Same Time Next Week

Chapter 15

On the day of Amanda’s first friendship club at Ray’s, Linus caught up with her on the Mon Enfant corridors of power to ask how things were going. He said he’d collated loads of information and ideas from the internet, but he’d like to run it past her to see what was viable. He’d heard about a company initiative where employees were given menopause gift bags. They included a paperclip, to keep everything together; a pencil, to write down things before they were forgotten; and jelly babies, in case the women wanted to bite someone’s head off. He didn’t say any more because the cringe showing in Amanda’s expression adequately answered the question, was this a good idea?

She wouldn’t have taken offence at such a present, she said, because it was all about the intention, which sounded well-meaning, if clumsy; but some might. And there were more practical and less jokey things that a gift bag might contain: cooling mist, for instance, a fan, a sachet of superblend tea. She’d put her thinking cap on.

Philip was on holiday that week so the office had a much lighter vibe and that was contributing to her good mood. She’d woken up to the sound of her alarm, and realised that she had slept a full seven hours and hadn’t had to get up to use the loo or wring out a cold cloth to put on her face. It was a blessed relief. The HRT was starting to work, she knew it, and she wondered why she’d been so bloody stupid in not seeking help before, but soldiering on. ‘I thought it was just all natural,’ she’d told the doctor on the Zoom call. ‘It is, but you don’t have to put up with it,’ had been her answer.

She liked her job, it was the best one she’d ever had and she’d had a few over the years. She’d got used to the half-hour commute to the near side of Huddersfield which was easy enough, and the people were, on the whole, a good bunch. She was paid well, but then she had worked her way steadily up the ranks; there were plenty of perks; she knew the industry inside out and she was respected by everyone, apart from Philip who she suspected was jealous that she was by far the better person for the job of running the department. She had been offered the position but had had to turn it down, because at the time, her mother had a health blip and Amanda just didn’t want to take on extra responsibility.

She might have liked her job… but sitting at a desk wasn’t what she had ever planned to do with her life. From an early age, she’d wanted to be a chef, to work in a kitchen, wear whites, create; a pastry chef, more than any other department. Her mother had said she was daft for thinking of making buns as a career and should get a proper job. She’d had a place at catering college lined up, but her mother wouldn’t help her out with the finance she needed. She said she wouldn’t throw good money away on silly ideas – and cooking for a living was a silly idea.

So Amanda had got a job to earn some money to pay for her course. It would be expensive in London but where better to go, she thought. But she’d never gone. Her mother had had an operation and needed her to stay around to help her look after Bradley. So she put off going for another year and that year became two…

Then she met someone and the relationship wouldn’t have survived if she’d moved south. It didn’t survive anyway. She didn’t blame anyone for her giving up her dream, because she could have said sod it to them all and gone, but no one had ever instilled any confidence in her, any faith in herself, and when she eventually got some, it was too late to go to London because she’d have been the oldest student in town.

Years passed and her mother became more and more reliant on her always being around ‘in case’, because, as Ingrid said, ‘it’s a daughter’s duty to look after her mother’. Which was rich, seeing as she didn’t talk to her own, and had stuffed her into a nursing home rather than care for her. Amanda caved in to the pressures of duty, living a second-best life, always hoping that one day her mum would just tell her she loved her and mean it. Pathetic, she knew it was, for a daughter to crave the same validity as a son.

Amanda knew everything about the products of Mon Enfant and their competitors: the best cots, the newest toys, the most comfortable nursing chairs and yet she’d never had that maternal pull. That’s what she’d told people anyway; the truth of it was that she’d fought it with every fibre of her being, because she couldn’t bear the thought of bringing a child into the world whom she found unable to love, as her own mother had.

Astrid sat in Ray’s diner having a coffee and a pastrami-on-rye sandwich, which was delicious. She’d gone up there on the pretext of asking if the owner needed a cleaner, but he’d taken on Bettina Boot’s old one. She was feeling quite low because she’d been up to clean the house of her last remaining oldie, Mr John, and his daughter had been there. They’d decided to move him down to Cambridge with them. They’d been asking him for a long time; they had a big pile in the country and he’d have his own space but he’d always refused ‘until the day came’, he’d said. And it had now, because his only remaining friend had just died. Another loss to get used to, another change.

The diner was lovely, Astrid thought. Bright and cheery, the opposite of how she felt, because she felt dark inside, lonely and sad. A webbing had grown over the raw grief but too often it broke and she felt cut apart all over again. She plastered a smile on her face because she never wanted to bring anyone else down, be a joy sponge, but sometimes that smile needed too much scaffolding to hold up.

