Wonder Women (9 page)

Jo was practised now that she'd run through her pitch for each of the experts that morning, so she rattled through the description of her shop and then opened her folder to show Louise Lee's initial sketches. Louise looked at them for a long time in silence.

‘Old H&S Gerald is right: there are mountains of things you're going to have to get right to get this one past the authorities.'

Jo sank lower in her seat. Her fears were correct. It was too hard. But Louise was still going through the sketches, one by one. Finally, she pushed them back across the table and said, ‘Having said that, this is the single most original and exciting idea I've seen since I started running these seminars. And as the mother of a small boy, I'd travel a long way to visit your shop. This is brilliant, Jo. You're on to a winner here.'

Jo floated through the afternoon sessions, through the farewell drinks and on to the train. She felt so fired up and full of positive energy, she could have burst. Lee picked her up at the station and took her home, but she held back on talking about it. It wasn't a conversation she wanted to rush through while they handled the kids' dinner, bath and bedtime and juggled the needs of two demanding toddlers. She wanted to discuss it seriously. Anyway, there'd be a million things to do in the house when they got in.

Except – there weren't. As they walked through the door, she could smell furniture polish. The living room was clean and freshly hoovered and there was a stack of clean, folded laundry on the kitchen table.

‘Wow!' said Jo. ‘The house looks amazing.'

‘I thought I'd get some stuff done before we went to my parents, so it wouldn't be too bad when we got home.'

‘Thanks, love. It looks great. Well, all I have to do is make dinner.'

‘You don't even need to do that. My mum has as much faith in my cooking as you do, so she gave me a chicken casserole to bring home. It's warming in the oven right now. I'll just put some rice on, if that's okay.'

‘That's more than okay.'

‘I stopped on the way back from Pinner to get bread and milk for the morning, and I got us a bottle of Pinot, so, if you like, just sit down in the living room, play with the kids or whatever, and I'll bring you a glass.'

Jo didn't need to be asked twice. She kicked off her shoes and sat down on the floor with the kids. She had Imogene cuddled into her lap, and she and Zach set about building a fort out of wooden bricks. Progress was slow because every time they got any height to it, Zach would push it over, or Imogene would pull out a vital supporting brick to chew on. It was lovely to hear her kids laugh though, and she cuddled Imi's solid little body close. Zach suddenly flung himself on her, his bony little arms tight around her neck, and kissed her wetly on the ear.

‘Did you miss me, Zachy? I missed you.'

‘Nah. We had the best time at Gran and Grandpa's, and Dad's been cool. Can I have some juice?'

‘Course you can. Go and ask Dad in the kitchen.'

He bounded off and she looked around her tidy living room. She felt a small sad knot in her stomach, and she berated herself for being the meanest, most ungrateful, small-minded person in the world. Because while she had said all the right things to Lee, and while she'd had an amazing day and was beside herself with excitement at the prospects for the shop, she felt nastily, jealously cross that Lee and the kids had managed so well without her. She felt, irrationally, that Lee's doing all the housework was a comment on the fact that she hadn't done it before rushing off for the weekend, and that Betty sending a casserole was a silent reproach for her absence. Knowing and loving her husband and mother-in-law as she did, she knew that these thoughts were hers and not theirs at all. But she couldn't shake the feeling that it was all too easy to replace her in her primary role as mother and carer. Lee came through with her glass of wine and dropped a kiss on the top of her head, which made her hate herself even more. He was the best bloke in the world, and she was incredibly lucky to have him. She'd heard story after story of women who'd left their husbands in charge of the kids and come home to a house that looked like a hurricane had been through it. Lee was thoughtful, practical and competent, and even though he had extremely limited cooking skills, his ability to hunter-gather (or get his mum to do it) was admirable. Imogene had crawled off her lap and was heading determinedly for the kitchen. Jo shook the negative thoughts
away, put her wine glass down and crawled after her daughter for some cuddles and tickles.

