The World According to Jessie

Chapter Five

"...Ok wasn't expecting this!"

Sixhours and a good scream at a traffic jam on the M25 later, and I was back in The Box that Sunday night. I quickly checked my answer phone messages and was slightly despondent to find that there were none from Tristan. I huffed slightly and threw my bag and jacket onto my sofa before I entered the kitchen. Going through the messages slowly, there were the usual messages from Grandma Nicki leaving the requisite seven messages to make sure I rang her when I got home safe. I would probably just send a text to Granddad Mel instead. It would take him half an hour to work out how to try and read it. I wouldn't witness this event bit it would be fun knowing in the back of my head I would have the image of a seventy something, short-sighted man sat on a bar stool hundreds of miles away, swearing at a piece of technology before finally admitting defeat and calling Grandma Nicki or Mum to make sense of it for him. It made me giggle literally just thinking about it. May be I was a secret sadist but I did get a little guilty pleasure out of it.

I pulled my boots off and dragged my feet across the wooden floor in search of coffee. It was probably the last thing I needed, considering I had to be up early to get into work on time. The wonderful Underground had decided to schedule engineering works according to my Twitter app (thank the Lord for iPhones and their apps), so I had to either walk or catch the bus. Considering I had to get from Battersea to Fleet Street, walking in heels was certainly not an option. Not unless I wanted broken feet by the time I got there. No it would have to be the bus, and that was a challenge in itself! If you have never caught a bus in London then you are one of the lucky ones. If you thought The Underground was bad, nothing prepared you for the red double decker's that seemed to have a problem with people to seat ratios! And there was no way that I was paying a congestion charge or trying to park the Fiesta, no matter how small it was. Lost in my daydreams of how I was going to handle that, I pursed my lips and stared blankly at the wall only realising just in time that my kettle was in fact boiling over!

Coffee in hand, text sent to Granddad Mel and slippers firmly on feet, I slumped down onto my sofa and fired up my battered laptop to check my emails. I had purposely not linked up my phone to either of my email accounts, because the weekend was my time and I was not to be disturbed. I immediately logged onto my professional email account first and my heart immediately jumped into my mouth as I saw an email from Bernice. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard as I opened it up. I was fired, I knew it. The column had been a complete failure and she wanted nothing more to do with my writing or me. I needed to open my eyes but I had to gather myself first. After another long gulp of coffee, half of which went down my top due to the fact that I couldn't see anything and a few deep breaths later, I looked at the email:

From:

To:

Subject: Column Report

I wish to see you in my office first thing in the morning. Don't be late!

Bernice

Oh God! An email from Queen Bitch that positively wreaked Fire and Brimstone. I could hear the cackles as she was typing it out. She was deriving pleasure out of the fact that I was almost certainly fired. How was I going to tell everyone? Run back to Blackpool with my tail between my legs and say "sorry, big time didn't work out, just like people told me that it wouldn't". Oh, how Lillian would love that. I could hear the "I told you so's" leaving her mouth as we speak. That and the drowning of the sorrows that would no doubt happen. Oh my poor liver! Well, there was nothing I could do about it now. All I could do, was try and get a good night's sleep. Fat chance of that happening! As I lay in bed that night, watching the clock doing its rounds, two sets of eyes entered my mind once again. One belonged to Tristan, the other belonged to Simon. I don't know what it was about green eyes on a man but it sent me into a tizzy. This probably explained why the man I fancied in my youth had them. I had never been in this kind of place before and I didn't really know how to deal with it. At 4.38am I finally fell into some semblance of sleep, thinking that green-eyed men would make a great column.