The Northern Lights Lodge. Julie Caplin

       Chapter 1

      BATH

      ‘I’m afraid there’s still nothing. Like I said last week and the week before. You have to understand it’s a difficult time. The economy isn’t great. People aren’t moving around as much.’ This was said with a mealy-mouthed, pseudo-sympathetic smile and shark-like small eyes that slid away from meeting Lucy’s as if being unemployable was catching.

      Difficult time? Hello! Lucy was currently writing the bloody book on it being a difficult time. She wanted to grab the recruitment consultant by the throat and shake her. Instead she shifted in her seat opposite the other woman in the brightly lit office, with its trendy furniture and state-of-the-art Apple Mac screen taking up most of the desk, trying to look serene instead of utterly panic stricken.

      The other girl was now dubiously eying Lucy’s lacklustre blonde hair, which hung in limp rats’ tails, unable to hide an expression of horrified curiosity. Lucy swallowed and felt the ever-present tears start to well up. You try styling hair that’s been coming out in handfuls for the last three weeks, she thought. She didn’t dare wash it more than once a week because seeing the plug hole full of blonde strands seemed even more terrifying than all the other crap going on in her life right now. Things must be bad when your own hair started jumping ship.

      Lucy could feel her lip curl. Oh God, any minute she might snarl like a wild animal. It was increasingly tricky to try and behave like a normal human being these days and, at this moment, a particular challenge as she looked back across the desk at the girl sitting there in her cherry red, fitted power suit, with her perfect glossy bob and darling plum gel nails. The epitome of success. What someone looked like when they were going places. When their career was on the up rather than going down the swanny faster than a canoe going over the Niagara Falls.

      With a sigh, Lucy swallowed hard and forced herself to calm down. For the last twenty minutes, she’d fought the temptation to grab Little Miss Professional by the lapels and plead, ‘there must be a job somewhere for me’. She’d had to resort to sitting on her hands with her shoulders hunched up by her ears as she listened to the same spiel that she’d heard in the last ten other recruitment consultant offices; the market was down, people weren’t recruiting, no one had a career for life these days. And they didn’t need to bloody tell Lucy that, she’d discovered that inconvenient fact the hard way. But, whined the persistent voice in her head, she was looking for a job in hospitality, the whine became shriller and more insistent, there were always jobs in hospitality.

      ‘Perhaps if you could …’ The girl tried to give her an encouraging smile, which didn’t disguise her raging curiosity, ‘you know … get some more recent references.’

      Lucy shook her head feeling the familiar leaden lump of despair threaten to rise and choke her. The girl tried to look sympathetic, while taking a surreptitious glance of her watch. No doubt she had an infinitely more placeable candidate for her next appointment. Someone whose CV was dripping with recommendations from her last boss and hadn’t had her shame shared among all in her professional world.

      ‘There must be something.’ Desperation chased the words out with the glee of naughty fairies escaping. ‘I don’t mind taking a step down. You’ve seen how much experience I’ve got.’ She heard herself utter the fateful words, which she’d promised herself, no matter how bad things got, she wouldn’t say. ‘I’ll take anything.’

      The girl arched her eyebrow as if wanting her to elaborate on anything.

      ‘Well, almost anything,’ said Lucy, suddenly horribly aware that anything covered an awful lot of situations, vacant or otherwise and this woman’s income was derived from placing people.

      ‘W…ellll, there is one thing.’ She gave an elegant shrug.

      Now Lucy regretted the ‘almost anything.’ What was she opening herself up to? She didn’t know this woman. How could she trust her?

      ‘It’s … erm … a big step down. A temporary to permanent contract. On a two-month trial. And out of the country.’

      ‘I don’t mind out of the country,’ Lucy said, sitting upright. A two-month trial was good. Actually, out of the country would be bloody marvellous. Why the hell hadn’t she thought of that before? A complete escape. An escape from the sly sniggers behind her back from her former colleagues, the that’s her, you know the one who furtive looks, the we know what you’ve done secretive smiles and the occasional I bet you would knowing leer, which made her feel positively sick.

      The girl stood up and strode several paces to the corner of her office to rummage in a small stack of blue files on the beech console table behind her. Even from here Lucy could tell that they were the barrel scrapings, those jobs that had been consigned to the ‘we’ll never fill these in a month of Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and the rest’ category. With a tug, a dog-eared folder was pulled out from near the bottom of the pile. Lucy knew how that poor file felt. Overlooked and cast aside.

      ‘Hmm.’

      Lucy waited, sitting on the edge of her seat craning her neck slightly trying to read the words as the other girl trailed a glossy nail down the A4 page. ‘Hmm. OK. Mmm.’

      Lucy clenched her fingers, glad that they were jammed between her thighs and the chair.

      With a half-concealed tut, the girl closed the file and looked worriedly at her. ‘Well it’s something. Anything.’ Her expression faltered. ‘You’re very over-qualified. It’s in …’ and proceeded to say something that sounded rather like a sneeze.

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘Hvolsvöllur,’ she repeated. Lucy knew she’d looked the pronunciation up.

      ‘Right,’ Lucy nodded. ‘And where exactly is …’ she nodded at the file, guessing that it was from the sound of the word somewhere in Eastern Europe.

      ‘Iceland.’

      ‘Iceland!’

      ‘Yes,’ the other woman carried on hurriedly. ‘It’s a two-month post for a trial period in a small lodge in Hvolsvöllur, which is only an hour and half’s drive out of Reykjavik. An immediate start. Shall I call them, send your details over?’ Her words spilled out with sudden, unexpected commission bonus enthusiasm.

      Iceland. Not somewhere she’d ever considered going. Wasn’t it horribly cold there? And practically dark all the time. Her ideal climate was hot with tepid bathwater temperature seas. An hour and half’s drive out of Reykjavik sounded ominous, the sub text being in the middle of nowhere. Lucy gnawed at her lip.

      ‘I don’t speak the language.’

      ‘Oh you don’t need to worry about that. They all speak English,’ said the girl blithely before adding, ‘of course, they might not want you … you know.’ Her smile dimmed in silent sympathy. ‘I don’t want to get your hopes up. But I will tell them what good previous experience you’ve had. It’s the … er recent references might be a problem.