Cherry sat at her desk and silently surveyed the office. Abigail and Emily were standing side by side gazing intently at a screen, checking the photographs of a new house they’d just taken on. She wondered why she’d never really bonded with them; was it because they recognized a kindred spirit in each other’s backgrounds? She didn’t know and was past the point of caring. They cooed over the glass staircase and roof terrace overlooking Hyde Park and she despised them for it. It was pathetic when you thought about it, facilitating the buying and selling of some of the most expensive properties in London while getting paid a pittance. Insulting really, and all the time thinking that being in close contact with the houses themselves was a ‘perk’. You got to walk on hand-woven rugs and polished maple flooring, but nine times out of ten there was a clause in the contract saying it was imperative shoes were removed on entering. Something Cherry would have done anyway, but being told to do so, as if she were some serf who didn’t know how to respect something of value, got her back up. The owners were all laughing at them, these people with their millions in the bank. ‘Look but don’t touch’ would be their motto, while the agents had to kowtow and gush and remain deferential lest they offend and lose their business. It stank. It was also excruciatingly boring. Cherry had been there a year and a half now. She felt trapped, as if her life and valuable time were seeping away, her youth leaking into the ground and disappearing. This scared her and further fuelled the boredom until she went round in demented circles trying to work out what to do.
This wasn’t how it was meant to be. Daniel had been her escape route and it had all been going so well. She was still hurting from his death, and it was made worse by the fact she felt partly responsible. The life change, the plummet to the start of the snakes and ladders board, well, she had to take some responsibility for that. She’d done it to herself. If only she’d concentrated on that raft. If she hadn’t hit him, he’d most likely be here now; they’d be living together, perhaps even engaged. She’d be well on her way to a life of freedom. Freedom! From drudgery and work and fear. For a moment, she imagined what it would be like always to have money, before the bitter taste of reality came back.
Cherry recognized she was in a bad place. She’d been impatient, curt even with a couple of clients lately and Neil had overheard and taken her aside for a stern talking-to. She had boiled inside while he was speaking but knew she had no choice but to toe the line. The ever-present cloud of Croydon loomed, its tendrils reaching closer, ready to snatch her back to obscurity and a humdrum life with no prospects. She’d tried scouting for other men, a new boyfriend, but every single, or potentially single man who walked through the door irritated her. They were all so self-important; they barely looked at her, and spoke to their friends as if she wasn’t there, while she seethed and fretted and wished again that she’d never booked that white-water-rafting trip.
Then there was Laura. She hadn’t heard from her since March, when she’d called to tell her Daniel had died. No one had rung to make sure she was OK, that she was coping with her grief. No one had asked if she wanted to see the gravestone or whatever there was. Her insides corkscrewed with the hurt and humiliation of it all.
Two women were heading her way. She’d heard the door open but hadn’t bothered to look up; now she realized that she was the only one who didn’t look busy. She cast a resentful look over to Abigail and Emily, but they were oblivious. The women arrived at her desk. One was about twenty or thirty years younger than the other, and the older one looked impeccable. She guessed they were mother and daughter.
Cherry took their details and listened to what they had to say about the apartment they wanted. The daughter needed a ‘little pad’ for when she started university. They were looking now as she wanted to ‘try it out’ over the summer. She wanted a garden or, preferably, a roof terrace. There had to be a porter and a gym. It needed to be light and near to the King’s Road as she wanted to be close to the ‘fun’.
There weren’t many that fit all her criteria. Cherry showed her one, then another, detesting this difficult-to-please honey-haired, golden-limbed girl who was a couple of years younger than herself. Judging by her skin colour, she’d probably already had two or three holidays this year and was now being offered every opportunity Cherry had craved but had never had: university, independence, a mother to whom she was close, so much so they went shopping for apartments together. Jealousy stuck in her throat and she wanted to snarl at her for being so spoilt, so self-involved that she couldn’t see how lucky she was to have a flat in Kensington, and who gave a fuck if it had black not white cupboards in the kitchen? Surely her darling mother could fork out for a whole new interior if she whined about it enough. Instead, she smiled, albeit coolly and said in a bored tone that she only had one other to show her. She got it up on her screen and this time the gushes poured out.
‘Oh, I love it. Look, Mummy, it’s got a cute little oven. I could learn to cook!’
Cherry flinched; she hated hearing grown women calling their parents ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’. And the cute little oven was a top-of-the-range La Cornue. Mummy smiled indulgently, amused, and Cherry knew the girl was one of these types who thought it was amusing to claim she burned eggs, and any attempt at cooking would have more focus on how she was adorably incompetent than whether or not she’d actually put in any effort.
‘Can I have it? Can I, please?’
‘If you ask Daddy and me round to dinner first.’
The girl squealed in delight.
Cherry felt sick. She looked unabashedly at the clock. Thank God she could go home in ten minutes.
‘Can we look at it now?’
The mother had spoken and caught her unawares. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible.’ The lie didn’t sound convincing and the mother frowned.
‘Why not?’
Because I want to go home, and the thought of spending one minute of my own time taking you and your overprivileged daughter to a place I could never dream of owning in my entire life makes me want to turn this desk over, was what she wanted to say.
Instead, she settled for ‘We need to give the owners twenty-four hours’ notice.’
‘But I thought you said the place was empty.’
Cherry turned to the girl. So she had been listening. ‘Nevertheless, we do still need to let them know.’
The look of displeasure on the girl’s face gave her a surge of satisfaction, of power. She felt a need to damage that self-appointed God-given right and take something away, let her know what it felt like not to get what you wanted.