The House of New Beginnings Read online

  It went without saying that Georgie didn’t have her head completely in the clouds. She knew that writing jobs did not grow on trees – you had to go out and pitch for them, and what was more, you had to prove yourself against hordes of other talented writers, all of whom would have far more journalistic experience than a small chatty library newsletter to show for themselves. But then again, she’d also once heard Mary Portas giving an interview where she had described being so determined to work for Harrods, she had phoned up their human resources department every single day until they eventually offered her a post. Tenacity, that was the name of the game. Bloody-mindedness. Refusing to take no for an answer. And if that approach had worked for Mary Portas then who was to say it couldn’t work for Georgie Taylor too?

  The very next morning, she got stuck in, researching all the local-ish publications she could find as well as the big glossies, and jotting down their contact details. She who dares wins, she reminded herself, before compiling a list of potential articles she could tailor for each one. Now she just needed to convince someone to take a chance on a newbie, she thought, dialling the first number on the list.

  Her initial round of speculative calls didn’t go brilliantly well, to be honest. Brighton Life magazine flatly rejected her suggestion of a ‘New Girl In Town’ column, based on her experiences since moving to the area. ‘I’m straight out of the Yorkshire Dales, throwing myself into the delights of the city,’ she’d pitched. ‘The highlife, the lowlife, the people I meet, the—’

  The features editor politely interrupted her before she could get much further. ‘We’ve done that before,’ she replied, before adding that she had to go to a meeting and hanging up.

  Sussex Now magazine were equally lukewarm when she ran a different feature idea past them, inspired by her Sunday cycle ride, about bike trails across the county. ‘We’re covering something similar in next month’s edition,’ the bored-sounding editor told her. He too seemed in a hurry to get off the phone and Georgie let out a little sigh as she said goodbye and hung up. Thanks but no thanks. On that bike of yours, love, in other words, and pedal off.

  Undeterred, and using the last of the milk to make herself a motivating coffee, Georgie next tried a smaller indie magazine, called Brighton Rocks which seemed witty and vibrant, and was stuffed full of articles about the city, as well as pages of What’s On listings at the back. With her most confident voice, Georgie pitched the same ‘New Girl In Town’ idea, only to be told by this third editor, Viv, that they too had already covered similar ground. Hmm. Maybe she wasn’t quite as original as she’d thought. Still, she hadn’t actually been hung up on this time, which was progress at least. Taking this as encouragement, Georgie quickly suggested an ‘Action Girl’ column instead – basically her, trying a new activity around the city every week. (‘Roller-blading along the pier, tandem-riding, zorbing . . . I’ll do anything!’ she’d declared, crossing her fingers that Viv wouldn’t ask her what ‘zorbing’ actually was. Or decide to send her to the bondage dungeon featured in last week’s edition.)

  ‘Hmm,’ Viv replied. She had a throaty London accent and it sounded as if she was breathing out a plume of smoke as she spoke. ‘Got anything else?’

  Georgie swallowed. ‘Got anything else’ was by far the most positive response so far. It was practically an open door compared to the previous two calls! Heart pounding, she scanned her list of ideas and pitched a ‘Brighton and Hove Through the Keyhole’ idea instead, where she set out to explore behind the scenes of some of the city’s most iconic places. ‘I was thinking, the Royal Pavilion, the Palace Pier, um . . . Zoe Ball’s house?’ she finished up.

  Viv gave a little snort and Georgie cursed herself for mentioning Zoe Ball’s house. Now she sounded like some kind of weird stalker. ‘Look, darling, I appreciate you ringing with all these ideas,’ the editor began, ‘but—’

  Oh God. No. Not the ‘but’. The ‘but’ was almost certainly a precursor to ‘Jog on’ and then ‘Goodbye’. Before Georgie could stop herself, she was hauling out the Big Gun of Pleading. ‘I’ll write anything!’ she blurted out desperately. ‘And I’ve got loads of other ideas. Dogs of Brighton – people’s pets,’ she said randomly, remembering how popular her Reggie updates had been in the library newsletter. ‘Um . . . Lunch with Georgie – a restaurant column. Undercover Shopper – me, checking out the latest new boutiques. I could have a hidden camera, maybe. I’m very discreet!’

