“Is Cat short for anything?” the woman on the phone says.
I lean against the empty desk, peering out through the glass walls into the academy’s hallway. “Nope,” I say. “Just Cat.”
I got a call last night about the teaching job in Spain. A British man called Greg asked me a series of questions about my teaching qualifications and experience. He said he worked at the academy in Gexta. He sounded tense as we spoke.
Before he hung up, he told me they’d be in touch. Whoever they were.
And now we’re here.
“Odd,” says the woman on the phone. “I would have thought your name was Catherine, or something exotic like Caterina!”
She gives a short laugh.
“Right, Cat,” she says. “I’m Deborah, but you can call me Deb.”
I make a mental note not to call her that. Something about her gets my guard up. I remind myself this is an interview, and I shouldn’t get too chummy with her.
“I spoke to Greg, and I wanted to ask you a few questions of my own.”
“Sure,” I say, taking another glance out into the hallway. I’m huddled in an empty room at the academy, and since I don’t have a class right now, I have every right to be on my phone. And yet, I keep waiting for Sam’s head to pop around the corner.
“Great!” says Deborah. “So, as you said to Greg—and keep me on the straight and narrow here—you’re a part-time teacher, right?”
“Yes,” I say. “I teach at Pennyhill Academy in Johannesburg. Six classes a week.”
“Great. Good. And what do you do for fun?”
I open my mouth, close it, then open it again. “I like to read.”
More like binge on Netflix shows, but no potential employer wants to hear that.
“Anything else?”
“Uhm,” I turn on my heels, walking from one side of the room to the other. “I like hiking.”
That’s a lie. I barely go for walks. Why did I just say that?
“Do you like wine?”
Now this I finally have an answer to. “I used to,” I say.
Deborah’s voice rings with disappointment. “Oh.”
Damn. Wrong crowd.
There’s an awkward moment, but she soon fills it again. “No matter,” she says. “Let’s go back to your teaching. Would you say your students like you?” She emphasises the word and I’m surprised. Do they like me? I don’t even know if I like me. But I let out a forced laugh. “I hope so.”
My nostrils flare in disgust. You sound so lame. Deborah is quiet on the other end of the line, and my fingers fidget. “I try to make every student as comfortable as I can.”
“Fantastic,” she says. “That’s always important. We enjoy likeable people over here. The friendlier, the better.”
I nod. “How big is the academy there?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Didn’t Greg tell you about that?”
I think back to my brief conversation with Greg, how he told me in a rushed fashion that I’d be teaching a few classes alongside him and another teacher from the UK. He didn’t talk about the size of the academy, but he told me it was fairly new, and that it was growing because of the demand for more English courses in the region.
“He did,” I say to Deborah. “He spoke about the classes I’d be teaching.”
“Good, good,” she says. “And from what Greg’s told me, you seem like you’re a highly competent teacher.”
I feel my head jerk a full 180 as I take in what she says. The man said that—about me?
“That’s good to know,” I say. “I’d love the opportunity to work with your team over there.”
Deborah chuckles. “Oh no, I don’t work at the academy.”
“Oh?”
“I’d be your host here in Gexta,” she says. “You know, the person you’d be living with while you work here.”
I rack my brain for past information, mentally scanning the paragraphs I’d read on the ad from before. And then I remember the phrase. Accommodation with a host family in town.
“I should have mentioned that at the start of the call,” she says, chuckling again. “Greg has already screened you for the teaching position. I just wanted to have a call with you to make sure you weren’t—you know—”
“Unlikeable?”
A burst of laughter. “Exactly!”
For a moment, neither of us says anything. I feel so awkward I almost wish Sam would appear and pull me away.
But then I remember InCheck and my clients.
I remember that Instagram message from yesterday, threatening to expose my counsellor profile. I know you’re a fraud, Alice.
But above it all, I remind myself that I really, really want this job. I want to get on a plane and go to a foreign place, and live in this foreign woman’s house. Because maybe if I can get away, I can clear my head. Figure out my next move.
Desperate to get out of my head, I say: “Do you live close to the academy?”
“Oh yes,” Deborah says nonchalantly. “I live just down the road. It’s a lovely walk in the mornings.”
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “I’ve never stayed with a host family before. I’ve never left South Africa, actually.”
Really building your case there, Cat.
“That’s all right,” she says, almost maternally. “We were all new to travel once. You’ll enjoy it here. It’s a different type of Spain. But since you’ve never been, you wouldn’t really know the difference, would you?”
I hear that deep chuckle of hers again.
“True,” I say. “But still, I’d love the opportunity.”
“Well look, Cat, I’m happy to give this a go. And so is Greg. Everything looks fine on paper and it would be good to have someone with a fresh perspective here. And talking to you today makes all the difference. Sometimes hearing someone’s voice just puts you at ease, you know?”
“Yes,” I say. “I completely get what you mean.”
If only she gave me that feeling too. One minute she’s warm and the next she’s so condescending. I can’t get a handle on her.
“Am I right in thinking you’d need a visa to travel here?”
I nod, even though she can’t see me. “That’s right.”
Deborah makes a humming noise like she’s thinking. “All right, well, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll organise a Schengen tourist visa to get you here, and then once you are, Greg and the gang will arrange a student visa through the academy. Does that sound good?”
