Page 96 of Sorry I Missed You

There was a bit of a shocked silence all round and everyone sort of stared at me and then at Amanda and then there was lots of clapping, which I enthusiastically joined in with.

Afterwards, I sat back down at my desk and got on with my work. I had my interview at Children in Crisis at 6.30, so I needed to be out of here at 5.30 on the dot. It was good of them to see me out of hours as it was. How did everyone else slope off for daytime interviews? I mean, you’d basically have to lie, wouldn’t you? Say you had a dentist’s appointment or something. The fact that they’d offered me a realistic time because they said they knew it would be difficult for me to get out of work was extremely promising – imagine working for a company who actually genuinely cared about their employees.

Freya sat down opposite me.

‘Are you OK?’ she mouthed.

I nodded. I’d told her in the end because she was my friend and it felt like the right thing to do.

‘Amanda, though …’ she said, screwing up her nose.

I shrugged.

It would have been nicer if the role had gone to an external candidate who perhaps could have brought something new to the role. But Amanda was great at talking the talk, at being gushy when required and at name-dropping her celebrity friends at every turn. In terms of doing the actual job, though, she annoyed everyone, so how she was going to manage us all, I had no idea. Fingers crossed I wouldn’t be around long enough to find out.

Children in Crisis were on the fourth floor of a building just off Rosebery Avenue. When I stepped into the reception area, I immediately relaxed. It was lighter and airier than I’d imagined from the outside and homely, with a box of toys in the corner, a table housing an array of magazines and a wall adorned with colourful drawings and paintings, presumably the product of some of the children they’d helped over the years.

The middle-aged woman behind the desk was all smiley and warm, a stark contrast to the welcome you got when you entered Kingsland Marketing and Violet was the first person you saw.

‘Hello! You must be Rebecca,’ she said, standing up and offering me her hand, which I shook, smiling back. I liked it here already. ‘Come with me. They’re ready for you.’

Her name was Sheila, she told me, and she’d worked here for nearly thirty years.

‘You’ll be meeting the CEO, Katherine Grey, and the Head of Public Relations, Adam Clarke.’

‘Great,’ I said, swallowing hard. I tried to remember all the notes I’d written, all the responses to possible questions I’d memorised. My mind felt fuzzy with nerves; surely I’d retained at least some of it. I’d be fine once I got going.

Sheila knocked on the door and ushered me into the room ahead of her.

‘This is Rebecca,’ she announced before giving me a good-luck thumbs-up and disappearing off down the corridor.

Katherine and Adam were sitting in bright yellow armchairs, which I assumed were an attempt to make the room as unintimidating as possible so that the children didn’t feel as though they were in a clinical environment. I wondered if some of them hated hospitals as much as I did. They both stood up and shook my hand.

‘Thanks so much for coming in, Rebeca,’ said Katherine, in the sort of tinkling, welcoming tone I warmed to immediately.

‘Take a seat,’ said Adam, who was young and quite trendy and nothing like Mike Walbeck or Paul from Accounts. ‘I hope you found us all right?’

‘Oh yes, it was no problem,’ I replied, following their lead and sitting down, clasping my hands in my lap, trying to stop them shaking. I wished Jack had come to run through my presentation with me like he’d promised.

‘Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about yourself,’ suggested Katherine, sitting back in her chair. I felt more relaxed just looking at her. ‘What made you apply for the position here?’

I thought about my mum and dad and how they’d always been helping other people, Mum with her social work and Dad had been a teaching assistant at a tough, failing comprehensive school in Luton. I’d always wanted to follow in their legacy but hadn’t known how until now. And with that in my mind, I began to talk. In the event, I didn’t need the notes I’d spent hours putting together, I just spoke from the heart, remembering how I wished I’d had somewhere like this to come when I’d lost my parents and how I was determined to help kids who were feeling as lost as I’d felt then.

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