A Spring Affair (29 page)

‘I’ll make sure you aren’t penalized for leaving without notice,’ Bob Bowman said. He held out his hand to her and she shook it. ‘But we could really do with people like you in this firm, Lou. Please think again.’

‘You’ve got plenty of people like me in this firm already, Mr Bowman,’ said Lou. ‘Lots of good, hardworking people who deserve better.’

All eyes were on her as she strode into the office. Nicola slid straight over, smiling like a crocodile with a mantrap hidden in its mouth.

‘A word in the bubble with you now please, if you don’t mind.’

‘No,’ said Lou, and walked past her to Zoe. She gave her a tight hug and said in her ear, ‘Make a joke about the jumper in your interview and they will love you. Good luck, love.’

Then Lou gave Stan a big hug and said secretly, ‘Have a wonderful holiday and a wonderful retirement, and don’t let the bastards grind you down.’

She gave an astounded Karen the biggest cuddle of all and said, ‘It’s been totally rubbish working with you. Go knock ’em dead, kid, and I’ll see you soon about your dad’s sausages.’

Then Lou Winter grabbed her coat and her bag and faced Nicola with eyes that glittered like chips of green ice. There was nothing behind those eyes for Nicola–no liking, no loathing, nothing. They barely acknowledged Nicola’s nickel-gobbed existence–and that was the ultimate torment for the younger woman. She squared up to parry verbally with whatever Lou might say on her exit. Something beautifully bitchy, no doubt. Something–
anything
–that would bring them to confrontation point at long last. But Lou Winter said nothing. She merely walked out of the office with her head held at a dignified angle, uncrushed, undefeated–mistress of the unspoken word.

People in the whole building talked about it for months, long after Stan Mirfield left with a fantastically generous retirement package. What could ‘Little’ in Accounts possibly have done to have such a weird effect on Rogering Roger’s bit? Office legend had it that Nicola turned into
a sort of rabid combine-harvester and had to be restrained and tranquillized with WD40. And why was she moved so quickly over to a permanent place–in Operations Manchester?

Fillet steak with all the trimmings, thought Phil with suspicion as Lou delivered his tea to the table. He didn’t have to wait long to learn why a king’s supper had been served up to him.

‘I packed in my job today,’ Lou said, just after he had taken his first mouthful.

He stared at her as if she had just escaped from a secure mental hospital and repeated her own words back to her flatly. ‘You packed in your job.’

‘Yes, with immediate effect,’ she said.

‘With immediate effect?’ he echoed.

She was tempted to say that long place name in Wales to see if he repeated that too. That’s how she used to treat Shirley Hamster when she tried to play the ‘let’s annoy Lou and repeat everything she says’ game. ‘
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
.’ That never failed to shut her up.

‘Now why would you do that?’ asked Phil with calm annoyance. It wasn’t that they needed the money from her job but it was another uncharacteristic display from this new Lou and, as such, it needed further investigation.

‘Because I hated working there, that’s why,’ she said.

‘And what are you going to live on now?’

That rankled her so she retaliated. ‘I’ll start charging you for your accounts work. If I put a bill in for all the back work, I could probably buy Microsoft.’

Phil needed this like a hole in the head, especially today. There had been a letter delivered in that morning’s post from Sharon. The twins were going to be thirteen in a couple of weeks. They were getting expensive, she said, so she thought an extra payment of five hundred pounds on their birthdays and Christmas from now on wouldn’t be unreasonable. Not each though, she added–which Phil thought was very fucking big of her! He’d spent ten minutes on the calculator working out how much extra that added to the overall bill. Then he came home to find that Lou wanted to parasite off him as well.

‘The café will be up and running in eight weeks anyway, so I’m sure I’ll have lots to do.’

Phil stopped chewing his meat, dropped his cutlery and rotated his finger in the air.

‘Whoa, rewind–
café
? What do you mean,
café
?’

‘What do you mean “what do you mean,
cafe
?”.
My
café!’ said Lou, totally bemused. ‘I told you I was going into business with Deb.’

‘Talk sense, Lou,’ said Phil, laughing mirthlessly. ‘You haven’t got any money, you haven’t got anywhere to put it—’

‘Yes, we have. We’ve got finance and property and we open in August, all being well.’

Phil couldn’t quite believe his ears. ‘Hang on, when did all this happen?’ he demanded.

‘It’s been happening since I first told you about it,’ said Lou.

‘You’ve done it all behind my back?’

‘I have not!’ said Lou indignantly. ‘I did tell you. And if you remember, all you did was tell me that I obviously wasn’t clever enough to run my own business, so I didn’t bother you with any further details.’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’ Phil pushed his plate across the table in a tantrum and it knocked over the salt pot. He got up slowly as if coming out of a trance.