  There was a pause from Viv and for a moment Georgie thought the other woman had put the phone down on her. She could have kicked herself for letting her mouth run away with her. Dogs of Brighton indeed. Why on earth had she come out with that? Maybe she was wasting her own time here, as well as that of all these long-suffering editors. Perhaps she should just swallow her pride and go out and find a café job or something to keep her busy while she was here instead. Like anyone would be interested in her lame ideas anyway!

  But then, to her surprise, she heard Viv say, ‘Well . . . Actually there is something we’ve been considering. Why don’t you come in and we can chat it through? This would be freelance, mind, and I’m telling you now, the pay isn’t brilliant.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Georgie said, quick as a shot. ‘Whatever it is, I’ll do it.’

  Half an hour later, she’d put on a proper face of make-up, her smartest jeans and her favourite white shirt with a big pointy collar, plus a silver star necklace for good luck. I’m going to be a writer, she thought with a burst of butterflies in her stomach. I might actually be able to pull this off. Then she headed into town to find the Brighton Rocks office, which was situated above an antique-glass shop in the Lanes. ‘We’re what you call a shoestring operation,’ Viv had told her, deadpan.

  When she found it, the small office up two flights of stairs in an old Victorian building was not exactly the buzzy newsroom of her imagination; more, a cramped room with two desks, one sloping skylight and a heap of unopened post on a chair. It was not what you would call minimalist either: there were folders and books piled on shelves, a life-size cardboard cut-out of Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge leaning lopsidedly in one corner, a huddle of plants in varying stages of death, and a fridge in another corner, with a note on the front saying ‘STOP STEALING THE SOYA MILK’. Still, she reminded herself, it made a change from the mummifying quiet of her own flat, at least.

  Viv was about thirty, Georgie guessed, with a lot of dark eye make-up and a crumpled salmon-coloured T-shirt that read BITCH SAYS YES. Her dark red nail varnish was chipped and she smelled of cigarettes and last night’s wine. In fact, there was a half-open bottle of claret on one of the filing cabinets, Georgie noticed. And was that a sleeping bag folded messily in the far corner of the office? ‘So,’ Viv said, hauling the pile of post off the chair and into a perilously full in-tray, so that Georgie could take a seat, ‘you want to be a writer. Join the club, darling. You can’t walk down the street in this city without tripping over them. Coffee?’

  ‘Um . . .’ Out of the corner of her eye, Georgie could see a collection of unwashed mugs by a small sink and decided not to play e-coli roulette. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘As you can see, we’re a tiny set-up here,’ said Viv, perching on the edge of a desk. ‘It’s just me and another part-timer, Danny, doing everything ourselves: writing, design, accounts, advertising, you name it.’

  Cleaning? thought Georgie although decided to keep such facetiousness to herself.

  ‘We’ve been running on adrenalin and sleepless nights for the last six months, and it’s all a bit hand-to-mouth – so, like I said, don’t get your hopes up in terms of cash because we’ve barely got a pot to piss in. But Danny’s about to get hitched and is insisting on taking a honeymoon, the selfish bastard, so we’re a bit short-handed this month. That’s where you come in.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Georgie eagerly. ‘I’m game for anything.’

  ‘Good, because I’m looking for someone to do us an agony column. Only not one of your typical ones,
with whingey letters and mumsy replies. My boyfriend’s been unfaithful, boo hoo, I’m really insecure,’ she said contemptuously, and Georgie felt obliged to give a short disparaging laugh, even though she personally could see nothing wrong with someone worrying about their unfaithful boyfriend. Who wouldn’t feel insecure?

  ‘We want something edgy, funny, modern – and very Brighton-centred,’ Viv went on, ticking off each adjective on her fingers. ‘Don’t be afraid to dish out a sharp reply if it’s warranted, or take a letter-writer to task when they’re feeling sorry for themselves. Our agony aunt should be waspish and sassy; all about the tough love. Above all, we want this to be something that people talk about. Have you seen this week’s reply? Classic!’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you reckon?’

  Georgie felt a swelling sense of excitement. Her own column – this was absolutely perfect! And advice too – fabulous. Georgie loved giving people advice, whether they wanted it or not. Back in the library, her customers were frequently pouring their hearts out to her, and her friends did too. ‘And what will it be called? “Dear Georgie”?’ she suggested eagerly. ‘“Ask Georgie”?’ Her head spun. ‘“Doctor Georgie Will See You Now”?’

