Chapter 35
On Monday morning, Bella put on her work suit and high heels and headed for Danson’s. She thought she might as well stick with plan A until everyone knew about her plan B.
Sitting in her car at 8.05a.m., she decided to try Susan before she drove into the morning traffic. She dialled her direct line.
‘Hello,’ came the reply, before a second ring had sounded.
‘Susan, hello, it’s Bella.’
‘Oh, hello, Bella. I’ve been thinking about you. How are you coping?’
‘I’m fine, sort of. Have you got any time today? Lunch or after work when we could have a quick meet?’
There was a pause, Susan no doubt checking her overstuffed diary for a bite-sized chunk of opportunity.
‘No, I’m totally booked up. You’re speaking to me in the freest moment I’m going to have all day.’
OK… well, here goes, Bella took a deep breath.
‘I’m going to suggest doing my share of the Danson’s work from home for the next few weeks. I haven’t spoken to Hector or Danson’s yet, I wanted to clear this with you first.’
No response. Bella thought she’d better just carry on. ‘Hector and I can communicate by email and phone and we’ll have regular meetings. I really don’t think it will pose any problems.’
‘What’s brought this on?’ Susan asked.
‘Well, I have a full-time nanny, but my son is still unsettled, really upset about me being away all day, Susan. He’s still breastfeeding and he needs me around.’
She tried not to sound too emotional as she said those words.
Utter silence from Susan. Bella waited a moment then began to wonder if she should say something else.
Finally, Susan spoke. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I have lots of other things you can do for me from home, Bella. But if that’s where you want to base yourself for the time being, Hector will do the Danson’s job on his own, closely supervised by Chris.’
Bella couldn’t believe it. She was stunned, too shocked to do anything but gasp for breath.
‘Does that sound OK?’ Susan said lightly.
‘No, it bloody well does not!’ Bella was surprised at the anger in her own voice. ‘Hector?!’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. This is a half-a-million-pound contract, which I won for you, remember? I have given up a big chunk of maternity leave to come back and work on it and all I’m asking for is a little bit of flexibility here. Hector is the most junior person in the office, he is my assistant on the job.’
Susan’s voice came back, calm and controlled. ‘Don’t have a girlie fit on me, Bella. Yes, half a million pounds is at stake here, I can’t take a risk. Hector told me on Friday you didn’t seem to be ready to come back yet. He said you were tearful, leaving early, unable to attend key meetings. And there’s some senior exec there you have a problem with, apparently.’
Bella was distraught. That little brat had completely stitched her up.
‘Go home and think this over for a day or two if you like,’ Susan continued before Bella could challenge Hector’s version of events, ‘but I’m sure you’ll see I’m right. I’ve got lots of work to keep you busy with, but I can’t let you risk our reputation by sending you out to clients before you’re back to full strength.’
Bella could not believe what she was hearing. She was being demoted to Hector’s position and he was waiting in the wings to snatch up her job. Her prized job, the one she had fought so hard to get.
‘I should have been promoted after my work with Merris, Susan,’ she said, surprised at how calm she suddenly felt. ‘Instead, you’re going to demote me because I’ve had a baby.’
‘I’m not demoting you,’ Susan cut in.
‘If you make Hector the number one on the Danson’s job, you’ll leave me with no option but to resign.’ She realised she was deadly serious.
‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Bella. You’re obviously tired and postnatal, don’t do anything you’re going to regret.’
Bella was speechless with anger.
Susan spoke again, angry too now, ‘Resign? Of course, you’re not going to resign. This is your dream job, the one you were born to do, you’re not going to sit at home pureeing carrots. You’ll go up the wall.’
There was a long pause, then Bella began to speak, only recognising the truth of her words as she said them. ‘You know what? I am going to resign. It’s not ridiculous. Leaving my tiny baby alone all day with a stranger is ridiculous, thank you for helping me to see that.’
There was a long silence on the line, then Susan stormed, ‘Bella—? Bella—? Don’t even think about putting the phone down now, Bella. If you hang up, your job here is finished. I mean it, I will not renegotiate with you— Bella?’
Bella held the phone away from her ear and clicked the end call button.
She stared at the little hung-up phone symbol on the screen in disbelief.
And right then, a message landed from Don:
Don’t let the buggers get u down. Love u D.
She dangled her car key in her hand and wondered what to do. She couldn’t face going back home just yet, she needed some time to calm down. She decided to head over to her favourite café beside their old flat.
