he was offering and was determined not to leave without having secured it.
‘I might not be what you’re looking for, but it looks like you’ll have to settle for me because no one else has applied for the job but me, have they?’ she challenged him.
That was true. And he just couldn’t understand why. He supposed he could advertise again, but if no one else applied and meantime this woman had got herself another job elsewhere, he’d have no one. He was desperate for someone to help him run his surgery, so as matters stood it appeared he had no choice but to suffer this applicant. She was better than nothing.
Reluctantly he told her, ‘I suppose we could see how it goes.’
Aidy’s face lit up.
‘I can start tomorrow.’ Then a thought struck her and, to show her commitment, she added, ‘Unless you’d like me to do anything for you tonight?’
Perish the thought. He needed the next few hours to get used to the idea that, due to circumstances beyond his control, he would be working closely with this irritating young woman. ‘No, no, tomorrow will be soon enough.’
Tomorrow would be soon enough for her too. Working with such a morose, self-important man was going to be challenging indeed, but she was up for that challenge in return for the wage it would bring her. Then it struck her she didn’t know yet what wage he was offering. ‘What is the pay for the job?’ she bluntly asked. She prayed it was sufficient for her to keep the family on, unlike the amount Marjorie Kilner was offering.
Ty wasn’t a mean man and had been fully prepared to reward the most suitable applicant with what he felt to be the fair amount. In light of the fact he didn’t really want this woman working for him, he was tempted to mention an amount so low it wouldn’t be worth her while, but then he reminded himself that she had been his only applicant and it would be both unethical and remiss of him not to pay her the same as anyone else. And, of course, the hours weren’t the regular office ones and that had to be taken into account. He told her, ‘One pound, three shillings and sixpence a week.’
Aidy wanted to clap her hands with joy. A couple of shillings short of what she’d have earned in the factory when meeting her expected targets, but with careful handling just about enough to scrape by on, helped along by the few coppers her grandmother insisted she contribute from the takings for her potions.
‘If that’s acceptable, I suppose I really ought to have your personal details,’ Ty said to her. ‘Shall we start with your name?’
Aidy was put out that she hadn’t made enough of an impression on him for him to have remembered it from her visits to him recently. But she supposed that, through the course of his work, he met so many people it wasn’t humanly possible for him to remember the names of all of them.
She looked at him a bit uncomfortably then. Everyone knew her as Aidy but that was not the name she had been given at birth. She was in fact called by a name she absolutely detested and had refused to use since she’d been old enough to realise she had been named at her father’s insistence after his own grandmother. She’d been a mean, spiteful woman but one who, it was rumoured by the family, had had a few pounds stashed under her bed, which her father had been hoping to inherit. He’d thought the deal would be sealed by his honouring her by naming his first-born after her. The rumour had turned out to be unfounded as she died owing tradesmen and neighbours far more than the few coppers she’d had in her purse at the time.
Irritated by this delay, Ty persisted, ‘You have got a name?’
‘Of course I have,’ she snapped back. ‘I’m known as Aidy Nelson.’
He frowned at her. ‘Known as? What is that supposed to mean?’
‘Just what I said. I’m known as Aidy Nelson.’ She noticed the suspicious look he was giving her, could see it going through his mind that she was possibly a fugitive from the law or something like that, hence the reason for her alias. She told him, ‘There’s nothing sinister behind it. I just don’t like my name. Hate it, in fact.’
So, against the odds, he and this woman did have something in common