Читать книгу Meet Me at Pebble Beach - Bella Osborne - Страница 12

This time Regan was thinking ahead. The alarm code for Cleo’s studio was now Regan’s birthday, so she could at least remember it. Once she had managed to sneak all her stuff in to the studio without attracting any attention she shut the door and waited for her racing pulse to settle, feeling like an MI5 agent on a top-secret mission. She looked around Cleo’s studio. This was to be her home for the next two months, unless of course she got discovered and kicked out. That absolutely must not happen, she thought. Cleo would be terribly upset if she lost the studio – Regan knew how much she loved it, having been with her the day she’d found it. Back then it had been a dirty, dusty sanctuary for spiders and rodents, having been used previously as a store for a nearby garage. Now it was clean and critter free – thanks to a lot of TLC from Cleo.

She sat herself down in her friend’s comfy chair: an oversized, slouchy, modern affair. Perfect. She could definitely sleep here, she thought, pulling out the teddy bear throw she’d taken from the flat and drawing it over herself. Cosy … What more could she need?

She smiled to herself. The place was a bit paint-splattered but otherwise clean and dry. Her eyes landed on Cleo’s latest canvas of a large nipple and the smile became a pout. That was a little off-putting. It felt as though it was studying her … Judging her. She closed her eyes but it was no use – she knew it was there. She opened one eye. The nipple was still staring at her. Regan pulled off the throw and huffed. She’d have to move it. Carefully, she lifted the nipple picture and leaned it, nipple side down, against the opposite wall. Much better, she thought, and snuggled back under her cosy cover to try to get some sleep.

She woke up super early. Typical: on the one morning she could actually have a lie-in; although lie-in was stretching it, given her position was more hunched up than lying down, but that wasn’t the point. It was the first time in years she wasn’t meant to be up and out for work, and she’d woken up mega early. What sort of sick reality was that?

Her positive mood from the night before was apparently only temporary. She felt weighed down with a sense of impending doom that was no longer impending but fully in situ. She hadn’t got much sleep because her mind had been far too busy panicking about the situation she was in. One that – for once – was not entirely of her own doing. Bloody cockwombling Alex, she thought. A fresh wave of anger and injustice engulfed her and she paced the studio saying out loud all the things she wished she’d thought of yesterday. Why did the perfect insult always wait twenty-four hours before appearing in your head?

She threw insults around like pebbles but they didn’t make her feel any better. This was all so unfair. And on top of everything, there was no milk, so she’d had to have black coffee again.

She stomped about the studio for quite some time until she got tired and the adrenaline powering her subsided, at which point she flopped into the chair. The fury that had kept her going had turned to despondency as the reality of the mess she was in truly hit home. She no longer had somewhere to live. The studio was a very temporary setup until Cleo came home; even more temporary if anyone caught her living there.

She no longer had a boyfriend – although if the latest stream of texts from Jarvis were an indicator, she would be hearing from him again very soon via his lawyer regarding what he termed the criminal abuse of his rug.

She didn’t have a job, and that meant she had zero income. She also didn’t have any savings as such – just a few quid in her bank account that she had been holding onto so she could buy Jarvis a birthday present. At least that was something.

She was also surprised to discover that, on top of everything else, she’d lost her purpose – and this was most shocking of all. She hadn’t liked her job, but then who did? Moaning about bosses, colleagues and too much work was par for the course, but when it suddenly wasn’t there it left a great big nine-to-five-shaped hole.

Regan spent a while mulling over whether to call Nigel and ask for her job back. Eventually, she swallowed her pride and rang Nigel’s number, but as soon as she’d been put through to him he went into corporate mode, listing all her faults and making it very clear that returning was most definitely not an option. She thanked him kindly and hung up.

Regan sat there staring at one particular brick in the bare Victorian wall. This brick wasn’t like the other red bricks; it wasn’t a perfect little clone like the rest. The surface of this one was rougher; pock-marked, almost. It didn’t have defined angular corners and sharp edges. They were worn and rounded, partly due to it being slightly out of alignment. It didn’t quite fit, so someone had chipped bits off it in an attempt to wedge it in, but had simply managed to scar it instead.

