I returned to the front of the shop from the back office, I needed to somehow get my head around the fact that I was going all the way to Manchester just for a couple of hours to play my fiddle. Was it really worth it I wondered. Don’t get me wrong I was very grateful for the opportunity to show what I was capable of doing musically but why did it have to be in Manchester.
So many memories came flooding back to me, and my heart lurched. When I was twenty years old I moved in with Sam, he’s now my ex-boyfriend and he owned a flat in Manchester. I’d met him at a nightclub in the city centre when I was eighteen, around the same time that I had just started studying at Manchester University. I thought he was my Mr. Right and I spent a long time looking at the world through rose tinted glasses, but by the time I was twenty-three I couldn’t be dealing with his drinking problems and his kinky demons anymore so I left him to deal with them on his own.
Three years have now passed and I’ve never seen him or heard from him since, and to be completely honest, I don’t think that I ever want to and I don’t really know what I would do if I ever bumped into him. He messed around with my head, he cheated on me and completely turned my life upside down, to the point where I didn’t know if I was on my head or my heels.
Eventually I managed to bring myself to leave Sam, something I kept putting off, but I needed to get away before our relationship spun out of control and into something which couldn’t be undone. I moved back home to live with my parents, I sorted myself out and I got myself a job as Arty’s Assistant, and that’s the way it’s been ever since until now. Okay, so at the ripe old age of twenty-six I still live at home with my parents.
Arty made me jump and brought me and my thoughts back to the present moment when he popped his head around the back door.
‘So Bea, are you going then.’ He asked, ‘It really is a fantastic opportunity for you to get your own foot in the door, so to speak. To be honest with you I know that you’re capable of doing this, you just need to have a bit more confidence in your own abilities.’
‘Hmm, I guess so.’ I replied, ‘I have nothing to lose at the end of it, do I? Only my job!’
‘That’s great!’ he cried, ‘As I said I’ll make some travel arrangements and book you into a hotel for the weekend, and I’ll pay you an extra special bonus for helping me out of this bungled mess. You know, I really do appreciate you stepping into my boots so to speak to help me out with this project, I think I can safely guarantee that you won’t be disappointed.’
When work was over for the day I collected my things from the back office and made my way to the bus stop and waited for the bus to take me home. All I could think about was Manchester. Wait until I got home and told Mum and Dad where I was going for the weekend. I hadn’t been back to Manchester since I’d left Sam. I felt a little bit sick that I was returning to the City but it might do me some good, give me a chance to have final closure on that chapter of my life and rid me of the horrible memories that have haunted me these last few years.
The green and white number fifty-three bus pulled up at the stop less than five minutes later. I nearly missed it, I was so deep in thought that I forgot to put my arm out. Oh golly, what if I had missed it, the buses around here are not that frequent, there’s usually about an hour in between each bus. Lucky for me the driver recognised me and stopped anyway. I boarded the bus, paid my fare and pulled the white paper ticket out of the machine. I found a seat in amongst all the other passengers, sat down and made myself comfortable as the bus trundled back home through the country lanes.
When the bus arrived back at the sleepy Cotswold village where I lived, I hopped off the bus and practically skipped all the way home, I almost felt like a ten-year-old again. I’d been thinking about the forthcoming weekend all the way back on the journey home. Being totally honest with myself I hadn’t really thought about anything else all day, especially after Arty and myself had discussed it earlier this morning and now all I could think of were the possibilities that could come from this one opportunity and of course, the fact that Arty believed in me and wanted to give me a chance to shine at what I did best.
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