During the fifteen-minute drive she replayed Susan’s words over and over: ‘…You’re obviously tired and postnatal…’, ‘…You’re not going to sit at home pureeing carrots…’ Bella was so furious, it was hard to drive straight.
But she had resigned. She felt her stomach lurch at the full implications. No more Danson’s, no more Prentice, no more Chris, Kitty, no more big salary. But on the other hand, no more leaving Markie behind… Well, for the moment. God, she needed to think this through.
In the café she drank a succession of lattes, which didn’t make things any clearer, but she felt determined and focused in a buzzy, caffeinated way.
OK, she’d resigned from Prentice, so… she would take a couple of months off to be at home with Markie full-time, then she would get another job. Hell, maybe she could still take up Merris on his offer; well, if he had a company left to run.
Suddenly, she really wanted to speak to Chris about all this, so dialled his mobile.
His reaction to the news was a hardly surprising. ‘What?!!’
‘Yeah, well, I had a bit of a run-in with Susan this morning,’ she explained. ‘And anyway, I’ve left.’
‘Bella! What the hell happened?’
‘All I wanted was to do the Danson’s work from home for a few weeks. I thought that would be perfectly feasible. But she said she’d give Danson’s to Hector and give me “other things” to do.’
‘Oh God… so you took the huff?’
‘Chris!’ Bella felt very defensive. ‘I was really insulted she didn’t believe I could do it. And she has basically offered up the contract I won to that— brat. Sorry, but there’s no other word. Hector phoned her up on Friday and told her I wasn’t up to the job.’
‘Jeeeeeezo,’ Chris let out a long sigh. ‘But are you happy about this? Do you really want to leave?’
‘I didn’t feel I had any choice, Chris. Oh, I don’t know,’ she admitted, ‘I’ll have to think about it. I just want to be with my son right now.’ That she definitely did know.
‘Look, maybe you need some time off, time to think it over,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you leave it for a few days then phone Susan back? I’m sure something can be worked out, Bella…’ Chris was almost pleading with her now. ‘You don’t really want to leave, do you?’
All at once Bella felt exhausted, far too tired to deal with this, so tired she just didn’t care any more.
‘I don’t know, Chris,’ she managed. ‘I’m not in the best frame of mind. I need to go home.’
‘I’ll phone you. Take care.’
‘OK, thanks, you’re a really nice guy,’ she added. ‘Thank you for being my colleague and my friend.’
‘Speak soon, Bella.’
She had to get home. She paid up and headed for the car then drove back, wondering how on earth she would explain all this to Don.
As she let herself into the house, she could hear Markie’s desperate cries coming all the way from upstairs but also the TV on in the sitting room. She walked in and saw Joanne lying on the sofa watching breakfast television.
Joanne turned round, open-mouthed.
‘What’s going on?’ Bella asked.
‘There’s nothing I can do with him to make him feel better, so I’ve had to leave him to cry himself to sleep,’ Joanne said by way of explanation, quickly getting to her feet.
Bella felt white with fury, but managed a controlled, ‘This is not what I would do and I need a nanny who will do things my way, or Markie will never be happy. So you’re not the nanny for me.’
Joanne’s face flushed, she picked up her bag and her jacket. She looked up at Bella, obviously wanting to say something before she left the house.
‘You should have bottle-fed him from the start. The situation you’re in now is unfair on him and unfair on me,’ she said in a raised voice.
‘Thank you, Joanne,’ Bella said sternly. ‘You can go now. I’ll settle up with you through the agency.’
Bella stood rooted to the spot in the sitting room until she heard the slam of the front door, then she ran upstairs to her son.
He was lying on his back in the cradle beside their bed. His face was red and creased with howling and his furious fists were waving about in the air.
How could Joanne have left him like this?Bella scooped him up and slumped onto the bed. Propping pillows behind her back, she hurried to feed him.
Afterwards, they both fell into a doze.
Bella was woken by the trilling of her mobile. Gently, she laid Markie in his crib and picked up her phone from the bedside table.
‘Bella? How are you doing?’ Don asked.
‘Oh, everything is absolutely tiptop,’ she began. ‘I’ve resigned from my job and fired the nanny, but otherwise everything is just perfect.’
Don could tell from her tone of voice that she wasn’t joking and his first reaction was to swear.
Bella held the phone tightly and wondered what was coming next.
‘OK,’ he said, sounding very tense now. ‘What happened?’
Bella gave him a sketchy outline of her quarrel with Susan, then Joanne’s dismissal.
