In spite of herself she sniggered, in a laughter-through-tears kind of way.
‘Not as bad as the time he said that I’d had all human emotion surgically removed from me, but, yeah, certainly right up there in his top ten insult hit list.’
‘Where I come from, we have ways of sorting out a git like that very fast, let me tell you. Nothing terminal of course, just a bit of a going over … Say the word, and I can have it taken care of for you. That guy needs teaching a lesson and I know a few lads who’d gladly take care of it in a heartbeat. Seth Coleman would never walk straight again.’
For a split second, she looked up at him horrified, then caught the cheeky glint in his eye.
‘You’re messing,’ she half smiled.
‘Course I’m messing. You think I’m ever going back to you-know-where?’
She grinned even wider his time, as ever he thought, completely softening her whole face.
‘Eloise, will you tell me something else?’
Feck it, it was bothering him and he might as well ask her now, when she seemed to be opening up a bit.
‘What it is?’
‘No offence, you know I’m happy to talk to you any time, but why are you telling me all this? Isn’t there anyone at home waiting for you who’d want to know all about your day?’
And like that, she immediately clammed up again. Not for the first time either. Whenever he as much as broached the subject of her home life, she turned back to stone. As if the temperature in the room suddenly just dropped down about ten degrees.
‘Jake,’ she said, suddenly tuning out. ‘I’ll make you a deal. I won’t ask you about your past or your personal life and you won’t ask me about mine. Okay?’
He shrugged.
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘You have to trust me. It’s just better that way.’
She got up to leave then, looking shattered and probably aching for sleep.
‘Look, it’s nearly coming up to eleven,’ she said, as he stood to help her pull her coat back on and looking gratefully up at him. ‘And I’ve to be up and back into work for six tomorrow morning, so I better hit the road. But look … I just want to say thank you. Just being able to talk through such a shitty, awful, crappy day was a huge help. You’ve no idea.’
‘Any time,’ he said evenly, arms folded, towering over her by at least a foot. ‘Least I can do. Look at all you’ve done for me.’
‘You’re more than welcome, you know that.’
‘Doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad for accepting all this help from you. But I promise you this Eloise, the day will come when I’ll pay you back. I mean it.’
‘Just concentrate on getting a good job that uses you to your best ability. Seeing that happen would be payment enough for me,’ she smiled.
He couldn’t resist.
‘Just let me know whenever you want to start work on the feature you were talking about.’
‘The what?’ she asked, and he guessed that exhaustion was momentarily clouding her normally perfect recall.
‘The feature for your paper? About guys like me and how they fare on the outside?’
‘Oh yeah, the feature, of course,’ she said unconvincingly he thought, her involuntary glance down to the left giving her away again. ‘Not now, but another time, okay?’
A minute later, she had gone back out into the rainy night and all Jake could do was stand there, utterly baffled, thinking … why? Why was someone like her putting herself out like this just for someone like him?
He’d meant what he said to her, he didn’t feel one bit comfortable at all with the help she was so freely giving him. True, he was paying his own way in the flat, but then there was all that work she was putting into his CV.
And another thing. Was the girl really that lonely, that he was the only person she had to talk her in off the ledge after a bad day? Where were her friends, her family?
Or was he really the only person in the world she had to open up to?
Chapter Eight
His mam’s magic novenas to St Michael and St Joseph were answered and not long after, Jake got a letter from one of the many language schools where he’d applied to teach English as a foreign language, requesting – he thought he was seeing things – an interview. An actual interview. For a decent, respectable job and not driving taxis or flipping burgers or selling the Big Issue outside late night supermarkets like most of the ex-cons he knew.
He called Eloise immediately and even though she was in her office and couldn’t really react, he swore he could hear the delighted triumph in her voice. ‘We’ll plan this all out later,’ she hissed down the phone.
Planning, scheming, devising, taking total control, he’d learned, were Eloise’s favourite pastimes in the whole world. The woman was utterly wasted at the Post, he reckoned, she should have been head of the CIA – she’d have the place running effortlessly smoothly with one hand tied behind her back.
True to her word, she popped into the flat late that night, on her way home.
‘Okay, we’ve just got one problem,’ she told him decisively, whamming her briefcase down on the tiny coffee table, whipping off her too-tight jacket and gratefully taking the glass of white wine Jake offered her.
‘You’ve only just got in the door! Would you ever relax and tell me a bit about your day first?’
‘Can’t Jake. This is too important for us … I mean, for you. Have you any idea the amount of prepping we’re going to have to do to get you ready in time? And while we’re on the subject, there’s something that’s been worrying me …’
‘You mean what to say if they ask what I’ve been doing for the past two years?’
‘No, no that’s not it,’ she interrupted. ‘At least, that’s not just it.’
They’d been over and over the subject of how best to gloss over his past and Eloise had stressed time and again that any potential employer was bound to run background checks, even for a part-time job. So with that in mind, she advised Jake he’d no choice but to openly and honestly tell them the whole truth and nothing but. It was a huge gamble and they both knew it, but somehow she believed in him and genuinely hoped that his personality and passion for the job would sway things his way. Not to mention the fact that his score on his final TEFL exam was one of the highest in the country. Besides, from sitting on the far side of an interviewer’s desk, she claimed to know from bitter experience that an employer was always far more concerned about the potential future of the candidate sitting down in front of them, and considerably less about their past.
‘What’s up then?’
‘There’s no easy way to say this, and you’re not to take offence, but – it’s your appearance.’
‘What about it?’
‘Ehhhh … Jake, to date all I’ve ever seen you in is either a black or a blue T-shirt and the same pair of jeans day in day out. Two T-shirts does not a well-dressed interviewee make. Not good enough. There’s an awful lot riding on this, so you’ve got to give yourself the best shot possible.’
‘Ahh Christ, don’t say what I think you’re going to say.’
‘You need