Chapter 3
As I brush my teeth, I conjure up a three-step plan.
Step one: appeal the decision not to offer me the fellowship.
Stalk Banbridge postgraduate vacancies and apply for anything that even sniffs of my qualification.
Or just apply for everything: groundskeeper, librarian, landlady at the Fox and Hound, living specimen for medical students.
Anything and everything. I need to get back there.
I call Dr Burley but get no answer. I leave a message for him to call me back URGENTLY.
Step two: getting aforementioned job will enable me to move out and resume a life that merits getting dressed in the mornings.
Step three: regain dignity. Fall in love with someone gorgeous and rich and clever so I can montage my beautiful ‘Best Thing I Never Had’ life on social media for Harriet and Gregory to see.
Get ripped and toned and serene and Zen-like.
Be able to just let stuff go and not carry inwardly corrosive grudges; be all ‘I wish you well, meagre hater’.
I’m going to be the Xena: Warrior Princess of shit-togetherness.
This is good. This is going to work. It shouldn’t even be that difficult, because if I manage to get a job back in Banbridge, then all the other stuff will just naturally follow.
I shower, pull on my jeans and jumper and do what most graduates do the day after they leave uni: go down to the job centre.
I sit in the waiting area with a ticker-tape number that makes me feel like I’m holding my own barcode.
There’s a very fat man wearing stained grey tracksuit bottoms, the dribble on his stubble looking weirdly like dew glistening on a black lawn.
I smile at him when he makes eye contact, causing him to immediately dart his eyes away, like he’s afraid I’m flirting with him.
I take out my phone and play Candy Crush. It’s a lesser hell.
The sign flashes 632 and shifty ‘don’t make eyes at me’ man waddles forward.
This means I’m up next, so it’s time for me to start putting my career head on.
I reread the application form I’ve filled in.
I think it’s pretty impressive, actually.
I’ve got my CV up to date and the qualifications look great – first-class honours in my bachelor’s degree, my MSc and my PhD.
The second referee box is blank as I can’t use Dr Winters any more and I’m not sure who to stick down in her place just yet.
Employment history is also a teensy bit blank, but I can’t do anything about that.
I’ve been in education all my life and that’s kind of the way I’d hoped to continue.
I need to stay positive. Remember that this is only temporary.
I’m just here until I can find my way back to Banbridge.
‘A bend in the road is not the end of the road,’ I mutter to myself.
Oh lordy, what am I saying? I am channelling my mother in one of her more cringeworthy Mama Cliché moments.
This fridge-magnet wisdom is infectious.
As in, likely to gnaw away at your bruised intellect until you succumb to moistening your bleeding gums with ice-cold, numbing placebos.
I run my tongue over my teeth. I’ve had an existential battering; I’m too weak to fight folly with conventional reason.
Let’s hope I make it to lunchtime without counting my chickens or crying over spilt milk.
A lady in a dark green headdress joins us, manoeuvring her pink double buggy in between the fixed plastic chairs.
I want to congratulate her on having utterly silent kids until I catch a glimpse of four cats climbing in and over the padded seating.
I decide just to leave it be and stare at my application form in my lap.
I’ve got to make this work. When I get in there, I will make it crystal clear that I am open to any reasonable vacancy and that I’ll work anywhere, though nowhere cold or with a poor human rights record or on the Northern Line.
Perfect. I smooth down my jeans, tighten my topknot and give my lips a quick lick of gloss. Number 633 is ready.
Number 632 must have left the building through some secret disposal chute, because within five minutes my number is flashing in red digits on the mounted screen.
I turn the handle on the door labelled Interview Room to find a maze of grey partitioning.
A very tall, very thin young man who looks no older than twelve years old leans over a desk stacked with handwritten forms that appear to be printed on recycled newspaper.
His desk is a mess, the frames of his glasses are uneven, his tie is tugged to the side; even his teeth seem to be pulling in different directions.
And he looks like he should be kicking a football in the car park with his school friends.
Stay positive, Poppy. This is only temporary.
I put on my best fake smile and this helps me relax enough to shake his hand and take the seat he has offered me.
‘I’m Markus, your career facilitator and transition mentor. A pleasure to meet you …’ he scans my application form, ‘Poppy! Have I got that right?’
