Page 10 of ReTreat Yourself

‘Nice to talk to you, Nell. How are you?’ she asks.

A seething hot mess, fresh from being detained by the armed police at the airport and trapped on a bus full of curtain twitchers.

‘How long have you been in Spain for?’

Less than five minutes.

I hope she can’t hear the beeping and rumble of buses around me as we leave the airport. She asks where I would be based, and it turns out our family villa is only a short twenty-minute walk from her office, down near the beach, so I cling to this as a clear sign it’s meant to be.

‘Do you have family here?’ she asks.

You mean the people I grew up with who stabbed me in the back?

‘No. No, I have no family. Just me. All… gone. Thank God,’ I say.

I have no idea why that slipped out but they may as well be dead to me at this present moment.

There’s an understandable hesitation while she makes soothing noises and offers commiserations.

I am a terrible person. Terrible.

I take the opportunity to check that no one is still listening in.

Gaaah! They are all fecking listening. They are craning their necks and their eyes are out on stalks. Except Oliver. He is staring hard out of the window. I shake my head disapprovingly at them.

‘Would you say you were a people person?’ Nidi asks.

‘Yes,’ I say forcefully. ‘I’d say I was a people person, yes. I love people. Love them.’ I scowl at the passengers still looking at me before crouching right down in my seat.

I need to get through this interview as quickly as I can.

Nidi continues with the Spanish Inquisition and, reeling from the humiliation of the redundancy, my meltdown at the airport and this busload of nosy parkers, before I know it, out of desperation, I’m telling her everything she wants to hear.

‘Fluent in Spanish? Yes, almost. Me llamo Nell,’ I say, letting out a nervous horsey laugh. ‘Me gusta jugar al padel y me gusta hacer salchichas.’

Mystifying. I’ve never once played padel or made my own sausage.

‘Am I qualified? Yes, yes, plenty of experience in events and PR, yes. Social media expert. Managing a team, no problemo.’ I panic. It all feels a bit surreal. Technically speaking, I am qualified; just not in life coaching. But I need this job. I need it so badly.

Thankfully, Nidi agrees to giving me a trial run and ends the call.

With shaking hands I switch off my phone and let out a sigh of relief. I desperately need something positive to cling to and this opportunity seems to be it. So what if it is partly based on a lie? Loads of people ‘embellish’ the truth on their CVs. Actors saying they can horse ride. People saying they have done charity work and they like going to art galleries. It’s almost expected these days. I’ll just push it to the back of my mind and focus on reinventing myself. I can’t go back and live at home any more because my sister has betrayed me. I can’t throw myself into work because I no longer have a job, and I can’t turn to my boyfriend for support because he’s a complete wanker and is ghosting me.

Nonetheless, I am determined not to have a meltdown over any of it.

While the mountains and the twinkling Mediterranean give way to the sprawling, high-rise towers that signal Benidorm in the distance, I begin to plan my new life in Spain. My parents had the foresight thirty-five years ago to keep driving past the drunken, built-up Mecca to a little development called Albir, a tiny hidden corner of idyllic beach at the foot of a leafy mountain, next to the beautiful, whitewashed Spanish town of Altea. Despite having no grasp of the language, it has been a second home to me all my life.

As the coach pulls into Benidorm bus station, I am still trying to convince myself that I can totally do this. I will simply spend the next few days at the relaxing retreat, frantically studying the language (embarrassingly long overdue), qualifying to be a life coach online and trying not to have a brain seizure.

‘Good luck with the new job.’

I turn to see Oliver getting up out of his seat. ‘Um, thanks,’ I say, managing to raise a half smile for him.

‘So, you’re a life coach, are you?’

‘Um, yes.’

‘What kind of life coach exactly?’ he asks casually as he takes his rucksack down from the overhead storage. What did I say about him being unbelievably nosy? He must have some sort of condition.