Once the kids were in bed, she and Lee sat down to talk about what she had learned on the course and their next steps. ‘A lot of what I need to do is just red tape and time,' said Jo. ‘But there are two big problems that I don't know how to solve. The first is how we fund this project without bankrupting ourselves, and the second is finding the right clothes to stock the shop.'

‘How much do you think you'll need to get this thing off the ground?'

‘I need to firm up the numbers, and of course stock, which is an unknown, will be a big part of the set-up cost, but I think we're looking at about £50,000. That should cover premises, stock, set-up and salaries, for a few months anyway, depending on where we find premises.'

‘Ouch.'

‘I know.'

‘What did you learn about funding on the course?'

‘Well, there are quite a lot of business loan schemes, and grants for start-ups I can apply for. I just … well … it doesn't seem fair for me to get us into more debt while I'm not actually bringing anything in.'

‘But you will be.'

‘We hope.'

‘I know. I have such faith in you, Jo. And from what you told me about what the woman running the course said, well, that sounds like it is a unique idea. And a good one. It would be wrong not to go for it.'

‘Enough about me though,' said Jo. ‘How did you find the weekend? Was it a nightmare being all on your own?'

‘Anything but. I loved it. I loved having time with the kids and taking them to see my folks. I don't want to go to work tomorrow – I want to stay home and play again.'

Jo's laugh was strained. ‘Well, it sounds like you had an easy time of it. If you'd ended up with a two-day stretch where Zach was throwing hourly tantrums, the washing machine packed up and Imi had one of her clingy fits, you might have had less fun.'

Lee, as always, got the subtext. ‘I know what you do every day is hard. I know I got a lucky break this weekend and the kids were easy. But I really did have fun. I just want you to know that if you need time and space to work on your business in the evenings and at weekends, at least you don't need to worry about the kids being looked after.'

‘I'll drink to that,' said Jo, refilling their wine glasses.

She didn't care what anybody else said, London was just bloody freezing. Holly was cold all the time, even though people kept telling her it was summertime – the best summer they'd had in years. She wasn't sure if it was the weather that made her feel like that, or the constant, icy knot in her stomach. Everything was so strange, such a wrench. It was ten years since she'd last lived here. So much had changed, both in the neighbourhood around her mother's house, and in her. A crowd of teenage boys stood on the corner of the road, talking and laughing, and, as far as Holly could see, spitting incessantly. The old-fashioned corner shop she used to go to on her way home from school had been replaced by a Tesco Metro, and the pub up the road had closed down, to be replaced by a giant betting shop that was open till eleven every night. And what about Holly herself? The Holly who had climbed on the plane to South Africa, twenty years old, full of ideals and energy, couldn't be more different from the thirty-year-old woman hunched by the radiator, staring out of her mother's window at the suburban street. She'd been back to London in the intervening years, but only
as a tourist, coming home for the odd Christmas or for family weddings or occasions. She always knew then that at the end of the week, or two weeks, she would be getting on a plane back to Jo'burg, to her large, sunny workshop, and the sprawling house she shared with Damon.

But now she was back. Back for good? She didn't know. All she knew was that she couldn't be in Johannesburg right now. Not with all the memories, not with the constant possibility of bumping into one of Damon's friends, or his mother. Not a chance. So she'd packed up her stuff, put most of it in storage in a friend's garage and got on a plane. And here she was, back in Ealing, with nothing to show for the decade she'd been away.

She'd kind of lost contact with the friends she'd had in London, and she didn't feel like explaining to anyone why she was back, what she was going to do or how long she'd be staying, especially as she didn't know the answers to the last two questions herself. As a result, she hadn't seen anyone or gone anywhere in the week since she'd been home. Her sister had rung her every day and kept offering to come and see her. Until now, Holly had managed to put her off. She'd done some grocery shopping for her mum, finding the aisles of an English supermarket strange and confusing after so many years away, and she'd sat shivering on a bench in the park for an hour each day, mainly to avoid her mum's constant offers of tea and overly sympathetic expression. She couldn't do another day of it though. She had to get out and do something, so she decided she'd get on a bus and head for North London to see Miranda.

