Page 25 of Interning For A Billionaire

“I couldn’t get in,” Maya said regretfully. “By the time I tried to get a spot, they were fully booked. I’m going this Friday though.”

“Yeah, you should,” I said, distracted by my thoughts of Belle.

As soon as Maya left, I picked up the phone to call Josie. Then I saw her walking outside and got up, calling over to her.

“Josie!” She looked up and I walked over to her.

“I’m just leaving for an appointment,” she said.

“I’ll walk with you,” I said. “Just wanted to say you were right about Belle. I was wrong. She is a good hire.”

“Right?” Josie said, looking pleased with herself. “She is very focused on wellbeing and mental health, all that stuff. It’s actually a relief to leave it with her, so I can get on with other stuff. Managing the Friday sessions will take up a lot of work, it seems. They are already fully booked for the next two weeks!”

“I heard,” I said. “I think I might go again as well. I actually fell asleep last time.”

“Happened to me too!” Josie said with a laugh.

“Anyway, I guess I was wrong about her. Who knew?! That could actually happen!”

Josie joked, “The great Michael Greer, actually wrong about something? I don’t believe it!”

When I turned to go back up, I saw that Belle was standing at the top of the escalator. I wondered how much of our conversation she had heard.

When she looked at me, her eyes all shiny, I knew she’d heard it all.

Chapter 11

Belle

My mother died when I was eleven years old.

I don’t remember too much about her, to be honest. There are snatches of life with her, like snapshots and over the years, I’ve often wondered whether these events actually happened or whether I was remembering things people told me about her. My aunt told me that my mother liked to bake, and I have memories of us baking cookies and cakes in the kitchen. In some recollections, I am helping her shape the dough and licking out the bowl. But did that really happen?

These thoughts make me sad and that is why I avoid them. My mother was killed in a hit-and-run incident in town one evening. She and my father were out at a community meeting and were walking back to their car when a truck came barreling down the street, jumping the red light and hitting my mother as she was crossing the street. The driver was drunk, he hadn’t even seen my mother. My father had gone on ahead, but she had lingered to look at something in a shop window.

As the story goes, my father was waiting for her at the car. He’d called out to her, and she was coming towards him, facing him, not looking up the street, where the truck driver was. My father saw the accident and saw his wife flung into the air. He’d known straight away that she could not have survived the accident and people later said that this was his only comfort, that death would have been instant and that she hadn’t suffered.

My Aunt Kate, my mother’s older sister, came for the funeral. She stayed on for a few weeks afterwards and then somehow, she didn’t leave again. She was divorced and they didn’t have children, so it made sense for her to help my father and to take care of me. She was similar to my mother in many ways, having the same dark hair and a quiet, peaceful way about her. She wasn’t a great cook though, and she was always trying to improve her skills at the stove, much to our amusement. We needed our comic relief, my father and I, as my father especially, struggled to move on following my mother’s death.

I grew to become very close to my Aunt Kate and in my mind, many of my memories of my mother merged with images of her. It was sometimes hard to remind myself that the person who encouraged me to have the vegetable garden was my Aunt Kate, while the woman who’d tried to teach me to knit, was my mother.

Aunt Kate was good at telling me stories about my mother, trying to keep her alive for me and I sometimes had the feeling it helped keep her alive for her too. I often called her, when I was feeling down or a bit melancholic, and asked for a story about my mother, something light-hearted or silly, even doing something naughty.

One evening, after finishing work at Pyramide, I called Aunt Kate. We talked for a bit, she told me the latest news around town and asked how the job was. I gave her a quick run-down, then I asked her, “Tell me a story about mom when you guys were growing up, you know. When you were teenagers.”

“Oh, gosh,” my aunt said. “That’s long ago!”

“Who was prettier?” I asked.

“Well, that’s easy, your mother, obviously!”

I laughed, “Be honest, right?”

My aunt said, “All right. But I always did think she was prettier. She was skinnier than I was and more popular. She always had lots of friends and boys interested in her.”

“Tell me more.”

“When she was sixteen, this boy called Murray started coming round to the house. Walking her home from school. I think she liked him, but she held back. I would tease her about him, because he was so obviously smitten with her. She was friendly towards him, but she kept holding back. One day, I asked her if she was going to the prom with him. He was older, you see.”

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