The Yorkshire Pudding Club (12 page)

Elizabeth wore her new maternity skirt for her interview on Monday–not that she looked very pregnant at eleven weeks, but it was certainly roomier and moved when she breathed out, unlike her normal skirts that were starting to constrict her like hungry boas. She drove down to the station, checked that she had not left her lights on in the manner of an obsessive compulsive disorder syndrome sufferer, and then she got on the train. It had always been far easier to travel to Leeds that way as the few available car parking spaces outside the Handi-Save building tended to be taken up by the keen boys and girls who arrived at unearthly hours, and the overflow car park was miles away in a dodgy, dark area that was a serial killer’s paradise. Plus she liked relaxing on the train far more than battling through traffic jams.

She arrived with plenty of time to spare so she spent a hundred million pounds on a coffee in Starbucks and then set off for the day’s main event. Just the Job headquarters were a leisurely five-minute stroll from the station down by the waterfront. They were one of the new family of buildings, with lots of
glass and an adjacent massive three-storey car park that seemed to cater adequately for its staff numbers, judging by some empty spaces that Elizabeth noticed as she passed by.

She arrived on the dot to report at a very funky and impressive Reception desk that made the one at Handi-Save look like a funeral parlour. The entrance was so lofty and vast that it was more like an airport than an office block, and the blue-suited glossy Reception staff looked like its air-hostesses. A very short wait later, a young smiley girl called Nerys led Elizabeth upstairs on an escalator, chirping on about how awful the weather was. Terry Lennox was running late, she explained, leading her into a room full of squidgey leather sofas.

Elizabeth smiled and said, ‘That’s okay,’ but inside she was thinking about Laurence and his ‘I’m important so I’m going to be late just to annoy you–ner ner ner ner ner!’ ploys, and her brain went automatically into, ‘Here we go again!’ mode. Nevertheless, Nerys seemed nice enough and fixed her up a coffee in a real cup with a saucer, not a plastic one that threatened to burn her fingerprints off.

Elizabeth sat quite comfortably in the lovely plush corner room with the massive windows framing the view of the river, happily sipping in the atmosphere of the place, which seemed lighter and more dynamic than Handi-Save ever did, even in its finest hours. Providing Terry Lennox, whoever he was, turned out not to be a total Laurence. Elizabeth was already thinking, Yes, I could work here.

She had just finished the coffee when Nerys put in another appearance.

‘Mr Lennox is so sorry,’ she said, with genuine apology. ‘He hates being late for anything and he was a bit worried you might be getting hungry, so he asked me quite specifically to get you one of these.’

She set a knife, fork and serviette down on the table in front of Elizabeth and then a plate with a delicious-looking soft brown bap bursting with prawns, salad and pink dressing.

‘Oh thanks,’ she said, thinking, Crikey, is this how interviews go these days? She had expected a Digestive at a push, but lunch-while-you-wait? She wasn’t looking the sandwich gift horse in the mouth though, because she was starving, and so she stole a fat prawn that was hanging out at one side. Then she ripped off a bit of bread, then she thought, Sod it, and cut the sandwich into four, and before she knew it, she had wolfed the lot. She was just licking her fingers when a man with a craggy face and rolled-up shirt-sleeves breezed in.

‘So sorry, young lady. A thousand apologies–how are you?’ He came over with his hand extended and shook hers so firmly and vigorously that he almost pulled her arm out of its socket.

Well, if this was Terry Lennox, Elizabeth thought, he wasn’t one of those smooth, slimy executives like Laurence. He had a face she had seen somewhere before, but she couldn’t quite place it. Probably on the financial pages of a newspaper, if he was as prolific as Janey and Helen said he was. According to Helen, Terry
Lennox, MD of Just the Job, had been born on a council-house estate that made Blackberry Moor look like Chelsea. He had been written off at school and could not read a word before he was ten. He left school at fourteen to start work in a local brush-making factory that he owned fifteen years later. Through a mix of natural acumen, hard graft, unsentimental ruthlessness, and presumably some luck and black magic, he was now the owner of the biggest DIY chain in Britain, which was fast expanding into Europe and gobbling up the competition for breakfast. He made Laurence look like a choirboy.

‘You took some tracking down, you know,’ he said in a very deep and broad South Yorkshire accent.

‘Pardon?’ she said, wondering if he had mistaken her for someone else because this wasn’t making any sense.

‘Your old Personnel Department were a bit on the reticent side to divulge any info about you–now why do you think that was?’ he went on.

