnys past me.

But a stable career? I’ve never seen a stable career, other than three months I spent last summer mucking out horses.

So not much money means I rent with four other people. I could just about afford it. Until today.

“You should be happy,” my boss told me after telling me my services were no longer required. She was all, “We’re setting you free to follow your dreams,” platitudes followed by, “What was it you said you wanted to do?”

“Be a journalist.”

“That was it. Be a journalist. Well, now you can. We’re giving you a hand in reaching your goals, Rosa. You should thank us, really.”

“For firing me?”

I hadn’t even taken my coat off. The reception desk had been swept clear of my computer. In it’s place was a new phone and a coffee machine. I stood in the entrance hall of Mercury and Sons, insurance broker with an office in the shadow of the Minster.

Every day I got to walk past the enormous cathedral, looking up at the Gothic spires and buttresses, thinking how they had taken two hundred and fifty years to build that thing. A towering achievement that would stand the test of time. What had I achieved with my life? Eight GCSEs and an allergy to penicillin. It wasn’t quite the career of glass ceiling shattering journalism. Receptionist to an insurance broker. But it was the first steady job I’d had in forever.

Not any more. Six months and now this.

“We’re not firing you,” Mrs Pellham explained, her smile widening. “We’re becoming a mobile dynamic get go digi-enabled company ready for the twenty-second century now. I did a Spencer course, taught me how to maximise the potential of me.”

“By replacing your receptionist with a coffee machine?”

“And an answerphone.”

“Oh, yes. Well now it makes much more sense.”

“Don’t you see, Rosa? Clients ringing up will hear this.”

She picked up the phone and hit the red button at the bottom. Nothing happened. She hit it several more times, becoming increasingly annoyed. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath.

“They’ll hear you say shit?”

“Just teething problems, that’s all.” The smile faded for a moment before coming back with a vengeance. “They’ll hear a recorded message asking them to choose which broker they need to speak to. Then when they come to their appointments, they can get themselves a drink from the Burghini Express. Did you know it has a separate steamer?”

“So you don’t need me anymore?”

“Look on the bright side, Rosa. Now, you can go and fly higher than we can ever imagine.”

“Couldn’t have given me some notice?”

“It has a separate steamer.” She pointed at the coffee machine again.

“This hasn’t got anything to do with saving money then?”

“What? No, not at all. Why would you think that?”

“Because an answerphone and a coffee machine are a lot cheaper than having a person behind a desk from nine to five, six days a week.”

“Go,” she said, putting a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Live your dreams.”

So that was how I ended up walking home at five past nine on a Monday morning, going back past the crumbling Minster. If a gargoyle had fallen at that moment and crushed my skull, I wouldn’t have been that surprised.

I could have caught the bus but I was only going to get a statutory redundancy payment and then nothing. I needed to make what little money I had last as long as I could. By my frantic calculations, I could pay the rent this month but without a job, I’d be stuck next month. I needed a job, preferably one where I couldn’t be replaced by an inanimate object, even one with a separate steamer.

It took half an hour to walk home in the rain. I had taken an umbrella out with me but on the way in to work, I’d seen my Mum’s friend Sylvia waiting for the post office to open, the wind driving the rain directly into her face. “Here,” I said, handing it to her. “Drop it off later.”

“Oh thank you, Rosa,” she replied. “Are you sure you don’t need it?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I’m at work all day and I’m sure it will have stopped by the time I go home.”

What a naive fool I was for expecting to remain at work for more than ten minutes.

So I got wet. And cold. And miserable.

When I finally shut the front door behind me, I stood in the hallway, unable to tell if it was rainwater dripping down my face or tears. My hair was stuck to the top of my head, my clothes soaked. “April showers, my arse,” I said out loud as I threw my bag down on the floor. Then I couldn’t even leave it there. Too messy.

It’s a funny thing about living with other people. You either become a parent or a child. The parents of a household do the tidying, the cleaning, most of the cooking. The children of the household do the messing, the dirtying and the ordering takeaways at ungodly hours. There were four of us, a dynamic that should have afforded two parents and two children, or even four parents. But no, not here. I was the house-parent to four oversized children. I was the only one who cleaned, who tidied, who drew up the rotas that everyone else ignored. I did most of the cooking, I kept us in toilet roll and washing up liquid, all the glamorous stuff.

I would have given anything for someone else to take charge of things. I tried it once, not cleaning, I mean. I left things how I found them. Lasted a fortnight before I cracked. In that time, the empty toilet roll tubes formed a wobbly pyramid in the upstairs bathroom.

The downstairs bathroom, I stopped going in.

If I didn’t constantly nudge the others to keep things organised, it just didn’t happen, they were happy to live in chaos. I wanted to be like them, I wanted to not care if the washing piled up so high in the sink it looked like a particularly avant garde piece of modern age, I wanted to relax and chill out as they were always telling me to, but I couldn’t.

