Her phone vibrated with a notification just as the Tube was about to disappear underground. Expecting another marketing email from a brand she could no longer afford, Kate’s heart sank at the subject line: Your Application. Good news never arrived first thing on a Saturday morning.
When she’d first started her job hunt, Kate had optimistically created a colour-coded spreadsheet to track the applications. But logging the rejections had become so depressing that she couldn’t bring herself to open the file any more. She briefly checked this email, searching for a hint of feedback or even just a glimmer of humanity within it, but no, nowadays everything was just an automated response. She wondered, not for the first time, if her CV, and the black hole within it caused by the job at the gallery, had been rejected by an algorithm before a human being had even laid eyes on it. The gallery was only ever meant to be a stopgap, something she could do for a few months until she figured out what to do next. How had a few months become nearly two years?
Kate swiped delete on the email. She thought about tweeting her disappointment, but then she worried that a potential employer might see it and be put off. Worse than that, she worried that Lindsey might see it, and it would cause her to worry. Lindsey had an exciting new life now. She didn’t need concern for her old friend holding her back.
It’s fine. Everything is fine.
Renee was waiting for Kate by the staff entrance to the gallery.
‘Come on, it’s cold.’ She was shivering in her stylish but too-thin jacket.
‘Sorry, I was chatting to Lindsey. The time zone thing takes a little getting used to.’
‘How’s she doing?’
‘Great. Fine. I think she’s really enjoying herself out there.’
‘Not so great and fine for you though?’
‘Oh, I’m OK.’
Renee’s mouth, red with bold lipstick, quirked with scepticism as she held the door open for them both.
‘Really. I’m OK. I got another rejection this morning, but I didn’t want that job anyway. The commute would have been painful.’
‘Well, no wonder you’re bummed out.’
‘It’s just . . . I would have been perfectly qualified to do that job a few years ago. It wasn’t even manager level. I thought I stood a really good chance.’
‘But you didn’t want it anyway?’
‘No, but that’s not the point.’
‘Well, until the job of a lifetime comes along, I’m pleased that we get to hold on to you for just a little bit longer.’ Renee wrapped an arm around Kate’s waist, and hugged her close as they zapped their passes and made their way down to the basement, where the staff changing rooms were. There were worse places to have a stopgap job, Kate knew, and worse people to work it with.
‘You’re looking fancy today,’ Kate noticed as Renee climbed out of a slinky black dress and into her uniform. ‘Hot date later?’
‘Actually . . .’
The lurch. It pulled at her insides.
‘No way. Who is he? Or she?’
‘He,’ Renee clarified with a smile, ‘is someone from my course. Claude. He does these weird, giant abstract portraits. Here, let me show you.’
Renee pulled out her phone and flicked to Instagram, revealing a series of brightly coloured splatters and artful blobs arranged in vaguely face-like proportions.
‘Don’t show me his art,’ Kate laughed. ‘Show me him.’
Renee laughed and flicked through to some pictures of a man who looked distinctly Mediterranean, and distinctly hot, in that dark, Mediterranean kind of way, with thick-rimmed glasses that seemed to tone down the hotness to the perfect level of gorgeously approachable.
‘And this man was just in your class? Just sitting there? The whole time?’ Kate asked. She couldn’t remember when she had last seen a man that good-looking in real life. ‘He was just . . . there?’
‘Well, he only switched to my particular module at the end of last year, and we kind of hooked up at the Christmas social, but I think after that he tried to play it cool, all tiny flirty moments and longing stares. Stupid stuff. I think he thought it was more romantic that way. But I got bored, so I bought him a drink and ended up asking him out last week. You should have seen his face!’
‘Just like that.’ Kate marvelled, thinking about how easy it seemed to be for Lindsey too.
‘But I don’t know yet. He’s very cute, obviously, and I want to get to know him more, but quiet guys freak me out a bit, you know?’
Kate nodded like she knew.
When Renee disappeared to pop to the loo, Kate finished putting things away in her locker, fixed her lanyard around her neck, and straightened up her shirt so that the buttons didn’t pull across her chest. She used to have such nice clothes, and nice make-up too. She used to get her hair done at fancy salons with juniors who massaged your head during deep-conditioning treatments. She sighed as she pulled out a small compact mirror from her handbag, smoothed her hair and quickly smudged on some tinted lip balm.
Kate met up with Renee again during the pre-shift briefing, and only half listened to the duty manager as they relayed the necessary news. She was thinking about how some people seemed to date like it was nothing. Renee did this all the time, some of the relationships so fleeting that Kate never had the chance to ask what their names were (if Renee cared enough to remember). And then there was Lindsey, barely landed on another continent and already getting interest from guys. Maybe it was because they were beautiful – far more beautiful than Kate had ever considered herself to be – but there was something else too. Something everybody else seemed to understand that Kate didn’t, like a radio frequency she had no idea how to tune into.
The gallery always started quiet first thing on a Saturday, like the calm before a storm. Then, at around eleven, the public descended. But the truth was, no matter how humdrum the job could be at times, and how easy it was compared to the job she used to do, there were many parts of being at the gallery that Kate absolutely loved. Being given ample opportunity to people-watch was definitely one of them. At this time of day there were never many children, apart from the ones dragged along by family members desperate for their progeny to get away from their screens and absorb some culture. There were plenty of students, who would crouch before the famous paintings with their sketchbooks and get all the lines and tones completely wrong. There were older folk who dressed like they were going mountaineering, complete with heavy backpacks and sometimes even hiking sticks, and bored Europeans sneering that London galleries were nothing compared to the ones on the continent. There were girls in floaty dresses and tennis shoes, wandering dreamily and taking artful selfies that would appear on Instagram later, and serious boys in black turtlenecks, stepping furiously from one room to another and scowling at anything they didn’t like (which was most things).
More than anything, Kate loved watching the couples. They’d wander through the rooms holding hands and pushing hair out of each other’s eyes, standing before the more famous works of art and then turning to each other for a quick kiss or simply to exchange a meaningful glance. Kate tried to hate lovey-dovey stuff, told herself that she should be hardened to that kind of thing by now, but she couldn’t deny there was still a tiny part of her that believed in love. She still believed, despite all the years that it hadn’t happened for her, despite working so hard to stamp out any sentimentality.