Chapter 2
2
I drove home in a bit of a daze to my rented lakeside apartment. As I walked through the door and looked at its sparseness, something hit me. Because I was always at work or working away, I never spent much time there, but I saw it this morning through new eyes and as I looked around me trying to gain some comfort from the one place that you are supposed to feel safe and content, I realised that my home actually had no soul.
This was the place that Jamie and I had picked eight years ago, to spend what I thought would be the next chapter of our lives together. We chose the gorgeous Staffordshire lakeside setting as it was quite a trendy location, not too far from Stafford town centre where we both worked, and there were a few bars close by too. It was also the place that held so many memories; some great and some that I couldn’t bear to think about.
Out of habit, I picked up my phone to see whether I had any missed calls and realised that actually no one was going to call me. This was my personal phone and all my work calls would be going to the phone I’d left at the office. I felt like I’d lost my purpose. It was a really strange feeling. Normally I would walk through the door and set up my Mac on the dining room table, and it was always there in the background. But now, I had no computer to turn on. There was no pinging of emails, or dinging of our automated work communication system. Just silence. Even when I took time off, which was very rare for me, I always checked in every day, just in case anything important came through. But now there was nothing to check. I supposed at the agency I liked to feel like I was indispensable but now I thought about it, was anyone, ever? Was anyone at work even thinking about me now and how I felt? I’d thought some of them may have phoned me, to be honest, after they’d been told the news, but I had heard not a sausage from a soul that I had spent every day of my life with. It was weird and deathly quiet. And I hated it.
I had some serious thinking to do. What did I do now? What would the time ahead hold for me? Ronington’s PR and Marketing was everything to me; I’d thrown my heart and soul into that company for the last twelve years.
I really didn’t know what I was going to do with myself going forward and it was hugely worrying. What was I going to do with the rest of my life? How was I going to cope? What was I going to do for money? Would I have to go back to live with Mum and give up this flat? How did I actually feel about that? So many questions were running through my mind and it was overwhelming.
When I heard of other people losing their jobs in this way, I always wondered what sort of person it happened to. But now I’d been made redundant myself, I realised that anyone could be affected like this. How life could change in a heartbeat. And right now the overriding feeling I had was that I clearly must be totally useless and they didn’t want or need me.
I always thought I’d be settled in life by now, with a family of my own, juggling work and home life effectively, but at the grand old age of thirty-seven, I was single and childless. I’d always been the successful one, the one who left Giddywell to make a fantastic life for herself elsewhere. But now? I felt like such a loser. What would people think?
My heart began to beat faster once more as I focused again on what had happened to me. It had come as such a shock. This morning I was going to work thinking I was going to be promoted, and bang ! Not only did I not get the promotion that I’d been expecting, but I also now didn’t have a job at all.
As I started to feel nauseous again, I grabbed the back of the sofa for support. A wooziness took over my body and I had so much stuff going through my head, I felt like it was going to explode. So many questions to answer. I hadn’t felt this discombobulated since everything happened with Jamie.
This wasn’t me. My life was sorted. I was busy from early on a Monday morning to late on a Friday night and I worked most weekends too from home. Living alone and rushing around all the time meant that most days I didn’t bother with breakfast, grabbing a sandwich from a petrol station which I ate while driving and dining on ready meals each night, which probably weren’t all that good for my health or my weight. Which was probably why my backside wasn’t getting any smaller these days.
I wasn’t one for wasting time, even if it was just a few seconds. When I got up in the morning, I had my little routine where I filled the kettle and flicked it on while I went to the loo, so that the kettle was boiled when I got back, saving me valuable minutes of standing around doing nothing. While filling the sink with water to do the washing up, I’d be wiping the already sterile sides down. It was almost like I had to fill every second of my life with doing something.
I’m not sure when I started to do that. Probably when my thoughts began to overtake everything and I filled every second of my time with activity of some sort to stop me thinking. It struck me now though that I didn’t know how to relax. And right now, I felt like I didn’t even know what my purpose in life was. My breath started to speed up once more and I recognised the feeling that I hated. I was going to have to revert to my failsafe coping strategy which always calmed me down. I was going to have to make a list.
What did I need to do next? What steps did I need to take to move my life forward?
Buy a computer
Buy an iPad
Buy a car (in a month my company car will go back)
Find a job
Invest my redundancy money
Write a CV (blimey, haven’t done one of those for years!)
Fill my time (that was a list on its own)
The phone rang and Mum’s name flashed up.
‘Maddy, darling, it’s me. Mum.’ Normally I got quite annoyed when I received a call from Mum because a) she always called at the most inconvenient times and b) she always told me who it was despite the fact that her name flashed up in blooming big letters on the screen.
‘I’m sorry to bother you. I know you must be busy, but do you have one minute for me to ask you a very quick question? I know I’m a pain and I won’t keep you long. I promise. I just can’t think of anyone else to ask.’
I realised that for the first time in a very long while, I had all the time in the world to chat to Mum and she sounded delighted when I offered to pop round early afternoon instead of chatting on the phone. She said she’d make me lunch. I tried to remember when I last saw her and thought it must have been a good couple of months ago. What sort of a daughter must I have been to not see my mum for that long, when she only lived twenty minutes away and for her to start the conversation with ‘sorry to bother you’?
Looking at the clock, I realised that there were still three hours before I was due to see her. What had happened this morning was only just over an hour and a half ago, yet it seemed like hours had passed. My head was thumping, but I realised that I didn’t have to find the answers right this very minute, so I tumbled into bed, pulled the covers up over my shoulders as I felt a little cold and shivery, and surprisingly, slept.
* * *
When I woke, it took a couple of minutes for me to remember why I was in bed when it was light outside. Looking at the bedside clock, and realising that it was 12.24, reality came flooding back and hit me like a ton of bricks. Breathe, Maddy. Breathe! I told myself.
While I really wanted to wallow in bed and feel sorry for myself, I realised that could only be the start of a very slippery slope, so I dragged myself out of bed and over to my walk-in wardrobe, where I saw that my cleaner must have been in at some point early this morning as it was filled with my ironed clothes.
I supposed that was something I would have to start doing for myself if I didn’t have a job. How was I going to afford a cleaner? And did I really need one when I was at home all day? I hadn’t done my own cleaning for years.
Instinctively, I went to grab a suit and blouse, then realised I was going to Mum’s so I chose a pair of jeans and a casual shirt that was right at the back and that I hadn’t worn for ages, because I was always working. Even when I was at home, I always wore something reasonably smart, just in case I had to go into work at the drop of a hat.
Catching sight of myself in the bathroom mirror, I realised that I should probably sort my face out before I scared any small children that may be around. Not sure the Alice Cooper look was really me!
I used a little concealer under my eyes in an effort to hide the dark circles and red rims, brushed a little blusher over my cheeks, gave my lashes a lick of mascara and finished off with a little rosy-pink lip gloss. I normally wore my hair in an efficient bun, but I really couldn’t be bothered right then, so just ran my fingers through it and gave it a shake so it fell in natural waves around my shoulders. I was sure Mum wouldn’t mind and to be honest right now I didn’t have the energy to even worry about it. Jamie would never have wanted to see me like this and I’d never go to work in this dishevelled state.
Work! All of a sudden, it hit me that I wouldn’t be going back to Ronington’s. Ever. I had put my heart and soul into a job which I thought defined me, where I had thought I was valuable and part of something amazing. I knew it was my choice, to put my own life on hold, but it was only now that I realised that I had given far more out than I ever got back and that when the chips were down, a company had to do what they had to do, and if that meant that you were a casualty then that was just the way it was. Sometimes life seemed very unfair.