Three weeks after swapping my tiny village for the big city, something I should have done immediately after I finished university, I was on the phone with my mother, when she suddenly asked me if I’d heard from Nathalie. While trying to conceal the surprise in my voice, and the sinking feeling in my stomach upon hearing Nathalie’s name, I asked my mother why she wanted to know.
“Your father may be a bit dense about these things, but you can’t fool me, dear. Oh, and late last night she dropped a letter in the mailbox for you.”

I had moved to London, but removing yourself physically from the place where you got hurt doesn’t automatically lessen the pain. I learnt my lesson there. Even though I suspected I had done the right thing, if only for myself, any Nathalie-related thought moistened my eyes and tore through my heart in a way I was convinced I would never recover from. Hearing my mother talk about Nathalie only deepened those effects. It had only been three weeks and the scars on my soul were still fresh and vulnerable. My mother offered to bring the letter to London, so we could make a day, or even a weekend of it, but I declined. I couldn’t have her come all the way up there to find me in tears − and living on someone’s couch. By the end of that phone call, I was crying some more, I had hurt my mother’s feelings, and I was dying to know what Nathalie had to say to me.

My old friend Julia temporarily offered me that spot on her couch. She lived in a one bedroom flat, so it was either that, or share the bed. I felt more comfortable on the couch, even though it didn’t feel very comfortable during the night. I was hoping this particular situation wouldn’t have to last very long, but for me to be able to rent my very own room, I would also have to get my very own job. This time I was to find one without the help of my, according to my mother, slightly dense daddy, who got me the job at the paper factory. Not that unemployment was disagreeing with me too much, I mean, who doesn’t love sleeping late in a pre-warmed bed − I moved to Julia’s room once she was off to work − watching daytime TV and having time to write pages and pages of unsent letters to a secret ex.

My mother promised she would mail Nathalie’s letter to me first thing, so I sat around waiting for it, hoping the Royal Mail would do its job. The next day, when I got up early to empty the letter box, instead of finding a package from my mother, I found something I wasn’t expecting at all. It was a job offer. It wasn’t anything too glamorous, but it was money and money meant getting my own, albeit shared, place, and all the possibilities attached to that. I was to call a certain person to arrange for an interview as soon as possible. So I did. And then they told me why this specific job was offered to me.

To be continued…