Saving The Mission, page 12
part #1 of The Race to Space Series
“That would be great :) Come to mine at say 7? I’ll have a bottle ready and I’ll cook. X”
Samantha had already started planning the meal she was going to prepare, not being at work gave her time to cook properly. She was thinking of cooking duck for a change. She got her phone and sent a message to herself with a shopping list when at the top of the phone she saw another incoming message. She felt like a schoolgirl going on their first date, all giddy and giggly. Samantha had not felt like this in years. She scrolled down and opened the message.
“Sorry I can’t, I’ve got work. I’ll be over about 9. Don’t worry about cooking.”
Samantha was surprised at how that short message had suddenly ruined her mood. She had already built up a picture in her mind of a romantic date with candles and sat at the dinner table like they were in a private restaurant, just the two of them. It was as if the image was in a heart-shaped bubble above her head and a bullet had just driven straight through it causing it to evaporate. Samantha could even imagine the popping sound that it made. She considered how to reply, knowing that she couldn’t sound disappointed, he had after all decided to come and see her.
“No worries :) I’ll keep the bottle on ice.”
Samantha put the phone down and decided to go to the supermarket and do some shopping. She was surprised how she had only been off work a day and already the thought to leave the house seemed too much effort. She put on Ryan’s hoodie and a pair of jogging bottoms and walked up to the supermarket.
While Samantha was shopping, she could feel others around her looking at her judgingly. She wondered if this was all in her mind, her mind making her feel bad that she wasn’t at work, or if it was actually happening. Even the checkout lady called Sandra appeared to serve her with a look of utter contempt. Samantha vowed next time to use the self-service, however, realised that even then, someone needs to come over and authorise her questionable purchase of three bottles of wine.
Later that night, Samantha ate her cheap, microwavable dinner and tidied up the house. She lit a scented candle she had bought from the supermarket, which gave off a lavender scent to make the place smell nice. She had set the wine glasses out in the living room and had prepared a selection of films for Ryan to choose. She could hardly wait. She glanced at the job specifications, made a note of the keywords and decided that she would look at them later. Whenever she tried to concentrate, all she could think of was getting the place ready for Ryan’s arrival. She diarised to work on the applications tomorrow.
Samantha sat on the sofa and waited, she looked up at the mirrored clock. The time was 8:35pm. She started to open the wine and sip it. By 9:15pm, Ryan still hadn’t arrived and that sip of wine and turned into a whole glass. She had already poured herself a second glass.
By 9:30pm, there was still no sign. She sent Ryan a text and thought that half an hour late was a reasonable amount of time to wait before chasing.
“Hey :) are you still coming later? X”
Her text went unanswered. It was almost 10pm before Ryan arrived. She had started to drop to sleep on the sofa and the knock on the door awoke her. She checked herself in the mirrored clock, one side of her hair was now completely ruffled, she frantically tried to straighten it and licked her finger to clear her smudged make-up.
She opened the door and exclaimed “Heyy!” She wrapped her arms around him. He put his arms around her but Samantha could feel there was no emotion in the hug. She looked up at him and could smell the stale ale in his breath, he had been drinking before he came over. He looked at her and she could tell he had drunk a few pints, his pupils were dilated and he wasn’t focusing on her. It was as if he could see three people rather than just Samantha in front of him. He stepped through the door. Each step was carefully planned and tentative like he was wearing astronaut boots.
Samantha guided him through her living room to the sofa and offered him a glass of wine, which he gratefully accepted but communicated only through a nod. He hadn’t said anything since he arrived. Samantha was worried, something was wrong.
Ryan didn’t look ready to say anything so she decided to start first. “I don’t know how long you have got, but I thought we could watch a film of your choice?” She got up and showed him the DVD’s she had selected for him. He looked over to her, but turned his head away and stared at the wall.
She couldn't leave it any longer she had to ask. “Ryan, what’s wrong?” She didn’t want to ask, she didn’t want to know. Her internal alarm bells had already been ringing the minute that she had seen him at the door.
“I, I can’t see you anymore.” He looked at his hands when he said it.
Samantha felt her heart lurch, she had expected bad news but not this. Not so soon after he had come over yesterday. “What do you mean Ryan?” She knelt down and held his hands in hers. They were warm and sweaty. He did not refuse her affection but could not meet her gaze. She waited patiently.
“Gail. She found out after I stayed over last night. She was obviously upset but even more so because...” He shook his head almost like he was trying to shake the thought from his mind. He turned to Samantha and looked into her eyes. Samantha took a deep breath, waiting for the impact. “She’s pregnant Sam.”
The words felt like someone had punched her in the gut. She released his hands and staggered backwards. Samantha could hold on no longer and felt the tears roll down. She looked up at the ceiling, trying to gather her thoughts. “But how Ryan? You told me you didn’t want kids.” A thought occurred to her and it was as if red mist started to cloud her vision. “Infact, you said that you weren’t even sleeping together anymore! I guess she must be the new virgin Mary!”
Ryan looked away and shifted on the sofa. “Well, recently we have been trying to get the marriage back on track...”