Now Elizabeth was totally lost. One of them had a screw loose and she was pretty sure it wasn’t her.
‘And where
have
I seen him before?’
she pondered. Her thought processes were busy trying to work it out but having no luck so far.

‘Are you anything to do with Golden Door Recruitment?’ she tried, but his blank look answered that question adequately.

‘I thought the prawn sandwich might have given it away for you when I knew I was going to be late. Mischief on my part, I’m afraid. I told Nerys to get you one.’

Whaaaat?
It was like being trapped in a game of Cluedo. Mr Lennox, in the office, with a prawn sandwich. Then suddenly she got it.

‘You’re the man in the lift!’ She pointed at him.

He clapped in a ‘By George, she’s got it!’ kind of way. ‘Yes, unfortunately that
was
me, and I owe you a huge apology. Why I didn’t use the damned staircase that day, I’ll never know. Well, I do–I was in too much of a rush, if that isn’t the irony of it all. I have terrible claustrophobia, which is why I’ve always given myself an office not too many stairs up and plenty of room in which to faint,’ he said and smiled. ‘Anyway, I’ve been looking for you ever since, to say a big thank you.’

‘Oh right,’ said Elizabeth, still totally nonplussed. ‘Well, thanks for the thanks.’
Was that it then? All this way for a sarnie and a thank you?

‘I found out eventually what had happened to you,’ he went on. ‘I thought I might have made a contribution to your downfall.’

‘No–er…not at all.’ She felt herself getting hot. Did he know the whole story then? Obviously not or she wouldn’t be here. He held up his hand as if Caesar was in the room and he had just hailed him.

‘I’m pretty sure that if we could replay the whole day without me flopping all over the place, you just might not have exploded.’

Oh hell, he did know the whole story!

‘Maybe I was the straw that broke the donkey’s back, eh? So my first reason for inviting you here was obviously to say a huge, huge sorry for that. My second
is to ask if you want a job to replace the one you lost.’

Elizabeth’s eyebrows shot up so far they almost had to call Maintenance to get them down from the ceiling tiles.

‘I did get to see your personnel file in the end,’ he went on. ‘Quite impressive. I like that sort of company loyalty. It must have been something pretty monstrous for you to jack in your job like that after all those years. Or someone, perhaps?’

‘It was,’ said Elizabeth without elaboration. She was professional enough not to take the opportunity to slag off Teenwolf and old Bandy Legs, however deliciously tempting it was to do so.

‘I haven’t got a secretary at present. Mine recently got bitten by the travel bug and is rescuing koala bears or something in Australia so I’ve been surviving on temps, and every last one of them is useless. Now, let me lay it on the line for you, Ms Collier: I’m an old-fashioned kind of boss–I like a cup of coffee brought to me every two hours without some woman yelling at me that I’m being sexist, although I have been told I am. I may, from time to time, ask you to nip up into town and get me things, although that won’t be in your job description, and I shall probably whip you out to lunch occasionally, although I won’t be trying to seduce you. I’m very happily married to my Irene and have been for centuries, and no doubt you’ll be putting many calls through to me from her because she rings up to talk about our curtains on a regular basis, or so it seems.’

Elizabeth stifled a giggle. She liked him. His rough-edged bluntness was charming.

‘I’m not as easy as I like to think I am to work for, but if you give as good as you get and don’t go off crying in the toilets like Miss Last-Week, I think we’ll get on marvellously. Although, after hearing you in full flow, I don’t think I need to prompt you on that front.’

Whoops! thought Elizabeth.

‘Now here’s the deal. I can’t offer you a company car straight away, but if you ever get stuck, we’ve got pool cars. What I am offering is twenty-four thousand, bloody good pension, profit-sharing, life insurance, private health scheme, staff discount, tax-free Christmas bonus, birthday appraisal and thirty days holiday a year, including your stats. Well?’

Elizabeth’s mouth moved soundlessly. Someone up there was having a laugh, she thought. She should grab it with both hands and not mention the obvious. Legally he didn’t have a right to ask about her childbearing plans, it was discriminatory and she could have him for it. ‘Keep stumm about the baby,’ her instincts screamed at her. ‘Anybody else would.’ Except Elizabeth was not anybody else.

‘It’s only fair to tell you that I’m pregnant,’ she said. Ah well, that was that then. Easy come, easy go. She did self-destruction so well.

‘Oh!’ said Terry Lennox, clapping his hands together, interweaving them and bringing them to his lips as if he were preparing to pray. ‘Well, do you want to have a word with your hubby and see if he wants you to work?’

She cut him off. ‘I don’t have a husband. Or a partner.’

