Monday to Friday Man Read online

  ‘It smells of silage round here,’ he laughs.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so stupid. I’ll have a lovely garden where I can grow my own vegetables and fruit,’ I insist. ‘Raspberries, potatoes and . . . and . . . purple sprouting broccoli!’

  ‘If you think you’re lonely now ...’

  ‘Lonely! I’m not lonely.’ I bend down to stroke Ruskin, curled up with his face resting on my feet.

  ‘Why are you really moving?’

  ‘What?’ I daren’t look up. His question takes my breath away.

  ‘Gilly, someone once told me I should leave London only when I hated it, when I’d squeezed all the juice out of it. Stupidly I didn’t take their advice and I miss it like mad. I’m not sure you’ve reached that stage yet.’

  I picture Ed again and at last some courage fires up in my belly.

  ‘Want to bet?’

  He nods.

  ‘I’m tired of the same old scenery. I’ve become immune to the wailing sirens and accidents that happen right under my nose. I hate paying the fucking congestion charge, Ruskin has no garden, just paving stones, hardly any of my friends still live in London and . . . and . . . the ones that do only invite me round for tea where I have to listen to their screaming children demanding ice cream in a cone not a bowl!’

  I breathe again. My God, that felt good.

  ‘I don’t have a job, well, not a proper job right now,’ I continue, like a pressure cooker letting off steam. ‘I’m free and single so I have nothing to lose, right? So what if I’m single? What if I never meet anyone, Richard? If I just live my whole life in London and then get buried in Hammersmith too? I’m scared, I’m ...’

  He sits up. ‘You’re scared?’

  ‘I’m so angry with myself.’

  ‘Why?’

  And then the strangest thing happens. I start to cry and Richard is handing me tissues and telling me to let it all out, his voice now soft, as though he’s my therapist.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say eventually, wiping my eyes. ‘I’m really all right . . .’ I falter. ‘Oh God, Richard,’ I exclaim, knowing I can’t fool him now, ‘I’m so embarrassed! I haven’t seen you in such a long time, and here I am breaking down in front of you.’

  What must he think of me?

  ‘You don’t need to be sorry.’ Richard smiles. ‘Happens all the time.’ I find myself smiling back at him. ‘But tell me,’ he asks gently, ‘what is it?’

  I sigh. ‘I still love him,’ I say.

  Richard listens patiently as I fill him in on my four-year relationship with Ed and how it ended abruptly, only two weeks before our Christmas wedding. There was no explanation from him except for a scribbled note on the hall table that read, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t marry you.’

  ‘Do you sometimes feel like you’re sitting on the sidelines, that you’re watching everybody’s life move on except your own?’ I ask him.

  ‘Often.’

  I tell him that I’d bumped into Ed and his future wife in Selfridges.

  ‘God, Richard, I’m stuck in a rut.’ I wait for him to say something comforting. ‘Tell me what I should do.’

  ‘You need to stop feeling so sorry for yourself and get on with it.’

  ‘What?’ I say, taken aback by the sudden change of tone.

  ‘I feel for you, Gilly, I really do. What this Ed did was unforgivable, but it’s been six months. You need to move on.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, bottom lip quivering.

  ‘Moving here isn’t right. You’re running away.’

  I fiddle with the strap of my handbag. ‘You’re married aren’t you, Richard?’

  ‘Divorced. It’s a lonely business. Believe me, I’ve felt like running away too.’

  I glance at him, surprised by this sudden confession.

  ‘If I were you, Gilly, I’d go back to London with my lovely dog and start having some fun again. What are you smiling about?’ he asks me now.

  ‘Going back home. London’s dirty, so expensive and everyone’s rude,’ I add. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, but the other day I was told to fuck off by a drunk on my own doorstep who then proceeded to chuck his beer can at me.’

  Richard smiles.

  I tell him how Gloria, my neighbour, had asked me if I had a new lodger who’d forgotten his key.

  ‘Oh my God!’ he exclaims as he rolls up his glossy property magazine and thumps it against the table in triumph. ‘I’ve got it,’ he says, sounding like Professor Higgins. ‘Get a lodger.’

  ‘A lodger?’

