Chapter 10
The square mile that formed the City of London, one of the richest square miles in the world, always felt eerily deserted at the weekend. Most of the shops, cafés and bars were closed, the pavements filled Monday to Friday with smartly suited workers were empty, and the office towers abandoned, apart from security guards and the odd weekend visitor like herself.
Bella had dressed down – just a little bit – for the meeting with Susan and as she tapped in the entry code at the office door, she wondered nervously how this was going to go.
She was fifteen minutes early, but Susan was already there, in her office with her chair turned to the window. For once she wasn’t on the phone.
Bella tapped on the door and gave a tentative ‘hello.’
The chair swivelled to face her. ‘Hello, Bella, come in.’ Susan’s voice was neutral but Bella wondered if she’d made a wardrobe misjudgement with her dressed-down look when she saw her boss was in full tailoring, with a beige rollneck sweater instead of a blouse as her one concession to informality.
‘Hi, Susan, how are you doing?’ Bella asked.
‘Why don’t you take a seat?’ With a faint smile, Susan gestured to a chair. ‘That was quite a bombshell you dropped on us last night.’
Bella decided to launch straight into the pitch she’d planned on the way over. ‘Yes, I didn’t mean to do that. I blurted. But, Susan, I love my job. I love working for you. I’m planning to take three months of maternity leave and come straight back. This is what I’ve always wanted to do.’
‘What, have a baby?’ Susan asked.
‘No, consult, for the best team in the country.’ Bella paused, then added, ‘You know I didn’t want children when I joined. And that’s what I told you at the time. But I met Don, we got married and my feelings changed. I hope you can understand that.’
‘I run a very small company, Bella, so I have to be very organised and have very committed staff. Here you are promising me you’ll be straight back to work after a short break, working just as hard as you do now, but we have to ask ourselves – is that realistic?’ Susan asked and there was no ignoring the cool formality in her tone.
‘I’ll make it realistic,’ Bella answered.
‘We’ll have to take you off the Danson’s job,’ Susan said. ‘It’s due to start in the summer.’
Not without a fight, you won’t, Bella felt her hackles rise. ‘I brought that job in, Susan. And they want me to do it. Tell them we can begin on 1 August and I’ll be there. Surely you owe me that?’
Susan tapped long beige nails on the desk and finally said, ‘OK, 1 August, but you’ll take Hector with you as your number two. That way, there is backup.’
‘Fine,’ Bella replied, although this was not fine at all, but August was months and months away. She’d worry about having to bring along Hector nearer the time.
‘OK, well, I am impressed by your commitment,’ said Susan. ‘But we’ll have to see how it works out once your…’ she seemed to pause, as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to say the word, ‘baby is here.’
With that, the subject appeared to be closed, so Bella opened up her files and they began talking about Merris Group.
She listened to Susan and learned. Her boss was as brilliant as ever.
Bella had two whole weeks off for Christmas. She wasn’t due back at Merris until 3 January, whereas Don was off just for Christmas Day, Boxing Day and 1st January, but she would be too busy to notice, she told herself.
She had drawn up a typically ambitious ‘to-do’ list for her holidays: buy Christmas presents, maternity clothes and… hey, maybe even a house. She planned to at least start looking.
Bur first of all, she needed some relaxation, so Tuesday was going to be a shopping day and Tania was taking the day off so they could hit town together.
‘There’s this fabulous maternity shop around here,’ Tania assured her when they met for coffee at the start of the shopping session. ‘I’ve already been looking for you.’
Bella took in her friend’s recent chunky toffee highlights and up-to-the-nanosecond manicure. She was the best possible person to take shopping. ‘I am half French,’ Tania would declare. ‘I don’t know the meaning of post-retail guilt. We need these things! We have to look lovely!’
‘Let’s do the Christmas presents first, I can’t see maternity clothes shopping as fun,’ Bella said, gloomy at the prospect of getting even bigger.
So, they went to Selfridge’s and got the gift buying well under way, scooping up picture frames, luxury candles, bed linen and books.
Bella cheered up when she started shopping for Don. She’d planned to buy him a jumper, but got carried away and bought him the jumper, plus a shirt, plus a new black cashmere overcoat. ‘He only ever wears his battered oilskin thing,’ she told Tania. ‘Oh hell, I’m going to get him a new briefcase as well. It is Christmas.’
‘How are we going to carry all this?’ Tania wondered.
‘In a cab,’ said Bella.
‘Are you as rich as you’re making out?’
‘Christmas bonus,’ grinned Bella. ‘Susan may hate the fact I’m having a baby, but she hasn’t let it affect bonus season.’
Finally, they got to the swanky, high-end maternity shop and wandered amongst the displays.
‘I’d just like to look around for a bit,’ Bella explained. ‘Try to get my head into the zone.’
Soon she was complaining to Tania, ‘Everything looks too cute for me. All I can see is pink wrap cardies and lilac pinafores. I can’t turn up for a senior leadership meeting in a pinafore!’
‘No, no, let me take charge of this,’ Tania insisted. ‘I have clocked their tailoring and the lovely cashmere things. Come this way.’
So, Bella was steered into a changing room and then her friend carried in one outfit after another.
‘Just no pinafores or dungarees,’ Bella warned.
Tania’s first offering was a grey tailored skirt suit. The jacket, with its shoulder pads and roomy cut at the front was acceptable enough, but the skirt with its saggy pouch at the front did not inspire love.
‘Well, it’s the only type of suit they’ve got,’ Tania told her. ‘Try it with this white smock-blouse thing. It might not look too bad.’
And this was true, once the voluminous shirt was on, the suit didn’t look too bad.
‘You get some lovely earrings, a nice chunky necklace…’ Tania encouraged, ‘put your red lipstick on. You’re going to look as together as you can in the final stages. They also have this suit in black and the smocks in blue and pink.’
