heavy silver bracelet around her wrist. “Kaboom!” she’d said suddenly, and swirled her hands in opposite directions to indicate an explosion, her eyes wide. Jane had laughed, even while she thought, Great. I’ve made friends with a crazy lady.
The only reason Jane had had an enemy in primary school was because it was decreed to be so by a pretty, charismatic girl called Emily Berry, who always wore red ladybug hair clips in her hair. Was Madeline the forty-year-old version of Emily Berry? Champagne instead of lemonade. Bright red lipstick instead of strawberry-flavored lip gloss. The sort of girl who merrily stirred up trouble for you and you still loved her.
Jane shook her head to clear it. This was ridiculous. She was a grown-up. She was not going to end up in the principal’s office like she had when she was ten. (Emily had sat up on the chair next to her, kicking her legs, chewing gum and grinning over at Jane whenever the principal looked the other way, as if it were all a great lark.)
Right. Focus.
She picked up the next document from Pete the Plumber’s shoe box and held it carefully with her fingertips. It was greasy to touch. This was an invoice from a wholesale plumbing supplier. Well done, Pete. This actually relates to your business.
She rested her hands on the keyboard. Come on. Ready, set, go. In order for the data-inputting side of her job to be both profitable and bearable she had to work fast. The first time an accountant gave her a job, he’d told her it was about six to eight hours’ work. She’d done it in four, charged him for six. Since her first job she’d gotten even faster. It was like playing a computer game, seeing if she could get to a higher level each time.
It wasn’t her dream job, but she did quite enjoy the satisfaction of transforming a messy pile of paperwork into neat rows of figures. She loved calling up her clients, who were now mostly small-business people like Pete, and telling them she’d found a new deduction. Best of all, she was proud of the fact that she’d supported herself and Ziggy for the last five years without having to ask her parents for money, even if it had meant that she sometimes worked well into the night while he slept.
This was not the career she’d dreamed of as an ambitious seventeen-year-old, but now it was hard to remember ever feeling innocent and audacious enough to dream of a certain type of life, as if you got to choose how things turned out.
A seagull squawked, and for a moment she was confused by the sound.
Well, she’d chosen this. She’d chosen to live by the beach, as if she had as much right as anyone else. She could reward herself for two hours’ work with a walk on the beach. A walk on the beach in the middle of the day. She could go back to Blue Blues, buy a coffee to go and then take an arty photo of it sitting on a fence with the sea in the background and post it on Facebook with a comment: Work break! How lucky am I? People would write, Jealous!
If she packaged the perfect Facebook life, maybe she would start to believe it herself.
Or she could even post, Mad as hell!! Ziggy the only one in the class not invited to a birthday party!! Grrrrr. And everyone would write comforting things, like, WTF? and Awwww. Poor little Ziggy!
She could shrink her fears down into innocuous little status updates that drifted away on the news feeds of her friends.
Then she and Ziggy would be normal people. Maybe she’d even go on a date. Keep Mum happy.
She picked up her mobile phone and read the text her friend Anna had sent yesterday.
Remember Greg? My cousin u met when we were like 15?! He’s moved to Syd. Wants your number to ask u for a drink! OK? No pressure! (He’s pretty hot now. Got my genes!! Ha ha.) x
Right.
She remembered Greg. He’d been shy. Short. Reddish hair. He’d made a lame joke that no one got, and then when everyone said, “What? What?” he’d said, “Don’t worry about it!” That had stuck in her head because she’d felt sorry for him.
Why not?
She could handle a drink with Greg.
It was time. Ziggy was in school. She lived by the beach.
She sent back the text: OK x.
She took a sip of her tea and