Page 3 of A Winter in Wonderland
Chapter 3
By the weekend, I was living alone in my flat. Jamilia had gone, leaving me with a broken clothes horse, two bags of her stuff to go to a charity shop, and both our shares of the cleaning. She said she was coming back to sort it all out before the end of the month, but when she was leaving she also said, ‘Bye, babe, I’ll miss you. Text me if you’re ever around.’
‘We’ll see each other in a couple of weeks though, right? You’re coming back over?’
‘Yeah, no, sure.’
I knew I wasn’t going to be seeing that sultry goddess again.
I wandered about my flat for most of the weekend, in and out of spaces left empty without Jamilia, and felt a heavying weight of doom pressing down on me. Where was I going to live? Where was I going to work? How, in the space of a day, had I become such a mess?
I called my friends, even my acquaintances, to see if they knew of any rooms, or jobs, going, and they all said they’d let me know. Also, none of them were free to hang out at the weekend, so in the end I bought myself two pizzas and spent Saturday night from five p.m. onwards binge-watchingRiverdaleand chain-eating pizza slices.
By Monday, I was facing down my sister.
Behind her desk, Shay shifted her pregnant belly and handed me a bag of jelly babies together with a disapproving sigh. In her office she was surrounded by snazzy posters of exotic destinations covered in words like ‘Best summer of your life!’ and ‘Why wait?’ and ‘Say no to boring this season’. I think I was making the right decision.
‘To what do we owe the pleasure, dear sister?’ she asked me.
‘I want you to send me somewhere to work for the season,’ I answered, my back straight and my chin lifted like a totally confident person who has their shit together.
‘This season?’ Shay clarified, and looked at the date on her phone. ‘Even though it’s already late October?’
‘Yes. I’ve thought about it a lot, well, since Friday, and if I don’t have the burden of a job and a home then I can be free to go somewhere else for a change. Somewhere sunny. Somewhere they don’t celebrate Christmas, please.’ This was actually the perfect plan; I knew there was a silver lining to everything cocking up. I wanted to escape over the festive season, and had planned to just try and avoid Christmas by keeping blinkers on and staying home as much as possible. But what if I could avoid it altogether, without needing toturn into a hermit? I could be free in the sunshine and enjoy December as if it were just another month on the calendar.
‘Sunny, no Christmas, last-minute,’ she made a note.
‘That pays nicely and provides accommodation,’ I added.
‘It’s lucky you don’t have a massive wish list.’
I leant forward eagerly, trying to turn her monitor towards me. ‘So what have you got?’
‘Very little, Myla.’ She swung her computer back to face her. ‘Companies recruited for their winter season staff back in the summer, the spring even. Right now, I’m sorting out placements for people next summer.’
Oh. ‘But you must have something. A spare place on a turtle sanctuary in the Caymans, perhaps? What about fruit picking in Australia? I’d even … ’ I paused. ‘I suppose I’d even consider working in a chalet in the Alps.’
Shay rolled her eyes. ‘How thoughtful of you.’
‘It’s just that my preference would be to avoid the snow and all that “white Christmas” mumbo-jumbo.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to come and spend Christmas with me, Tess and Dad? We won’t make you eat any turkey or have any fun whatsoever.’
‘Thanks, but I think I really want to get away.’
Tapping away on her computer, Shay wasn’t giving much away, so I let my eyes roam about her office again. On her desk was a framed photo of her and Tess on their wedding day. I wondered if she’d replace it in three months with one of the two of them and their new baby. They were going to make a cute family.
Shay started laughing, a slow, quiet laugh that remindedme of a Bond villain, which she then turned into a cough and sat up straight again.
‘Actually, I do have one thing.’
‘OK.’ I sat forward. Ooo, what was it going to be? Dubai? South Africa? Tahiti?
She stalled, her eyes still reading from her computer screen, which she angled away from me when I tried to catch a peek. ‘Just how desperate are you?’
‘Very desperate.’
‘But what’s, like, the most important reason you want to go and work abroad for a season?’