  He crosses his arms with satisfaction. ‘Yes! I was only reading about it in the paper the other day and how everyone’s renting out their spare room. Hang on, you’ve got a spare room, right?’

  I nod. ‘A very small one.’

  ‘There you go then.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ I need time to warm up to ideas.

  ‘It’s an easy way to make some money,’ he tempts me.

  I think about this. Since being made redundant from my last job my salary has plummeted. Mari, my dogwalking friend who owns the antiques business, can’t afford to pay me much more than the going rate for working in a shop. Recently I’ve been making my own packed lunch to save some cash.

  ‘I’m too old for a flatmate, I’ve done all that. I’m too set in my ways now.’

  ‘Well, unset.’

  Next thing I know he’s ushering Ruskin and me out of the door. ‘What are you doing?’ I say in protest as he propels me out into the fresh air.

  ‘Taking you out for lunch.’

  ‘Hang on ...’

  ‘There’s a good pub across the road. Clearly you need convincing,’ he finishes.

  3

  I am scrolling through the job section of my newspaper when Mari staggers into the shop carrying a marble bust. She’s just returned from a stock-buying trip in France. ‘Look at this handsome fellow, Gilly!’ She lowers him onto the sofa. Ruskin and Basil, Mari’s Jack Russell, reluctantly make room. ‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’

  He is, but where is he going to live for the next few months? The long oak table in the middle of the room is already piled high with treasures. ‘Is there a lot?’ I ask, following her outside.

  ‘Less than last time, more than the time before.’

  Soon I’m helping Mari unload the stock from her battered old white van, vases and lanterns littering the pavement. ‘All they need is a glaze and rich fabric cushions,’ Mari says, when she sees me raise an eyebrow at a set of rusting garden chairs.

  Mari, short for Marigold, is one of my most flamboyant dog-walking friends. She’s in her late forties with jet-black hair cut into a chic bob, and today she’s wearing a lime-green jumpsuit. I first met her four years ago in Ravenscourt Park, standing under the shade of an oak tree near to the underground station. She was smoking a menthol cigarette in between hurling a ball for Basil to retrieve. Mari is divorced with no children. ‘I never wanted them,’ she told me on one of our walks. ‘I only wanted a dog.’

  Her shop, along the Pimlico Road, specializes in antique chandeliers, mirrors, lanterns and vases, and she’s just been to various brocantes to find bargains. Mari has a great eye; she picks things up that most of us would walk straight past. With a bit of sprucing up, she can see that what is underneath the cobwebs, dead flies and dust is in fact a Georgian chandelier.

  ‘Now this is interesting,’ Mari tells me, both of us crouched down on the floor looking at a large, circular, silver light. ‘I would think it was made in the twenties,’ she guesses, ‘and used by surgeons to perform operations. Some clever person had the idea of taking the design from the eighteenth-century peasant lights.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I say, imagining it in my own fantasy French rustic kitchen.

  ‘What I love about antiques is they’re dead people’s stuff,’ Mari states. ‘Think of all the fabulous parties this light has witnessed,’ she says, gesturing to one of her new chandeliers that looks as if it’s come from the rubbish dump.

  �
�Yes, yes, but when Bob gets his hands on it, it’ll be perfect.’ Robert Chamarette is Mari’s glass and metal man, whom Mari loves almost as much as Basil. ‘Think of all the servants that have polished her,’ she continues, ‘all the scratches and knocks she’s had, and somehow she’s found her way into my shop.’

  ‘How much did it cost?’

  ‘Oh, Gilly,’ she tuts. ‘It’s not how much “it” cost. It’s how much I can sell it for.’

  Later that day, when Mari is out meeting a journalist who wants to hire some chandeliers for a Hello! photo shoot, I continue to scan the jobs section of my newspaper, but no jobs leap off the page. Maybe that’s because I just can’t face any more interviews? I think I’d rather endure root-canal treatment than be subjected to more rejections. I shut my eyes, remembering them . . .

  Interview One: ‘Gilly Brown, would you like to go in?’ the glamorous receptionist asks me. This job is in the fashion business, working for a dress-design company, so I’ve gone out of my way to look the part, wearing a fitted dress with new gladiator-style ankle boots.

