Julie Caplin - Romantic Escapes

‘W…ellll, there is one thing.’ She gave an elegant shrug.

Now Lucy regretted the ‘almost anything.’ What was she opening herself up to? She didn’t know this woman. How could she trust her?

‘It’s … erm … a big step down. A temporary to permanent contract. On a two-month trial. And out of the country.’

‘I don’t mind out of the country,’ Lucy said, sitting upright. A two-month trial was good. Actually, out of the country would be bloody marvellous. Why the hell hadn’t she thought of that before? A complete escape. An escape from the sly sniggers behind her back from her former colleagues, the that’s her, you know the one who furtive looks, the we know what you’ve done secretive smiles and the occasional I bet you would knowing leer, which made her feel positively sick.

The girl stood up and strode several paces to the corner of her office to rummage in a small stack of blue files on the beech console table behind her. Even from here Lucy could tell that they were the barrel scrapings, those jobs that had been consigned to the ‘we’ll never fill these in a month of Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and the rest’ category. With a tug, a dog-eared folder was pulled out from near the bottom of the pile. Lucy knew how that poor file felt. Overlooked and cast aside.

‘Hmm.’

Lucy waited, sitting on the edge of her seat craning her neck slightly trying to read the words as the other girl trailed a glossy nail down the A4 page. ‘Hmm. OK. Mmm.’

Lucy clenched her fingers, glad that they were jammed between her thighs and the chair.

With a half-concealed tut, the girl closed the file and looked worriedly at her. ‘Well it’s something. Anything.’ Her expression faltered. ‘You’re very over-qualified. It’s in …’ and proceeded to say something that sounded rather like a sneeze.

‘Sorry?’

‘Hvolsvöllur,’ she repeated. Lucy knew she’d looked the pronunciation up.

‘Right,’ Lucy nodded. ‘And where exactly is …’ she nodded at the file, guessing that it was from the sound of the word somewhere in Eastern Europe.

‘Iceland.’

‘Iceland!’

‘Yes,’ the other woman carried on hurriedly. ‘It’s a two-month post for a trial period in a small lodge in Hvolsvöllur, which is only an hour and half’s drive out of Reykjavik. An immediate start. Shall I call them, send your details over?’ Her words spilled out with sudden, unexpected commission bonus enthusiasm.

Iceland. Not somewhere she’d ever considered going. Wasn’t it horribly cold there? And practically dark all the time. Her ideal climate was hot with tepid bathwater temperature seas. An hour and half’s drive out of Reykjavik sounded ominous, the sub text being in the middle of nowhere. Lucy gnawed at her lip.

‘I don’t speak the language.’

‘Oh you don’t need to worry about that. They all speak English,’ said the girl blithely before adding, ‘of course, they might not want you … you know.’ Her smile dimmed in silent sympathy. ‘I don’t want to get your hopes up. But I will tell them what good previous experience you’ve had. It’s the … er recent references might be a problem. You’ve got a bit of a gap.’

‘Perhaps you could say I’ve been taking a sabbatical.’ said Lucy, hurriedly.

The girl nodded, plastering her smile back on. ‘Let me go and make the call.’ She stood up from her desk looking a little awkward. Lucy suspected she usually made her calls from the phone on the desk but wanted some privacy to try and persuade the client to take someone on with a three-year gap on their CV.

For the last year, she’d been Assistant Manager for the flagship hotel of a big chain in Manchester having worked her way up through the company during the previous two, until said big chain sacked her for gross misconduct. Lucy gritted her teeth at the memory of the heartless HR storm trooper of a woman Head Office had sent up from leafy Surrey to deliver the killer blow. Of course, they hadn’t sacked Chris.

For a minute, self-pity threatened to swamp her. Job application after job application, rejection after rejection. Not one single interview. Every time she got another rejection, the bleakness grew, like a shadow spreading in the setting sun. Her bank account was running on empty, she was rapidly running out of sofas to bunk on and, the end of the road, holing up in Mum and Dad’s two up, two down terrace in Portsmouth, was looming large. And there was no way she could do that. Mum would want to know why. The truth would kill Dad. Lucy gnawed at her lip, opening up the ulcerous sore already there. For some reason, she’d taken to chewing the inside of her lip and it had become a horrible habit over the last few months that she couldn’t seem to shake.

‘It … it is live in?’ asked Lucy hurriedly as the girl was about to leave the room.

‘Oh Lord yes, no one in their right mind would look at it without accommodation.’ Her eyes suddenly widened as she realised she’d probably said far too much. ‘I’ll be right back.’ Rather tellingly she’d scooped up the file to take it with her leaving Lucy alone in the office.

‘Are you sure it’s the right thing to do?’ asked Lucy’s best friend, Daisy, shaking her head, an expression of diffidence on her face, as she stared at her laptop screen. ‘You’re massively over-qualified for this. It’s only got forty-four rooms,’ she paused. ‘And you hate snow.’

‘I don’t hate snow. It’s not so nice in the city when it goes all slushy and black,’ protested Lucy thinking of childhood snow. That first winter fall when it was clean and crisp and begging for virgin footsteps, snowball fights and snowmen.

‘Hmm,’ said Daisy, disbelieving. ‘You’d only just acclimatized to Manchester. Iceland will be far worse. Although,’ she wrinkled her forehead, ‘it does look very nice.’

Lucy nodded, nice was an understatement. According to the gallery of photos on this website it looked gorgeous. The outside, with its turfed rooves and hotchpotch of buildings was dwarfed on one side by a snow-covered hillside strewn with the dark shadows of craggy outcrops and, on the other, a wild rocky coastline where foamy waves crashed onto a narrow shingle beach. The beautifully photographed interior showed stunning views from each of the lodge’s windows, several huge fireplaces and cosily arranged nooks with furniture which invited you to curl up and doze in front of a warming hearth. It all looked fabulous. Which begged the question, why hadn’t the job of General Manager been snapped up before? Her teeth caught at that damn sore on the inside of her lip and she winced.

Daisy mistaking her sudden intake of breath, gave her a stern look. ‘You don’t have to take it. You know you can stay here as long as you like.’ Her eyes softened. ‘I really don’t mind. I love having you.’

Tempting as it would have been to stay in Daisy’s cute one man flat in Bath, Lucy had to take this job. ‘Dais, I can’t sleep on your sofa forever and if I don’t go for this job, it probably will be forever.’

A familiar gloom threatened to descend again dragging her down. She swallowed ignoring the panic beating like the wings of a bird inside her heart and glanced at Daisy. How did you admit that you no longer thought you were capable of doing a job? She was so trapped by indecision at every turn, constantly questioning her own judgement.

Should she go for this job? The brief Skype interview seemed a mere formality, a quick check to make sure that she didn’t have two heads or anything, conducted by a woman who hadn’t even bothered to introduce herself and didn’t seem to care as to whether she could do the job. Which was just as well because all Lucy’s stuffing had been well and truly knocked out of her, and if she’d had to sell herself she’d have withered on the spot.