Jennie Ensor - The Girl in His Eyes

Laura hurried on along North End Road, wondering how long she would be without a job. Hopefully she wouldn’t end up filling in the empty hours with visits to the betting shop. Rachel had phoned last night and had tried to be encouraging, told her it wouldn’t be much longer before she found a job, but they were only words. Rachel’s advice was to apply for a wider range of jobs, to lie about her employment experience, and to change the dates on her CV so there weren’t any gaps in her work history. Well, anything was worth a shot, though she hated having to lie. It was eight weeks since she’d last worked, and each week that went by was more dispiriting than the last.

She slowed at a café and glanced at the daily specials board outside – shepherd’s pie for £3.99. It was the sort of dirt cheap place she’d never normally go into, where everything was fried and the air stank of stale chip fat. But it was warm and bright inside, and there was a vacant table in the corner.

Studying the menu, she took out the last note from her purse – a fiver.

‘I’ll have scrambled eggs on toast, please.’

‘Anything to drink?’

‘A cup of tea, please.’

The waitress, a girl of eighteen or so, smelling of cigarettes, departed without enthusiasm. Laura looked around at the plastic tablecloths and picture-less walls. A calendar showed a topless blonde leaning over a sports car. Two rough-looking men in casual jackets argued at a nearby table. Behind them, a white-haired man in a hair-strewn coat hunched over a crossword.

She ate her meal quickly, feeling guilty for succumbing to temptation. The eggs were hot and fluffy but lacked flavour. As she sipped her tea, her thoughts turned to her worsening financial situation. It was on her mind constantly these days. She’d managed to pay the rent for February out of her last wage. But March’s rent, due in advance on the first of the month, was still unpaid, and soon April’s rent would be due. She’d applied to increase her overdraft at the bank but had been refused. She had no credit card and no way of getting credit without a job.

A rack on the wall held The Sun , a month-old copy of Hello , and two local newspapers. She picked up the less tatty newspaper and took it back to her table.

The employment section was less than a page long. Experienced receptionist wanted for a busy doctor’s surgery. Gardener wanted for a large estate. Mini-cab drivers, lorry drivers, construction workers – nothing she had the remotest chance of getting, apart from the part-time jobs for cleaners, shop assistants or pizza delivery staff, all of which stated variations of ‘experience and references essential’.

An advertisement in a small box at the bottom of a column caught her eye:

Girls wanted for stylish gentlemen’s club. Previous experience not essential. Good money available.

She pictured herself in a black dress, carrying a silver tray of Singapore Slings into a high-ceilinged, dark, wood-panelled room, delivering drinks to aristocratic types and retired company directors lounging on high-backed armchairs, smoking cigars, and talking in muted tones about the best investments, accompanied by some chap in a black jacket playing Cole Porter on a grand piano.

But no, of course it wasn’t that sort of place. It was the other kind of gentlemen’s club, where near-naked girls strutted about to stir the lust of city chaps.

The ‘good money’ was tempting, certainly. But she didn’t want to go down that road. She’d never worked in such a place and had never known anyone who had. Gentlemen’s clubs, as far as she knew, were sleazy places full of cocaine-snorting louts and desperate girls who would do anything for money.

She put the newspaper back.

‘Oh, by the way,’ she said, after paying the woman behind the counter, ‘you don’t need any staff do you, by any chance?’

The woman regarded her with a gaze that was both curious and pitying, her plastic gloved hands temporarily coming to rest on the sandwich she was preparing.

‘’Fraid not, love. Try at the Italian café up the road, if you haven’t already.’

She had tried them – three or four days ago. Like all the other places, they trotted out a well-practised line: ‘no thanks, maybe come back in a month and check again’.

Oh, well. It was the expected outcome, not even disappointing. She smiled, thanked the woman and left the café. She would go home now and apply for some of the jobs from this morning. There had been a few advertisements on Totaljobs website that she might have a punt on, more out of habit, and for something to occupy the afternoon, than from any real hope of landing a job.

Laura sat down at the table and read the letter from her landlord once more. It was printed on officious, headed notepaper, the crisp expensive kind. All afternoon the letter had nagged at her, like a toothache you tried to wish away so you wouldn’t have to go to the dentist:

Dear Miss Cunningham,

I am afraid I am no longer prepared to tolerate your non-payment of rent for the flat you currently occupy. If you do not pay the rent owed for the months of March and April in full by April 16th (a total of £890), I will consider the terms of the lease broken.

In this event, I shall unfortunately have no alternative but to ask you to vacate the flat immediately. Please note that in this circumstance I shall not hesitate to take immediate legal action (and any other that may be appropriate), to obtain your removal from my property.

She put down the letter. April 16th was less than three weeks away.

Picking up a piece of scrap paper, she scribbled some figures. Her bank account was £280 overdrawn, close to her limit of £300. On top of that, there was the cost of food, travel, electricity… How would she be able to produce £900 by the middle of next month? It was next to impossible.

Stupid though it probably was, she hadn’t seriously considered the possibility of losing her flat. You’ll find a job sooner or later , she’d told herself for weeks, despite the recession. Yet one thing after another seemed to have conspired together, making losing her home a distinct possibility.

A job was as far away as ever. In the two months since her last day at the film production company, she’d had a grand total of three interviews and zero job offers. She was considering almost anything now. For weeks she’d sat at home, checking recruitment websites and filling in application forms. With each application the result was the same: no, thank you. Not even that most of the time, just a monotonous silence in response to her stream of emails. There was nothing for her anywhere, it seemed, not even temping work in an office – they required references and recent relevant experience, thank you very much.

The housing benefit money she applied for weeks ago still hadn’t turned up. There’d been a delay in processing her claim due to an error in her application form, a letter informed her. It could take several weeks more to decide whether or not she was eligible for support; there would be no payment until then.

She took out a packet of digestive biscuits from the dwindling food cupboard, and stood by the window nibbling one. Outside, black wings flapped across the darkening sky. Low cloud threatened to gobble up the church spire. She tried to think without panicking, while the question in her head became ever more insistent.

So, Laura. What are you going to do?

She could find somewhere cheaper to live, perhaps. But there weren’t many places as cheap as this, even sharing with others – she’d found this flat after weeks of searching for the cheapest place going. It had a bedroom just big enough for a double bed, mould growing on the walls that had to be wiped off daily, a cooker – which looked unchanged since the seventies – with a broken grill and only two rings that worked, and a fridge that growled and shuddered most of the time and was scarcely cold enough to keep anything fresh. The landlord never took any interest in the flat, and never repaired anything if he could possibly avoid it – what did she expect for such a low rent? seemed to be the unspoken rebuke. And, even if she did find somewhere cheaper, what would be the point? Even for utter dumps you had to have several hundred pounds up front.