I pace the room, facts from the past few days popping into my head. There is a range of visas that TEFL teachers can use to teach English in Europe. From the articles I read, the majority are aimed at Americans, Canadians and the British. Not so much for South Africans. There’s no reason not to trust what she’s saying. They’re the experts. So why is there a sickly feeling in the pit of my stomach?
“I’m not familiar with the visas,” I say. “So the academy will handle it?”
“Yes, exactly. The academy will convert the tourist visa to a student visa once you’re here.”
“Are we allowed to do—”
“We’d send you all the details,” she says. “Everything you’ll need to apply for the Schengen visa at the embassy.”
“Sounds like you’ve done this before,” I manage to say, noticing that my breathing is strained, like I’ve climbed some stairs.
But Deborah is cheerful on the other line. “The academies here do it like that. It’s common practice, really. Do you have a bank account?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Good. You’ll need a certain amount in there, I think, but no worries, you won’t have to spend any of it. It’s standard.”
The gnawing feeling in my belly grows. “Okay, if you say this is how it works, then we can do it.”
For a moment, I think she’s hung up, but then she speaks again. “Listen, it’s just a paper hurdle we need to get over. But Greg knows what he’s doing. It’ll be fine.”
I nod. “Okay, that’s good to hear.”
For a second, I think of how stupid I’m being. Shouldn’t I be asking questions too? I take a deep breath and remind myself that this is good news. That I got the job.
“How’s Gexta?” I ask Deborah. “As a town, I mean. Sorry, I’m just curious since it’ll be so different. It’s exciting.”
“Oh, it’s lovely,” she trills. “It’s usually quite relaxed, I’d say. I work in Bilboa, which is just a few minutes away. My husband works there too—you’ll meet him when you arrive.”
“Sounds—”
“It’s not very touristy, and it doesn’t attract much attention,” she says. “Well, except for…”
“Except for?”
“Yes,” Deborah says, her voice trailing off. “Actually, you wouldn’t have heard about it, would you?”
A few people walk past through the hallway. I watch their legs move. Deborah’s talking too fast, and I don’t know where she’s going with any of this.
She must have picked up on my confusion, because she’s talking again, and it’s like sunshine through the phone. “Sorry, love, I don’t mean to spring so much information on you. But it’s best to tell you everything up front. So you know all the facts. Not like it’s a big deal—I just want us to start off on a good footing.”
“I understand,” I say, shifting my focus to the empty desk in the room. I grip the phone closer to my ear. “You were saying?”
“Right, yes,” she says. “It’s all fine. There’s just one more thing.”
“So you’re going,” Sam says.
“I’m sorry.”
I expected this. When hearing the news, Sarah and Ben were happy. But Sam was different. Even a round of cocktails after work—virgin mojito for me—wouldn’t make it easier.
“When are you leaving?” she says, eyeing me over her Aperol spritz.
“When my Schengen comes through,” I say. “I’m applying this week. And when you’ve found a replacement for me, of course.”
She shrugs and I fill the awkward silence. “I’ll help you look.”
“Okay.”
She sips her drink, not meeting my eyes. “Are you excited?”
“I am.”
She looks up, a faint smile appearing. “Well, I hate that you’re leaving. But I’m happy you’re finally doing something with your teaching.”
I return her smile. This can’t be easy for her, and I’m grateful for the effort. It makes me wonder if I shouldn’t just be honest with her about my feelings. Everything Sam does is by the book, and she doesn’t like cutting corners. When I told her about InCheck, she was pissed for a few days, and since then she’s refused to talk about it. But if I actually decided to become a counsellor—a legal one, that is—what would she think?
“Thank you,” I say.
“Who knows,” she says, with a mischievous glint in her eye. “Maybe you’ll end up with Adam in Shanghai.”
Maybe now’s not the right time to bring up the counselling thing. I raise my glass. “Thanks for everything, Sam. You’re a good friend.”
We sip our drinks and fill our mouths with the complimentary popcorn to mask the awkward silence.
“So you’re applying at the Spanish consulate?” Sam asks after a while.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s weird, though. I’m going in with a Schengen visa and then they’ll convert it to a student visa when I’m there. I didn’t know that was possible.”
Sam shrugs. “Every country has a unique process. In the Middle East they do it all the time. Border runs and all.”
She talks from experience. Experience she’s secretly dying to live, but can’t. Being the owner of a language academy has its perks, but it also has its chains.
“So tell me more about this town you’re going to,” she urges.
We talk about Spain. She orders another drink, and I tell her about Deborah, and how I’d be living with her and her husband.
I tell Sam everything except the last part. The one more thing Deborah had mentioned on the phone. As we talk, the conversation plays out in my head again. Deborah’s tone had changed, like she was being careful with her words. “Have you read any news? News in Spain?” she’d said, like she was tiptoeing across glass.
I’d thought back to my Google searches. I couldn’t remember anything that jumped out. But then again, I didn’t look for news stories when I searched the town.
“No, nothing,” I told Deborah. “Why?”
“Right. Well, we had an incident a few months back,” she said, her voice subdued. “I just thought it would be good to mention.”
“What kind of incident?”
She took a breath. “There was a girl here from the UK. She was here with her fiancé. His family lives in town.”
Deborah paused, and then her words came, sending a chill down my spine. “She died. Drowned.”
I said nothing, listening as she searched for words to fill the awkward space. “She was only twenty-two,” Deborah said, as if she was talking more to herself than to me. “Only twenty-two.”