Summer Daydreams (8 page)
It’s clear that Olly and Petal have spent the afternoon baking and I get an unwanted and unfamiliar twinge of jealousy that Olly is spending much more quality time with our daughter than I am. I sample one of the cakes and conclude that they really are very good.
When Olly comes down, he’s changed into his work clothes. A grey-that-was-once-white T-shirt with The Beatles on the front and jeans with no knees. The scruffier he is the more I love him. He adds some cold water to his cup and gulps down his coffee. ‘Got to fly.’
‘So soon?’ I wind my arms round his waist and pull him close.
‘Oh, what I wouldn’t give to lie in these arms tonight.’ He presses his face against my hair. ‘At the weekend,’ he says. ‘We can snatch some time together at the weekend.’
‘I’ll hold you to it.’
He kisses me briefly and then leaves.
I wander round the house aimlessly for ten minutes while I sip my coffee and I would so love to switch on the television and just lie on the sofa and watch something mindless, but I have a project to do for tomorrow and I haven’t even begun to think about it.
Clearing a space in the middle of Petal’s toys, I settle on the floor and pull my bag with my college work in it towards me. My eyes are so heavy. I could just do with half an hour’s sleep, but it’s just not going to be possible. I must get this work done. It’s for Amelia Fallon, my course tutor – she of the pinched face and the turned-up nose – and I know that it doesn’t just have to be good, it has to be marvellous.
Dragging a cushion from the sofa, I plump it up and then stretch out on the floor, resting my head on it while I start some doodles. My eyes feel like lead weights. This level of tiredness surely isn’t conducive to fabulous creativity. Coffee, coffee, I need more coffee. I shake myself awake and swallow the dregs from my cup. I’ll just do half an hour on this and then I’ll make myself another one.
What seems like a minute later and Olly is stroking my hair. I open my eyes. Oh, God, I must have fallen asleep when I really didn’t mean to. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I could ask you the same thing.’
I’m still lying on the floor, head on my cushion, work – untouched – spread out in front of me. I hear myself groan. Surely he hasn’t come back from his night shift already?
‘Please tell me that I haven’t been here all night.’
‘Sadly, you have been here all night.’
I haul myself up. Every bone in my body aches where I’ve been lying on the hard floor.
He sits down beside me and I lean against him and start to cry. ‘I’m so tired,’ I tell him. ‘So very tired.’
‘Don’t go in today,’ Olly suggests. ‘Go to bed. Catch up on your sleep.’
‘I have to go in today. I’ve got an assessment with that old harridan who’s my course tutor.’ She would just love it if I was absent for that. I’m sure she’d just love to mark up a
nul points
on my report card. ‘I can’t miss this.’
‘You can barely keep your eyes open, Nell. Nothing is that important.’
‘It is,’ I sob. ‘It’s important to me.’
He studies me and his face assumes a resigned expression. ‘Then go and have a shower while I make breakfast.’
I glance at my watch. No chance of churning out a fabulous project now. I’ll just explain exactly what happened to Amelia Fallon and the difficulties of my situation. I’m sure she’ll understand. Won’t she?
‘It’s not good enough, Nell,’ Amelia Pinched-Face-Turned-up-Nose Fallon says. ‘It’s really not good enough.’
We’re sitting at opposite sides of her desk and I feel like I am five years old again and in trouble with the head teacher. Needless to say, I was late and my interview/interrogation has not got off to a good start. Outside the door I can hear the noisy buzz of the college, students chattering, feet clattering. In here it is silent, and about as comfortable as a tomb.
I have just explained that I have not completed – not even begun – my latest project and to say that it has not gone down well, is something of an understatement.
After an awkward amount of time has passed, Amelia folds her arms and leans forward. Her face is close to mine and I resist the urge to back away. She lets out a weary sigh. I am all the troubles in her world personified. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave the course.’
That hits me like a body blow. ‘Leave?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
She isn’t afraid at all. I can tell that much. But whatever I had expected from today, this wasn’t it. I thought she would complain, lecture, reprimand. I didn’t think that she would simply truncate my dream. I’m struggling to hold my tears in check, but this woman will not make me cry. When I find my voice, I ask, ‘But why?’
She purses those hideous lips. ‘I’m not really sure that you’re cut out for this. Your work is always late.
You’re
always late. When you do deliver the required projects, they aren’t really up to scratch.’
‘I’ve been here a few weeks,’ I plead. ‘How can you tell yet? I’ve been out of full-time education for years. It may just be taking me longer to get into it than the other students.’ I could be the tortoise to their hares. I can’t be worse than any of those kids, I think. I can’t. Really, I can’t. ‘On top of everything, I have a job to hold down and my daughter to look after.’
‘This only makes me think that you won’t be able to manage
at all
when the pressure is really on.’
I’m speechless.
‘Do you think I should make allowances for you? When everyone else is coping quite nicely, you think you should be a special case?’
Yes, I want to say. Isn’t that the point of your job? Aren’t you here to help me when it’s all going tits up? You should understand, more than anyone, that I’m trying my best and this is probably more important, more critical to me than any of the other youngsters who have much more of their lives left to make mistakes, to realise their ambitions.
‘I can arrange for a refund for you for the rest of your fees,’ she says without warmth. ‘That’s the best I can offer.’