That brick was her. She was damaged and scarred. She didn’t fit.

She closed her eyes. She was losing the plot. She needed to get out before she went totally Jack from The Shining.

She’d been pleased that her dad was at home when she’d telephoned, and frankly delighted to hear that he was alone and she was welcome to pop round.

After the usual niceties, she followed him into the kitchen and he put the kettle on.

‘What’s up, Regan? You never come round in the daytime.’

It was like the time she got found out for smashing next door’s greenhouse; he was giving her the same look of disappointment.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she said, remembering too late that her defence of the greenhouse situation had started with the exact same words. ‘I thought I’d won the lottery and it turns out I hadn’t, but because I thought I had …’ He was watching her intently. She swallowed hard. ‘I dumped Jarvis, quit my job and moved out of the flat.’ She bit her lip and waited for his response.

‘Coffee?’

Not the response she was expecting. ‘Er, yes please. So …’

He shrugged his shoulders in a slow movement. ‘That wasn’t very smart. Was it?’

And the award for stating the bleeding obvious goes to Graham Corsetti. ‘I know that, Dad, but like I said I thought I’d won the lottery.’

‘Money’s not everything, Regan.’

‘I know.’ It was like being in a parallel universe. Why were parents so obtuse sometimes? And especially when you needed them to help you get to a solution ‘So what do I do?’

‘Get another job?’ His face was stoic.

‘Yes.’ That was the most logical thing. ‘What else?’

He scratched his greying temple. ‘I don’t know.’ He brightened up and squeezed her arm. ‘You’ll think of something.’

She blinked rapidly. Clearly he was not comprehending the huge shitstorm her life had become. In fact, shitstorm didn’t really cover it – this was more global shit tsunami with extra-large fans.

‘I feel like a pea in a river – too small to swim against the tide.’ She felt quite poetic and proud of her analogy.

Her dad screwed up his face. ‘You’d like to pee in a river?’

‘No. A pea … Oh never mind.’ Why was it so hard to explain? ‘It’s like someone’s slammed the brakes on my life.’

‘Hmm.’ He was pulling a doubtful face, but she continued unperturbed.

‘I mean, I was hurtling along and suddenly I’ve come flying off the rails.’

‘I see,’ said Graham, in a tone that said he wanted the conversation to end. He was a rather logical, straightforward person, lacking the encumberment of extremes of emotion – an unkind soul may have called him ‘odd’. He was still pulling a face as he passed her a mug of coffee and opened a fresh packet of cheap chocolate digestives.

‘What?’ asked Regan, catching sight of his twisted lips.

‘Well, I’m not being funny, Regan, but it’s not like your life was motoring along at a pace, now was it?’

‘Oh, thanks a bunch.’ She snatched a biscuit from the proffered packet.

‘No, what I mean is, in life’s race, you’re less Aston Martin, more Nissan Micra – slow and steady.’ He was smiling, like he thought this was a compliment.

‘Bloody hell, Dad. You’re not helping my self-esteem here.’ She’d been called lots of things in the past, but never a Nissan chuffing Micra. She knew he had a point though, however harshly worded. She’d liked to think she was pootling along taking the scenic route in life, but she could hardly claim that when on her life’s journey so far there really hadn’t been anything worth seeing – dead ends of jobs, a scrap heap of relationships and a junk yard full of mistakes. She dunked her biscuit and half of it disintegrated into her coffee. She frowned and tried to scoop it out with the other half of the biscuit, making the situation infinitely worse.

Graham was frowning. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘Cleo’s place.’ She didn’t like lying, especially not to her dad, but technically she was staying at Cleo’s – just in her studio and not in the flat where he had obviously assumed she meant, judging by the relief on his face. She knew he was secretly pleased that she wasn’t going to put him in the awkward position of making excuses as to why she couldn’t stay at his.

‘That’s good then. But you know if you’re desperate you’re welcome to stay here.’ His shoulders tensed.

‘It’s fine, Dad. It’s only temporary. Just until I get myself back on my feet.’ He looked relieved.

‘You okay for money? Because I’ve a little put aside.’

