‘Lovely. I will see you tomorrow then after work to view the office premises,’ she said, standing to indicate he could leave. ‘See what you think.’
He thanked Alice and felt a mellow feeling as he headed to his upstairs flat. Inside, he picked up the red envelope and opened the dinner invitation.
TWO
JESS
Flat 3
‘Come on, Maisie, we are going to be late.’ Jess sighed as she scraped her long, dark hair into a ponytail, before shoving her feet into her white trainers.
She had already put a wash on, popped a casserole in the slow cooker, and hoovered the lounge. In the long hallway that had grey flooring and white doors leading to the other rooms, she had wiped away a smudge of paint from one of the doors. Maisie must have had it on her fingertips after she had been painting. Jess smiled to herself as she rubbed the stain away with a cleaning wipe. Before she knew it, those little signs of a young child living here would have disappeared. She dreaded the thought.
‘I can’t find my pencil case,’ moaned her six-year-old daughter, Maisie.
‘They have pencils at school. Go and grab your reading folder.’ Jess didn’t have time for this today; she was due in work in just over half an hour.
‘But I want my pencil case.’ Her daughter folded her arms defiantly.
The pink fluffy pencil case in question, featuring a shiny unicorn, was entirely inappropriate for school. She wished the headteacher would ban the kids from bringing such things in from home, instead of her being the bad cop when she forbade her daughter from taking them. She wouldn’t be surprised if some of the kids had designer pencil cases these days.
There was a subtle competitiveness amongst some of the parents at Maisie’s school. She had lost count of the conversations she had overheard between them on the playground, comparing their children’s reading levels and various other accomplishments. One child had worn a pair of designer trainers to school on dress down day for Comic Relief, their parents clearly missing the irony of raising money to alleviate child poverty. Thankfully, not everyone was that way, though.
Jess remembered at the last minute the money in the brown envelope Maisie was to hand in to her teacher for the school trip.
The cost was forty pounds for a full day at Chester Zoo, including a café lunch. The price also included the hire of the coach, so although it was reasonable it was a lot for Jess to pay all at once. When she had mentioned it to Jess’s teacher, she had suggested paying the balance in two instalments. Most of the parents would not have a problem, as forty pounds was hardly a fortune, but it was a bit much to stump up all at once for a single parent. Jess liked Maisie’s teacher, who always tried to find solutions discreetly.
It might have been helpful if Maisie’s father could contribute to the practical things more regularly, such as school uniforms and trips, rather than overblown gestures, like the five-foot unicorn he appeared with after working away.
Her ex would alternate between being unemployed and working in a hotel or similar establishment, often on the other side of the country, sometimes abroad.
He was generous on his pay days, but they were sporadic. She never said too much, though, as he did regularly pay a modest amount of maintenance whatever his financial situation.
‘Have you brushed your teeth?’ Jess grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder.
‘Yes. But I want my pencil case.’ Maisie wasn’t budging.
They had precisely two minutes before they needed to leave. It was a ten-minute walk to Maisie’s school, and a two-minute walk to the bus stop afterwards, where Jess would wait for five minutes – if the bus was on time – before making the journey into town to her job at the M&S Food Hall in the city centre. At four thirty exactly, she would leave and make the journey back in time to collect her daughter from after-school club. She didn’t want to think about the next school holidays and prayed that the school would be running a summer holiday club, which they had recently been considering, or she had no idea what she would do for childcare.
Her mother had recently upped sticks and moved to Cumbria with a bloke she met at one of those school reunion dances and even though her mother reassured her that it was only an hour and a half drive away and promised to still see her and Maisie regularly – which was fine, it was her mother’s life after all – she missed her.
She was happy for her mum, though. She deserved to have someone nice to spend her later years with, after Jess’s dad had left her for another woman a couple of years ago.
After scanning her daughter’s bedroom, Jess spotted the horn of the unicorn on the fluffy pencil case poking out from beneath the bed, that was covered with a princess duvet. This was the last bloody time. She was going to have a word with the school about banning such things. When she had the time.
As she approached the front door, she spotted a red envelope on the mat. A glance at her watch told her she needed to get a move on, so she stuffed it into her pocket.
‘Right, go.’ She ushered her daughter out of the front door, as she handed the pencil case to Maisie, who dropped it into her school bag triumphantly. No wonder Jess never had time to speak to the neighbours in the block, as she was always in such a rush. Not that she encountered them much anyway. It would appear the other tenants led busy lives too.
Jess liked the walk to school, especially when they were not in a hurry. She loved how her daughter commented on just about everything, a chatterbox from the minute she was able to talk.
Halfway down the road was a duck pond surrounded by railings, a somewhat unusual sight in the middle of a busy city road and one that they often lingered at on the way home from school, along with lots of other families. Sometimes Maisie would feed the ducks the remains of her packed lunch, and Jess was sure she was saving things deliberately, but as it was generally just a few bread crusts or a handful of crisps she didn’t mind as she did not want to discourage her kindness. Besides, they always had a hearty evening meal, which was often discounted food items from the M&S Food Hall.
‘Love you lots.’ She kissed her daughter, who was a mini version of herself, goodbye on the playground outside of the classroom where the children were lined up.
‘Like jelly tots,’ replied Maisie as the teacher appeared then and led them into the classroom.
Jess caught a glance of her reflection in the window of the bus stop, and her pretty, lightly tanned face stared back at her, but there was no disguising the bags beneath her green eyes. She would kill for a lie-in, but Maisie’s routine lately was waking at around six thirty, even at weekends.