‘Don’t I have the right to appeal?’ What I mean is, can’t
someone
in this college help me? I can’t only be at the mercy of this woman who has clearly decided to get rid of me simply because she can. Because she’s bitter and twisted. Because she has some point to prove.
‘I’m afraid not.’ My tutor closes the folder in front of her that bears my name.
I’m history. Just like that. She stands up. I’m to be dismissed.
‘One day you’ll thank me for this. I’m doing you a favour, Nell. Perhaps you need to rethink your plans. I simply think you aren’t good enough to make it in this world.’
That cuts me to the quick. I am good enough. I’m sure that I am.
‘I can prove that I am.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Everyone deserves a second chance.’
But as she ushers me to the door, it seems that Amelia Fallon is unmoved.
In a daze, I walk out of the college. For hours I wander about aimlessly trying to get my head straight and failing. My dreams, before they even got off the ground, have crashed and burned round my ears. Up by the busy library, I sit alone in the small and pretty Physic Garden that’s right next door. I sometimes come to this place with Petal after we’ve collected new books for her to read. We both love it here. It’s a quiet little oasis in the bustling town centre. I’m surrounded by plants that are supposed to heal or provide succour – lavender, chamomile, St John’s wort. Today, they do nothing for me. I crush some lavender in my hand and breathe in the scent. Pretty, but my mind remains in turmoil. The wind whips up and I get so cold that my bones start to freeze and my brain goes numb. So I move on again.
I don’t really know where I’m going, but I eventually find myself outside Live and Let Fry just as they are about to close up after lunchtime service, which is just as well as I don’t want to go home while I’m in this state.
My eyes are raw from crying and I stumble inside. Constance is wiping down the tables and as soon as she sees me, she abandons her cloth and takes me in her arms.
‘Nell, love,’ she says, frowning. ‘What on earth is the matter?’
‘College,’ I sob. ‘I’ve been thrown off my course.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ she says, hand going to her heart. ‘Is that all? I thought someone was hurt. Now dry those tears. Thrown off your course?’ She tuts. ‘That can be fixed.’
She leads me to a table and sits me down. Then she calls out. ‘Phil! Phil! Our Nell is here and she needs tea!’
Phil and Jenny appear from the back of the chippy. My boss’s face falls when he sees me. ‘Nell, love.’ He comes and slips into the seat next to me and puts his arm round my shoulder, which makes the tears that I just about had under control flow again. This place feels like my sanctuary, my home. I’m loved here, not out on a limb. They don’t think I’m stupid, lazy, incapable. They don’t tell me here that I’m not good enough.
Jen says, ‘I’ll make that tea.’ She disappears into the back once more.
Constance hands me a napkin and I blow my nose into it.
‘Now then,’ Phil says softly. ‘Tell us all about it.’
I launch into my tale of how I’ve struggled to keep up with the work, struggled to keep all of my balls in the air, struggled to make the one important person at the college like me, like my work.
‘Oh, Nell,’ Phil says after he hears me out. ‘We could have helped you out. Why didn’t you say? We thought you were eating it up for breakfast. None of us knew you were struggling. We’re your friends, Nell.’
‘I wanted to show you all that I could do it.’ Look where that’s left me. My eyes fill with tears again.
‘Don’t fret,’ he says, patting my back. ‘There are other courses.’
‘She thought my work was rubbish, Phil.’ She thought
I
was rubbish. ‘What if I sign up for another course and they say the same thing?’ Then all my dreams, my hopes will be truly crushed.
‘They won’t,’ he assures me. ‘You’re wonderful. I’ve a good mind to go down to that college and drag that woman up here and make her look at what you’ve done. You were too good for them, that’s the problem.’
I have to laugh at that. ‘It’s lovely to have friends who have such blind faith in me.’
‘It’s not blind,’ Phil points out. ‘We can see what your work has done. She’s the one who can’t.’
Jen brings the tea and some chocolate digestives and we all dig in, gratefully.
‘She’s probably just jealous,’ is Jen’s take on this. ‘You’re young and fit and have the whole of your life ahead of you. Well, most of it. She’s a bitter old bag who probably hasn’t had a decent shag in years.’
That makes us all laugh. If only life were so simple. But the long and the short of it is that, decent shag or not, she still had my future in her hands. And she decided that it was not going to be on her bloody course, come hell and high water.
I put my head in my hands.
‘So what now?’ Constance wants to know.
‘Can I have my full-time job back, Phil? I’m going to be free at lunchtime now.’ I try to make light of it but inside my heart is breaking.
‘No,’ Phil says. ‘No. I’m not having you back here.’
He sounds fairly adamant.
‘You’re not giving up that easily, Nell McNamara. Oh, no.’
‘I can’t face starting another college course,’ I tell him. ‘Anywhere I went would be further away for one thing, and even more difficult to work round Petal.’ Not to mention the fact that my already shaky confidence, my self-esteem, has been smashed into the weeds.
Constance holds my hands. ‘Phil’s right, love. Don’t give up this easily. We need to come up with a Plan B.’
Plan B could just be to stay working in a chippy for the rest of my life with my good and well-meaning friends.
‘Will you get any money back from the course?’ Phil asks.
‘Full refund,’ I tell him. That offers some consolation. Phil’s money hasn’t been completely wasted. ‘At least that’s not lost. I’ll give it straight back to you.’ Otherwise I might be tempted to have a retail frenzy of the handbag nature to cheer myself up.