The owner – Ray – reminded her of Kev in a way, with lips that defaulted naturally to a smile, though Ray was a lot more handsome than Kev who had had, in his own words, the face of a bashed crab. Ray’s features together worked in wonderful facial harmony. So had Kev’s, but in a less conventional way.

And Kev had been much bigger of course. Both Kev and Astrid seemed to have been made by a god who had been working to an augmented scale, and they liked that they were different together. Kev looked like someone you wouldn’t want to meet up a dark alley if you didn’t know who he was – but if you did know him, then he was exactly the sort of man you’d want to meet up a dark alley, because there was none better to safely escort you home. He had the kindest eyes. Texan Ray had the same sort of eyes, sparkly and genial.

She missed Kev as fiercely as she had loved him when he was alive, and she still couldn’t get her head around the fact that someone so big, so strong, so vital could be felled by some fucking tiny bacteria. There was quite a renowned grief club that took place every Wednesday in the teashop in Spring Hill Square and she’d considered going, but she could hear Kev’s voice in her head: ‘Never mind sitting around talking about me and crying, I want you to go out, Astrid, and enjoy yourself ’, because he was a life-is-for-living kind of guy. He wouldn’t be happy looking down and seeing her so lost, so unfulfilled.

She idly picked up one of the flyers slotted between the condiments on the table and saw that it was advertising a friendship club for women of all ages on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. ‘No need to book, just turn up. ’

She felt a small poke in between her shoulder blades, a nerve twitch as if someone had tapped her. And in her imagination she heard Kev’s voice saying, ‘ Something like that is exactly what you need, love. ’

That afternoon, Amanda had eavesdropped on a conversation that two of her colleagues were having by the coffee machine. One was house-hunting and telling the other about a service called Scopesearch. It cost a tenner to register and allowed you to search on prospective properties: mortgage providers, subsidence, flood damage, Radon gas, disputes with neighbours, previous house sale information, up-to-date valuation. ‘It’s brilliant. It’s what solicitors use and far more detailed than Zoopla,’ they were saying.

As Amanda walked back to her department, she repeated the name over and over so she wouldn’t forget it, which was a distinct possibility, and then wrote it down as soon as she got to her desk. She wondered if the HRT would ever start to work so well that she’d retain information for as long as she used to, in the days when she could follow even the lengthiest questions on University Challenge .

That dreaded voice again.

‘Sky, I’d hoped you’d be here.’

And no Mrs van der Meer around to save her this time. She could have done without this today because Sky had a headache prodding at her temple, thanks to a night of broken sleep. She was on edge all the time in that house now; it was awful living with Wilton Dearne and his odours.

Angel was by herself on this occasion, so she had no one to play up to.

‘Do you restore tools in this shop, do you know? My grandfather is seventy in September and no one knows what to buy for him, but after leaving here last time I suddenly had a mad idea.’

Sky didn’t ask her what the mad idea was, she wasn’t at all interested in any of the Suttons. They saw themselves as big fish in a small pond, all of them. Angel’s grandfather Archie had started off as a tradesman but had wisely bought up a lot of the cheap property around Barnsley with his profits. His son now ran ‘the empire’, as the Suttons called it and both of them were considered arrogant tossers to deal with. They didn’t care; wealth was the only measure of worth they needed and they even revelled in their rather imperious reputation.

‘Yes, you need to see Jock of All Trades,’ said Sky, pointing down to the far end of the shop.

‘What are you working on?’ asked Angel. ‘I mean, I know it’s a bear. Is it a new one or a mend?’

‘It’s new,’ replied Sky. A stock piece. She was just stitching the growler into his tummy. It had to be positioned correctly, her dad had taught her: the holes always facing the back seam, so when he is picked up for a cuddle he makes a noise of contentment.

Angel gasped as a fresh idea hit her. ‘Oh my, what if you were to make grandy a bear. I’d pay you, obviously.’

Obviously.

‘The waiting list is over a year,’ said Sky, thinking quickly. She didn’t want one of her precious Sky Bears looking anything like Archie Sutton. He’d stoked the fire about her dad being the associate of Craven the Prowler, saying that they’d been at school together and ‘the Pole’ had protected Craven from bullies. And that he’d let him visit his house while his young daughter was there. Now didn’t that just tell you how close they were? Sutton had given Craven plenty of casual work, so his name had also been on the list of ‘persons of interest’, something that he’d found highly amusing. Everyone else found it risible, too, to think that he could have had any involvement: but somehow, an amiable man who mended toys and had never crossed swords with anyone was higher up on the list of suspects than someone most people found to be grandiose at best and intimidating, even threatening, at worst.

‘Couldn’t you squeeze it in?’

‘Not a chance, sorry.’

‘Please, please, please?’

‘Honestly, I can’t.’