If he was an old-fashioned man, as she suspected, that would probably just hammer the last nail in the coffin. Feisty, unmarried and pregnant. Should she just go now, or did he want Security to escort her off the premises?

‘Well, I admire your honesty anyway, lass,’ he said. ‘You’ll need a job more than ever then, won’t you? So, Miss Collier, when can you start?’

John’s Land Rover was parked outside her house when she got home and her heart annoyingly started to Riverdance when she saw it. She tried to pretend she hadn’t seen him, got out of the car and stuck the key in the lock, but he was behind her by the time the door swung open and neither of them said a word as he followed her in.

‘I hear your friend has lost her job!’ said Simon, with enough relish to coat a pub full of Ploughman’s lunches.

‘Oh, where did you hear that?’ said Helen, stopping the examination of her nicely rounding tummy profile in the full-length en-suite bathroom mirror.

‘In the office, of course,’ he said. ‘You know that one of our accounts is Handi-Save.’

‘Yes, I do know that,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t think you were on gossiping terms with anyone there.’

‘Not usually,’ he said smoothly, ‘but she left rather dramatically, didn’t she? Hardly the thing to do if you want to get another job, is it? Although I can’t say it surprised me.’

‘Well, she would have had to stop working in a few months any…’ Helen stopped herself; she had said too much already and cursed herself for it. Several slow seconds later, Simon appeared at the bathroom door.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Go on what?’ She tried to wriggle out of it, but Simon could smell when she was covering something up and he moved in on it like a vampire smelling a virginal jugular.

‘No, go on. You were saying that she would have had to stop working in a few months anyway. Why would that be then?’

‘Nothing. Let me get changed.’ She tried to squeeze past him to get to her clothes in the bedroom, but he blocked the way.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Why would she have to stop working?’

‘Simon, I’ll be late. My mother will be waiting. The play’s starting shortly.’

‘Why would she have to stop working?’

‘Stop this, Simon.’

‘Why would she have to stop working? Why would she have to stop working?
Why would she have to stop working
?’

He asked the same question repeatedly until the words drove a painful groove in her head.

‘Because she’s pregnant!’ Helen cried, and pushed again and this time he let her past him and into the bedroom. Behind her he was laughing in delighted disbelief as she threw open her wardrobe door and dragged a top off the hanger. Her mother would be wondering where she was.

‘Good God! Who’s the father?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Of course you know, Helen,’ he snapped impatiently.

‘I really don’t know. She…had a fling, that’s all I know.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t know. New Year, I think. A party–she didn’t tell us much.’

She buttoned up her blouse and slipped on her skirt quickly. Behind her, Simon stood, his brain whirring.

‘She was seeing someone at that time, wasn’t she? That labourer?’

‘Yes…no. Yes, but it wasn’t him,’ said Helen. She displaced the anger she felt at her own weakness by slamming the wardrobe door, snatching up her bag, stamping her shoes on. She felt ashamedly disloyal to her friend.

‘This is getting even better,’ said Simon. ‘So he’s not the father?’

‘No–yes…I don’t know,’ she stammered. When Simon was like this, she became confused and could not tell what was actually true and what he wanted to be true. He tied her up in psychological knots and made her feel like a professional liar and deceiver.

‘You must know who it is!’

‘I don’t!’ Helen said, attempting to leave the bedroom but he stood in her way again. She reached for the doorknob and he slapped her hand away from it.

‘Ow! That hurt, Simon!’ she said.

‘It’s very simple. Tell me then I’ll let you go out.’

‘I don’t know. She…she was drunk–she doesn’t know herself. Why is it so important you know?’

‘That isn’t the issue here, Helen. What is important is the fact that you keep things like this from me! These are things that affect me as well as you, don’t you see that, you stupid cow?’ Simon snarled, then he laughed with bitter amazement. ‘My God, and you say she’s not a slag!’ He shook his head slowly and went into the bathroom.

Helen silently slipped on her jacket, the evening spoiled before it had begun, and had just opened the door to go when she heard him say, ‘You aren’t to see her any more.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t want our child associating with her little bastard,’ he said with quiet menace. ‘End the friendship. I don’t care how you do it, but by the time that baby is born, you will not be in contact with her any more. It’s time you dropped those friends, anyway. You outgrew them a long time ago, but you can’t see it, can you? People are defined by the company they keep, Helen, and you associate with tarts and thickos! How do you think that reflects on me, hm? This really is the final straw.’

He came out of the bathroom, smiling gently, smelling of clinical mint and kissed her on the cheek.

