After the One, Cass Lester [top romance novels .txt] 📗

Chapter Three

Despite Nisha’s advice, after two solid weeks of filling in applications and uploading her CV to countless websites, Charley had nothing to show for her efforts except several pages of a meticulously completed spreadsheet and an inbox full of rejections. Slowly but surely, Charley’s self-esteem began to ebb away, and the fact that most of the rejections weren’t even addressed to her personally, but to ‘Dear Applicant’, eroded her confidence even further. Worse still, dozens of the companies – dozens – didn’t even think she was worth replying to at all. Despondency and a low-level persistent feeling of depression crept in as Charley altered the heading on her spreadsheet from Jobs I Want to Apply For to the more sobering title, Jobs I Can Apply For, and then, finally, to the more desperate-sounding Jobs I Haven’t Already Applied For. The shortness of the last list alarmed her, raising the frightening prospect that she might perhaps not be able to get a job at all.

The screen on her laptop had gone to sleep and Charley realised she had been sitting staring at it blankly for a long time. A glance at the kitchen clock informed her it was, somehow, way past lunchtime and she hadn’t eaten.

‘I’m losing track of time,’ she said. Then, realising she’d spoken out loud to a completely empty flat, told herself, It’s losing your mind you need to worry about.

Charley was a people person who needed the camaraderie and conversation of others to bounce off and bring her to life. She hadn’t spoken to anyone for days – no wonder she was talking to herself. Suddenly craving company, she picked up her phone. There was no point calling Tara or Nisha since they’d be working, but what about Angie? She had three kids, and only one of them was at school. She was almost bound to be home and up for a visit.

It was really, really tempting to go round to Angie’s and muck about with the kids. Or she could go round to Pam’s? The mere thought suddenly flooded her with a need for the reassuring presence, comfort calories and good old-fashioned mothering Pam always generously lavished on her. She would take herself off to Pam’s, she decided, until she remembered that she hadn’t been straight with Pam the last time her mother-in-law had called, and still hadn’t told her about her redundancy. A visit now would entail an uncomfortable confession, plus the admission that she didn’t actually have a job at the moment. She sighed heavily and put the phone back on the table. Bunking off to visit either Pam or Angie wasn’t going to help her get a job, was it?

A grumble from her stomach reminded her she really ought to eat something. She scanned the contents of the fridge; its pathetically empty shelves depressed her even more. She should go shopping, but she just couldn’t be arsed, and instead she forced herself to sit down in front of the computer again. There was a dull ping, and yet another job rejection joined the long list in her inbox, at which point she gave up and sat listening to the silence filling the empty flat. It was deafening.

In pure self-defence, she took herself round to Angie’s.

‘Come in, if you can get in!’ laughed Angie, opening the door.

‘I’ll give it a go!’ Charley grinned, trying to wade past Buster, the outsize chocolate Labrador who was bouncing around her dementedly, thumping his tail against her thigh, and the two small boys who had hurled themselves at her legs.

‘Charleeeeey!’

‘Hi, horrors!’ She laughed and ruffled the boys’ hair.

‘It’s chaos!’ Angie informed her cheerfully. ‘I’m painting the boys’ room.’

‘Again?’ Angie had only painted it two years ago just before Finn was born. Did the woman ever stop nesting?

‘Make some tea and come up.’ Angie turned to head up the stairs.

‘Tea?’ queried Charley. ‘Not coffee?’

‘Tea,’ Angie repeated casually. Too casually.

Charley hadn’t seen Angie go through two of her three pregnancies without knowing exactly what that meant.

Trying very hard to conceal the pang of jealousy threatening to contort her face, Charley rushed over to hug her. ‘Congratulations!’

Smiling blissfully, Angie turned and headed upstairs, the dog and the kids clambering after her.

It was hard not to envy Angie, who, quite simply, had the life Charley wanted. Where Charley had an empty flat and an emptying bank account, Angie had a house full of kids and animals. Piles of laundry, toys and games littered every surface, the smell of home baking permanently hung in the air and the whole place was a riot of colour, courtesy of Angie’s artistic talents. Giant hand-painted sunflowers burst into bloom on the kitchen walls while an enormous beanstalk meandered along the hall and up the side of the stairs. Upstairs her eldest child, Beth, went to sleep under a seascape, her deep blue bedroom walls teeming with yellow starfish, mermaids and a giant purple octopus. In Finn and Eliot’s room, adorably cute teddies drifted by on white fluffy clouds trailing rainbow bunting. Or rather, they had done – Charley wondered what was replacing them.

She made two mugs of tea, poured some milk into Eliot’s Spiderman beaker and into a smiley face tippy cup for Finn, and raided the cake tin on the kitchen table. A waft of syrup from a pile of crumbly, homemade flapjacks promised to more than make up for missing lunch. Putting everything on a tray, Charley went up to the boys’ room, where the furniture had been pushed into the middle and covered with a paint-splattered dust sheet.

‘We’re having pirates!’ yelled four-year-old Eliot.

‘Piwats!’ His little brother leaped up and down ecstatically.

‘Wow!’ Charley breathed, gazing at the scene Angie was finishing painting on the wall.

A massive pirate galleon, in full sail and with a Jolly Roger flag fluttering above the crow’s nest, sailed across the entire wall, cutting through an ocean of curly waves, while seagulls wheeled above it in a sunny sky. It looked like a