1

Violet

It was only when the message arrived that I realised how unprepared I was to receive it.
That’s the thing about shock, though, isn’t it? Seismic when something happens unexpectedly, worse when that same something was an inevitability for which you stubbornly failed to prepare. I stared at the words until my eyes stung, the text blurring as I fought to regain focus. Beyond the window, life went on. Traffic ground forwards, bicycle wheels turned, voices carried, and a stiff breeze chased city litter along gutters and into drains. It was all white noise to me.

I’ve put the house on the market.Thought you should know. H

For the past two years, I’d thought of the two of us as sitting on opposing sides of a chess board, each waiting for the other to make their move. This was his, and now, I knew, it was my turn.
‘Violet?’
The door behind me was ajar, and the man now standing in the gap sounded terse as he said my name. I turned to face him, rearranging my features into what I hoped was a contrite expression.
‘Sorry.’ I glanced towards the phone in my hand, ready to explain, only to falter. The man – my boss, Robert ‘call me Bobsy’ Prior – raised an enquiring brow. It was flecked with grey and impeccably neat, much like the goatee a few inches below it. ‘Let me guess,’ he said, ‘another family emergency?’ His tone left me under no illusions as to how he felt about that particular phrase, one that I had, admittedly, been unable to avoid trotting out on numerous occasions.
‘Not this time,’ I told him, trying for a smile. ‘It’s nothing.’
It’s everything.
He nodded briskly. ‘I’d like a word in my office.’
‘Now?’ Panic fluttered. ‘But I have that viewing—’
‘I took the liberty of rescheduling that.’
He waited a moment for me to register the importance of his statement. Bobsy Prior never rescheduled, not when it ran the risk of negatively impacting customer experience, and therefore business earnings. Whatever he wanted to talk to me about was serious.
Purposefully, he led the way back inside and dolefully I followed. Of the four desks inside our estate agency, only one other was occupied, and when I caught the eye of the young woman sitting behind it, she immediately looked away. Guilt.
It was an emotion I recognised only too well.
‘Take a seat.’
Bobsy’s own desk was obscenely tidy, the white laminate surface blemish-free and reeking of furniture polish. Aside from a neatly ordered set of trays – one labelled ‘In’ the other ‘Out’, there was little save for a closed laptop and a pot of red biros. On the day of my first interview, I’d sat in the same chair I was perched on now and wondered if I should be worried about what those pens represented, the hint they gave as to the personality of the man in front of me. ‘Intuition is always right, because truth is never wrong,’ my dad had been fond of saying. One of his many wise proclamations. They had been coming back to me with increasingly regularity, and often I comforted myself by imagining he was in the room with me, whispering them into my ear.
I became aware of a tapping sound and glanced up to find Bobsy watching me, his mouth set and fingers drumming.
‘I’ll cut right to it, shall I?’
I sat up a little straighter.
‘Did you,’ he asked, ‘or did you not, advise a client against putting in a bid for the house on Tension Road?’
‘Which one?’ I enquired mildly, though I knew full well. ‘The former HMO,’ he said, using the acronym term for a house in multiple occupation.The one to which he was refer- ring had been repurposed into a series of bedsits, but now the owner was selling up and wanted to attract those in search of a project, ideally a young professional couple with the time and resource to transform the dilapidated property back into a home. So far, so reasonable, until you considered the price tag.
I sighed. ‘Oh, that one.’
‘According to Sheena, your exact words to the individuals at the appointment were: “One point two is far too high. If I were you, I’d go in under nine hundred.”’
No wonder my colleague had been unable to meet my eye.
‘It is too high,’ I said. ‘Far too high. You know that as well as I do.The vendor’s dreaming if he thinks we can get that for him. The roof is rotten, the guttering needs a do-over, and that’s before you start on plumbing and electrics. And the garden—’
Bobsy held up a hand to silence me, before launching into a monotonic spiel about ‘competitive markets’, ‘desirable postcodes’ and ‘surveyor guarantees’. I didn’t need to spell out the truth, which was that my instinct had been to protect the would-be buyers from investing in a money pit, and that I’d put their welfare above any thoughts of my own or the business’s commission. Bobsy had figured out that much on his own, and he was furious.
‘Selling is what we do; it’s the job. If you can’t stomach that element of the role, Violet, then I’m afraid you leave me with limited options.’
‘Such as?’
The fingers continued to drum. ‘I think you know.’
‘You can’t just sack me,’ I said hotly. ‘That’s illegal.’
He sighed. ‘If I’m honest, Violet, this latest stunt doesn’t represent the most troubling example of your conduct. There is another, far more concerning issue at play here, one which I had hoped we could avoid discussing. If I’m honest,’ he said again, a sure-fire preface to another damning indictment, ‘I prefer not to dwell on such salacious behaviour. What I’m giving you here is an opportunity – walk away without a fuss, and I won’t be forced to take the matter further.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, though I could feel the heat in my cheeks. How had he found out when I had been so careful? ‘Please.’ It was close to a whisper. ‘I need this job.’
The arrangement of Bobsy’s features gave nothing away. He was as blank as the pristine walls of his office.
‘And I need people I can trust,’ he replied crisply. ‘People with a strong moral code. I’m being lenient here. What you have done . . . well, there are legal implications, and I’m sure neither of us wants to go down that path.’
The fact that he was right in his condemnations of me did little to assuage my anger, as it spread through my veins like nettles. I thought again about the message informing me that the house was going to be sold. Not just a house, but a home – our home, the place where life as I knew it had changed, where perhaps the most vital part of it had ended.The shock I’d felt as I read those words had calcified into rage, and it was the latter that brought me abruptly to my feet.
Bobsy rocked back in his seat, seemingly alarmed by the sudden movement.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I said, continuing to talk over his attempted reply. ‘I don’t need this job after all. You’re right, I’m no good at ripping people off. In fact, I don’t know what I was thinking accepting this job at all.You don’t need to fire me, because I quit, OK? I quit with immediate effect.’
Bobsy stood up clumsily, his features curled into a scowl, but whatever he chose to say next was inaudible against the ringing slam of the door as I yanked it shut behind me. Crossing to my desk, I snatched up my few possessions, swept past a gaping Sheena, and headed out on to the street without so much as a single backward glance.