Having It All (41 page)

Having grown up in a small mining town, David realized his knowledge of farming came largely from watching Jamie’s videos of Postman Pat. Liz was the country girl, not him. And Blackshaw
Head wasn’t Greendale. David told himself firmly to stop wondering what had happened to the farmers and get back to reading the map.

It was only five miles to Selden Bridge and breakfast. Folding up the map and putting it back into the plastic folder round his neck he zipped up his cagoule and started walking.

The climb zigzagged steeply upwards through woods and under huge grey crags past Eastwood Old Hall and up to Great Rock over rolling farmland, the soil hard as metal, to Heptonstall Village.
From there, beginning to feel tired and hungry, and convinced his backpack was twice as heavy as when he’d started, he was grateful to see at the bottom of a steep paved way, white with
hoarfrost but thankfully bordered on either side by a handrail, the town of Selden Bridge spread out below.

Despite the frost which made the steep path hazardous, David quickened his step, almost tasting the bacon and eggs, the fried bread and black pudding which waited for him in a café below.
As he slithered down the path, he began to sing a campfire song from his Boy Scout days that he hadn’t even known he could remember and he finally recognized the symptoms he was experiencing.
Happiness. Relief. Exhilaration. After fifteen years on the Fleet Street frontline he felt like he’d been set free. The depression might come later and the fear at having taken such a
dramatic, crazy step. But for the moment he knew exactly what he was feeling. Demob happy.

But there was one little sliver of reality he ought to face up to. Tonight he wouldn’t sleep in his one-man tent up on the tops. He would find himself a nice cosy B and B. He was
definitely too old to be a Boy Scout any more.

Despite the cold of the morning, Liz rolled back her sunroof to let in the pale winter sunshine, and switched on the radio. For thirty seconds the Nine o’Clock News from
the BBC began to inform her of sieges, hijacks and terrorist attacks on soft targets until, feeling a vague stab of guilt, she switched it off. She was in too good a mood to have it dampened by
death and destruction. Instead she slotted in a cassette of Paul Simon and sang along.

It was her very first day at WomanPower and the excitement had taken her by surprise, making her turn up the music and, although she was normally a careful driver, put her foot down on the
accelerator. She remembered how, five years ago, Britt had asked her if she ever looked at her own reflection in shop windows as she sat at the traffic lights and she had replied in amazement,
‘No of course not.’ But today she did. And an elegant woman with a sleek bob and dark glasses in an expensive-looking coat with its collar turned up gazed back at her, smiling.

You’re like one of those young bimbos, all hair and sunglasses and blaring stereo, she told herself. You’re making an exhibition of yourself. But she didn’t stop. She threw
back her head and laughed, so that the sluggish Oh-God-it’s-Monday drivers in the other cars turned and looked at her as though she was mad.

But she wasn’t mad. She was a thirty something woman who loved her children but who found she needed something else in her life as well, on her way to work for her very first day in her
new job. And as she drove along Liz had an overwhelming sense that, cliché or not, it really
was
the first day of the rest of her life. And she didn’t need a clairvoyant to
tell her that, this time, it was all going to work out.

David sat, feeling blissfully warm and full for the first time in what seemed like days, a pint mug – which was what they meant by ‘large’ in Yorkshire
– of strong tea in his hand and surveyed the pile of newspapers spread out in front of him on the café table. It was ten o’clock and he had the place to himself, the early
workmen having breakfasted long ago and not yet stopped for bacon sarnies as their elevenses.

He’d bought the papers for two reasons. First, because he was a news junkie and even if he was stranded, lost and penniless in the Gobi desert, he’d find a corner shop and borrow the
local paper, and, second, because he knew he had to decide whether he wanted to work for any of them.

Modesty isn’t one of the qualities that characterize editors of national newspapers, and David knew his worth. Greene Communications wouldn’t employ him but they weren’t the
only newspaper group in town. Even the fact that Logan was no doubt spreading the lie that he hadn’t jumped but had been pushed didn’t really matter.

Newspaper editors were always rising from the dead, and unlike Lazarus they’d often been in the tomb a lot longer than four days. One Fleet Street veteran had been fired – and given
a handsome payoff – so often that people said he’d been born with a silver knife in his back.

