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front of
Patricia’s Christmas tree from two years past. Julia stared at it,
felt the familiar hot tears at the back of her eyes and shook her
head. She couldn’t give in, she’d shed enough tears and now was the
time of healing, of moving forward, of making the best of an
impossible (and inconceivable) situation.
    She sat down
and opened the desk. Someone, most likely Mrs. K, had thought to
put some writing tablets, pens and pencils and other office
supplies in the shelves and drawers.
    Just a few
days ago, Julia was the head of a grant-making foundation attached
to a small group of three non-profit hospitals. She had been
responsible for disbursing the profits of the hospitals. With her
small team, they called for and assessed grant projects for
everything from equipment for basic research laboratories to doctor
and nursing fellowships to scholarships for students studying any
kind of medicine, be it nursing, physical therapy, midwifery, or
the like.
    She’d worked
there for twelve years. She loved it there. She would miss her
staff, her duties, even her damned desk.
    Julia shook
her head again to oust the melancholy that always seemed
threateningly close to drowning her and started to do what she’d
always done when a project loomed.
    She wrote a
list.
    She’d need a
mobile phone.
    She’d need a
computer and e-mail.
    She’d need a
driver’s license and a car.
    She’d need a
work permit and to have her visa extended.
    And she
carried on writing everything she needed and then prioritising
it.
    She took out
another piece of paper and she wrote down what she knew to be in
her bank account and her investment accounts. She’d made a tidy
profit from her house and car. She had some savings. She wasn’t
destitute.
    She started to
budget her money, what she’d need, what she could afford. She’d
have to have a talk with Douglas about a lot of things, including
what she would put into the house. Keeping a house like this had to
cost an extraordinary amount, anything she contributed would be a
drop in the bucket. But she had not been brought up not to pay her
way.
    As she looked
at the figures she realised that without a job she’d be out of
money way too quickly. She had a six month visa but did not have
the right to work or to healthcare. She’d need insurance… and it
went on and on.
    Julia started
adding to her list and wondered how much insurance would cost and
bent her head to the task of diverting her brain in the hopes of
exhausting it so she could fall asleep and not thinking of anything
else.
    She put her
elbow on the desk and touched the middle three fingers of her hand
to her forehead, closing her eyes and rubbing away the gentle ache
that had begun to throb there.
    But no matter
how hard she tried, she couldn’t keep the thoughts at bay.
    She hadn’t
expected very much out of her life. She never had big dreams or
ambitions. She didn’t want fancy cars, huge houses, jetting around
from exotic place to place. Sean had given her a taste of that and
it wasn’t worth the price you had to pay to get it.
    She was not a
risk-taker. She liked things steady, familiar and normal. She liked
her family close, her friends next door and to know exactly what
aisle the cake mixes were in at the grocery store. All her life she
did her utmost to keep everything just that way.
    She had been
pleased with her lot (after she’d divorced Sean, of course). She
had a house she loved. She’d lived there five years and just the
summer before had managed to renovate the last room so every inch
of carpet, every piece of furniture, every last wineglass was
exactly what she wanted.
    And she had
friends she was going to miss. She was going to miss Josie’s
Margarita Mayhem Night that was held every year on the longest day.
And the Christmas Party where they all trooped out in posh outfits
to see the Nutcracker Suite and then came back to Tom and Mary’s to
eat the vast array of delicious nibbles Mary spent days making.