Read Online The Little Things by Jane Costello - Free Book Online Page B

wouldn’t go that far,’ I reply, flicking on the kettle.
    In truth my feelings about the job are mixed.
    It’s for a wine club called Grape, which has grown exponentially in the last twenty-four months and now has ambitions for significant overseas expansion. In other circumstances I’d
be chomping at the bit: my experience with Panther more than qualifies me and I’d relish working for a small, independent company that’s really going places.
    There’s only one problem: it’s in Liverpool. Not Dubai. So, while I obviously
want
gainful employment that doesn’t involve wiping babies’ bums and ferrying kids
to drama lessons, I feel slightly disingenuous. If I do get the job, it’ll only ever be a stopgap, to tide me over until I find something amazing in Dubai with James.
    By the time I’ve gone back up and dressed, everyone has piled out of the house and I’m left to just grab my keys and dash to the station to catch my train.
    I sit at the window, watching the world pass in a blur as I make the rash decision to log on to Facebook. There is a picture at the top of my timeline, showing James on his
balcony, surrounded by beautiful women as if he were the owner-in-waiting of the Playboy Mansion, and the tagline, ‘This is the life!’
    An ugly resentment simmers up in me.
    Then I remind myself that this is
not
who I am. I’m
not
the jealous kind. I’m the cool, confident kind who is totally at ease with her wobbly bits and blackhead
breakouts and absolutely certain that it’s never occurred to James that his fiancée might be punching above her weight.
    I peer at the girl to the right of him, with her low-cut gold top and endless legs. Then the one to the left, with the long dark hair and sultry smile.
    And, just to stop myself from writing, ‘GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY BLOODY BOYFRIEND!’ under the one who has her elbow draped on his shoulder, I force myself to press ‘LIKE’
and sit back, congratulating myself on my open-mindedness.
    Then I wonder if it just looks odd – so I ‘unlike’ it. However, by the time I reach my destination, I’ve changed my mind again several times – liked and unliked it
so often that I’m starting to feel the need to take some strong pills and lie down in a dark room.
    The train pulls into the city centre and I head towards the Albert Dock, or, more specifically, the Colonnades, the trendy offices and apartments that are housed above the shops and restaurants
below. It’s quieter than I’m used to seeing it: by mid-morning this massive, Grade I-listed complex of renovated nineteenth-century warehouses will be heaving with tourists and locals
alike.
    Once inside, I find the office’s reception on the second floor – a bright, smart and achingly upmarket space with the sort of thick, luxurious carpet that makes your shoes disappear
into it. I introduce myself before being shown to a waiting area, where I sit and flick through a company brochure and catch a glance at the open-plan office behind the glass window next to me.
    There are twenty or so people – lots in their twenties and thirties, but one or two older, all of whom seem to be engaging in the sort of banter you’d expect in the pub at 5.30 p.m.
on a Friday. I’ve done a decent amount of research before today, but it’s only as I leaf through the more in-depth articles that I realise exactly what this place has got going for
it.
    Ideas burst to the front of my mind and I dig out my notepad and start jotting them down. Then I stop, reminding myself that this really isn’t where I want to be. It isn’t where I
want to be at all.
    ‘Ms Rogers is ready for you now,’ says the receptionist. She’s young and pretty, with bright blue eyes and teeth that look slightly too big for her mouth. ‘I’ll
show you in if you’re ready.’
    ‘Yes, definitely,’ I reply, gathering my belongings as she leads me down a corridor, my heels sinking into the carpet en route. At the end, she knocks on a door and