Samantha could feel the rage inside her building and interjected before she had time to hear the remainder of the gutrenching realisation.“What by fucking someone else for the last four years?”
Ryan stood up and raised his voice. His arms gesticulating as he spoke. He slightly staggered as he got up from the sofa. “This was not what I had planned Sam, I never wanted this!”
She couldn’t look at him any longer. She hated that he was indulgent in his self-pity. He hadn’t lost the only one he was close to like her. He still had his so-called ‘loving wife’. Samantha took her glass and went to the kitchen to pour herself another glass of wine. She took a large gulp to steady herself although if anything it made things worse. She was now on the third glass and her head was starting to make her vision and thoughts blurry. The wine was enhancing her emotions and as a consequence, she felt very angry. She walked back into the living room, each step seemed to be a stomp, as if the anger was in every part of her body.
She stood with her glass in her right hand and her other hand was on her hip. Any thoughts she had about being nice had gone. Any attempt to persuade him to stay had vanished. She was free of her inhibitions and asked him the question she had wanted to ask for years. “Tell me Ryan, was it ever going to be just me and you?”
Ryan looked away and paced around the room, stopping at the furthest wall away. “It’s difficult Sam, you know that. Gail is my wife. She would be broken.”
Sam shouted. “And what about me Ryan? What about if I am broken or do I not matter? I lost my fucking job yesterday and you decide now is a good time to leave me? Did you ever give a damn about me? About us?”
Ryan turned towards her but did not move any closer. “Of course I did Sam, a big part of me loved you.”
“Which part Ryan? Your dick?”
Ryan took a step forward and put his arms out to her. Something stopped him getting any closer. He put his hands back to his side. “I care for you deeply Sam, but for Gail and the baby I can’t carry this on.”
Samantha knew it was hopeless and she shouted with tears down her cheeks. “Well fuck you, Ryan. Let’s see how you enjoy your life with one woman. I bet you don’t last a day!”
Ryan approached her and put his hands out palms down. “Sam, calm down.”
Then the rage that filled Samantha reached the top of the glass. It started brimming over, she couldn’t hold it back.
“Fuck you, Ryan!” As she said his name, all rational thought had left Samantha and she threw the glass of wine she was holding in his direction. The glass hit the wall behind and cascaded into tiny shards. The grey carpet now had a dark red patch like a guilty stain. Leaving a mark like a crime had been committed. She stared at the wall in shock at what she had just done. Had Ryan not moved his head out of the way, the left side of his face would have been covered in tiny shards of glass. She did not move her gaze from the red stain.
Ryan looked at her in surprise at first, which quickly turned to utter contempt. As she was staring at the wall behind, he pushed past her and out of the door without saying a word. She did not move. She remained there for a couple of minutes, staring at the wall in complete shock after the events that had just occurred. Eventually, as if to rationalise her thoughts she said out loud, “What have I done?” It worked, reality kicked in. She moved her hands to her mouth in a pose like the painting, The Scream. She ran to the kitchen to get some towels to mop up the mess. She scrubbed at the wall and picked up all the glass and put it in the towel making her hands bleed. Her blood mixed in with the red winemaking it indistinguishable. The realisation of the past couple of days dawned on her. She frantically scrubbed the carpet, smearing the stain. She knelt down and put her head in her hands causing blood to drip down her face. Samantha thought she could feel a slight sting in her knees and realised that she was kneeling in shards of glass that she initially could not see.
Samantha cried. She wasn’t sure if she was crying over her lost job, her lost boyfriend or her lost dignity. She realised the irony, this same scene had happened years ago but with her, the one leaving. She realised that somehow her dad's behaviour was repeating itself, the drinking regularly to get to sleep at night and erratic behaviour. Eventually, at around 12am, Samantha got up, tediously pulled out the glass shards that were sticking into her kneecaps and dusted herself down. She picked up her phone and typed a text to Ryan.
“I’m sorry, for everything. X”
Samantha did not expect a reply.
6.
One week after the events of the incident Samantha called ‘glassgate’, Samantha had become a shell of herself. She was committed to drinking a bottle of wine a day, the tabs that were opened to bookmark the potential job applications still hadn’t been touched and she had barely got out of her pyjamas all week. The one thing she felt she had was dignity and she had even felt that drift away on that fateful day.
Samantha decided that today was the day to start her applications again. She opened the first tab recruiting a PA for a CEO at a small business. The job had expired. Samantha was no longer sure if she felt disappointed or pure relief that she didn’t have to try and apply. The next job was for a receptionist, Samantha looked at the application and dismissed it. To Samantha, it would feel like a step backwards even though it was the same job she did before. Samantha closed both tabs.
That left the job application for an Administrator. She looked at the Job Specification:
‘Post: Administration Assistant / Secretarial Support
Company: Mann & Cole LLP
Time left to apply: 1 day, 10 hours, 40 minutes
We are recruiting for an Administration Assistant / Secretary to assistant a Partner with drafting court documents, notes and assisting with initial enquiries. The ideal candidate must:
Have experience in an administration style role. Experience of being an Assistant to a Solicitor is desirable but not essential.
