Page 14 of So, I Met This Guy . . .

She’d also been making a little bit of money doing some dog-walking for a nearby boarding kennels. She’d replied to an online ad. It didn’t pay much but the only skills required were owning a pair of wellies, a pair of hands and liking dogs and she ticked all the boxes.

Which was quite something, as her life appeared to be ticking none of the boxes and there weren’t many jobs out there for a middle-aged woman who had gone bankrupt.

Correction. Almost gone bankrupt.

She’d done everything to narrowly avoid that. When the bank had called in the business loan after she defaulted on the payments and the interest on her new, much bigger mortgage had sky-rocketed, she’d had no choice but to sell the gallery and her flat above it to pay off her creditors. Running an art gallery meant she didn’t own any stock – what paintings she had were returned to the artists, all of whom were local and lovely and desperately sad to see her go – while the rest of the fixtures and fittings were sold off.

Luckily, she’d found a buyer quickly, but it was still a bitter blow. Last she’d heard the new owner had applied to the council to change the licence and open a coffee shop. It was as crushing as it was depressing. Like the world needed any more oat milk flat whites.

With what little she had left, she’d looked at renting, but everything was so expensive. Her friend George had said she could stay on his sofa bed in London, while one of her neighbours had kindly offered their spare room, but she didn’t want to be a burden. Plus, their teenage son would need it in a few weeks when he came home from university.

Instead, she’d bought an old caravan on eBay, borrowed an artist-friend’s Land Rover, and on a grey day in the middle of February, almost a year to the day since she first met the man she thought was the love of her life, she towed it two hundred and fifty miles up the M5 to the northern Pennines. Oh, the irony. To where Ainsley, an old university friend of her brother’s who was now a local farmer and with whom she’d kept in touch, had a spare field she could rent. It was supposed to be a temporary solution, just until she sorted herself out, got back on her feet.

Except, getting back on her feet seemed to be taking a lot longer than she thought.

Reaching for her phone, Maggie texted the owner of the boarding kennels.

Hi Emma, do you need me to do any dog walks next week?

She pressed send, then quickly added:

Just organizing my diary. Thanks, Maggie

Well, she didn’t want to look too desperate. Even though she was. She’d even added a smiley face.

A few seconds later, the ticks went blue and Maggie could see Emma was typing. Hopeful, she stared at the screen, waiting for the reply to appear. It was taking an awfully long time. And now Emma had stopped typing, as if she’d changed her mind.

Finally, after what felt like for ever, a message appeared.

Hi Maggie. Afraid next week’s a bit slow.

Will text you if we need you. Thanks, Emma

There was no smiley face.

Maggie stared at her phone, spirits sinking, before forcing herself to rally. Still, at least she had her emergency twenty-pound note – though she wasn’t sure how much good that was to her if she couldn’t find anywhere to spend it in this new cashless society. Getting up, she flicked on the kettle and checked the cupboards. She had a few tins, some pasta, a pizza in the fridge. There was enough food to last the weekend, but then what?

Anxiety bubbled, her mind flicking back.

When she lived in Bath she used to volunteer at the local food bank. Before she started volunteering, she’d assumed the people who used them weren’t people like her. That they were different somehow. It sounded snobbish. Ignorant. Embarrassing, frankly, to even admit that she once thought that way, because she’d quickly realized how wrong she was. Lone parents, struggling families, low-paid workers, professionals who’d lost their jobs, pensioners who couldn’t make ends meet, single men and women who’d suffered some unforeseen circumstance to push them over the edge. People just like her who thought it would never happen to them either.

The kettle boiled and she made tea. Chamomile. To calm the nerves. She thought about the bottle of wine she’d had to leave behind at the farm shop and felt a pang. Sod the chamomile, she could kill for a glass of that right now.

There was no shame. She knew that. And she was lucky enough to live in a country that had offered a safety net, of sorts. Amongst the pamphlets the police had given her, one had been for the local benefits office. But she’d ignored it, along with the rest. Somehow she felt like there were others much worse off than her, others that needed their help more. While she could manage, she would. Plus, would they even pay benefits to someone living in a caravan and without a permanent address?

She looked back at her phone. Perhaps she could do the Zero Per Cent Transfer Dance again? Surely there was bit of credit still left on one of her cards if she did a bit of tricky manoeuvring.

Maggie was just thinking this when her phone suddenly sprang to life and started ringing.

It was a WhatsApp video-call from George, one of her closest friends. They’d met at art college and spent a year together before she’d dropped out and moved back home. Still, they’d kept in touch and by their late twenties found themselves sharing a flat in London. By this time George had discovered it was actually quite hard earning a living as an abstract artist and was working as cabin crew for a big airline, jetting around the world. While she was getting experience in various galleries around Soho and Hackney, before finally moving out of the capital and opening her own.

Which, by the way, sounded very posh. An art gallery conjured up images of swanky locations and wealthy customers, but hers was a local neighbourhood gallery. Sandwiched between an antique bookshop and Jeera’s Tandoori House, it was a small, but beautiful, creative space filled with local art of different mediums, all reasonably priced. There were a few expensive paintings, but most of it was affordable. After all, art should be affordable, shouldn’t it? Why should only the rich get to hang nice pictures on their walls?

And over the years she’d built up quite a reputation, discovering new artists and working with them for months to curate a show, supporting local sculptors and ceramicists, hosting different exhibitions, events and workshops. She was well known in the community and her gallery was a little hub of creativity.

She’d always loved art at school and dreamed of a career as a painter; getting into art college had been a dream come true . . . But things happen, and it wasn’t to be. Still, that didn’t stop her passion. The government seemed to think everyone needed to do maths and sciences, but arts were what made the world go round. What made it all bearable, she always thought.

Maggie stared at the vibrating phone in her hand. George was the only friend who ever called for a chat. No one had time these days. Everyone texted. Or left messages on various WhatsApp groups. Most of her girlfriends were dealing with husbands and partners and kids and ageing parents and jobs and traffic and menopause and everything else mid-life threw at you.