The Chic Boutique On Baker Street. Rachel Dove

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       Two

      Amanda dragged the silver metal shutter down with tired shoulders. The metal clanged into place, and she cursed as she dropped the key twice in her attempts to lock the deadbolts. Sighing, she secured the last bolt and straightened up. She winced as her back popped and clicked back into place. She had always thought that being sat ramrod-straight in court all day, followed by long nights hunched over her desk, would have been detrimental to her health, but after a long day in her shop, she now realised that the city girl in her had actually had it pretty easy compared to her new country bumpkin self.

      The one thing she didn’t miss was the long commute home. She shuddered as she thought of all those early mornings and late nights crammed on the Tube with sweaty, cranky people and drunks, all trying to get somewhere, anywhere else but the tin can they were entombed in most probably. She remembered the stench, the awkward face thrust into an armpit journeys, the glazed eyes all framed within the condensation of the windows of the trains. To say Amanda had a new-found respect for sardines after all those years would be an understatement. Those fish were the Thors of the oceans, albeit that their journeys were done in the afterlife, but still, kudos.

      All Amanda had to do now was pirouette on one foot from the shopfront to her own front door, the flat being directly above her livelihood. The living quarters had been one of the main draws for Amanda, one of the catalysts that had enabled her to even visualise embarking into a new life, far away from her old one.

      She had kept the property listing bookmarked for weeks, occasionally taking time to moon over it in between sending work emails and IMs to Marcus. It was like her porn, property websites and Pinterest. They made her happy, and growing up in the dysfunctional family she had, Amanda had soon realised that happiness had to be grasped where it could.

      Being the daughter of two law partners, Amanda’s childhood was less My Little Pony and more Mandarin lessons after school and organic vegetables on her dinner plate. Her parents worked hard, played hard and treated their only daughter like a science project, something to be worked on, altered and trotted out to show off at dinner parties. They worked all the time, and Amanda soon found a refuge: Grandma’s house. Dad’s mum lived alone in a neat bungalow on a leafy street in Muswell Hill not far from the impressive and sterile Highbury house she shared with her parental units. Amanda loved staying with her gran, a woman who despaired at her son’s clinical, detached treatment of her only grandchild.

      Looking around her new flat, Amanda thought of the happy times she had spent in that house: the smells of cooking, washing on the line, life. That bungalow had more life and joie de vivre within its crooked walls than could be contained, and Amanda learnt everything from her grandmother, Rose. Sewing, cooking, baking: Rose could turn her hand to anything, and showed Amanda another side of life. One where work and money did not rule the world, and where creativity and enjoying life had more value.

      She was thirteen when Rose died. She could still remember the bungalow, the smells, the laughter, but now it was tainted, tainted with the memory of her parents picking through Rose’s life, selling and discarding her possessions. She could still picture her mother’s face, full of disgust at the layer of dust on the surfaces, the baskets of wool around the rooms. Grandma Rose’s death affected Amanda deeply, whilst it was barely registered by her own son. After that, Amanda threw herself into schoolwork, working most nights in her room, and when she finished her schooling, she made her escape to university, the promise of a law career already mapped out since her infancy.

      She wondered what Grandma Rose would have thought of her actions now; she suspected that she would be watching somewhere, geeing her on. Her parents, however, would not. She shuddered at the thought. Changing her life completely was something they would never understand. She reached out and touched one of the walls of her abode. It was cool to the touch. Perhaps that bookmark was fate, she thought to herself. Maybe it finally brought me home.

      The flat was all high ceilings and bumpy plastering, and it looked to Amanda exactly how she was feeling—a bare shell.

      She had pored over the pictures on the estate agent’s website all night that night—laptop plonked on the bed, Amanda submerged under the duvet, surrounded by sodden tissues and the contents of her household bills box. She had made herself a little island of desperation, her king-size bed floating along on a sea of desperation, isolation and sheer disbelief. She felt like her world had been spun on its very axis, and she couldn’t help but think of what her parents would say when they discovered the news. That night, Amanda had cried, wailed, and eventually, at 3 a.m., had emailed the estate agent to not only put her London flat on the market, but to also put in an offer on the shop and flat she had been ogling, far away from the hustle and bustle, in a Yorkshire town called Westfield. Only then, once the email had pinged ‘sent’, had the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach eased enough for her to drift off. She dreamed that her little divan island had floated away, and she awoke feeling determined and oddly detached from her previous self.

      When she came to, with the light from her bedroom window shining on her laptop screen, she winced, wondering what awaited her now the juggernaut of her plan had started the low rumbling of action. She hadn’t told anyone yet, but the water cooler gossip at work would be in overdrive this morning when she didn’t turn in as normal. What would Marcus tell people? Would he back her up, tell people it was a mistake? Would he even care?

      She still had no idea how it had happened herself, so how could she explain it to anyone else?

      She remembered how she felt that day, but the reason the contract had gotten so messed up eluded her still. She was always so meticulous. After Marcus’s visit to her office, she had knuckled down, eager to get the work done and sent off to Marcus, as he had so rudely requested on his way out to an afternoon at the golf course. Time had escaped her once again, and by the time she had finished printing off the paperwork, a quick glance at her workstation clock told her it was well past office hours. After rubbing her stiff neck, she arranged the papers neatly in the case file, threw her coat on, grabbed her bag and headed to Marcus’s office. The office was empty, even the cleaners had gone home. A few side lights lit her path along the sleek corridors. She was just pondering on her pathetic life when she heard a noise coming from Marcus’s office. Looking around her, she became all too aware that she was alone and that no one would actually miss her for a while if she were to go missing. Brandishing the file like a weapon, she froze, listening intently. She heard it again—a low grunt, punctuated by the odd squeal. What the hell was it? Gripping her bag tight to her side with her elbow, she gently pushed open the door to her boyfriend’s office. She jumped as a bang sounded near her, and she realised that she had dropped the file she was holding. The papers exploded from the file, fluttering around her, but she took no notice. What she was looking at was far worse. Marcus was lying across his desk, trousers around his hairy ankles, while a woman was straddled across him, writhing. Both heads snapped towards her at the noise, and they froze. Amanda was trying to form a coherent thought in her head when Marcus jumped up, bouncing the naked woman off him. He jiggled around one-footed on the carpeted floor as he tried to pull his clothing back on. The woman just stared at Amanda, a smug look on her face, and it clicked into place then. Angela, his secretary. The biggest cliché of them all. Shagging her boss in his office after hours.

      ‘Working late again are we, Miss Perry? We needed that Kamimura file by five,’ she said, all the while pulling her silky panties СКАЧАТЬ