‘Right,’ Don said. ‘I can leave this job at about 4p.m., so I’ll be home tonight. There are obviously some things we need to talk through.’
This was the right answer. ‘Thanks, that would be really good,’ she said.
He promised to be home by seven.
‘Drive safely,’ she pleaded, imagining him bowling the Jeep all the way down the fast lane of the M6 in his rush to get home.
Don was surprised to come back to such a peaceful house; he’d worked himself up into a state about Bella on the drive home. He’d expected to find her hysterical with a screaming baby in her arms. Instead, she was snuggled up on the sofa watching TV with Markie asleep at her breast. She’d had a bath and her damp hair was coiled up on her head.
They kissed hello. She smelled clean and flowery and milky, whereas he was unshaven, grubby and reeked of the greasy café he’d spent the afternoon in.
‘You look incredibly calm,’ said Don, sitting down on the sofa beside them. ‘I was expecting you both to be having tantrums.’
‘I am very calm,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I need to take some more time off to be with Markie, then I’ll have no problem finding another job.’
‘Well, OK,’ he answered. ‘You seem to have made up your mind. Don’t you want to keep a slot open with Prentice? I’m sure you could patch things up.’
‘Maybe, but not right now. I’ve got a point to make to Susan.’
‘Right— and that point is?’
‘That she can’t have everything her own way.’
‘It’s just—’ Don looked confused now and agitated. He ran his hand over his hair and then blurted out, ‘I don’t want to see you toss your career away for a few more weeks of playing the good mother.’
This riled Bella immediately. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Bella demanded.
‘You worked very hard to get that job and you loved it. I can’t believe you’re going to throw it away over a petty argument.’
‘Petty? She won’t let me work from home. She won’t let me be here with our baby.’
‘She said you could work from home, just on different stuff,’ he reminded her.
‘She was going to give Hector my job!’ Bella shouted, causing Markie to wake with a start.
‘Oh, well, that’s a perfectly logical reason to resign – wounded pride,’ Don snapped.
‘Just go away,’ Bella snapped back. ‘And take a shower, you smell horrible.’
Don stormed out of the room and Bella was left, hurt and angry. She’d taken a huge step, albeit without any forethought, and she needed Don’s support. He’d always supported everything she’d done before. He’d always made her feel confident and understood and fantastic. Now, she felt unsure and furious with him.
Just then her phone began to ring and she could see it was Tania but could feel only mildly enthusiastic.
‘Hi, Bella, how’s it going?’ her friend asked.
‘Well… I quit my job today.’
‘Really? Oh God, have you had a better offer? You better not be earning more money than me.’ This was the conclusion Tania leapt to.
‘Ha ha. No, I’ve decided to stay at home for a couple of months, look after Markie and get a new job after that,’ Bella explained.
‘Oh my God! Now I’m really shocked!’ Tania laughed. ‘What are you going to do all day? And what will you live on?’
‘The answer to your first question is a lot,’ Bella felt a little frosty now. ‘And I’ll live on my savings,’ she lied. ‘And my husband, if I still have one. It’s only for a few months. Why is everyone making such a big deal out of this?’
‘OK, of course, I totally trust you to have a brilliant and strategic plan,’ Tania soothed. ‘Now, I wanted to ask you over on Saturday, just you and me. We could have a girlie good time, shop, drink cappuccinos, maybe go for a massage or something. I’ve had such a stressful week, and I want to talk to you about Greg.’
‘Tania,’ Bella cut in, ‘I’ve got a tiny, breastfeeding baby. I can’t spend a day without him. Anyway, I don’t want to,’ she huffed.
There was no response to this from Tania, so Bella apologised. ‘I’m sorry that sounded much grumpier than I meant. Why don’t you come over on Saturday? I’ll make you lunch, then we can take Markie to the heath and have a long walk.’
There was a pause and Bella realised that for Tania, maybe that was not a very exciting option.
‘God, Bella, you’re in danger of turning into a suburban housewife,’ her friend joked.
Oh… that was too much.
‘At least I’m not some sad singleton,’ Bella snapped. ‘Why don’t you just phone me back when you’ve grown up?’ With that she hung up. Even though she regretted it immediately.
She lay back down on the sofa and looked over at her son asleep in his carrycot.
Good going, she told herself. At this rate, I’ll have no career, no husband and no friends. But a little part of her also thought, So what? My son loves me and I just want to be with him.
She stroked the little fuzzy head.