it run out, then, like at a jumble sale?’ She emits a dry, humourless laugh. ‘Well, never mind that. There’s a job here in the paper and it sounds ideal for Will …’
‘Thanks, Gloria, but I really think he’s fine, you know? I don’t want to keep bombarding him with suggestions …’
‘… They offer full training and excellent prospects,’ she witters on, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘I was worried when I saw him on Saturday. He seemed a little … flat.’
‘No, he’s fine, really – he’s great. So, um, what kind of job is it, just out of interest?’
‘Traffic warden. Sounds like there’s a shortage and, let’s face it, they’re always needed—’
‘Gloria,’ I cut in, catching Will’s eye, ‘I’m not sure he’d want to be a traffic warden.’
Will splutters his coffee.
‘Is that him, is he back?’
‘No, no, that’s Ollie,’ I say quickly, wondering at which point she’ll tire of being his personal career advisor: when he does find paid work, presumably. Another reason for him to ramp up the job hunt …
‘I think he should at least consider it,’ Gloria says, sounding put out.
‘I’m sure he will,’ I say, having difficulty maintaining a serious voice with Will miming throat-cutting motions across the kitchen. ‘Sorry, Gloria, but I really need to get off to work …’ I finish the call and kiss Ollie goodbye as he rushes off to meet his friend Saul, then head upstairs to find Rosie. Normally, she doesn’t need any chivvying to get ready for school. ‘Hon,’ I say, finding her hunched over her laptop on her bed. ‘You should be gone by now. It’s really late …’
‘Yeah-in-a-minute,’ she murmurs, eyes fixed on the screen. I can sense her mentally shooing me away.
‘What are you looking at? Is it a homework thing?’
‘No, it’s a fashion site …’
‘At twenty past eight? Come on, Rosie—’
‘I need to study this stuff,’ she mutters.
‘You mean you’re studying fashion? Is this for art or something?’
Ignoring me, she leans closer to the laptop. I peer over her shoulder. Models with haunted eyes and matted, dirty-looking hair are wearing baggy beige shifts in a setting which looks, to my untrained, un-fashiony eye, like a derelict psychiatric hospital. There are rusting iron beds, a sinister-looking trolley and, lurking in a corner, a concerned-looking man with Clark Kent spectacles and a clipboard. I glance at Rosie’s open notepad, in which she has written: Key trends. Unstructured nudes in pale plaster hues …
‘What’s an unstructured nude?’ I ask.
‘Um, I don’t really know,’ she admits.
‘It sounds a bit worrying,’ I add with a smile.
Rosie sniffs and writes: Washed-out colour palette. ‘Wow,’ I mutter. ‘The fashion industry must be populated by geniuses if this is what we’ve got to look forward to. Looks more like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest …’
‘Huh?’ She turns to me.
‘Classic film with Jack Nicholson set in a psychiatric hospital. Brilliant, but not really known for the outfits. I mean, it’s not Breakfast at Tiffany’s …’ I break off, realising I’ve lost her. ‘Why are you looking at this stuff anyway?’
‘For the thing after school.’
Ah, the agency meeting. ‘You don’t have to swot, you know. They’re not going to quiz you about hem lengths and trouser shapes …’
She pushes away a frond of dark hair that’s escaped from her sensible ponytail. While Rosie enjoys rummaging through the rails in Top Shop, she’s never been remotely interested in cutting-edge trends. She errs towards the casual: jeans, baggy sweaters and pretty embellished tops. ‘Look,’ she says, sighing, ‘I’ll feel better if I’m prepared, okay? You’re always telling me that.’
‘Yes, for an English or history exam. This is different …’ I glance at her dressing table, on which she appears to have tipped out every item of make-up she owns. Not that there’s much; she only tends to wear it for a night out. ‘Remember they want you to look natural,’ I add.
‘Yes, Mum, I know. Why are you and Dad coming anyway? I mean, I’m not going to get lost, you know. And it’s not a family outing. It’s not like we’re going to Madame Tussaud’s …’
‘We’re coming, Rosie, and that’s that. No need to be so snappy.’
With another dramatic sigh she shuts her laptop. ‘Sorry. I’m just a bit nervous, Mum …’
‘Hey,’ I say, pulling her in for a hug, ‘it’ll be fine. And it’s no big deal, is it? It’s just—’
‘A chat,’ she chips in, mustering a big, brave smile, before grabbing her jacket and scampering off.
Back downstairs, I give Will a hasty kiss goodbye as I, too, should have set off by now. As I step out into the bright sunshine, I thank my lucky stars – not for the first time – that I have a job to go to.
I enjoy my drive to work, despite the strange whiff in my car – fermenting apple cores, laced with stale biscuits – which I think is a hangover from when the kids were little, and couldn’t cope with a ten-minute journey without a huge array of snacks, and which never seems to fade, no matter how vigorously I go at it with the hoover. In fact, driving is blissful compared to dealing with Gloria’s well-meaning natterings, and ogling ‘pale plaster’ tabards, which reminds me that our kitchen desperately needs a lick of paint. We went for bare plaster walls, seduced by pictures in a magazine where it seemed to evoke a sort of faded beauty, like a Toast catalogue. In fact, it just looks like we couldn’t be bothered to finish the room. We can’t afford decorators, and I’m holding off suggesting that Will does it, in case it further delays his return to the world of paid employment.
As I’m heading out of London, and away from the worst of the traffic, I soon make up for lost time, and by the time I pull into the car park at Archie’s, I’m all soothed. I have a quick chat with Freya and Jen, who run the visitors’ centre and shop, then trot upstairs to the light, airy office. Our website implies that our potato chips are hand crafted in our home kitchen, deep in the Essex countryside. It is the country, just about; i.e., we’re not quite on the Tube, and are surrounded by flat, scrubby fields, and the building I work in is a converted village school with a small, tidy garden in front. But this isn’t where our crisps are actually made. That happens in an ugly gunmetal-grey manufacturing plant, concealed by a dense row of conifers. It’s why we don’t offer factory tours. The public would come expecting to see a kindly granny carving Maris Pipers, and discover a terrifying slicing machine and several enormous vats of bubbling oil manned by twenty-odd employees.
I pull off my jacket, and consider texting Rosie to ask if she’s feeling okay about the model agency meeting – as she clearly isn’t – then decide against it. She’ll be at school, and anyway, the more I try to reassure her that it’ll