Roll on when I could afford to live on my own. Not that it was likely I’d ever have the money if my current run of luck held out.

So I picked my bag back up and hung it on the peg by the front bedroom, leaving it to drip on the floor, that was as carefree as I could get.

A little about the house, just so you can get your head around the geography. Think battered Victorian terrace. In through the front door and you’re in the hallway. First door on the left, bedroom one. Catherine in there, probably asleep. Onwards, not taking the stairs but continuing down the hall. Second door on the left is my bedroom. I’ll take you in there at some point.

On to the living room and open plan through to kitchen, one big open space. The living bit had battered sofas and a huge TV, the kitchen had one of those breakfast bars with stools around, taking the place of a proper table. Far end is the downstairs bathroom, just a toilet and sink, and next to that the back door.

Head back through the house and upstairs. Straight ahead of you is the back bedroom. That’s Philip’s. He’s rarely in, works obscene hours.

To your immediate left at the top of the stairs is the big bathroom, sink, bath, toilet, carpet, and I’m in no way bitter that the bathroom is bigger than my bedroom. I don’t even think about it, I’m not bothered. Not at all. Why'd you even mention it?

Back on yourself past the stairs and along the landing and there’s the last two bedrooms. On the right is Craig’s and at the very end of the corridor, facing the street, is my destination. Emma’s room.

I knocked on her door. “Come in,” she shouted a second later.

“Hi,” I said, pushing the door open. “Got a second?”

“What are you doing back?” she asked, not looking up from her make up mirror. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work.”

The rant began. I didn’t pause for breath until I was blue in the face. I let out all the anger I’d been holding onto for far too long. I told her about the Burghini Express. I told her about being on the scrapheap once again, replaced by two machines, one of which didn’t even work. “I work,” I said as I gasped for air, pointing at my chest. “But apparently that’s not good enough.”

Emma was getting ready the entire time I talked, giving me the occasional nod of support.

“This is perfect,” she said when I fell silent at last.

“Are you going to tell me I can go live my dreams too? Please don’t do that, I’m not sure I can take it.”

“No, it’s perfect for both of us.”

“You want me to answer your phone instead?”

“I want you to go do an interview for me. It’s in twenty minutes.”

“What?”

She put her lipstick down and spun in her chair. “This douchebag just changed the time of his interview and I thought I was going to have to cancel and ruin three months of planning but this is fate, Rosa. You were meant to come home this morning.”

“I lost my job in order to help you with yours?”

“I’ll pay you. Please, the clock’s ticking.”

“I didn’t say I’d do it.”

“Come on, this could be your chance. Just get some quotes from him that I can bash into an article and we’ll split the commission. It’ll be enough to pay your rent for two months, give you time to find something else. It’ll look good on your C.V too, being able to say you’ve interviewed Jamie Spencer.”

“Hold on, what? You want me to interview Jamie Spencer. Is this some Fifty Shades re-enactment society thing? The journalist sends her friend to interview the billionaire? What if he ends up stalking me until I marry him?”

“Then we empty his bank account and have some fun?” She laughed. “I’d do it myself but I’m already committed with the head of Pie Face Records. I can’t send you to him, you haven’t been security cleared.”

“So I’m not safe enough to send to the man who brought us the Do Whores rap by the Batman Brothers but I am safe enough to talk to the man who was on the cover of Time, Business Quarterly and Arrogant Tousled Hair Monthly?”

“Don’t do jokes like that when you’re there? He probably won’t appreciate them.”

“That’ll take all the fun out of it, Emma.”

“I’m serious,” she said, digging out a notepad from her handbag and passing it to me. “If you want to be homeless, keep wisecracking. Otherwise go there, ask those questions, get the answers and come back. Nothing else. No Fifty Shades shit. That was a book. This is real life.”

“Nothing else,” I said, flicking through the pages, doing my best to decipher her handwriting. “Ask these questions then come home.”

“We’ve been trying to persuade him to give an interview for three months and he finally says yes and then today he moves the bloody time to first thing. I was still trying to work out what the hell to do when you came in and solved my problem.”

“That’s what I’m here for, to help your career.”

“And you will, Rosa Harper, secret ninja journalist. But get a move on, you’ve only got nineteen minutes to get there and he hates lateness.”

“I’m not sure I should do this, Emma.”

She paused long enough to glare at me. “You want to be a journalist? This is your shot. Get changed, get a cab. Get there by half nine.”

“Get changed? What’s wrong with this?”

“He might not like the wet tee-shirt look.”

I glanced down at my blouse, cringing at the sight. Bra completely visible through the wet cloth. Everyone on the way home would have seen it. Perfect.