‘Really? Not even for me?’

Especially not for you. ‘I’m already behind on orders, I’m afraid.’

Angel sighed impatiently. ‘Oh well, that’s a shame. I would have paid extra too,’ She flicked her hair over her shoulder. It was expertly dyed blonde, the same shade as Sky’s own natural colour. Angel had always made fun of Sky’s hair at school, said it was transparent because Sky bleached it with Domestos. And yet here she was, doubtless spending a fortune on trying to get the identical tone, and then interspersing it with extensions sold from their heads by impoverished Eastern European women.

‘Well, I’d better get on, where do I go?’ asked Angel, flashing her ultra-white perfect smile. She was very pretty, but then her mother had been a model apparently. It helped that she could afford the nails, the most expensive make-up, the beauty therapy; the T-shirt with Chanel emblazoned across the front and double-C diamond earrings – they’d be the real thing. A glossy, sparkly, smooth veneer concealing a rotten core, because Sky didn’t believe for one second that Angel Sutton had changed an iota in the ten years since they’d last been at school together.

Ten years wasn’t enough by half to forget what misery she’d caused Sky at school. Only once had Sky turned, when Angel and her gang were following Sky home and one of them had said, ‘Do you think he killed her mother as well?’ And Sky had turned and swung her loaded satchel, which had knocked big Bronty Konig flying. It hadn’t stopped anything then. And Angel smiling at her and being polite and wheedling for a favour didn’t soften any of Sky’s feelings for her now.

‘Like I said, you want Jock of All Trades, under the blue sign,’ said Sky.

‘Excellent. Well, see you again.’ She sounded so well-mannered, so butter-wouldn’t-melt.

Sky felt the tension drop from her shoulders as soon as Angel Sutton turned and made her way down to Jock. She switched her attention back to the bear, trying to stem the flood of unbidden memories that came to her every time that dreadful woman was in her orbit, when Bon’s voice broke in and scattered them for her.

‘Who was that?’ He put a coffee down on her work surface. ‘I made you one. You haven’t taken a break all day.’

‘Thank you,’ said Sky, feeling heat rising in her cheeks. She always felt warmer in his presence, as if he were a sun and she a small, insignificant planet.

‘So… friend or foe?’ He asked. ‘I overheard you saying you couldn’t make her a bear. I don’t think I’ve ever known you turn a job down before.’

He’d been listening to her, then.

‘The office door was open, I wasn’t snooping,’ he said, as if he somehow knew what she was thinking.

‘Foe,’ said Sky in a low voice. ‘One of the Sutton family, you’re bound to have come across them. They think they own this area.’

‘Yes, I know them,’ said Bon, with a slow nod. He knew that Shaun McCarthy, the developer and owner of Spring Hill Square had had a couple of run-ins with the patriarch of the Sutton family, when he’d refused to sell him some adjoining land. No one forced Shaun to do what he didn’t want to do and it hadn’t gone down well with the Suttons. Maybe it was a family trait that they couldn’t accept things not going their way.

‘I try and avoid her, but she caught me today. And a couple of weeks ago, when your wife kind of chased her off for me by buying a bear.’

Your wife. Bon felt now that he couldn’t ignore the fact that she wasn’t any more. It would have been weird not to say so: actively lying, rather than just not declaring it.

He wet his lips in preparation for letting the truth out of them.

‘Mrs van der Meer is… no longer my wife.’ The words, once spoken, sounded odd, deceitful. And from the look on Sky’s face, he’d confused her in his attempt to bring transparency.

‘We actually split up three years ago, but it was entirely amicable. Our divorce finally came through recently.’

‘Oh,’ was all Sky said, belying the maelstrom of thoughts in her head. Three years? Did that mean he must have wanted Erin back, not to have said anything, carrying on the pretence of them still being a couple, hoping that he’d never have to admit to it, hoping they’d mend whatever was broken between them? She should have been overjoyed to learn that he was unattached, but somehow the discovery had the opposite effect. Maybe he suspected what she felt about him, and had held up his marriage as a shield to fend her off. She had no right to be taken into his confidence but still, she felt insulted, hurt; there was no relief.

And Bon saw her eyes flickering and blinking, an indication of the activity that must be happening behind them.

‘It’s nice you’re still good friends,’ said Sky then, gathering every scrap of self-preserving strength inside her. ‘Thank you for the coffee.’

It sounded like the dismissal it was. She needed distance from him, to think about what it all meant, because it did mean something, she was sure of it.

‘Your turn to make them next time,’ he said, in a bid to end their interchange on a friendly note. He hadn’t expected to feel as he did for revealing such a small truth, but the clarity had brought with it a complication that he didn’t really understand.