The Cinderella Moment

‘…I’m a good team player with a mature approach to problem solving and good people skills. This project looks exciting and challenging and…and…’

Cass took another look, trying to work out how well she was doing. Did it all sound a bit too gushy? A bit too Miss World? A bit too, I want to help old people, learn to play the guitar and promote world peace? Maybe if she could master the pout, wiggle and flutter…

‘…a jolly good thing to be part of…’ Her voice faded. It had to be said that it wasn’t the greatest finish of all time. Did any of them really believe this bullshit?

Cass tried out another smile. Blouse-man raised his eyebrows a couple of times and then winked conspiratorially while sucking something troublesome out of his teeth. Cass held his gaze and the smile, wondering, when he’d said his role in the company’s new project was very much hands-on, how literally she ought to take that.

‘Well,’ said the Moustache briskly, glancing left and right at her two male compatriots. ‘Thank you. I think that just about covers everything. Thank you very much for coming in, Ms Er…er.’

‘Mrs Hammond.’

‘Miss Hammond. I think we’ve heard enough, don’t you, gentlemen?’

There was an outbreak of synchronised nodding and paper shuffling. Cass looked from face to face. What exactly did heard enough mean? Did it mean heard enough to know she was exactly what they were looking for, or heard enough to know that they wouldn’t employ her if she was the last creature walking upright on earth? Cass realised she still had her mouth open and snapped it tight shut.

‘It’s been a real pleasure meeting you,’ said the woman, without looking up.

Blouse-man got to his feet, signalling the interview was most definitely at an end.

‘Thank you,’ said Cass, scrabbling her things together and stuffing them into her handbag.

‘Thank you for coming today, Ms Hammond. We’ll be in touch over the next couple of days to let you know our decision,’ he said, easing himself out from behind the desk and guiding her to the door by the elbow. His handshake had all the charm of a bag of warm haddock. At the threshold Cass looked back into the shabby conference room.

The woman with the moustache was already thumbing through the next application and the third member of the panel – a tall balding man with a very pronounced Adam’s apple and a pigeon chest, who hadn’t said a single word during the entire interview – was busy picking his nose.

Cass nodded to the man by the door. ‘Thank you for your time. It’s been a pleasure to meet you,’ she lied.

He leered back at her, in a way Cass felt he hoped conveyed that lots of women felt exactly the same way.

Why would anyone ever want to commute?

The train journey home was hell. Worse than hell. It was hell with sweat and swaying and strange smells and people gibbering into mobile phones with earpieces so you couldn’t tell the difference between those who were just plain barking mad and life’s over-achievers, taking conference calls from Japan on the way home. And then there was the prospect of Danny waiting on the station platform with Jake – their next-door neighbour, who’d picked him up from school – asking her when David was coming home.

‘Will Daddy be home tonight, Mummy?’

No, actually, the man whose arse you think the sun shines out of is currently tucked up in bed with a girl half Mummy’s age who is thinking about how to spend the rest of her gap year, adultery not being that well paid.

There was no place for the truth there either.

‘No, sweetie, not tonight. How about we go home and cook some chicken dinosaurs and chips? And there’s ice cream.’ Not that he was so easily distracted.

‘When will Daddy be home? Will he still be coming on the school trip?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’

‘To the museum? He said he would. He promised. He said me and him could sit together on the bus. Can we ring him when we get back?’ And those big, big brown eyes, David’s eyes, looking up at her. Cass closed hers and tried very hard not to lean against the man who was wearing aftershave so potent it cast a shadow.

The train had emptied once they got to Cambridge. Cass finally sat down; the seat opposite was strewn with newspapers and coffee cartons. There was the Evening Standard and bits of The Times and Guardian that people always left behind, some sections folded back on themselves, some tented. Travel, sport and lifestyle, slim catalogues for expensive gadgets, stair lifts and garden awnings, a colourful clutter of them.

‘Hi, sorry to disturb you – is that seat taken?’

‘Sorry?’

‘The seat? Is anyone sitting there?’

Standing opposite her in the aisle was a tall man with floppy dark blond hair, a tanned weatherbeaten face and a rather nice, white button-down oxford shirt, broad shoulders and – and? And Cass stopped the thought dead in its tracks. What on earth was she doing? How was it her fancying radar was still up and running when she was feeling so miserable? Even if it was on standby, this was most certainly not the moment to start eyeing up strange men. She was supposed to be feeling heartbroken, angry, hurt and hard done by – and she did.

‘No, you’re fine,’ Cass said casually. ‘Help yourself.’

‘Yours?’

‘Sorry?’

He indicated the great scatter of debris. ‘I wondered if they might be yours.’ He spoke slowly, as if there was some chance she was deaf or foreign.

Cass held up her novel without smiling. Did she really look like the kind of woman who bought three newspapers, two takeaway coffees, something hot and greasy from the sandwich stand, then gutted them all over the carriage? God, some people could be annoying. He mimed contrition. Cass flipped over the page and let her mind fix on the print. Now, where was she? Ah yes…Like a knitter finding a lost stitch, she picked up the end of the sentence she’d just read.

Across the small table that divided the seats, the man tidied and then settled down before picking up a review section. He had very long legs. It took him a while to get comfortable.

He smiled at her. It was a smile meant to placate and invite.

Cass sighed. She knew from experience that however grumpy or miserable she felt on the inside it didn’t show itself on the outside, nor was it conveyed in her tone of voice. It was a curse. Since she’d been a child she’d always had to tell people she was angry and then they would look amazed and say things like, ‘Really? I’m surprised. You always strike me as so easy-going and laid-back about life. I can’t image you being angry.’ This when she was livid. It seemed that, amongst a very rich repertoire of facial expressions God in his infinite wisdom had given her, he had left looks-bloody-furious off the drop-down menu.

The smile warmed up. Cass stared determinedly at her book.

‘It’s really good to sit down. I’ve been standing since King’s Cross.’

She nodded just a fraction; she’d been standing too, but decided not to mention it in case it encouraged him.

‘Long day,’ he said.

Cass wasn’t altogether certain whether that was a statement or a question, so didn’t say anything.

‘Me too,’ he said, as if she had. It was meant as an opening, she was meant to say something. He stretched. ‘It’s been a good day, though.’

Depends on where you’re standing, Cass thought grimly as she stared at the page; she had read the same line three times.

‘This is such a beautiful part of the country, people really have no idea.’

Was that in general or just about the beauty of East Anglia in summer? growled her brain. Cass closed her eyes; if she wasn’t careful, she was going to turn into a curmudgeonly old woman who talked to herself and who nobody loved.

What do you mean, turn into? snapped her inner bitch.

‘It is breathtaking, isn’t it?’ the man said, staring longingly out of the carriage window at the great rolling expanse of the fens. The fens, flat as a newly brushed billiard table, stretched from horizon to horizon as far as the eye could see. Picked out on the pitch-black soil were row after row of celery heads and lollo rosso lettuces in startling greens and scarlets, and above them a cloudless cerulean blue sky that seemed to go on forever. It did have a peculiar, unforgiving beauty.

Cass looked across at him; he was still smiling at her. Maybe it was time to admit defeat. It was obvious that he was impervious to indifference and people who couldn’t look grumpy however hard they tried, and whatever had happened to him that day, it was obviously an ice age away from Feckett, Reckett and Snore.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. It is.’