“Jamie Spencer.” I shook my head. “But he’s famous. Always on the news opening some hospital wing or defending himself for sleeping with one supermodel behind the back of another one. If I were him, I’d just say they were thin enough to count as half a woman each. What do I count as on that scale? One and a half? Two?”

“You’re stalling. Get changed. Eighteen minutes to get there”

I flicked through the pad. I could just make out the address. He was at the old Aviva building near the train station, beside the medieval city walls. They’d moved out last year and the place had been taken over by Spencer Enterprises almost at once. I did a mental calculation as Emma threw clothes at me. Could I get there in time? “You’re lucky we’re the same size,” she said, yelling a thank you she ran downstairs.

I rang for a cab as I looked at the things she’d given me, hoping it would be here by the time I was changed.

Car horn beeping. The taxi was here already? I was still trying to decide. Eleven minutes to get there and I was standing in Emma’s room in my bra and panties. Shit, I needed to choose.

I grabbed a business suit. I looked roughly the same as I had ten minutes ago, only drier. Except my hair.

My hair? What could I do about my hair. No time to dry it. I grabbed a brush, hopefully I could do something during the ride over. Shoes. Why do shoes never go on easily when you need them to?

Car horn beeping again. “I’m coming,” I shouted out loud as if it could hear me. Then I was running downstairs, almost crashing into Catherine as she emerged, yawning, from the front bedroom. “Oh, Rosa,” she said, “I wanted to ask if you’d picked up any milk, only Craig drank my soya-”

“Later,” I replied, darting around her and grabbing my bag off the peg. “Got to go.”

I left the door hanging open and ran for the cab, the rain still pelting down. Eight minutes to go. “Morning, love,” the driver said, spinning around to grin at my chest, not even looking at my face. “Where we going then?”

“Spencer Enterprises, please,” I said, hoping he’d face the road in time to notice the van in front of him. He was already moving but his face seemed in no rush to move away from my chest.

“Right ho, off we go as my old man used to say.”

I ran the brush through my hair on the way, making little difference to the bedraggled state it was in. So, to sum up. Hair flat as a pancake, blouse all right if a bit tight, Emma’s chest was definitely smaller than mine. Make up? I took the mirror from my bag. Make up not waterproof. Fantastic. Tights, laddered. Notepad questions I was supposed to ask, indecipherable. Four minutes to get there. Traffic slowing, now at a standstill. How far was it from here? I could see the building over the other side of the river.

I swore under my breath. “I’ll walk from here.”

I shoved a fiver into the driver’s hand and pushed the door open. From here, if I sprinted, I might just make it. The cars beeped as I darted between them, not that they were moving anywhere. The rain made it hard to see, my vision blurring as I crossed the bridge to the far side of the river. The building was getting closer. I looked down at my watch. Two minutes. I looked up, straight into the briefcase of a man who had just climbed out of a black car, his door opening in my face. I tried to skid to a halt but formal shoes and wet pavement do not lead to a good stopping time.

I slammed into him, bouncing back and falling on my ass on the pavement, legs flailing in the air. “Oof,” was all I managed to say as my breath left my lungs in a huff.

“Here,” the man said, face hidden under an enormous green umbrella. “Let me help.”

I took his hand and was pulled upright in under a second. Just how strong was his arm? No time for flirting with Mr Universe. One minute left. “Thanks,” I called over my shoulder, already running for the building, doing my jacket up once more. No, not doing it up again. The button was nowhere to be seen. Perfect. Flashed a stranger, lost a button. What else could go wrong?

I held the jacket closed as I dashed into the entrance hall, passing under the enormous S.E logo. I made it with seconds to spare.

There was a queue at reception, obviously. Maybe they needed to replace the woman behind it with an answerphone and a coffee machine. The seconds ticked away. “Hi,” I said when I finally got to the front. “I’m here to interview Jamie Spencer.”

“Emma Morris?” she asked, her eyes going past me to watch something going by.

I turned in time to see the dripping green umbrella vanishing into a lift, doors closing a second later.

“No, Rosa Harper,” I said as her eyes turned back to me. “I’m her…erm…executive assistant.”

“Right, well if you’d like to take a seat, I’ll let him know you’re here. Help yourself to a coffee while you’re waiting.”

I looked at the Burghini Express by the row of armchairs. I didn’t get a coffee from it and then I sat down, dripping on the floor, holding my jacket closed with one hand and hoping I hadn’t messed things up for Emma. What if I was too late? What if he refused to do the interview? I’d be homeless. She’d never speak to me again. My ass felt cold and wet after its brief encounter with the wet pavement outside. Did I have time to visit the ladies and try and make myself respectable? Sort my make up at least?

“Miss Harper?” the receptionist said as I headed that way.

“Yes?”

“Mr Spencer will see you now.”