Helping himself to another huge doorstep of white toast, thickly buttered, David bit into it with relish. It was great to be back home where butter meant something yellow, delicious and deadly
instead of the tasteless sunflower margarine or low-fat spreads favoured by soft Southerners that made the toast damp and oily but certainly not hot-buttered.

But did he want to go back and work for another proprietor like Logan Greene who didn’t really want an editor, but a minion?

David threw down the copy of the
Daily News
in disgust and delved in his pocket for change to pay for breakfast, remembering with annoyance that he’d spent his last couple of quid
on the papers.

He’d just have to pay when he’d been to the bank. For a moment he grinned, imagining the scene if he had been power breakfasting at the Ritz or the Savoy and had forgotten his credit
cards. But life was a lot simpler here.

He strode across to the cash machine outside the NatWest bank and punched in his personal number. A hundred pounds spewed obligingly into his hands. That would last two weeks up here. In London
it seemed to be ten minutes.

On his way back to the café an advert for the local paper caught his eye and he dipped into a newsagent to pick one up. It sat there, the
Selden Bridge Star
, nestling between
Big Ones
and
Auto Car Weekly
. As he reached to pick up a copy he overheard a snatch of conversation that made him stand still for a moment, a mad, crazy idea sowing its first
tender seedlings in his excited mind.

‘Welcome to WomanPower!’ Ginny brushed the dust off an ancient desk with one of her sheepskin-lined gloves and gestured expansively round the tiny, unprepossessing
office.

Liz smiled back, trying not to think about Jamie and Daisy and whether or not they’d settled down with Minty, and doing her best to ignore the peeling paintwork, the battered grey filing
cabinets with drawers that didn’t shut, the desks that looked as though they were third- or fourth-hand rather than second-, and tried to picture it once they’d given it a lick of paint
and bought a few cheap black desks from The Reject Shop.

Liz had strong ideas about offices. She was convinced if you wanted people to work hard and well, you had to give them the right environment. And it didn’t have to be expensive. Plain
paintwork, haircord carpet, maybe ex-exhibition, a few posters. They wouldn’t be able to afford fresh flowers but the trendy gift shops all imported such brilliant lilies and tulips in
brightly coloured fabric nowadays that they were more fun than the real thing.

Liz looked round the room, mentally calculating how much it would cost her to transform it from the dingy off-putting place it was now into somewhere that would inspire clients with confidence.
If Gavin would do the decorating, she reckoned she could do it for £500. And it would be money well spent.

‘How on earth do you bring prospective clients into this dump, Ginny? Don’t they take one look and run straight off to Brook Street Bureau?’

Ginny didn’t answer but looked embarrassed and instantly changed the subject.

‘Have you met Kim, our Girl Friday?’

Liz looked her up and down. Kim was fat and plain and wore miniskirts which her best friend should have told her were not a good idea. Her manner was a winning combination of apathy laced with
– when she could be bothered – unhelpfulness.

Liz decided in Kim’s case Girl Friday probably meant she did a lot of different jobs badly.

‘So,’ Liz moved the dust on her desk round a bit and put down her briefcase, ‘let’s get stuck in! Kim, could you get me the client list and a copy of WomanPower’s
Profit and Loss Account, please?’

Kim looked stunned and ambled off towards the rickety filing cabinets where she bent over, displaying as much thigh as a Miss World entrant, and a pair of unappealing greyish white knickers. Liz
looked away.

‘I’m afraid I can’t find them,’ the girl announced without surprise.

Liz turned to Ginny, trying to keep the exasperation from her voice. ‘Ginny, have you got the client list in your desk?’

Ginny looked back at her, reddening. ‘The client list? What exactly do you mean?’

Liz tried not to sound irritated. After all, Ginny had no business experience. ‘The list of all the companies you’ve been finding staff for,’ she explained patiently.

‘I see.’

‘Well, where is it?’

Ginny came and sat on the edge of her desk. ‘We don’t exactly have one.’

‘Why ever not, how on earth do you keep track of your clients and their requirements?’ She looked around her. ‘You should have a computer, it would be ideal for this kind of
business. You must have at least a card index system.’