  Viv frowned, as if inwardly debating whether or not her newest freelancer was completely sane. ‘Er, no,’ she said bluntly. ‘We were thinking something more current – something to distinguish us from every other boring old advice column. Perhaps “Hey Em”.’

  Georgie thought for a moment that she’d misheard. ‘Hey M?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a bit more casual. Like, Hey Em, I’ve got this problem. Hey Em, I don’t know what to do. Hey Em, I need some help.’

  Now it was Georgie’s turn to be politely doubtful. It sounded crap to her but maybe that was because she was an out-of-towner, too parochial. Hey Em, your column name sucks, mate. ‘Right. So it’s like . . . M for . . . er . . . Mystery Agony Aunt?’

  Viv gave her an are you kidding? look. ‘No, E-M, short for Emily or Emma,’ she explained, and Georgie blushed, feeling like the village idiot. ‘We think it sounds friendly, approachable. I see Em as a twenty-something girl about town. Feisty, cheeky; she tells it like it is, no punches pulled.’ Viv pulled out a sheaf of printed pages. ‘Here are some problems. We’ve been running an ad for the last few weeks trailing the new column and asking for letters. Take a look through, choose the one that appeals to you most and give me your reply. Bring Em to life for us. I’m looking for four hundred words for the whole thing, including the actual problem. By tomorrow?’

  Flicking through the print-outs, Georgie glimpsed the following phrases in quick succession – anal sex, mother-in-law, infected piercing, wedding, very shy, custody of the cat – and tried to swallow back the gulp of nerves she suddenly felt. Blimey. This was a far cry from listening to the woes of Mrs Harris at the library on her grandson’s misdemeanours, or her friend Mel’s trauma over a colleague at work buying the same shoes as her. A pinch of doubt took hold. Who was she to start dishing out advice to strangers, anyway? What did she know? She hadn’t been married or divorced, she didn’t have kids, she didn’t even feel equipped to pass comment on the cat custody problem, because as far as she was concerned, dogs were better anyway.

  Not that she was about to admit to any crisis of confidence now that she was on the verge of getting some actual paid writing work, of course. Hell, no. ‘Absolutely,’ she said breezily, giving Viv her bravest and best smile. ‘Thanks very much. Leave it with me.’

  One handshake later, she was out of there, the spring sunshine warm and bright on her face, feeling as if she’d just been presented with a key to a whole new door – a whole new land, even. Talk about a stroke of luck. Talk about landing on her feet! If Viv liked the piece she handed in then the magazine would run the column and give her a trial period of a month – four letters in total, in order to gauge the public response – although, as Viv had warned, the pay she would receive for each one was pretty diabolical. But it was a start, wasn’t it? Experience. Something to fill the hours.

  Now all she had to do was choose a letter and write the perfect dynamite reply. Hey Em, I need to make a good impression here, she thought, grinning moronically to herself as she strode back through town, past a group of drama students with pastel wigs who were engaged in some kind of outdoor performance, past the vegetarian kebab stall that always smelled so tantalizing, past a busker giving it his best Bob Dylan on the street corner. Hey Em, I really want this to work out, you know. I’ve got to totally nail it.

  A vision swam up in her head, of the eponymous Em herself: a woman with big hair and loads of eyeliner, a wide lipsticked mouth and a husky laugh. And then, almost immediately she could hear the reply, loud and clear, drawling from the woman’s red lips. You go for it, girl. Do yourself justice. Show the world what you’re made of!

  Chapter Four

  Charlotte Winters was in a meeting. This was nothing new; working as part of the conveyancing team at Dunwoody and Harbottle meant that her week was taken up with many, many meetings but this one was a company-wide affair, with the entire workforce gathered, rather uncomfortably, in the boardroom that smelled faintly of cheese and onion crisps. Maybe that was just the man standing next to her, though; they were all packed in together so tightly, she could actually hear him breathing.