  As I walk into the interview room, towards a stylish woman with blonde hair sitting behind her glass desk, I trip on the edging of the carpet, lose my balance and virtually fly towards her, finishing my grand entrance with a crash-landing into my seat. Straight away I know I haven’t got the job, rather like when I took my driving test and bumped up and over the pavement within the first minute.

  Interview Two: ‘What are your strengths and weaknesses?’ he asks. I’ve applied for a job in a bank.

  ‘I’m very good with people, but terrible with figures,’ I claim proudly. Why is he looking at me like that?

  Interview Three: ‘And you can work long hours, right?’ This interview is for a hot-shot advertising company and to my amazement it’s going really well.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I reply. ‘I will put in one hundred and ten per cent. I won’t let you down.’ Under the desk I cross my fingers. I’ve always hated that one hundred and ten per cent expression, but judging from his beaming smile, he loves it.

  He stands up and leans towards me. ‘Are you hungry, Gilly?’

  I glance at my watch. ‘Well, come to think of it, I am a bit peckish,’ I say, wondering where he’s going to take me for a celebratory lunch to announce I’ve got the job.

  ‘I meant hungry for success,’ he says quietly.

  I open my eyes and find myself laughing. Oh God. I failed so badly at the last fence. Needless to say I didn’t get that job either and after a series of rejections I really lost my nerve and confidence, so when Mari asked me if I would like to replace her old assistant, I said yes immediately. I thought a temporary job could be the perfect opportunity to clear my head, earn some money, really think about what to do next and brush up on my interview skills. My friends and family had smiled when I told them I was working in an antiques shop. Anna, my best friend, who works in marketing, said she’d imagined people in the antiques industry to be short and bald with half-moon spectacles perched on the end of their noses and hunched shoulders from peering too closely at faded trademarks on porcelain.

  But I like it here. Extraordinary customers come to Mari’s shop, from all over the world. Only yesterday an Italian woman swept in, modelling a Vivienne Westwood outfit with a flowing designer scarf that she’d insist on dramatically throwing across her shoulders, so much so that it would get tangled up in the antiques. Repeatedly I had to extricate it carefully from a vase or lantern, praying the material wouldn’t rip. When she attempted to walk downstairs in her killer heels, I suggested that she put on my Birkenstocks instead. You see, the shop is set on two levels. The ground floor has creaking floorboards, old kilim rugs designed to trip me up and treacherous stairs leading down to the basement. It smells slightly old and musty, and though everything is utterly higgledypiggledy, it has a certain charm to it. I cannot afford to work here for too long though. The trouble is I’ve asked myself again and again what I would like to do next, but I still don’t know. I don’t want to apply for just any old job; I want to find something that I feel passionate about.

  Mari’s real love is acting, and when people ask her what she does, she tells them proudly she’s an actress. In her free time she auditions and performs in local theatre productions. ‘I won’t let my dream go,’ she tells me. ‘I don’t want to die with a pinched, bitter face. You have to find something that makes you happy, Gilly.’

  What is my dream?

  Since leaving Manchester University with an English degree I’ve jumped from one job to another as if they were hot stepping stones. I smile, remembering one of my teachers saying I was like a little butterfly, never settling in one place for too long. ‘When I grow up I’m going to be a farmer,’ I’d say to my school friends one week. ‘I want lots of horses and dogs.’

  ‘A hairdresser,’ was the next idea.

  ‘Pop star.’

  ‘Model.’

  ‘Vet.’

  My cv is a jumble sale of different roles, ranging from charity work to even (ironically) working for a career consultant to help others find their dream job. I could apply for another post in the locations industry; apart from the boss, I enjoyed working there for three years. My father said it was a world record. I made some contacts. I’m sure I could call them to see if they knew of any job opportunities coming up.

  I gaze down at my paper. What’s stopping me? Why do I feel something is missing?

  ‘When you feel stuck in a rut,’ Richard had said, over a ploughman’s lunch, and sounding increasingly like an agony aunt, ‘you need to do something different. Life can be like a padlock refusing to open. One small change in the combination can finally open the door.’

