All My Love by Miranda Dickinson EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Miranda Dickinson
- Language: English
- Formats: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Available for Download
- Genre: Holiday Romance, Romantic Comedy
- Price: Free
- File Size: 2 MB
ESTHER
‘This feels right. Being here. You know how sometimes you just know?
That’s how it feels. It’s exactly what I needed. I’ve had a horrible year until
now. Losing my last job, I mean. I thought my mother was going to have a
coronary when I told her – well, you can imagine …’
‘Mm-hm.’
My new manager, Marjorie, strides ahead of me. Blimey, she’s fast.
My breath quickens as I pick up my pace. ‘My mum thinks this job is a
comedown – no offence, by the way, that’s her problem, not mine – but it
really isn’t. I’m excited. Really keen to get started. It’s a challenge I’m going
to relish. Expanding my horizons, learning new skills …’
‘Skills, right.’ Marjorie wheels a cart between us, unsmiling. ‘Mop.
Bucket. Cloths and dusters in the basket, polish and sprays up top. Vac’s
power switch is tricky so just kick the bastard if it stops.’ She gives a brief
nod and starts to leave.
‘Great, thanks, but …’
I see her shoulders hunch and she slowly rotates back to face me. ‘But?’
‘Aren’t you staying?’
Marjorie’s eyebrows rise into her bottle-red fringe and I think I catch the
ghost of a smile. ‘Staying? I have six floors in this building, one cleaner to
each, and we have to be done by eleven. So no, sweetheart, I’m not staying.’
‘But there was supposed to be an induction? Mr Grove said—’
‘Mr Grove?’ That eyeroll of hers is worthy of its own show. ‘Right.’
Marjorie clears her throat and sweeps her hand across the darkened expanse
of the open-plan office. ‘Clean this—’ she points at the bright yellow
cleaning cart beside me ‘—with that.’
And then she powers past me towards the lifts.
Heart hammering, I call after her. ‘But what do I do when I finish?’
I’m answered by a large bunch of keys flying at me that I barely manage
to catch.
Stunned, I turn back to the office floor, clutching my keys like a first-day
nursery kid grasping their teddy, one side of the enormous blue tabard apron
I’m wearing drooping off my shoulder.
‘That’s it?’ I ask the dark expanse.
Sleeping computer screens stare blankly at me. Empty chairs face away.
From somewhere in the shadows a low buzz drones.
‘Seriously?’
Marjorie Ollerenshaw wasn’t the warmest of managers I’ve met, but even
her company would be preferable to this. Tears threaten, but I blink them
away. I am not going to cry on my first day …
First night.
‘Night cleaner,’ Mum repeated yesterday when I told her I’d got the job.
She said it like it was the sourest-tasting word to ever grace her tongue.
‘I get a tabard,’ I’d offered with a grin, thinking it would help. It didn’t.
I look at the bright yellow cleaning trolley, with its scuffed edges, peeling
labels and bleach-stained wheels. It’s jolly, in a beaten-up way. And,
apparently, it’s my new work colleague.
I think I’ll call it Fred.
‘Hey, Fred,’ I say, patting its rubber handles, not caring now that I say it
aloud because there’s nobody to hear me. ‘Pleasure to be working with you.
Fancy showing me around?’
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