She doubted he had very much put by. He worked part-time in a newsagent’s and it was sweet of him to offer but she needed to sort this mess out on her own. ‘I’m fine.’ If she said it often enough with conviction there was a possibility that she might start to believe it herself. ‘Really. Fine.’

Three days later, she was all out of self-belief. And ice cream. All too quickly, her world had been turned upside down, and she had no idea how to right it. She knew the answer wasn’t to drink her troubles away, and she couldn’t afford alcohol anyway, so she had eaten a skip load of ice cream instead. Regan had been spending a lot of time with her new best friends Ben and Jerry, but sadly she didn’t find any answers at the bottom of the cartons – only brain freeze and a little self-loathing.

She decided that this was what rock bottom felt like. She’d heard from no-one with the exception of one FaceTime call from Cleo that she’d had to reject for fear of her spotting the familiar background of her own art studio. They’d had a text chat instead, which was nowhere near the same. No-one else had called. Nobody had noticed she had slipped off the planet. Not one other person cared.

She hadn’t showered in days and felt wretched, tired and lethargic – though some of it may have been down to too much ice cream. She had no telly, no WiFi and no future. Everything felt too difficult. There was so much that needed sorting out, but every time she thought about it, she thought her head might pop with the overload. So it was easier not to do anything at all.

Regan found herself at a new low when she tried to eat a pot noodle using two coffee stirrers for chopsticks. It was a tough challenge, but at least it was warm and kind of like a meal, although she wasn’t sure how much nutrition there was in the reconstituted dust and noodles. She counted three dried peas, which definitely didn’t get her close to her daily government-suggested fruit and veg targets.

She wondered at how quickly she’d lost everything, and if this was what had happened to Kevin. How had he found himself living on the streets? If it weren’t for Cleo’s studio being empty, that could have been her. The thought frightened her. She pulled over the box she’d filled in the office on That Day – which now seemed like ages ago – and sifted through the contents, sniffing her derision at the useless things inside. A stolen stapler; what good was that to her now? Unless she used it for stapling Alex’s testicles to his desk – but he wasn’t worth the staples. She found the Mantra card from Charlie, the gallant stranger who had pulled her off Alex. She turned it over. Saturdays at ten at the community centre. Charlie had said mindfulness might help her focus on what was good about the here and now. She gave another derisory snort – there was nothing good about her life.

Regan bit the inside of her mouth and pondered. She had nothing planned for Saturday – or the rest of her life – so there really was nothing to lose.

She sniffed her armpit, whipping her head back from the nasal attack. She couldn’t go anywhere smelling like that. What had she become? She straightened her spine. This had to stop, and it had to stop now, before she drifted into a pot-noodle-induced coma and was found in a giant spider’s web being nibbled on by rodents.

‘Right,’ she said out loud, giving herself a start because her voice was all croaky from not having spoken for days. She felt herself galvanising for action. What to do first? She caught another whiff of her armpit. Getting showered was definitely priority number one.

Regan had her most favourite trip to the gym ever and was pleased that her membership card still worked. With any luck, it would take Jarvis a while to realise he was still paying for the joint membership; and since he was still paying, it would be a shame not to get some use out of it.

In the past she’d only ever had a quick shower after a gym session and dashed out, but today she could set a more leisurely pace. She made the most of the free shampoo, conditioner and body wash and took her time drying and styling her hair – taking care not to make it too fluffy for fear of it looking like she was wearing a motorcycle helmet. She felt a lot better for it and a bit of a spring returned to her step.

Back at the studio, she washed her clothes in the sink using Cleo’s Molton Brown hand wash and hung them over Cleo’s three easels to dry. She’d bought a local paper, so she made herself a black coffee and sat and circled a number of potential jobs. This was progress. She had a tall mountain to climb, but she had a foothold and the only way was up.

However, a few hours later she started to feel like she was slipping back down the mountain. A phone call to a recruitment agency had her stumped at the first hurdle when they asked her for her home address. After a long pause she gave her dad’s details and explained it was temporary. The second hurdle was a bit more difficult – they wanted her to upload her CV to their website. She had no computer and she was dangerously close to her monthly download limit on her mobile. She felt a mudslide sweep her back down the mountain and went again in search of ice cream.