It's cold. November barely started, but she's trying to postpone the moment to turn on the heating as long as possible, because those bills are no joke. She's wearing thick leggings, a long sleeve shirt, a flannel and a cardigan, and her fingers are achy and stiff. She can't get comfortable on this couch, but the poor excuse for a dinner table is too small for her laptop, tea mug, ashtray and reference books.
Saturday morning, just before nine, Jade Thirlwall gets ready for a couple hours of work. Her office job is steady, but not paying her enough to keep up with her bills, so she tries to get some extra cash by offering her translation skills online. She inherited Arabic from her parents, learned French in school and a year abroad, and is by no means certified, but sufficiently fluent. As it turns out, a lot of people don't care if a translator is certified when they go online to look for affordable services.
Her cold fingers click over the keyboard fast, her eyes not leaving the screen. Type first, edit later, is what she's learned from years of having to type reports, take minutes and work through piles of paperwork. The quiet calm of her suburb is suddenly disturbed by a large truck rumbling in, stopping right in front of Jade's house, blocking what little daylight she gets through the small windows of her ground floor apartment.
The neighborhood is a little upper class, mostly focused on families that want to be close to the city but need the space of the suburbs. Jade's block is made up of four story apartment buildings, with family homes on the opposite side of the street. Her one-bedroom is the smallest place she's ever lived in, but also the coziest, and the only thing she's been able to afford.
She looks up, her face barely peeking over the high window sill, at the truck that's rumbling and stinking and disturbing her. Three guys get out of the cab, pulling up their pants and zipping up jackets - a moving company.
Jade sinks down into the couch again, a frown on her face, and tries to find the paragraph of French where she left off. She's helping a guy named Guillaume to translate his resume into English, and he needs it before noon. She ignores the sounds coming from the guys opening up their truck, of which they have now thankfully killed the engine, until she hears more cars arrive and children screaming. She gets up with a sigh, her back complaining and her legs stiff, and brings her tea mug into the kitchen for a refill. Back in the living room, she regards the new neighbors as they haul their kids out of an SUV and park a cute little sports car in their driveway.
The Dad helps the moving guys, or he wants to, but he seems a little lost, standing on Jade's sidewalk. She wonders why exactly they had to park that monstrous truck on her side of the street and block her daylight. She feels caught when the Dad waves at her staring at him, and raises her hand shortly before getting back on the couch.
The truck stays for the rest of the day, and Jade plugs in headphones to drown out the noise, until she's done with most of her work and decides it's time to get some groceries. She exchanges the cardigan for a long, wool coat and checks herself in the mirror shortly. Her face is tan and free of makeup, her eyes are a chocolate brown and even her hair is a thick, long curly mess. She cuts it sometimes with the kitchen scissors.
The moving truck is still parked on her side of the street and isn't empty yet. Why do people have so much stuff? Ever since reading Marie Kondo's book on decluttering your life, Jade owns much less stuff. She sees three, no, four kids running around the house, and she guesses one does need more stuff when kids are involved. A blonde little girl hops over the sidewalk right in front of her, screaming at her brother on the other side of the street. Her hair is a mane of golden ringlets, framing a chubby face with large blue eyes. She looks like an angel in a pink down jacket. She runs past Jade and around the truck, ready to run to the other side again, when Jade hears a car accelerate somewhere behind her. She responds before she even realizes it, and grabs the hood of the little girl's jacket. She screams and nearly falls back, but Jade catches her against her legs as a car passes the truck and speeds along.
