“Your Aunt Lorraine is right,” Colin added. “You’ve got a roof over your head, a warm bed to sleep in later, and our Rosie will make sure you don’t go hungry. That’s all that matters for now. Do your aunt and I favour and put job-hunting out of your head for a day or so at least. The last thing we want is you having a badturn because of all this stress. At nearly eight months pregnant, it’s the last thing you need.”
Because it was obvious they wanted her to agree, Courtney nodded. She would certainly start job-hunting, but her kind aunt and uncle didn’t need to know about it. The last thing she planned on doing was lounging around her cousin’s home, doing nothing for the next few days or weeks. There was nothing to stop her finding a temporary job, or possibly agency work, to see her through the final few weeks before the baby was born.
After that… well, if she’d learned anything this past year, it was that planning ahead didn’t always get you anyfurtherahead.
“Thank you, Uncle Colin and Aunt Lorraine,” she said. “I don’t know how I would’ve survived this morning without you both there.”
“You would’ve been fine,” Colin insisted. “You got through much worse than this when your mother died and you had to leave your home. What happened this morning is hard, but it’s just a job and you would’ve dealt with it. I’m just happy to know that your Aunt Lorraine and I can be here for you when you need us.”
Lorraine’s phone beeped just then, and she set down her empty tea mug to check the screen. “Oh, that was my calendar reminder. I forgot I promised to give my friend a lift to the hospital today. I ought to make a move or I won’t be over there on time to pick her up.”
“And I’ll have to go, too, I’m afraid,” Colin said. “I’m teaching a class at noon and I’ve got meetings all afternoon too, which I’ll have to prepare for. Will you be okay here on your own, Courtney?”
“Of course I will.”
“Rosie says her shift finishes at six tonight, so you’ll see her shortly after that,” Lorraine said. “In the meantime, I’ll give youmy spare key for Rosie’s front door and that way you can come and go as you please.”
Lorraine flicked through the keys on a keyring she pulled from her bag before removing one and setting it on the coffee table.
“Thanks,” Courtney said. “I’ll unpack a few things upstairs and then it might be nice to get out for some fresh air and a walk, and clear my head a little.”
“That’s a terrific idea,” Colin said. “If you turn right out the front gate and walk all the way to the other end of Foxglove Street and then take a left, you’ll eventually come to Peartree Park. It’s lovely there and the perfect place for a stroll. And, as you know, the high street is in the other direction along Foxglove Street if you fancy a look at the shops instead.”
“You know how to find us if you have any problems,” Lorraine said. “You’ve got both our mobile numbers in your phone now, don’t you?”
“And Rosie’s number too, I hope?” Colin added. “We’ll give you Zara’s as well, just in case.”
Once they’d added the new numbers into her phone, including the number for Lorraine’s mother, Janet Barker—“just on the off-chance you need to get in touch and none of the rest of us can answer our phones for some reason,” Lorraine insisted—Courtney walked her aunt and uncle to the door. After another volley of questions about whether she felt okay and whether she’d truly be fine if they left her on her own considering the morning she’d had, to which she replied with a firm yes each time, not wanting either of them to upend their plans on her account, Courtney waved them off to get on with their busy days.
Alone once more, she returned to the living room and carried the tea cups to the kitchen and popped them in the dishwasher. Upstairs, she sorted through her hastily packed belongings, and as she refolded clothes, a text message pinged through fromRosie, telling her to help herself to the empty chest of drawers in the guest room for her stuff. She sent a thank you text and a little string of heart emojis to the serendipitous message, before making use of the drawer space for her clothes.
After emptying the plastic carrier bags into which she’d stuffed shoes and trainers, toiletries, and the few other belongings she’d squeezed into the tiny bedsit, she pushed her empty suitcases underneath the bed and then sat down on the edge of the mattress.
Part of her wanted to lie back on the bed, pull the soft cosy cover around herself and close her eyes and fall asleep so she didn’t have to think about this latest disaster that had befallen her.
But tempting though it was to seek oblivion, she was too keyed up for sleep. One thought, and one thought alone, kept flashing inside her head like a neon sign.
I lost my job. I lost my job. I LOST MY JOB!
Was the universe conspiring against her? Was the universe deliberately picking on her? Had she been singled out as the focus for some terrible cosmic experiment to find out how much a human being could take before they were utterly broken?
A memory surfaced from long ago, when she’d been a child and had attended Sunday school class for a few months at the local church near her old home. Although Courtney’s mother hadn’t been a church-goer, Courtney’s friend at primary school had been a regular and invited her along one Sunday. After her first visit, she’d gone back many times, happy to be with her school friend on a weekend and charmed by the cosy comfort of the Sunday school class. Each week, they’d listened to the gentle, white-haired, Sunday school teacher read a passage aloud from the children’s Bible, which they’d then discussed together in order to understand the message that lay within and how they could learn from it. Once their Bible work was finished, they’denjoyed milk and biscuits while colouring in scenes featuring Jesus and the angels and any number of characters and stories from the old and new testaments.
Courtney now remembered one particular story, the story of Job and the endless trials he’d endured in his life. He lost his wealth, his friends, his family, his home—everything. The tale had struck her as dark and disturbing at the time, this poor man who faced tragedy upon tragedy and who was, apparently, a mere pawn in a great cosmic game between God and Satan. The story of Job was, perhaps, a little on the brutal side for use in a children’s Sunday school class, even when the version told was trimmed and sanitised so as not to traumatise little students.
The dark horror and unfairness of the tale had stuck with Courtney over the years, and she thought now about the man’s great struggle to survive against the odds despite everything that was thrown at him. Now more than ever, she understood poor Job’s plight. He’d lived a good life and had always tried to do the right thing, and yet at every turn disaster struck, dragging him deeper and deeper into a pit of black despair.
In the end, things turned out okay for Job, and his faith in God was rewarded with the restoration of his riches, his family, and everything he held dear. She couldn’t remember if Job ever found out that the entire ordeal was the result of what amounted to little more than a bet between God and Satan, but she imagined he would have taken a dim view of being so mercilessly abused just for the purposes of testing his faith and proving a point.
Although the story was just that—a story, albeit with a crucial lesson at its heart about life and faith and morals and endurance—Courtney wondered how many countless people had thought of poor old Job across the ages and compared his misery and misfortune with their own.
Just as she was doing now.
She wasn’t the first person in the world to go through tough times, and she wouldn’t be the last. But the weight of everything that had happened to her over the last eight months was pushing her to her limits.
Losing her job felt dangerously close to being the last straw.
While she’d still had a job—a good job where she earned decent money—she had hope of pulling herself out of the dire situation she was in. Losing her mother and her home were both terrible blows, with the added agonising insult of wrecking her finances, forcing her to drain her meagre savings to pay for her mother’s funeral, and then using what little remained to deal with moving out of her house so unexpectedly.