‘Have a nice time, darling. Give my love to your mother.’

John sat down on the same chair he had always sat down on whenever he used to come to the house. Elizabeth put the kettle on; it was always the first thing she did when she came in through the front door–well, apart from lighting up a cigarette, but that habit was no more.

‘So, where’ve you been all dressed up?’

‘Job interview,’ she said.

‘How did you get on?’

‘I start next Monday.’

‘Where’s that then?’

‘Just the Job Head Office in Leeds.’

‘Good for you. So, how’s the car?’ he said, and she laughed mirthlessly at his continuing effort of small talk.

‘What do you want, John?’

‘I just wanted to see how it was running.’

‘Great, thank you, but what do you really want?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, using his hand like a big comb through his black hair that had lots of stray grey ones coming through these days. He’d had it freshly cut, just after the point where it started to curl. It made him look younger somehow, and his brown eyes seem larger and darker.

‘I just want to be friends again,’ he said. ‘We’re so awkward with each other and we were never like that, so I suppose I’m here to sort it out. We were always good friends and couldn’t you use one of those right now?’

‘I’ve got enough friends,’ she said, not understanding why she had to be so snotty with him all the time. She hated herself for it, yet couldn’t seem to stop it.

‘You needed a friend the other day in the car park.’

‘If you hadn’t come, do you think I’d still be sat there?’ she snapped.

John got up and strode towards the kitchen door, and then he stopped, took a deep breath, counted to three and swung back to his seat at the table.

‘No, I won’t let you drive me out,’ he said. He looked cross, but there was his hand, stroking Cleef, gently as you like.

‘Who’s the baby’s father?’ he asked calmly. ‘You said you didn’t know him well.’

‘None of your bus—’

‘I hear you were going out with Dean Crawshaw at that time. Setting your standards as low as usual, I see. You do realize he’ll be sitting on that same bar stool in the Victoria twenty years from now, just like he was sat on it twenty years ago!’

Elizabeth closed her eyes against the shame of him knowing about Dean, and noisily started getting some cups out of the super-neat cupboard. John looked around the kitchen: the sparkling worktops, the polished floor, the oven hob so shiny it looked brand new. She used to clean her house until her hands were raw and bleeding because she couldn’t clean out the mess in her head.

‘It isn’t his,’ she said. ‘And yes, I’m sure before you ask.’

‘What is it all about, Elizabeth? Another way of hurting yourself?’

‘How bloody dare you? It wasn’t like that at all!’ she yelled at him.

‘Then what was it like, Elizabeth?’

‘It…it…’
She nearly told him.
She very nearly told him, but he knew too much about her already and that made him dangerous.

As if he was reading her thoughts at that moment, he said, ‘Do you think I’d tell anyone if you told me? Think I’ve told anyone at all any of that stuff I know about you?’

‘There’s nothing to tell. I made a mistake and I’m paying for it, so just get lost, will you!’ she said, and then her eyes started squirting again.

‘Oh, come here, you daft beggar,’ he said, and he opened his big arms and forced a quick, safe hug on her just before she pushed him off, before she let herself savour that feeling. She knew he would never try anything on with her, she knew he would not pretend to like her only to get her upstairs, and that is where John Silkstone had always confused her. John Silkstone was a ‘giver’; the takers in life were so much easier to deal with.

‘Don’t push me away, Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘Just let me in a little bit, eh? I never wanted us to fall out. I know it was my fault last time–I pushed it, I scared you off and I am sorrier than you could ever know for that, but it’s in the past. This is seven years on and I’m back, so please let us at least get on. I don’t want to dredge up faults and recrimination and blame. I always thought too much about you for all this to have happened and spoiled everything. Can we
please
just start again, being friends?’

She nodded and blew her nose on the hankie he snapped out of the tissue box, which stood on the shelf of her Auntie Elsie’s old kitchen dresser. It had been sanded and waxed, sanded and waxed until it was as smooth as the knotty wood would allow. There was a hook on the side; Sam’s dog lead still hung from it that Elizabeth would touch out of habit sometimes when she passed it. They drank their differently flavoured teas quietly and after it, he said goodbye and that he’d see her soon, no doubt, and she hoped that he would, although she didn’t say that aloud. Satisfied by that for now, he went.

For a long time after he had gone, Elizabeth sat at the table, wiping her leaky eyes on her sleeve, feeling like a snotty kid. Like the snotty, gobby, horrible, rude, unloved, unlovable kid she used to be. Until the day she came for help to the woman whom she hated most in the world; the woman who saved her from the nightmares then. But who was there to save her from them now?