Holly's sister was four years older than her, but the age
gap might as well have been three times that, their lives were so far apart. Miranda was married with two children, and keen to add at least two more to her brood. Her husband Paul did something with hedge funds in the City, and as a result they had a lovely big house and no shortage of money. Miranda didn't need to work, didn't want to work, and devoted every fibre of her being to her children.

Holly sat upstairs on a number-83 bus, looking out of the window at the endless rows of houses and shops that made up suburban London. Everyone behind each of those doors had something to do: a job, a family, a purpose. She had sod all, right now. First of all, she was going to need to get a job … she'd brought what little money she had back with her, but the exchange rate was not kind to her savings at all. She knew it wouldn't be hard to find work of some sort – she had transferable skills – but she needed to think about what she wanted to do. She needed to set some life goals. She'd had some, pretty clearly marked out ones, but then Damon had decided to change everything.

Maybe going to see Miranda was a mistake. Her mum's sympathy was bad enough, but in Miranda's eyes Holly would be a real failure – no man, no prospect of a family. Miranda wouldn't even care that Holly's career plans had gone down the pan. She'd never understood Holly's rather unconventional career path anyway. Like some kind of terrifying 1950s throwback, Miranda thought work was something women did until they had children. Holly seriously considered texting to say she was ill, getting off the bus, crossing the road and getting on another one going in the opposite direction. But when she thought about the silent house and her
mother's face arranged in an expression of perpetual pity, she decided Miranda was the lesser evil.

When she got there, she expected to find Miranda calmly engaged in some perfect maternal pursuit – making cup-cakes or reading an educational book to the kids. But instead she opened the door holding a screaming baby Oscar and smelling distinctly of vomit.

‘Oh, thank God you're here. It's lovely to see you, but please forgive me if I don't kiss you.'

‘Lovely to see you too, Randa, and no worries, I really don't need a kiss.'

‘Oscar's come down with the twenty-four-hour bug. He's vomited up everything I've given him so far today. Most of it in my hair.'

‘Delightful.'

I think he's empty right now. Could you hold him for five minutes while I dash through the shower?'

Without waiting for an answer, Miranda handed the fat, bald baby to Holly, who held him rather gingerly away from her. Miranda dashed off up the stairs, pulling her stained shirt over her head. ‘Martha's in the living room!' she yelled over her shoulder.

Holly carried Oscar into the perfectly tidy living room. Martha was sitting in the middle of the enormous sofa, her legs stretched out in front of her, watching a Barbie film on DVD.

‘Hey,' Holly said, and perched on the edge of a chair, still holding Oscar as far away from her body as she could. He was very sweet, she was sure, but he smelled decidedly iffy. Martha looked over at her.

‘Who are you?'

‘I'm your aunt Holly. The one who lives … lived in South Africa? We've talked on Skype, remember?'

‘You look different.'

‘That's because I'm not trapped inside a computer screen.'

Martha, a serious little girl, nodded her head and turned back to her film.

Holly bounced Oscar lightly on her knee and watched the screen too. Then it occurred to her that bouncing a nauseous baby might not be such a good idea, especially over Miranda's immaculate golden carpets, so she stopped. He didn't look happy, poor little chap. He was very round, but his little face looked drawn and pale. Even though he still smelled pretty gross, she drew him closer to her and he rested his head against her chest. It was the first time she'd ever seen him: the last time she'd been in the UK, Martha had been about eighteen months old and Miranda was pregnant with Oscar. Now Martha was three, and this sturdy little chap must be about nine months old.

Miranda came back down the stairs, dressed in fresh clothes, her wet hair combed back from her face.

‘That's better!' she said cheerfully. ‘Now, can I get you a cup of tea? Something to eat?'

‘I'm fine.' Holly handed Oscar over to his mum, and Miranda settled herself on the sofa opposite.