‘Kelly Rockford. Babe.
You’re a hit!’
That was the kind of talk
Kelly had heard only in her dreams. But there she was, sitting at
editor-in-chief Maya Rampling’s desk at Fresh magazine, hearing those
glorious words for real.
Maya’s talon tipped finger
tapped the draft of Kelly’s latest magazine column which lay on her desk. ‘This
is your best effort yet. Your column has really touched a nerve. Barely a
month on and we are getting more mail for you than any other regular writer. As
such I would like to offer you a freelance contract here at Fresh.’
Single, and Loving It!,
her pride and joy, her week by week column about how to be a happy single, was
now her ticket out of writing bridal announcements and obituaries in the local
rags! And she would be able to pay the rent on time. Her heart almost burst at
the thought.
A dead straight strand of
cocoa coloured fringe slipped from Kelly’s straining ponytail and swung before
her eyes. She had to fight the urge to blow the offending lock away as, knowing
her luck, she would blow a raspberry rather than the smooth, perfectly aimed
wisp of air she would prefer. And she wanted to remember herself in this
perfect moment as the epitome of cool. Well, maybe not cool so much as not
blowing a raspberry at an inopportune moment. She could hope for at least that
much.
‘We will offer you a three
month contract,’ Maya continued in the face of Kelly’s strained silence. ‘Work
at your own pace. Here or at home. Just as long as your copy is on my desk
every Monday afternoon at five, and the work and the reader response stay on
track, you will be a welcome and regular member of the Fresh family.
Come on, I’ll show you to your work-station.’
Maya stood and led the way.
In desperate relief Kelly raked her hand over her hair, tucking the fringe back
in place. There. Cool Kelly held her ground.
And then she saw her
work-station and had to choke back a gasp of splendiferous happiness. It
was her very own tiny three-walled cubicle amongst a dozen other tiny
three-walled cubicles. The desk was so sparse it reminded her of the first
day of school when every new pencil is sharpened and no book is dog-eared nor
scratched. The work-station housed a corkboard, a filing cabinet, a phone,
an assortment of stationery and a computer, which was turned on and opened to a
fresh, hopeful word file.
Kelly took off her faded denim
jacket and fluffy pink scarf and hung them over the back of her very own bouncy
office chair. She took a seat, swung back and forth and imagined dozens of
happy snaps plastered over her corkboard, her “I Hate Working Wednesdays, They
Really Cut Into My Weekends” mug resting amidst a ring of stale coffee, and
assorted funky knick knacks balanced atop her monitor. Yep. This was
her dream come true.
‘So how does that all sound?’
Maya asked.
Like the angels were singing
her song!
‘Sounds fine, thanks,’ cool
Kelly responded.
‘Great. First things
first, your next column. You have touched on something very deep and given
it a voice. So of course, I want you to hit that vein deeper and deeper
every week. Our female readers love you so in my infinite wisdom, I have
decided reader feedback will become a huge part of your page. We will
start with a whammy. In amongst your legion of new fans, there was one
reader who was not convinced.’
'Just one?’ Good one,
Kelly, real cool and confident!
Maya smiled indulgently,
her sharp, preternaturally smooth face breaking into a zillion telling wrinkles
at the unfamiliar movement. ‘One juicy one who made an interesting point.
So maybe you could respond to this beauty in next week’s issue.’
Maya flicked a one-page
letter onto Kelly’s desk as she left. ‘Have fun, and welcome to the Fresh
family.’
Have fun? This was
turning out to be the best day of her life! The best she cared to
remember, anyway. She now had a real job doing something she utterly
loved, her very own quasi-office with her very own bouncy chair, and lastly a
real pay packet, a regular pay packet. How she wished she could have
stapled her mother to the wall to have listened to everything Maya had said.
Then her life would be perfect.
Kelly picked up the letter.
She unconsciously fiddled with the corners of the folded piece of baby blue
paper.
Truth be told, Kelly was
surprised there was only one not convinced. The Single, and Loving It!
idea had come about around a month before after a Saturday Night Cocktails
session with her flatmate, racy Gracie, and her landlord, classy Cara, during
which they had bitched and moaned about their conglomerate of ex-boyfriends.
How they threw every ounce of their energy into the relationships whereas the
guys had seen them as a step above cricket practice but not so important as
Mum’s home cooking. Was that love? they had asked. Was that as good
as it could be?
So Single, and Loving
It! was born. Kelly had written her first attempt the minute she had
trudged home. It had been 3am, there had been no coffee in the cupboard, as she
had not been able to afford it, so she had plied herself with chicken
cup–a-soup. She sold the story to Fresh within the week and had been
writing weekly follow ups ever since.
She glanced down at the
letter. In her fidgeting hands lay the first piece of fan mail she had ever
received. Well, except for that one old guy who once had been determined she
was the only one whom he would allow to write his obituary (first job after Uni
– bad office, bad pay, bad news).
She rubbed her fingers over
the fine paper, memorizing the touch. She took a deep breath and dove in.
Dear Kelly
Men and women are meant to be attracted, but not forever, you say. They
come together to fill in space, time, and the void left by their parents, you
say. Well, dear Kelly, I don’t believe a word of it.
I believe you are a woman who has loved and loved deeply. I
believe you have convinced yourself there is no such thing as love so that you
do not have to feel you have failed.
And the thing is, dear Kelly, I believe love is alive and well out there.
Especially for you. You just have to be willing to lose yourself to find
it.
Simon of St Kilda.
Kelly dropped the letter to
the table as though it had scorched her fingers. She hastily looked over her
shoulder to make sure no one had seen the words on the paper, the words she
wanted nobody else to believe, as no more potentially damaging words had ever
been written.
How did the writer know?
How? Then out of the red mist before her eyes swam the most telling part
of the read. She picked up the letter between two fingers and re-read the
name at the bottom of the page.
Simon of St Kilda.
No, it couldn’t be!
