Molly gives a brittle laugh. ‘Will we be able to get in?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting here a sec, I’ll see if I can skirt around and get to the front door.’
My shoes sink into the soggy fringe of grass, and I feel the squelch of waterlogged earth through my boots as I edge past the mound that’s almost at head height. With a sinking heart, I see that it’s been dumped right up to the entrance with no space to get to the door. The door itself is spattered with flecks of brown, like the house has contracted a skin disease. I’d have to get a shovel to clear a path, and I’m not doing that.
I turn to the couple and hold up a finger, asking them to wait a minute. Maybe I can get in around the back. I push at the six-foot-high wooden side gate, but it’s not budging. Must be bolted from the other side. I give the vendor a quick call, but it goes to voicemail, so I leave an urgent message.
I take a moment to collect myself – wet, muddy, out of breath, and one soggy misstep from a total breakdown. Then, resigned, I limp back towards the prospective buyers, who are silently watching me from the safety of their umbrella. Molly flashes me a look of commiseration, while Ted’s jaw tics in the way I imagine people’s do when they’re plotting a one-star Google review.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, cheeks burning. ‘There’s no way in. I’ve left a message with the vendor to find out what’s happened. As soon as I hear back, I’ll give you a call to reschedule.’
Molly gives me a sympathetic smile, but Ted huffs his annoyance. Irritatingly, this listing is also on with another agency. I hope the pair don’t decide to go with them instead.
‘I truly am sorry,’ I repeat.
I watch them pick their way back to their car, umbrella bobbing with each step.
I let a sigh leak out, roll my eyes at the rain, and trudge back to my own car, where I sit behind the wheel with my sodden coat on the passenger seat. I reach for my phone, see five missed calls and two urgent texts, all from people who would almost certainly like to yell at me or, worse, demand things I can’t possibly deliver.
I don’t answer any of them.
I stare at the windscreen, tracing the way the droplets race down the glass, forming rivers that collide at the bottom and disappear. I like to imagine that if I could hitch a ride on one of these droplets, I’d end up somewhere far away from all of this, preferably somewhere warm and dry. Instead, I start the ignition and pull out of the development.
On the way to the office, I stop at a petrol station to pick up something for breakfast since all I’ve eaten today is a bite of Reece’s toast. The place is empty except for a cashier so deep in a TikTok scroll that she doesn’t notice me at all, which suits me fine. I grab a Red Bull and a packet of prawn cocktail crisps, then add a Snickers for good measure, because why not? The cashier rings me up without breaking eye contact with her phone, and I tap my business card on the reader.
Back in my car, I rip the crisp packet open and eat with desperate, greasy fingers, letting the crumbs fall where they may, imagining the entire audit team at HMRC laughing at my expense claimswhile sipping taxpayer-funded tea and biscuits. I down the Red Bull next, enjoying the buzz. My plan was to save the Snickers for later, but I’m already tearing the wrapper off.
I’m not ready to go back to the office. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But I have to, because everything relies on me being a functioning cog in my own life. I dust the crumbs from my skirt, take a breath, and finally –finally– pick up my phone to answer my messages.
I click on my accountant’s first:Bella, please call me as soon as you get this.
My stomach clenches, and I drop the phone back into my bag, all my good intentions evaporating.
Chapter Twenty
Jade
I’m at work, behind the bar at The Oak, doing my usual routine – pouring pints, collecting glasses, stacking the dishwasher. The entire room is humid with the smell of lager and aftershave. I blend in perfectly. I’m part of the furniture here. There’s a kind of energy in the place on Saturdays – nervous and a bit desperate, like the punters are all trying to drink away the memory of their week. Mags already put up the tired Christmas decorations at the start of the month, like she does every November. She says it puts people in a more festive, spendy mood, and she’s right – the decades-old tinsel and a few gold-sprayed pine cones definitely increase the bar takings.
There’s a group of three lads at the bar, wearing footie tops and Lynx. They’re showing off for the benefit of some girls over by the fruit machines, trying to outdo each other with stories about who can drink the most and who once nearly got scouted by Southampton FC. One of them leans over the bar so far that I can see the blackheads in his pores. ‘You’ll go out with Tommo, won’t you?’ he says to me, nudging the supposed Tommo – a lanky blokewith a gormless expression whose only reaction is to try to grow taller still, as if he can impress me with his height.
I hold out the card machine. ‘I’d love to, but I’m married.’ I give them a regretful smile while flashing my left hand, where a cheap gold band shines dull under the bar lights.
The ring is fake, obviously. I bought it from Claire’s Accessories in a two-for-one set with a cubic zirconia engagement ring. I started wearing it after I realised it cut down on chat-up attempts by about 80 per cent. The other 20 per cent persist, but the story of my MMA-fighting husband is handy for those triers.
The lads groan, all faux heartbreak, but at least they pay and move away, back to hassle the fruit-machine girls, jostling and snorting as they go.
I used to get angry, or at least stung, by the way the customers treated me – a weird mix of invisible and hyper-visible, like a prop with boobs. Now it just slides off, most of the time. I have bigger things on my mind.
My next customer is Dodgy Steve, the local supplier of bootleg perfume and ‘designer’ handbags.
‘All right, Jade?’ he says, sidling up with his usual air of conspiracy. ‘Got a new shipment in, if you fancy summat. Gucci. Real snakeskin.’
‘Sorry, Steve, I’m skint at the moment.’ But he already knows I’ll have a look at his wares in the beer garden after clocking off. It’s a ritual.
If you’d asked me a few months ago whether I enjoy my job, I’d have laughed in your face. Back then, work was something to endure, an endless carousel of sticky floors, pretending to be nice, and night buses that never arrive. Now, though, everything’s changed. Not because the work is any better – God, no – but because there’s something on the side. My secret project. Having a mission, even a petty one, takes the edge off a lot of life’s daily shit.It gives me something to look forward to. A reason to think, and plot, and scheme in the quiet moments between orders.
For example, last week, before my shift, I went to watch the house on Greenway that Bella’s agency is showing. I parked two streets over and observed her from my car, clocking her Fiat 500 as she swept up the drive to showme– a no-show – the property.