‘You’re nuts, you are, Lou. You need to see a doctor.’ He tapped his temple hard with his finger. ‘Loop the fucking loop.’

‘Where are you going?’ said Lou. If Phil had left a steak, he was seriously annoyed.

He didn’t answer her. Just grabbed his car keys and his jacket and slammed the door behind him on the way out.

After she had tidied up the table, Lou took herself off to her new bath to try and relax her nerves, which were still jangling from her altercation with Phil. The experience of sinking into a pool of bubbles wasn’t half as wonderful as she had been imagining over the past months; it felt rather ordinary, to her disappointment. Nevertheless, she took a glass of wine with her and the cordless phone and checked the messages that were flashing up on the handset. Firstly she heard Keith Featherstone’s humble-pie voice asking her if she was happy with the work, and saying that he hoped she had found the cash refund he had left hon the work-surface in a brown henvelope. Then he lightly enquired if she
had made up her mind about the
Casa Nostra
quotation for phase one.

The second message was from Michelle. She was pretending to cover up tears and in a very controlled voice told Lou that she was a heartless bitch and she hoped Lou would have a nice life and this was the last message she would ever leave. The third message was Michelle who said that Lou was never to call her again and she hoped that she didn’t have a nice life and this was the last message she would ever leave. Lou deleted all three messages without a second thought, and then she called Deb.

‘Hi,’ said Deb. ‘What sort of a day have you had then?’

‘Ooh, you know, ordinary. Packed in my job, stalked by crazed ex-friend, Phil’s stormed out somewhere because he thought I was joking about opening the café and now he knows I’m not, Keith Featherstone’s hounding me about the first phase of
Casa Nostra Europe Inc
…’

‘Ho, so nothing to chat about then,’ laughed Deb. ‘You sound echoey, where are you?’

‘In my new Keith Featherstone bath,’ said Lou.

‘I hope he’s not in there with you,’ said Deb, wondering where Phil had gone. Or rather–
who
he had gone to.

‘Nobody could be that desperate to win my business!’

‘Put yourself down again and I’ll come over there and drown you in that new bath of yours,’ said Deb crossly.

‘Anyway, how are
you
?’ enquired Lou.

‘I’m fine. Never mind about me, tell me about the job. How come you’re not working your notice?’

Lou told her.

‘Well, you know what you need to do now,’ said Deb. ‘Ring Mrs Serafinska. Get onto it straight away. She was
asking me this morning if I’d given you her number. We could do with that money to buy my fancy pink American Smeg fridge.’

‘OK, I will,’ said Lou.

‘She’s retired, so she’ll be able to fit in to suit you. She only pokes her head into the shop because she’s bored. Oh, by the way, I have a great recipe for some big soft cookies. They’d be fantastic with homemade ice cream.’

‘Yum,’ said Lou, who made beautiful homemade ice cream.

‘Ring her, please,’ implored Deb, who loved Mrs Serafinska like a favourite aunt.

‘I promise,’ said Lou, and as soon as she put down the phone to Deb, she did indeed call Gladys Serafinska and made arrangements to see her the very next day.

Phil wasn’t speaking to her the next morning. She wasn’t surprised by that, but what did shock the living daylights out of her was that when he did come home in the wee small hours, he hadn’t done his usual sulky trick of slamming doors and banging things to announce his arrival. Instead, her ears traced his unusually quiet footfalls up the stairs and into the spare bedroom, where he slept. He had never, ever slept in the spare room before and that buzzed around in her head like a very annoying wasp, threatening to sting her at its leisure.

Lou arrived at the bakery, gurned at Deb through the window and knocked on the adjacent cottage door with the pretty window-boxes full of June geraniums. She had never seen Gladys Serafinska but always imagined her to be a tiny little wisp with a foreign accent, not the great battleship that came to the door and said in a gravelly South Yorkshire accent, ‘Come in, lass, before the rain starts yet again. Apparently it’s going to belt down. Summer, eh?’

It was a typical cottage, low ceilings, beams, shiny brasses and wall-to-wall chintz and ornaments–so many ornaments that it must have been a nightmare to dust.
Lou sat on a big plump sofa whilst Mrs Serafinska wheeled in a little trolley set with china cups, a teapot, and biscuits made in the bakery.

‘Debra said you’d help me,’ said Mrs Serafinska.

‘Mrs Serafinska…’

‘Call me Gladys, please. For years I’ve told Debra to call me that, but she never does. “Mrs Serafinska” always makes me sound like an old headmistress.’

She seems nervous, thought Lou, watching her hand pour out the tea none too steadily.

‘Gladys,’ Lou smiled. ‘I’ll help you all I can but I do warn you, it might be harder than you think to let stuff go, so rather than me tell you what to do, how about we do it together?’

