She’d worked there for twelve years. She loved it there. She would miss her staff, her duties, even her damned desk.
Julia shook her head again to oust the melancholy that always seemed threateningly close to drowning her and started to do what she’d always done when a project loomed.
She wrote a list.
She’d need a mobile phone.
She’d need a computer and e-mail.
She’d need a driver’s license and a car.
She’d need a work permit and to have her visa extended.
And she carried on writing everything she needed and then prioritising it.
She took out another piece of paper and she wrote down what she knew to be in her bank account and her investment accounts. She’d made a tidy profit from her house and car. She had some savings. She wasn’t destitute.
She started to budget her money, what she’d need, what she could afford. She’d have to have a talk with Douglas about a lot of things, including what she would put into the house. Keeping a house like this had to cost an extraordinary amount, anything she contributed would be a drop in the bucket. But she had not been brought up not to pay her way.
As she looked at the figures she realised that without a job she’d be out of money way too quickly. She had a six month visa but did not have the right to work or to healthcare. She’d need insurance… and it went on and on.
Julia started adding to her list and wondered how much insurance would cost and bent her head to the task of diverting her brain in the hopes of exhausting it so she could fall asleep and not thinking of anything else.
She put her elbow on the desk and touched the middle three fingers of her hand to her forehead, closing her eyes and rubbing away the gentle ache that had begun to throb there.
But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t keep the thoughts at bay.
She hadn’t expected very much out of her life. She never had big dreams or ambitions. She didn’t want fancy cars, huge houses, jetting around from exotic place to place. Sean had given her a taste of that and it wasn’t worth the price you had to pay to get it.
She was not a risk-taker. She liked things steady, familiar and normal. She liked her family close, her friends next door and to know exactly what aisle the cake mixes were in at the grocery store. All her life she did her utmost to keep everything just that way.
She had been pleased with her lot (after she’d divorced Sean, of course). She had a house she loved. She’d lived there five years and just the summer before had managed to renovate the last room so every inch of carpet, every piece of furniture, every last wineglass was exactly what she wanted.
And she had friends she was going to miss. She was going to miss Josie’s Margarita Mayhem Night that was held every year on the longest day. And the Christmas Party where they all trooped out in posh outfits to see the Nutcracker Suite and then came back to Tom and Mary’s to eat the vast array of delicious nibbles Mary spent days making. And Kelly’s Annual Birthday Extravaganza which was always a blast.
And of course there was Mom. She was really going to miss Patricia.
The three of them, Patricia, Gavin and Julia, had always been close. They had to be once Dad left them high and dry with only a token look back every once in awhile at the family he created and then abandoned.
Patricia was never the “cool” Mom. She was the stern and loving Mom and she was very wise. Life hadn’t dealt her a good hand, divorced young with two kids and an ex who forgot to pay the child support far more often than he remembered. He also forgot he had another family, vastly preferring (and not too concerned to show it) his two daughters and son from his beautiful, wealthy and upper class second wife. “The Izod Family” Gavin used to call them as a joke but it was too real to be truly funny and it always made Mom’s mouth tighten at the corners to hear him say it.
But, despite all this, Patricia had made a happy home, full of laughter, good times and support (with a great deal of meddling). She tried to fill the void (although sometimes failed) of an absent, careless father.
And as the years went by, Patricia and Julia’s relationship had changed from mother and daughter to confidants and friends.
Julia needed that. After she’d left Sean, her heart in tatters and her self-esteem so low she had to dig a ditch to drag it around after her, with the added burden of living a life as the unwanted daughter, Julia had decided she did not ever want another man. The men in her life had torn her heart out and kicked it around. Her father by not wanting her. In Sean’s case, four years she suffered his bad moods, cruel words, relentless attacks on her confidence, flirtations and infidelities. She figured she might find someone else eventually (although she didn’t really look). But Julia had rules. Whoever that someone would be, he wasn’t going to be handsome, wealthy or accomplished. He just had to be there. There to listen to her when she had a bad day. There to help her unpack the groceries. There to drive the car every once in awhile.
She was tired of always having to be the one to drive the car. She just wanted to get in and let someone else drive.
But now, any thought of that was far away. Now she had the children and this inconceivable situation and would likely be driving the car forever.
On that thought, she felt it and her head come up as her hand dropped.
What it was, she didn’t know. A draught against her ankles, but not just any draught, this was intensely cold and felt, somehow, menacing. She had kept the door to her room open just in case one of the children called, maybe it came from there.
She felt it again. It wasn’t a chill throughout the room, just a draught at her ankles. It was mid-October, and cold, but even the chill outside was not of the fierce arctic of the draught at her ankles.
She looked around the room and saw nothing. She’d turned on most of the lights but had not drawn the drapes. She stared out into the dark night wondering if Douglas had come home and opened the front door letting in the cold. Surely she’d have seen the lights of his car as the length of her suite ran along the front drive.