Pretending Life is Sweet

So using my current job as a reference, and feeling very guilty about doing so, I applied for a few other positions further afield and got the offer of an interview with a unit dealing mainly with children of immigrants who were having trouble coming to terms with living in the UK. It seemed like something I might be able to do quite well considering my own background so I set up an interview. For some reason i'd assumed Shepherd's Bush was a town near London but when I started to look at my travel plans it became obvious it was a lot more Londony than I had thought.

I wasn't really prepared for London, i'm not sure you can be unless you've lived in one of the other global megacities. In fact on the train up the my interview as the towns merged together for mile after mile and the buildings got taller I started to think maybe there should be some kind of additional acclimatisation program before people started to live like this. Then I reconsidered the precis of the job I was applying for and realised that basically I was hoping to help run one. It became obvious to me that I was completely out of my depth and I started to panic although I did eventually manage to get it back under control. I got to my interview almost an hour early having made it through the underground in mild terror but with fair accuracy.

The two managers of the unit were kind enough not to keep my hanging around for an hour. They interviewed me together right away and I thought it went pretty well up to the end when they asked me whether I had any questions. The panic kind of returned and I talked, I think a little disjointedly, about how intimidated I was by the scale of the city and how concerned I was that in spite of the work I had done I wouldn't be able to transfer my skills into filling the role they needed. I left there sure that I had blown it and spent a dejected evening back home looking for other options. One possibility which was looking more and more likely was just moving out of Errwood, finding a flat in the town I was working in, and sticking with my current job but that wasn't the clean break I really wanted.

I can't have put them off too badly though as it was only the following day that they emailed me to let me know i'd got the job. They had obviously thought about what I had said too because along with the job itself came additional offers of assistance. Firstly they were going to set up a training program for me to help me get some of the more formal qualifications I would need (I had learned most of what I knew on the job up to this point). Secondly though and far more importantly there was a spare room in a shared house where another member of the team was living so I would be able to move in there and avoid having to look for a place to live on my own.

So I took it and I moved to London a couple of months later. For almost a year I did basically nothing but work and sleep. They pushed me really hard at work which was rewarding but tiring and what with the extra training I was doing as well I was clocking up sixty or so hours most weeks. The one luxury I insisted on allowing myself was that I started going to a local tai chi group once a week. I ran through some exercises almost every day but once in a while you do need someone to check that you are staying on track and I was also starting to broaden my learning into a couple of the weapon forms which hadn't been on offer at Errwood.

Life was pretty good but as I started to settle into a more normal working routine in my second year, closer to forty hours a week, my energy levels started to come back up a bit and I had time to consider there was something I hadn't been paying attention to; I hadn't had sex since splitting up with Lucy and there was an itch growing there which I was definitely going to have to scratch at some point. There is only so long that a vibrator, however technologically advanced, can provide sustenance.

I was starting to tentatively check women out on my commute and one day I saw the most gorgeous figure passing in front of me. Tall and slender with tanned skin (no surprises there then) she was casually dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt with a men's jacket over the top and a messenger bag over her shoulder. She was wearing trainers but then again everyone in London wears trainers if they can get away with it don't they. Her hair was a lighter brown than mine, tan I suppose, cut very short, practically shaved at the sides and a little longer on top, her face quite thin, all angles. And, in case my attraction was not obvious, she was pretty, really pretty. She disappeared into the crowd and I noticed with some amusement that I was salivating.

For the next week or so my eyes were like searchlights whenever I passed through the station. I was starting to wonder whether she had been a tourist or something although she had definitely moved like a commuter. Then I was late out of work one Friday evening after an interview overran and as I was walking up the platform I saw her stepping into a carriage ahead of me just like that. She was wearing a shirt and dark trousers that day, dressed up in comparison to when i'd previously seen her. I set my resolve, I was going to say 'Hi' and see what happened. I jumped onto the train and cast my eyes around until I saw her, she was the only occupant of a set of four seats so I took the one diagonally opposite. I was so nervous, I had butterflies in my stomach and was half tempted to bottle it.

This was my first opportunity to get a close look at her face, she was staring out of the window at a train pulling away on another platform, obviously lost deep in her thoughts. I realised with enormous shock that I knew her, or had known her rather. I hadn't seen her since she was fourteen, she'd be what now, eighteen? Nineteen?

"Excuse me." I said a couple of times before I managed to attract her attention and she turned her head to look at me..

"Excuse me," I said again, "It's Rachel isn't it? I'm sure it's you."