  ‘Rusk, what am I going to do?’ I stroke him, wishing he had the answer.

  ‘Get a lodger,’ I hear Richard pipe up again. I jot down my monthly expenses and fret as the list goes on and on. Maybe I should cancel my gym membership. I need to be going at least three times a week to make it worthwhile.

  Richard’s got a point. I should make the most of my home; after all I’m lucky that I’m even on the property ladder. Five years ago, when my mother’s mother died, she left Nick and me enough money to put down a decent deposit on a house. My grandmother was an austere, distant figure in our lives; Dad always says she left us money in her will because she felt guilty for avoiding us when my disabled sister Megan was born.

  I stare at the list again. This morning my credit card bill arrived. It’s had one too many outings recently. I know I shouldn’t have bought my Birkenstocks. Plus my gas and electricity bills have gone up.

  There is no doubt that I need the rent. I pick up the phone.

  ‘A lodger? Hang on,’ Anna whispers, ‘vile boss coming, will call back.’

  Anna works for a marketing company that specializes mainly in sports and travel. Growing up, we went to the same school, formed our first pop band together with Nick called the Funky Monkeys, played and tobogganed in the snow, and Anna often came with our family when we took Megan to the seaside or the zoo.

  Just as I’m about to tuck into my packed lunch, I hear the little tinkle on the door and shove my sandwiches back inside the box. A stooped old man enters, carrying a Boots plastic bag. He shuffles towards me and I quickly warn him not to trip up on the rug. ‘Can I help?’ I ask politely. He’s wearing a collection of clothes that can only have come from a jumble sale.

  ‘Um.’ He lingers. ‘Um. I’m looking, yes lovely things here, looking for er . . . er . . . a set of um . . .’

  The phone rings and I’m wondering if I should pick it up. I notice the maroon socks inside his brown sandals. Oh, please hurry up.

  ‘Er . . . yes, now, what I’m after is . . . um, a set of um, er, china platters.’

  I try not to laugh. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, sir, but we only sell antiques, mainly lights and mirrors.’ I gesture to the mirrors pressed against the wall. He looks lost and unsure what to do next. I guide him gently out of the shop and point him i
n the direction of Peter Jones.

  I rush back, hearing the phone ring again. ‘Mari’s Antiques . . . oh, Anna, hi . . .’

  ‘Sorry about earlier. Got to be quick. I’ve just been talking to one of the guys at work and he does this Monday to Friday thing. Google it,’ she orders. She’s about to hang up when she can’t help saying, ‘I’m so relieved you’re not moving. I need you here. Us single girls, we need to stick together.’

  I smile. ‘I’d have missed you too.’

  ‘Monday to Friday,’ I type that evening, having just returned from a night out with Anna. We went to one of our favourite Greek restaurants near her flat in Clapham.

  I love my evenings with Anna. We have known each other since childhood, and she is like a ray of sunshine, someone whom I always feel better for seeing. Currently she’s single, though how long that will last who knows? Anna has no problem attracting men. She’s fair with a spattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and men fall for her husky voice and infectious laugh. ‘My problem is I become restless quickly,’ she says. Anna claims she’s had enough of men now, she positively wants to be single, but I know the real reason why she finds it hard to commit. She’s always been in love with Paul, one of her colleagues at work. Nothing’s happened between them because he’s married. I haven’t met him yet.

  I click onto the Monday to Friday site now.

  ‘By the way, how come you decided to find a lodger?’ Anna had asked earlier tonight.

  ‘I’m going to get over Ed,’ I announced proudly. ‘If he can move on, so can I.’

  ‘About time!’

  I tell her about Richard, and that while he was a useless estate agent, he’d made a lot of sense with this lodger idea.

  ‘I could kiss the ground Richard walks on! Is he married?’ she’d added.

  A clean-shaven man called Miles pops up onto the screen with a beaming white-toothed smile, modelling a City suit. ‘Monday to Friday works like a dream,’ he says. ‘No long commute to work, no traffic jams! Just a simple hop and a skip on the tube, and voilà! I’m in the office. Then, come the weekend, I go home for real. I couldn’t recommend it more as it ticks all the boxes. It’s a no-brainer!’