Same Time Next Week

Chapter 7

‘Crackers, that’s what this business is,’ cackled Iris Caswell as her old but deft fingers rolled up the casing of a Christmas cracker.

‘Oh god, not that line again,’ said Venus, the new girl, who had fitted in with the crew from the moment she’d stepped over the threshold with her purple hair and dry wit. The Pandoros, who owned the small but successful factory called The Crackers Yard, wouldn’t have employed anyone who looked down on corny jokes, didn’t pull their weight, didn’t mind sticking on the kettle even if it wasn’t their turn, and who didn’t pass the Iris test. As Iris always said, ‘I haven’t got to my nineties without knowing a thing or two about people’.

‘She’ll do,’ was her verdict when Annie Pandoro asked if Iris thought the pouty teenager passed muster. And she had done. She reminded the crew of young Palma Collins when she first turned up at the factory with her pink hair, one of their favourite people to have walked through the doors, now married to a British champion boxer, and a mother of three.

Joe and Annie Pandoro had bought the company off the peg when it had more or less run aground and, with the help of a wisely picked workforce, had made it into the success it was today. It was situated on an industrial estate between the villages of Maltstone and Higher Hoppleton, easy to get to with plenty of parking. The order books were full, profits rose year on year and the staff loved coming to work.

‘Long before you arrived, there was a woman called Gill Johnson who sat right where you’re sitting, Venus, and she said that every single day: Crackers, that’s what this business is ,’ Iris told her.

‘How the hours must have flown by,’ said Venus with a click of her tongue. Iris chuckled at her cheek but she was on her own. There was something up with both Annie, holed up in the office like an agoraphobic mole, and Astrid, who was beavering away with her brow lowered as if she was in a faraway place.

‘Summat on your mind, Astrid?’ Iris called down to the bottom of the long table. She had to repeat it.

‘What?’

‘Earth calling Astrid. You’ve had a stick up your bum all morning, what’s up with you?’

Astrid snipped the ribbon on her cracker and sighed heavily.

‘On Tuesday, I gave the finger to Mr and Mrs Hutchinson.’

Venus pulled a shocked face. ‘You?’ Astrid might have been six foot four and built like an Amazon warrior queen, but she was probably the politest person Venus had ever come across in her young life and the least likely ever to give pensioners a rude digit.

‘Ja, me,’ replied Astrid.

‘They must have done something bad for you to do that,’ said Iris, equally as shocked. ‘Whose turn is it to put the kettle on? We need a cuppa and a birthday cake break to digest this revelation.’

‘I’m sure it’s my turn,’ said Venus, getting up. ‘I mean I’ve only made twenty today.’

Venus got some plates and cut wedges of the birthday cake that Annie had brought in for Astrid that morning. Her husband, Joe, had made it and their little boy, Massimo, had stuck the chocolate buttons on the top. Iris didn’t want the grisly details to start until the coffees had been dished out, and kept shushing Astrid until then. Annie joined them from the office when Iris waved her in through the window.

‘What’s up?’ she asked.

‘Astrid’s told the Hutchinsons to do one,’ said Iris, almost with pride in her voice. ‘About time. I never liked them. They show their faces in church every so often just to get some brownie points with Him .’ She pointed upwards. ‘But He’s got their number. And it’s six hundred and sixty six.’

‘They bought me a mop head for me birthday,’ said Astrid, correcting herself immediately. ‘Two actually, as they were in a buy one, get one free pack. Although I was expected to leave it with them so I didn’t use it for any of me other clients.’

Iris’s jaw dropped open and she nearly lost her forkful of cake.

‘The cheeky bleeders. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back then, was it, because I know you haven’t been happy there for a while.’

‘Yes, that is right,’ said Astrid, feeling better already at having let it out, because she’d been visited by the guilty fairy and wondered if she’d gone over the top with her reaction.

‘That Dennis is a creepy beggar. He once felt my bum in a jumble sale. He said it was an accident,’ said Iris. ‘If he’d got any closer to me, I’d have ended up in the maternity unit nine months later.’

Astrid smiled. It had been the first time she’d smiled since being here last week.

‘He asked you one too many questions about your bits for my liking,’ said Iris, who wasn’t renowned for her political correctness or up-to-date terminology, though her good intentions were never in doubt. ‘It’s not what decent people do, though Dennis and Valerie Hutchinson consider themselves holier than the Virgin Mary.’

‘Yes. He was too interested in my anatomy. I think he would have liked me to strip off so he could do a full examination and nothing short of it would stop the questions.’

‘It’s none of his business, is it?’ said Venus. ‘Did you ask him what shape his willy was or how low his balls hung?’

Astrid threw back her head and laughed. ‘No, Venus, but I wish I had now.’

‘Well, good for you,’ said Iris. ‘It’s not as if you need the pittance they paid you anyway, is it?’

‘Ah, but they gave me two pounds extra for a birthday treat.’

‘What did you buy with it, another house?’ asked Venus.

‘The mop head wasn’t even Vileda. I don’t think it would have fitted the stick.’

‘Kevin left you well set up, didn’t he?’ said Iris. ‘I don’t know why you’re still cleaning if you don’t have to.’

‘I like cleaning, Iris. But not so much the Hutchinsons really.’

‘You’re too bloody soft,’ was Iris’s verdict on that.

‘I only do two clients now and they are lovely. I am proper happy just having them and working here. So if you ever vant me to do an extra day, Annie, just shout up.’ She beamed at Annie, who didn’t mirror the smile but instead stopped eating her cake and dropped a long, heartfelt sigh at the same time.’

‘Annie, love, what’s up?’ said Iris, immediately concerned because like Astrid, Annie was usually walking sunshine and yet here she was looking more like a storm cloud.

‘I haven’t known how to tell you,’ said Annie, rubbing her forehead. ‘Joe and I… we’re moving to the coast. We’re retiring early.’

Silence met the news but Iris, Venus and Astrid all guessed at the words that would follow and they were right.

‘I’m sorry, but we’re selling the factory.’