The thing is, I don’t feel comfortable. I should have known better. I should never have allowed Caroline persuade me. I should never have let her talk me into wearing her navy Paul Costello suit. For starters, it’s too big, the skirt especially, and despite her assurances (and the presence of a couple of discreet safety pins) I worry it might go sliding down over my hips without notice – most likely at some inopportune moment, like when I’m crossing the room to shake hands with the interviewers. I did try voicing my worries to Caroline last night when she was doing her Trinny and Susannah on me but she just waved my concerns aside and told me the suit could have been made for me. Made for me? Why, yes – if I were a stone or two heavier, a couple of inches shorter and was shaped and proportioned altogether differently. Made for me? No, but the sad truth is, it is so much better than anything I own.
And, because it is so much better, I’ve been terrified all morning that I’ll spill a cup of coffee on it or rip it on something sharp. Caroline must have mentioned a dozen times how very expensive it was and how privileged I am to be getting a loan of it. What with the prospect of being humiliated by a panel of interviewers hanging over me, this additional worry of doing hundreds of euros’ worth of damage is one I could do without.
Another reason I don’t feel comfortable is because I simply don’t feel like me. This power-suit-wearing me is a false me, it’s me playing at being a Caroline type – sharp, in control, the kind that looks like she could juggle a budget of millions with one hand while applying blood-red lipstick with the other.
And that’s another thing. I should never have let her persuade me to wear her blood-red lipstick. It makes me feel like a hooker which isn’t quite the look I was aiming for and, now, even at this late stage, I have the urge to find the Ladies’ and go wipe the scarlet gash from my face. Only the worry of having my name called out in my absence keeps me in my seat.
Despite my preoccupation with my too-loose skirt and my too-tarty lipstick, I get the feeling that someone is staring at me and I look up to be met by the haughty gaze of a haughty-looking woman, early twenties I’d guess, who’s sitting across the waiting-room and who heretofore has been at pains to haughtily ignore me. Now that she’s caught my eye, she arches one of her thinly plucked eyebrows and stares pointedly at my foot. I follow her gaze and look down. My foot is tapping like crazy, powered by my nervousness.
“Nerves,” I explain, smile apologetically and force myself to still that errant foot. She looks at me stony-faced, like she has no comprehension of this word. “What is this ‘nerves’, you speak of?” I half-expect her to ask in (for some reason) a heavily accented voice. I struggle to keep my foot still while she sits there, coolly studying me, deciding whether I’m a worthy opponent, all the while managing to look utterly composed as if being here in this sterile room, waiting for a head to pop around the door, call out a name and then the owner of that head to lead one of us candidates, one of us condemned, down a corridor to face a panel who’ll look us up and down, judge us, ask us to explain our life, or at least that portion and version of it outlined in our CV and then, most likely, reject us – me – is, well, no big deal. No big deal! Oh God! God!!!!!!! My stomach lurches. I think I’m going to get sick. I think about making a dash for the toilets but again the fear of being called in my absence keeps me where I am.
Across the room, Ms Cool, Calm and Collected, having now dropped me from her stare in the manner a child might drop some bug after examining it to his or her satisfaction, picks up her expensive-looking leather satchel. She unfastens it, extracts what I guess is a copy of her CV, then relaxes back in her chair, opens it, and begins to read. Maybe I should take my lead from her and study my own CV but no, I would find no comfort there – it would make me even more anxious: the poor science degree that took longer than it should, the lack of any relevant work experience, and – yes – the lies. Was I right to listen to Caroline? Was I right to take her advice and omit the fact that I’d spent my time since graduating working in the unrelated area of fashion to put it in lofty terms or, more prosaically, as a shop assistant in a Dublin city centre boutique? I’d probably still be there but for the fact that months back it closed its doors permanently to the city’s shoppers who failed to come through those doors in numbers sufficient to keep it viable, lured as they were by trendier, brighter, brasher and much cheaper shopping opportunities in the city. All that I left out. Caroline argued that to tell the truth would show a lack of interest in my field. Far better, she maintained, to say I’d been travelling. They’d like that, Caroline said, they’d like the idea that I’d wanted to broaden my mind and now that it was sufficiently broadened, I was ready to settle down and apply myself to this new job, ready to become a productive member of their team and society at large.
Now the door slowly opens. I look towards it, holding my breath – has my time finally come? But no, instead a nervous-looking human beanpole sidles in, eyes firmly focused on the ground. His fresh-from-the-shop suit but even more so his nervousness suggest he’s here for the same reason I am. But how can this be? He looks fifteen – tops. Nervously he glances around the room but manages to avoid all eye contact with either me or Ms Cool, Calm and Collected, then he takes a seat exactly equidistant from me and Ms CCC so that we’re like three magnets repelling one another. For what seems like an age he sits there, head bent, not daring to look up until, finally, he garners the courage, raises his eyes nervously, catches mine and, when he does, I smile, hoping to put him at ease but instead I guess I startle him, my own nerves having strangulated my facial muscles, doubtlessly making my smile more like a wolf-like grimace. He promptly drops the A4 pages he’s been clutching – his CV? – and, unstapled, they flutter to the floor.
Both he and I jump from our seats and bend down to pick them up.
“Ms Rosie Kiely?” a voice calls out from behind my back.
From my disadvantaged squatting position, I turn my head around and look up to see a friendly, bubbly young woman looking down.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Can you please come with me, Ms Kiely?” She beckons with a nicely manicured nail but to me it’s as menacing as the long gnarled finger of the Grim Reaper.
I get up from my haunches. My time has come.