‘Oh, would you?’ said Gladys with a big gasp. ‘You know, it’s the silliest thing, but I think I’m scared.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ said Lou, who knew exactly what she meant.

So, after their tea, Lou followed Gladys to a big room upstairs, off the main bedroom, decorated in darker gentleman’s colours. The wardrobes were walnut and the furniture masculine.

‘This is Bernie’s dressing room. I made a start…’ She pointed to some suits laid out on the floor. ‘Sorry,’ she went on, and sniffed as her eyes started to gush.

‘Come on,’ said Lou, leading her out of the room. ‘Let’s start with a drawer in the kitchen.’

Two drawers and an understairs cupboard later, it was clear that they would need to order a skip. Gladys Serafinska could never have imagined just how much junk she was hoarding, but she was thoroughly enjoying
herself, warming up to the big project by clearing out all the kitchen detritus. Lou rang Tom’s mobile. She could have rung the
Tub
but this way she was sure of speaking to him and not one of the lads.

‘Hello there, Trouble,’ said Tom merrily.

If he’d called her ‘Cowface’ she thought his voice would have had the same effect on her knees.

‘I need a skip at the back of
Serafinska’s Bakery
in Maltstone,’ said Lou.

‘You go ahead then, I’m not stopping you. Have a hop and a jump for me whilst you’re at it,’ said Tom, laughing down the phone.

‘Very funny, Mr Broom. Now, if you wouldn’t mind…’

‘What size, Mrs Winter?’

She didn’t like him calling her Mrs Winter.

‘I think a mini will do, please.’

‘I haven’t got anything until tomorrow morning. Is that OK?’

‘Harrison’s have got them,’ said Lou naughtily.

‘I shall come around there and spank you in a minute, young lady.’

Lou gasped, not sure if she was horrified or thrilled and then deciding she was both–in a highwayman-bodice-ripping way. She pictured Tom in a frilly romantic shirt, tricorn hat, his big thighs in breeches…Her cheeks were burning so much she could have barbecued a chicken on them.

‘That’s OK then, bye,’ she said extremely quickly and dropped down the phone. Her head was sparking with pictures that wouldn’t have been out of place in a porn film.

‘Cup of tea?’ called Gladys, doing a double-take at the sight of her flushed face.

‘Lovely,’ said Lou.

‘Do you take sugar?’

‘No, thanks,’ said Lou,
but fourteen teaspoons of bromide, please
, she added to herself.

Lou got stuck in the traffic heading towards a demonstration the next morning and missed the skip arriving.

‘What a beautiful dog that man had,’ said Gladys Serafinska. Damn, thought Lou. Tom had delivered it himself. Although maybe it was better that she didn’t see him for a couple of days. Her imagination had nearly blown the top of her head clean off last night. Then again, she had plenty of time to think, what with Phil not coming home from work until ten. At least he had phoned to tell her he’d be late, albeit in a perfunctory way. But he hadn’t wanted anything to eat and had hardly said a word to her when he came in; he slept in the spare room again, which unsettled her.

‘What are these?’ Lou asked, pulling a bag out of a cupboard.

‘Oh, er, just things I keep,’ said Gladys quietly.

Lou spilled them out onto the floor to find children’s books, pencils and crayons–all unused.

‘Grandchildren?’ said Lou.

‘Not yet,’ said Gladys sadly. ‘We thought there would be once but it wasn’t to be. I bought them, just in case, you know.’

Lou gave her hand a squeeze. ‘You do realize that every time you open this cupboard and see these, it reminds you of what you don’t have?’ she said, then:
‘Let’s put them in the charity pile. Then when you do get grandchildren, you can enjoy going out and buying some more.’

Gladys was about to put up a protest, but she pulled it back. Lou was remarkable–and she was right, of course. Why on earth hadn’t she given them away before? Had she hoped the presence of those things might force the cosmos to give her what she wanted?

Gladys disliked ornaments, but she had an excuse why each one couldn’t be given away. This one was a present from a friend, this one was a present from a different friend, this one cost a lot of money…Lou cut her off, holding up a particularly revolting porcelain hound with lips worthy of Angelina Jolie.

‘Gladys, do you like this dog?’

‘Not really.’

‘Then which pile do we put it on, because we are not putting it back on that shelf.’

‘OK, the car-boot one.’

Gladys had always fancied doing a car-boot sale. Every month they held one in the pensioners’ club. She would never have dreamed she could part with enough items to fill up a whole stall herself.

The room looked so much lighter by the end of the third day and Gladys felt the same way. Lou was the best tonic she’d had in years. She’d told everyone she knew about her and hoped the young woman wouldn’t mind that she’d passed her telephone number around her friends.