The council building was one of the big white buildings, but more important, it was one of the few places in town with air-conditioning. An old woman with a hunch and thick Coke-bottle glasses was sitting on a bench out the front; she smiled hopefully at Rose, who nodded in return. This woman was often hanging around, and if you weren’t quick you’d get stuck listening to her rattle on all day about her cat. Rose stepped inside, and her skin prickled cold. It was a lovely feeling. She stood in front of the notice board, her eyes closed, feeling her blood cool.
This was where the office for the local newspaper used to be. The Colmstock Echo—Rose had done work experience there when she was in high school. Everything about it had felt so right. Going out and finding the real story. The smell of ink on printing day. She’d started working there during the day after she’d been rejected in her university scholarship applications. It had only been for six months, and she’d been at Eamon’s at nighttime, but Rose had been okay. She’d almost been happy. It hadn’t been long until they could no longer afford to pay her, but she’d stayed on anyway. Most of the other staff had left, so Rose had become the deputy editor. Eventually the funding was cut completely. That was when Rose had done the stupid thing. The dumb, reckless thing that had really sealed the deal on her crappy life. The idea of the newspaper closing, of her life just being about Eamon’s, killed her. So, big ideas in her head, she’d got a small loan from the bank. She had been sure if they could just hang on until they had some advertisers, she could save the Echo. It hadn’t made any difference; the newspaper had barely lasted another month. Rose’s loan had grown steadily, and now she wasn’t even managing to pay off the interest each month.
“Rose?”
Steve Cunningham came to stand next to her.
“I thought that was you,” he said, smiling. “How are you?”
“Fine.” She felt caught out; she didn’t want to have to explain to him that she had nowhere to live. He looked up at the board, but didn’t ask her about it.
“It’s quiet around here,” she said, and it was true. They were the only people standing in the corridor.
He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
Steve was looking terrible; he was pale, which was making the shadows under his eyes appear deep and purple, but his smile was real. She had always suspected Steve might admire her, not in the ogling bad-joke way that some of the other punters did, but like he actually thought there might be more to her than her arse.
With a swish from the doorway, his smile fell instantly from his face. She followed his gaze. Mr. Riley was opening the building’s front door for his wife, his hand on her lower back as he steered her through it. Rose looked away quickly. Since the fire, the Rileys had become almost famous in town, triggering silence and averted eyes wherever they went. Their grief followed the couple like a cape.
“Hi,” Steve said, walking toward them, hand outstretched. “Good to see you both.”
He escorted them past Rose and into one of the rooms beyond the staircase. Rose watched them go, trying to imagine how it would feel to have both your child and your business disappear all at once.
She swallowed and looked back at the board, oddly grateful she definitely wasn’t the least fortunate person in town. She looked for rooms to rent among the badly photocopied posters advertising secondhand cars and used baby cribs for sale. There were two advertisements for tenants. One was so far out of town she had no idea how she could get to work, and the other was a room share, but she wrote both numbers down in her notebook. Neither was appealing, but both were better than sleeping under the stars with the fossickers.
As she stood thinking of how the rent per month added up against her income, she felt a movement behind her. Nothing touched her, but the hair on her arms prickled and stood. Turning, she saw the back of a man walking up the stairs. Will. Without thinking, she began to follow him. She wanted to know more about him, understand what someone like him, someone with new clothes and no apparent connections with the town, was doing here in Colmstock.
Rose waited until he reached the crest of the stairs and turned down the corridor before she began quietly climbing them herself. When she reached the top, he was gone. He must have entered one of the offices. Rose looked into one. A woman sat glumly behind a computer, barricades snaking around the room in preparation for a long line, but no one was waiting. The woman straightened when she saw Rose but Rose just smiled at her and kept walking. The next room was the public records. You were meant to register yourself at the station and ask the attendant to find records for you. Rose had done research for stories here a couple of times. There was no one behind the desk now. Looking at the logbook, she saw that the last entry was for over six months ago. There’d been layoffs at the council around then.
She was about to turn when she heard a sound of a filing cabinet drawer squeak open. Leaning across the desk, she looked into the archives. There was Will, flicking through a drawer like he was perfectly entitled to be there.
“Hey!” she said. “What are you doing?”
He looked up at her and smiled. “Hi,” he said. “You’re the waitress from Eamon’s, right?”
As if he didn’t remember who she was. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You know you’re not allowed to just look through this stuff yourself.”
He shrugged. “Are you going to help me?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t work here, you know.”
He didn’t answer but began flicking through the records again.
She came around to the other side of the desk. “What are you looking for?” she asked.
He stopped, turning around completely this time, and fixed her with a blunt stare. She found herself taking a step backward.
“If you don’t work here,” he said, not smiling anymore, “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
He stared at her, waiting for her to leave. And she did. As she was turning to walk out of the room, she wondered why she was doing it. She never, ever let people talk to her that way. If they did she was quick to tell them to bugger off. But something about the way he’d looked at her, about the severity in his voice, had made her falter.
She was almost home, replaying the encounter over and over in her head, when she remembered the reason she’d gone out in the first place. She took the notebook out and flicked to the page where she’d written down the phone numbers and prices for the rentals. Wishing she’d paid more attention in math, she divided the monthly amounts by 4.3 and then put together a rough estimate of her weekly wage. Snapping the notebook shut, she felt the all-too-familiar lump rise in her throat again. There was no way it would work. She’d have to get a second job, like most people in town.
Walking in through the front door, she imagined it. The only jobs around were at the poultry factory. She desperately didn’t want to work there. Her mother’s job there was debeaking. Rose remembered the way she’d looked after her first day. She’d come home so pale she looked sick.
Rose had poured her a glass of water and asked her what had happened. She hadn’t really wanted to know, not at all, but she wanted her mother to feel better. Her mother told her about how she’d had to use a dirty pair of scissors to cut the end of chickens’ beaks off so they didn’t peck each other in the battery cages.
“The noise they make,” she’d said. “They’re in agony.”
She had to do one hundred a day; if she didn’t reach the target she’d get her pay docked. Rose had told her not to go back, that she was sure there’d be another job she could get. But her mother had gone back. That was five years ago.
Rose sat down on the end of her bed and looked at her suitcase. If she worked at the factory, she’d give up on ever getting out of town. There wouldn’t be time. Slowly, she shut the lid of her suitcase