Have excellent communication skills to assist clients with any initial enquiries as well as taking messages for the Partner.
Have experience with all Microsoft Office Applications, in particular, Outlook and Word.
Be able to manage their time effectively and have excellent organisation skills to assist with the management of a number of files at any one time.
An experience of dictation and case management systems is desirable but not essential as training will be supplied.
Mann & Cole LLP have an excellent reputation in the local area as the go to Solicitors in Buxton. We offer flexible working hours should this be required and we are committed to developing our staff to aid in their own personal progression.’
Samantha looked over the application. She started to pull out the keywords and put together a CV and cover letter. She found it difficult to describe her qualities when at that moment she did not feel she had any. She put her application together and sent it. She had motivated herself by saying that she would not drink any wine until the application had been sent. It had certainly driven her to send the application. Samantha had also wanted to send the application because if anyone then dared to ask her the fatal question of ‘How is the job hunt going?’ she had an excuse to say she had tried.
She did not check the application and as soon as it was complete, she clicked send. Samantha shuffled across to the kitchen in her pink slippers and pulled out a bottle of wine and some cheese and started to eat. Her diet had completely gone, she was putting on a noticeable amount of weight through drinking wine daily. She also hadn’t been back to the gym after ‘Glassgate’. She did not want to risk bumping into Ryan. He never replied to her text and she never chased. Ending a four-year relationship was as simple as throwing a glass near someone's face.
Samantha went back to the sofa, sat down and put her feet up. She picked up the remote and turned on ‘The Group’. It was the only interaction she’d had with other people in the last week. She listened to their minor tiffs, their mindless drivel to the camera and their self-indulgent discussions and fell asleep on the sofa for the third night in a row.
7.
Samantha awoke the next day at around 10am. At some point in the night, she must have briefly awoken to put a blanket around herself and gone back to sleep. Even after a just over a week of not having an alarm she was waking up later each day. She made herself sit up on the sofa and creaked her neck, which was sore from sleeping at an angle on the sofa arm all night. She gradually got up and went to the kitchen. Her head was pounding in the usual throb that she had become accustomed to in the morning. She rubbed her forehead and ran her hands through her hair while walking to the kitchen. Samantha made herself a cup of strong coffee and rummaged for the biscuits but could not find any. She must have eaten them all a couple of days before. She sighed and returned to the living room with her coffee and sat down. She patted around the sofa looking for her phone and eventually found it down the back of the sofa. As it came out, it was covered in dust and other bits which could possibly have been the food that had got stuck down there previously. She dusted the phone down and was surprised to find that she had an email. Samantha dismissed it as probably some marketing junk, advertising things she couldn’t afford and opened up her inbox ready to delete the email.
The email was headed up with the subject ‘Your Application’, Samantha readied herself for the disappointment of a rejection email. She opened the email:
‘To: Samantha Harrington
From: Channel 3 Submissions
Subject: Your Application”
Samantha was confused, she had not submitted an application to Channel 3. The thought suddenly occurred to her that the social media questionnaire she had submitted had mentioned a television show. Her heart beated that bit quicker and she anxiously scrolled down the email:
“Thank you for completing our initial application process and congratulations on passing the questions contained. We would like to invite you to a further assessment stage. Although we are unable to disclose the full details of the television show you have applied for (due to confidential reasons) we can reveal how the programme will be set up. You will be required to complete numerous challenges testing your physical and mental capabilities, in particular, you will be assessed on your ability to work under pressure.
The prize on offer is a once in a lifetime experience, that we can assure you. If you are still interested then we would like to invite you to our further assessment stage.
We would be grateful if you can please choose your option below by marking an X in the appropriate box and click submit. We will then contact you further on the telephone number you provided at the time.
Yours sincerely
Channel 3 Submissions
I do want to be considered for the role [ ]
I do not want to be considered for the role [ ]
Submit’
Samantha read the email and re-read it again and again. She was sure that her eyes were playing tricks on her, she must have misread the part of the email that had said she wasn’t successful. When the realisation finally dawned on Samantha that she needed to do something with the email, she without a moment's hesitation, or a moment to consider the consequences, put an X through the first box and clicked submit. She straight away noticed a further email in her inbox and clicked to open it.
‘To: Samantha Harrington
From: Channel 3 Submissions
Subject: Your Application
Thank you for confirming your interest in the opportunity. We will be in contact with via the telephone number provided, in the next 2 to 3 working days. For reference, our number will be withheld so please ensure your phone allows a call from an unknown number.
Yours sincerely,
Channel 3 Submissions’
For the first time since she had lost her job, Samantha felt a glow in her heart and mind. At first, she couldn’t figure out what the feeling was, her feelings having been numbed by the wine for so long. She realised that it was hope. She got up and walked into the bedroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She took off her pyjamas and stared at her naked body with self-loathing. Her once flat stomach had developed a more rotund front and had started to slightly sag at the bottom. Her shoulders were slumped which did not help her appearance. Samantha considered that the email had stated that she would need to be tested physically as well as mentally. She decided to go for a run that morning to try and get herself back into shape.
