Free Before I Met You by Lisa Jewell

Dean, getting a job. No way!’
    ‘Well, it’s about time.’
    ‘Good grief, what sort of job?’
    ‘No idea. Maybe an art gallery? A boutique? An auction house? Somewhere I can start at the bottom and work my way up.’
    ‘Excellent,’ Bella said. ‘Have you even got a CV?’
    ‘Ha,’ Betty laughed, ‘and what would it say if I did? “1990–1995: Squeezed an unexceptional B.Tech Diploma in General Art and Design in around caring for crazed old lady. The End.”.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t think I’m really a CV type of a person. I think people will just have to take me as they find me.’
    ‘Hmm.’
    Betty groaned. She hated it when people said ‘hmm’. ‘Hmm, what?’
    ‘Nothing. Just, you’re in London now. As amazing as you are, I’m not sure just being “you” is going to be enough to get you the job of your dreams.’
    ‘Urgh, God,’ Betty groaned. ‘You sound just like my mother.’
    ‘I
am
just like your mother. That’s why you love me so much. And she’s right.’ Bella paused. ‘Well, maybe we’re both wrong and you’re right. But either way I agree with her. It wouldn’t hurt to put something in writing. Talk yourself up a bit. Maybe you could say you were, God, I don’t know, Arlette’s personal assistant?’
    Betty laughed. ‘Not too far from the truth, I suppose.’
    ‘Exactly!’
    ‘I know what you’re saying. But I think I’ll try it my way first.’ Betty smiled.
    ‘Yes,’ said Bella, ‘of course you will. You always, always do.’ They fell quiet for a moment. ‘So,’ said Bella. ‘When are you coming to visit?’
    ‘Was just about to ask you the same thing. Have you got any holiday coming up?’
    ‘Not until next month. Why don’t you come down here?’
    Betty paused and pondered the suggestion. She envisaged Bella’s bleak lodgings in a tumbledown cottage in a remote village just outside the zoo. She thought of cold fingers wrapped around chipped mugs of tea and condensation-covered windows looking out over tangled gardens and cool, flagstoned kitchens and early morning birdsong. She shuddered. She’d only just arrived in the kingdom of sirens and neon and filth and chaos, and double yellow lines as far as the eye could see. She could not yet countenance the prospect of a return to the countryside, even if it was to see her oldest, most-loved friend.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘maybe.’

10
    THE STALLHOLDER WAS outside when Betty left the house the next morning.
    She glanced at him awkwardly, and was taken aback when he smiled at her. ‘Morning, neighbour,’ he said.
    ‘Oh. Hi.’
    ‘Any more thoughts about the coat?’
    ‘Oh. Yes, definitely. Yes. I want to sell it.’
    ‘I mentioned it to my sister. She said to take it round to her studio. Any time.’
    ‘Any time, now?’
    He shrugged. ‘Yeah, now would be OK.’
    Betty hurtled back upstairs to retrieve the coat.
    ‘Here …’ He was feeling his pockets rather randomly. She watched him as he did so, noticing that his fingers were long and slender, that he had a tattoo on the inside of his wrist and that his eyes were so brown they were almost black. ‘Here.’ He pulled a small card from the inside pocket of his jacket, and handed it to her.
    She glanced at it.
    Alexandra Brightly.
    Betty smiled. ‘Is that your name, too?’ she asked. ‘Brightly?’
    ‘Yeah,’ he smirked. ‘John Brightly. I know. Not exactly fitting. Or maybe,’ he continued, deadpan, ‘I’ve deliberately played against type all my life.’
    Betty laughed. ‘It’s nice,’ she said. ‘I like it.’
    He smirked again and then turned, almost abruptly, away from her.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said to his back. ‘Thank you very much.’
    ‘No problem,’ he said.
    And that appeared to be the end of their exchange.
    She stood, for a moment, suspended in an air pocket of uncertainty, wondering what she should do next. A propos of nothing she turned left, and then left again. She found herself outside the nice house on Peter