‘Yes, Poppy Bloom, that’s me. Dr Poppy Bloom, actually.’
He dips his chin and raises his eyebrows as if to say ‘get you’, then holds my application form close to his face, trying, I imagine, to read very quickly while hiding behind his computer screen.
‘Right, the purpose of today is to establish your eligibility for full-time employment, identify your needs as a job seeker and try to answer any questions you may have regarding the process into permanent gainful employment. Sound okay with you?’ he says, and I nod my co-operation.
‘So, I’ll just set you up on our database and that will kick-start the process of finding a suitable vacancy for your skill set.
’ He hasn’t made wonky eye contact with me since our handshake, and I suspect this patter is so scripted that he doesn’t even know what he’s saying any more; he just rattles it off meaninglessly, a little like the Scout promise.
The computer bleeps its acceptance of my details. He shuffles in his seat and cracks his neck.
‘And we are in! Welcome to your future, Poppy.’ He taps the side of his monitor. ‘In here is everything you could wish for in terms of your career. I like to call it the Job Genie. Get it?’ He runs his hand up and down the monitor. ‘Would you like to rub the Job Genie?’
I shuffle backwards into the seat of my chair, shaking my head.
‘No? Not willing to move outside your comfort zone? Well, that’s your call, Poppy. However, I have to admit it’s not a good start. Maybe it’s time to open your mind a little to possibilities you may not have previously considered? Do things you didn’t think you could do?’
Markus closes his eyes and breathes deeply through his nose. I think he has watched Matilda too many times and is trying to control my mind. Finally I reach out, quickly air-swiping my hand down the side of his monitor. He joins his palms together and leers at me.
‘Good. Very, very good. Okay, now that we are on the same page, the Genie needs to ask you a few questions. He can help make your wishes come true and grant you the job of your dreams.’
‘Sounds great,’ I tell him. ‘Fire away.’ This sounds easier than I thought.
Markus licks his dry, cracked lips and begins his line of questioning with all the solemnity of a Mastermind presenter.
‘Do you drive?’
‘No,’ I tell him, and he types in my answer with one finger.
‘Do you own a car?’
‘Well, hardly … I don’t drive.’
He flashes me a look.
‘Sorry, the answer is no. No, I do not own a car.’
‘Are you married?’
‘No.’
He punches the same key again. No. No. No.
‘Any children or dependants under the age of sixteen?’
‘No.’
‘Homeowner?’
‘Nope.’ Bloody hell, Markus, kick a girl while she’s down, why don’t you?
‘Tenant?’
‘Yes! Yes! The answer is yes. I am a tenant. Yes, I am.’ Thank God, an affirmative answer.
Markus nods appreciatively. ‘Okay, so how much is your weekly rent, excluding bills and council tax?’
‘Oh, nothing. It’s free,’ I tell him. ‘I’m living with my parents at the moment.’
Markus sighs and punches the NO button, deleting my previous affirmative answer.
‘It’s only temporary,’ I say.
Markus winks at me. ‘Yeah. Temporary. We hear that a lot.’
‘But it is only temporary! I’m just here because I’m in between …
opportunities at the moment. Make no mistake, Markus, I have no intention of sticking around at my parents’ house with nothing to do and no one to do it with.
I intend to implement my three-step plan as a matter of urgency and then I’ll be on my way again very, very shortly. ’
‘Three-step plan? Isn’t that for alcoholics?’
‘No. That’s the twelve-step plan. My plan has only THREE steps to get me back to where I belong, back home to the low lights and darkened corners of academic sanctuary. So when I say that this is only temporary, I really, really mean it, okay?’
Markus is studying the ragged cuticle of his thumbnail. ‘National Insurance number?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Bank account number? Sort code?’
‘I don’t know. My mum usually deals with all this stuff. I haven’t a clue.’
Markus looks over the rim of his glasses.
‘Passport number?’ He mouths, ‘I don’t know’ along with me.
‘Qualifications in …?’
Okay, I’m back in the game. I take a deep breath and resume Mastermind posture. ‘Psychology – clinical research and analysis. Doctorate.’
He nods and punches in some more letters with his one stiffened typing finger.
He looks at my application form, back to the screen, stabs the keyboard again, squinting back over to my application.
I can’t see the screen from where I’m sitting, but I can see the flummoxed look on his flat, asymmetrical face.