Ginny looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, so far I’ve managed to carry it all round in my head.’

‘Ginny, that’s crazy! Don’t you ever forget any of it? You must have a mind like a word processor.’

‘Well, so far it hasn’t been too difficult.’

‘Why not?’

Ginny took a deep breath. ‘Because so far we’ve only placed a few dozen people and most of them were temps.’

Liz looked at her, speechless. She couldn’t have heard her right. ‘But you’ve been open more than two months!’

‘I know. It’s been rather a slow start.’ Ginny smiled engagingly. ‘But it’ll pick up now that you’re here.’

Liz closed her eyes and tried to blot out Kim’s ballooning thighs and Ginny’s wild optimism.

When she’d agreed to work for WomanPower, what the hell had she let herself in for?

‘You heard about the
Star
?’ The newsagent’s head appeared from behind a Mount Everest of unsold newspapers as he leaned out over the counter piled
high with Old Holborn, returned Pools Coupons and jars of gobstoppers to tell his customer a particularly choice piece of gossip. ‘Closing down unless they can find themselves a buyer to take
it on. It’s that freesheet that did it, it’s taken all their readers away.’

The customer drew in his breath sharply, making a hissing noise of shock and outrage. ‘T’won’t be the same without the
Star
. That paper’s been going ever since I
were a boy.’

‘Over a hundred years.’

‘How much do they want for it?’

‘Look here. There’s an announcement in last week’s edition.’ He leafed through the paper. ‘There. Quarter of a million. But I bet they’d take an offer.’
The newsagent grinned at his toothless customer. ‘Going to make a bid, Stan, eh?’

And the two men cackled with laughter.

‘Excuse me,’ David interrupted, pointing to the advert, his brain racing, ‘have you finished with that?’

‘Aye.’ The newsagent handed it to him.

‘Is it a good paper?’

‘Used to be. One of the best. Ten years ago, every household took a copy. Now they get sent the
Messenger
free, most of ’em don’t bother.’ He looked at David for
the first time. ‘You interested then?’

David smiled back. ‘I might be.’ He fought his way through the piles of newspapers and magazines to the door as both men watched him curiously.

‘He don’t look like Rupert Murdoch, do he?’

‘I dunno what Rupert Murdoch looks like, but I bet he puts his cagoule on the right way round.’

David heard a deep throaty laugh, swiftly followed by an attack of smoker’s coughing.

He looked down at the bright orange garment. It was inside out. Slowly he took it off and turned it round the right way as he walked, a new spring in his step, back to the café to pay for
his breakfast.

Keep calm
, Liz told herself, as she looked back on the unmitigated disaster of her first day back in the working world. She had been looking forward to it so much. And
what had she found? That Ginny was terrific at persuading women to sign up with WomanPower but it had no systems, no organization, and hardly any customers. WomanPower two months on was exactly
what it had been when Ginny had first told them about it: a good idea on paper only. Except for one crucial difference, which Liz was trying to push to the back of her mind, but which kept bobbing
up again like a bad apple in a barrel of stinking water.

To set up WomanPower Ginny had borrowed a hefty sum from the bank. But the bank manager hadn’t given her the loan out of the kindness of his heart or because he thought women returners
were a good thing and ought to be encouraged. He had given it to her because Ginny had broken the fundamental rule that Liz had been taught at Business School. She had put up her own home, that
warm and welcoming haven of love and hospitality, as security.

And if Liz didn’t manage to rescue the fortunes of WomanPower pretty damn quick she would lose it for ever.

Feeling physically sick at the responsibility she had unsuspectingly taken on, Liz turned into the lane that led to Crossways and Jamie and Daisy. The day had been so ghastly that she half
expected to see them both waiting in the doorway, their faces stained with unquenchable tears, to accuse her of abandoning them into the arms of a cruel stranger.

Instead the front door was closed and as she walked, physically exhausted and emotionally drained, towards it, she heard gales of giggles coming from inside. She stood for a moment, her hand on
the doorhandle and let the delicious sound wash over her, as soothing and restorative as a cooling shower on a long, hot day. Minty was clearly a hit.