JULIE - CHARACTER PROFILE

Cassie Mitchell sat before the interview panel.  Her eyes - too green to be called plain blue, with just a hint of brown around the pupil which wasn’t quite enough to justify calling them hazel – darted between the three people who stared back at her.  Cassie bit her lip nervously, a substitute for biting her nails – a habit she detested and which she had tried for years to stop.  Her usual jokey and optimistic demeanour was notably absent.

‘Tell me a little bit about yourself,’ the woman in the middle said kindly.

Cassie took a deep breath.  ‘I’m sixteen.  I’ve just left school.  I’d like to go to college to study A’ levels and then become a journalist.  I live at home with my Mum, who’s called Helen, and David, my Dad.  Dad stays away from home a lot because he works as a sales rep for Timpsons, the agricultural machinery suppliers.  My Mum is a housewife, although she doesn’t cook or clean much.  I have a brother called Greg, who is two years older than me, and I’m very close to my Grandmother, my Mum’s mother.  Mum has a younger sister, who we never see because of something awful she’s done which no-one will tell me about.’

Cassie paused, and raked her fingers through her straight brown hair.  As it was shoulder length, she could pile it all up on top, which gave her the look of a school teacher, or she could plait it, which made her look about five, so she mostly left it loose.  As usual, she was wearing bright, casual clothes – an orange cheesecloth shirt and white flared trousers, with high platform sandals – it was the seventies, after all!

‘What are you interested in?’ the man on the right asked.

‘I enjoy listening to music, you know, pop music and stuff in the charts,’ she began, and then wondered if she would sound a bit shallow, so she added, ‘but I love reading, I’ve read all the classics: Dickens, Hardy, D H Lawrence, Orwell…’

‘Go on,’ the man prompted.

‘I like going up the pub with my mate Paula.  There’s one pub in Fircombe where we can get served even though we’re under age.  We’ve also been to a few parties recently, and I’ve just met someone who I think might be very special to me in the future.’

The woman leaned forward and smiled encouragingly as Cassie continued.

‘His name’s Joe Orton, he’s eighteen, with dark hair that curls over the collar of the leather jacket he always wears because he rides a motorbike.  He plays guitar as well and has lovely brown eyes.’

‘Where do you see yourself in ten or fifteen years time?’ asked the man on the left, who hadn’t spoken before.

Cassie tried to picture her slim, five feet four inch frame fifteen years older.  Thirty-one seemed a lifetime away.  So much could have changed for her.  How could she know what life had in store?

‘I’d like to be married, probably with children, but also to be a successful journalist.  I hope I’ll get a really good story which will make my name.  I worry quite a lot about things, what people think about me and whether I'm letting them down, but as I get older I hope I'll be more confident.’

The three interviewers lent back in their chairs and conducted a whispered conversation.  Finally, the man on the left cleared his throat.

‘Well, thank you for coming here today, Miss Mitchell,’ he said gruffly.  ‘There are a few gaps that need filling in, and there is still quite a bit of work to be done but, all in all, you could certainly be considered as a character in a novel.’