  Dunwoody and Harbottle was a medium-sized legal firm, for whom Charlotte had worked first in her home town of Reading, before making the move to the Brighton office three months ago. She had assumed law firms everywhere would have the same safe greyness about them, the lack of surprises, the steady, busy pile of work to tackle, one case at a time, but it hadn’t taken her long to realize that they did things differently in Brighton. There had been the company team running the half marathon dressed as zombies, for instance; the away-day to Rye in February for new employees where they’d been forced to compete in sack races and a karaoke sing-off to ‘get to know one another’. Then on Maundy Thursday last month, an actual Easter bunny – well, some poor sweating trainee in a rabbit costume, presumably – had come lolloping around with a basket of Easter eggs, bouncing from desk to desk to distribute them amongst the staff. For Charlotte, who had come to the new office precisely with the intention of keeping her head down and getting on with the job, all this enforced jollity was kind of discombobulating. Camaraderie could be over-rated.

  ‘. . . And so, as we are keen to really engage with our community, to play a valuable part within our city, not just in the excellent work we do for its residents, but also to add something extra, something more meaningful . . .’ Anthony, the oily-haired shiny-suited PA to the company director, was going to run out of breath any second, Charlotte thought to herself. ‘I am delighted to welcome Janet Thompson from Sunset Years to talk to you all about a new project we will be running together. Thank you, Janet. Take it away.’

  There was a round of dutiful clapping and then a small energetic-looking woman in a pale pink suit stood up with a smile, pressing a clicker that activated a PowerPoint presentation. The first slide read SUNSET YEARS – AND YOU, and Charlotte felt a weary sense of apprehension, along with a pang for the Reading office where nobody expected you to do anything for your community, apart from perhaps chip in a few quid once a year for a local hospital collection.

  ‘Hello, everyone, thank you so much for having me,’ said Janet. She was in her late forties, Charlotte guessed, with bright blonde hair cut in a chin-length bob, and beady birdlike eyes that swept around the room as she spoke. ‘I’m here today to talk about loneliness and what can be done about it. First of all, I’d like to ask – does anyone here ever feel lonely?’

  Oh God. Of all the questions. Charlotte did her best to keep her expression impassive but could feel heat rising to her face. Did she feel lonely? Living here in a city where she knew nobody, in a tiny, over-priced flat overlooking the beach where at the weekend you could hardly walk down the street for laughing throngs of friends and family get-togethers? Did she feel lonely? Only every si
ngle day. Sometimes it felt as if this whole city was one gigantic raucous party to which nobody had thought to invite her. Not that she would dare to put her hand up in front of her colleagues and admit as much. No way.

  Nobody had put their hand up in answer to Janet’s question in fact, and she nodded with a knowing smile. ‘Of course you’re not lonely!’ she cried. ‘You’re all busy with your social lives and work and parties and dinners, you’re all so happy happy happy, posting hilarious updates on social media every night – look at me, having fun, not lonely at all . . . yes, I know.’ She paused, her eyes narrowing a fraction. ‘And even if you did secretly feel lonely, there’s something about admitting it, isn’t there, a terrible stigma attached to loneliness that makes even the most confident-seeming person refuse to dare confess. Right?’

  There was a longer pause this time, her words hanging in the air, and Charlotte felt her face grow even hotter. It was as if Janet was talking about her, as if, any minute now, she would shoot a finger out at Charlotte and tell the room, ‘There’s one. Her with the chubby face and brown swishy hair. She’s lonely.’ Even the landlady of the flat she was renting had tried to fix Charlotte up with her apparently gorgeous son; that was how obvious her aloneness was to the rest of the world.

  Shuffling her feet, she glanced despairingly at the tightly sealed windows – was it her imagination or was it getting clammier by the second in this boardroom? Her face was already doing a good impression of a red traffic light, and she could feel her back becoming sweaty too under her cheap white blouse. If anyone happened to look round at her now, they would surely see her visible awkwardness, her sense of being rumbled. Gotcha! If they even recognized her, that was. Charlotte had done her best to stay under the radar here, making apologies when it came to the out-of-hours activities the management team seemed hell-bent on organizing, claiming she had casework to finish whenever someone suggested going to the pub at the end of the day. They didn’t know her. They probably had zero interest in her either, frumpy shy Charlotte who never had much to say for herself. One guy in the team, Zack, had called her Catherine for three weeks before she plucked up the courage to correct him.