‘Hmm,’ I say non-committally. I carry on turning the pages of my newspaper, but I’m not interested in sport and now it’s mostly adverts and theatre reviews. I won’t be home till after seven at this rate: we’ll have to have something easy for tea, rather than the baked chicken I’d planned. Simon cooks during the week, and I do Friday evening and the weekend. He’d do that too, if I asked him, but I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t have him cooking for us – for my children – every night. Maybe I’ll pick up a takeaway.
I skip over the business section and look at the crossword, but I don’t have a pen with me. So I read the adverts, thinking I might see a job for Katie – or me, come to that, although I know I’ll never leave Hallow & Reed. It pays well and I know what I’m doing, now, and if it wasn’t for my boss it would be perfect. The customers are nice, for the most part. They’re generally start-ups, looking for office space; or businesses that have done well, ready for a bigger place. We don’t do much residential, but the flats above the shops work for the first-time buyers and the downsizers. I meet a fair number of recently separateds. Sometimes, if I feel like it, I tell them I know what they’re going through.
‘Did it all turn out okay?’ the women always ask.
‘Best thing I ever did,’ I say confidently. It’s what they want to hear.
I don’t find any jobs for a nineteen-year-old wannabe actress, but I turn down the corner on a page with an advert for an office manager. It doesn’t hurt to know what’s out there. For a second I imagine walking into Graham Hallow’s office and handing in my notice, telling him I won’t put up with being spoken to like I’m dirt on the sole of his shoe. Then I look at the salary printed under the office manager position, and remember how long it’s taken me to claw my way up to something I can actually live on. Better the devil you know, isn’t that what they say?
The final pages of the Gazette are all compensation claims and finances. I studiously avoid the ads for loans – at those interest rates you’d have to be mad or desperate – and glance at the bottom of the page, where the chatlines are advertised.
Married woman looking for discreet casual action. Txt ANGEL to 69998 for pics.
I wrinkle my nose more at the exorbitant price per text than the services offered. Who am I to judge what other people do? I’m about to turn the page, resigned to reading about last night’s footie, when I see the advert below ‘Angel’s’.
For a second I think my eyes must be tired: I blink hard but it doesn’t change anything.
I’m so absorbed in what I’m looking at that I don’t notice the train start up again. It sets off suddenly and I jerk to one side, putting my hand out automatically and making contact with my neighbour’s thigh.
‘Sorry!’
‘It’s fine – don’t worry.’ He smiles and I make myself return it. But my heart is thumping and I stare at the advert. It bears the same warning about call charges as the other boxed adverts, and a 0809 number at the top of the ad. A web address reads www.findtheone.com. But it’s the photo I’m looking at. It’s cropped close to the face, but you can clearly see blonde hair and a glimpse of a black strappy top. Older than the other women pimping their wares, but such a grainy photo it would be hard to give a precise age.
Except I know how old she is. I know she’s forty.
Because the woman in the advert is me.
2
Kelly Swift stood in the middle of the Central line carriage, shifting to one side to keep her balance as the train took a bend. A couple of kids – no more than fourteen or fifteen years old – jostled on to the train at Bond Street, engaged in competitive swearing that jarred with their middle-class vowels. Too late for after-school clubs, and it was already dark outside; Kelly hoped they were on their way home, not heading out for the evening. Not at their age.
‘Fucking mental!’ The boy looked up, his swagger giving way to self-consciousness as he saw Kelly standing there. Kelly assumed the sort of expression she remembered her mother sporting on many an occasion, and the teenagers fell silent, blushing furiously and turning away to examine the inside of the closing doors. She probably was old enough to be their mother, she thought ruefully, counting backwards from thirty and imagining herself with a fourteen-year-old. Several of her old school friends had children almost that age; Kelly’s Facebook page regularly filled up with proud family photos, and she’d even had a couple of friend requests from the kids themselves. Now there was a way to make you feel old.
Kelly caught the eye of a woman in a red coat on the opposite side of the carriage, who gave a nod of approval at the effect she’d had on the lads.
Kelly returned her look with a smile. ‘Good day?’
‘Better now it’s over,’ the woman said. ‘Roll on the weekend, eh?’
‘I’m working. Not off till Tuesday.’ And even then only one day off before another six on the trot, she thought, inwardly groaning at the thought. The woman looked aghast. Kelly shrugged. ‘Someone’s got to, right?’