What better moniker, then, than the poor, misunderstood Raven. Most people saw the bird as a portent of doom, but if anyone ever bothered to read anything properly, which they didn’t, they would actually know that the raven represented prophecy and insight. Security. Wisdom. And, if anyone cared, which she was sure they didn’t, the raven was the Royal Bird of Bhutan.
One of the few plus sides of working at the call centre meant that she could be or say or appear whatever way she wanted because the turnover was so rapid, no one ever noticed to comment. 111 was a weigh station for most people. A halfway house between working for 999 (which people thought sounded cooler but was actually freakier) or getting ‘a proper job.’ Staying longer than six months was unheard of. For most people anyway. Raven needed to stick it out for nine thanks to Parent-gate this morning.
She dabbed at her eyes, praying her eyeliner wasn’t running. It had taken about a hundred years on Brown Goth pinterest sites to get that right and sad clown goth was definitely not the look she’d been going for when she’d done her make-up at the Costa just down from the bus stop. Her mother’s lecture had been so long-winded she’d had to leave bare faced. Crazy-eyed more like.
She still hadn’t entirely registered her parent’s ultimatum. Intern at her uncle’s law firm in Birmingham or pay for her own university fees? They had a desk all ready and waiting for her. And a room she could share with her cousin Aneesha.
Intern for ambulance chaser Uncle Ravi? Nine months of sleepovers with Awfully Affected Aneesha?
Not ruddy likely! Why couldn’t they get it through their heads that she didn’t want to be a lawyer? That gazillions of teenagers had no idea what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives after they’d finished college. She was taking a GAP YEAR, not ‘destroying her future’ as her parents continually insisted upon calling the handful of months she’d asked for to sort herself out. Those last few months at college had been fraught with so much turmoil. Not so much in her life, but it was like the whole of sixth form had become a Netflix series intent on showing just how dark the teenaged heart could become. Hard to study and figure out the bright side of life with so much drama squeezing the joy out of everything. Not that she’d told her parents that. They’d been told she didn’t want to be a lawyer. Which she didn’t. Not the Uncle Ravi sort, anyway. Nor did she want to become a lawyer because it was mandated. As much as she loved her brother and sister, who became exactly what her parents had said they should (doctor, finance whizz), she did not want to grow up to be them. Or her parents. Or have another round of ‘We would’ve leapt at these opportunities if we’d had the chance. Didn’t Sunita know how difficult it was, working day and night, saving, moving a family halfway across the world, parenting, running a business, wanting more for your children?’
It had been difficult not to remind her mother that both she and her father had been born in Leicester when that particular lecture reappeared, as it often did.
‘Raven. Hunh.’ The guy next to her popped his phone back into his pocket as if they’d carried on chatting and not been completely ignoring one another. ‘That’s cool.’ He looked confused for a second then did the chin lift thing again. ‘I’m Dylan. Dylan Riley. I was in your chem class with Mr Houlihan. I used to watch you draw those cool, um, you know those skulls with the—’ he pinned his fingers into bunches and put them in front of his eyes.
‘Roses,’ she filled in for him. She liked to do sort of a cross between Frida Kahlo and Goth art. Mostly because it was the only thing she could draw, but it was better than doodling swirls or squares like Sara Richardson who sat next to her had. Sara was at uni now. English or Media Studies. No doubt making someone else’s life miserable with that finely tuned look of contempt of hers. Raven dug her nails into her hands. She should’ve said something.
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Dylan nodded as if she’d just told him she’d actually created the flower varietal herself. ‘Roses for eyes. That was some cool shit.’
She looked down at her shoes, too embarrassed to accept the compliment and saw that they were, annoyingly, spattered with mud. February was a messy month. Mud puddles. Rain. Sleet. Slush. Parents wanting to micromanage the whole rest of your entire life making you choose between one suffocating roof over your head and another. And then, mercifully, right before she fell apart in front of Dylan The Almost Stranger and told him absolutely everything she was going through, the bus arrived.
Chapter Four
Kath moved her eyes towards the autocue. She’d fine-tuned it to a craft, having her make-up retouched, not moving a millimetre and absorbing whatever was on the Brand New Day prompter before the cameras were back on her.
This was a new one, though. Touching her up as they played a ninety-second piece on a woman who knitted jumpers for her pets. Usually they waited until the commercial break. She couldn’t bear this new make-up girl. Bridget. Bridie. For some reason the younger they got, the more their adorably quirky/old-fashioned/whimsical nicknames annoyed her.
‘No lip pursing, chica,’ Bridie chided as she put another layer of powder on Kath’s upper lip. ‘Lines.’ Bridie’s eyes shifted to Kevin’s for just a moment and Kath knew in that instant that Kev had organised it. They must have some sort of signal. A ‘the wife’s looking a bit saggy’ finger flick.
Kath’s eyes slid back to the autocue.
K & K: AD LIB ON JUMPERS FOR PETS 30 SECONDS
She smiled, shook