‘Blue and pink… blue and pink… it’s all about blue and pink when you’re pregnant,’ Bella growled. ‘OK, we’ll take the grey suit, the black suit, two white shirts, a blue and a pink. Is there anything else I can wear for work?’
When Tania came back, she was holding a long stretchy black dress, perfectly plain with a square-cut neck.
‘I think this has a lot of potential, if you up your scarf and boot game.’
Once Bella had put it on, she looked at herself and had to agree – a long dress wasn’t her usual style, but this wasn’t bad at all.
‘OK, this is a win. Does it come in any other colours?’
‘A totally uninspiring shade of grey. I don’t recommend it,’ Tania replied.
‘OK… well that’s work outfits sorted. What about everyday life?’
Tania sprang back into action and gradually, a pile of acceptable clothes built up in the fitting room. Two pairs of maternity jeans and one pair of black faux leather trousers, a selection of black tops, T-shirts and one big black rollneck jumper. Bella was even wheedled into buying two billowing summer dresses, one in blue and one in pink.
When she complained, ‘They are so not my thing,’ Tania pointed out that her baby was due in late April, when it might be too hot for leather trousers.
‘And let’s be realistic, even a daily exerciser like you might still be in need of a maternity dress for a few weeks afterwards,’ Tania added. ‘And these have breast-feeding flaps.’
This additional information gave Bella something of a jolt. Taking a look at the flaps to see how they worked, she turned to Tania with a worried expression.
‘Breast-feeding flaps? I didn’t even know about these. I think you know more about babies than I do, Tani.’
‘The look on your face! Don’t worry, Bella. You’ve got time,’ Tania soothed. ‘Get some pregnancy books in and do some reading. You’re a total swot. You’ll be fine. Come and visit my mum soon, she’ll want to give you the alternative health take on everything.’
‘Yeah,’ Bella agreed. ‘Good idea.’ Maybe Valerie could help take the edge off this growing feeling that she had no idea what she was letting herself in for.
She tried on many of the maternity outfits again for Don when he got home later that evening.
‘This one isn’t so bad, is it?’ she asked, modelling the slinky black dress for him.
‘No, but I don’t know about the suits.’
‘I know… tricky to pull off when I get really ginormous,’ she said, shuddering at the thought.
‘Looks like you’ve been spending big,’ he noted, but not disapprovingly; it was her money, after all.
‘Yeah, but I got my Christmas bonus,’ she confided. ‘It was very good and very deserved.’
‘Well don’t go over the top with my present, because I don’t get a bonus.’ He sounded sulky now.
‘OK,’ she said, while thinking oops, too late.
‘Where are we going for our lunch on Christmas Day?’ was Bella’s next question, ‘Do you want to take me and Maddie out somewhere posh?’ she asked, taking a sip of her ghost-of-a-white-wine spritzer and trying to pretend that it tasted nice.
‘What about we do Christmas day here at home? And I do the cooking?’ he asked.
‘No, we’re not doing that whole plum pudding and turkey thing just for the three of us sitting at home. What will we do all day?’ she protested.
‘We’ll have fun. I always have fun when I’m with you and Mum.’ He smiled at her.
‘I want to go out. Let’s go to a posh restaurant for Christmas lunch.’
‘OK, if you like,’ he answered.
‘Does that mean you wouldn’t like it?’
‘I don’t mind, Bella, you choose.’ He was lying across the sofa and looked like he was about to reach for the TV remote.
‘Don, talk to me a bit more,’ she asked. ‘We have to have a house talk. We are still going to buy a house, aren’t we?’
‘Yup, that is the plan.’ He didn’t sound enthusiastic.
‘It should be a really good investment,’ she added, ‘I think we should spend as much as we can. We can use the savings for a deposit and the decorating.’
She was treading as carefully as she could – note use of ‘the’ savings, not ‘my’. It was a tricky subject because he earned less than her and did not like to be reminded of it. She didn’t know exactly how much he earned because they had separate bank accounts and they’d never spelled their salaries out to one another. But she did know that he had little in the way of savings – part of his ‘life’s too short’ philosophy.
‘So how big a mortgage do you have in mind?’ He looked up at her with a serious expression.
When she told him the figure she had in mind, he exclaimed, ‘Bloody hell,’ and jolted from lying down to sitting bolt upright. ‘What the hell would the monthly repayments be?’
‘One and a half times what we pay now in rent. I’ve found a great deal.’
‘Bella, I don’t want you to bite off more than you can chew. Especially with a baby on the way.’
‘But this is me, Don,’ she protested. ‘I’m planning to go straight back to work and I’m expecting them to make me a partner next year and I really, really want us to have our own place.’
‘I know you think everything is going to be just exactly the way you have planned, but what if it isn’t? What if you want to take a longer break? Or work part-time?’
‘I won’t,’ she said curtly.
‘Don’t you think we should just build in some wiggle room?’
‘Fine, we’ll go a hundred grand less then. Oh, please cheer up, sweetheart,’ she said, going over to sit on the sofa beside him. ‘This is such an exciting time – a new house, our new baby. Aren’t you excited?’
She cuddled up to him and turned her face to kiss him. He kissed her lightly on the lips then, to her surprise, broke away.
‘Bella, I am excited and I will think about all this, I promise. But I’ve had a run of stressful days,’ he added, ‘so I’m tired. I’m going to take a shower and head off to bed.’
‘OK,’ she sighed, ‘good night then, I’m going to stay up for a bit, if that’s OK.’
‘Yeah, fine.’ He nodded vaguely and stood up to go.
She suspected he was suffering from a classic case of income-related anxiety. Never mind, he’d get over it. So she earned a bit more than him, well, quite a lot more with bonuses. But so what?