Chapter 11 The Following Saturday
The Following Saturday
Anna was renting an apartment at the other side of Meadowhall so they arranged to meet at the shopping mall on the following Saturday at eleven, giving Tam the perfect excuse to get out of having coffee with Natasha and her Pilates pals.
She would never tell Natasha but, as much as Tam liked the classes, she didn’t like that group of women very much.
One of them bragged more than Jame about money, one had a disturbing habit of raking her eyes over Tam with CT-scan intensity, and the other was loudly opinionated about everything from worldwide politics to what constituted a Spanish omelette.
Natasha chameleoned into the people she mixed with, Tam had noticed over the years.
When she was with the ‘Witches of Eastwick’, as Tam thought of them, her personality changed in line with theirs.
She participated in the annoying one-upmanship, and even her accent tweaked itself up.
At Sunday lunch, she became a younger version of Davina, and Tam had learned that there were a lot of subjects she should avoid talking about with her because, like her brother, there was no debate to be had in things she felt strongly about.
Tam had been thinking a lot about reuniting with Anna that week; how they’d been texting almost non-stop since their lunch.
It cast her friendship with Natasha in a new light.
She felt a little guilty, as Tam had never looked forward to meeting up with Natasha the way she was looking forward to spending time with Anna again.
But she shook it away; maybe it was just the novelty of Anna being back in her life.
Much like relationships, things always did ebb and flow, didn’t they?
In Maura’s Bridalwear, Tam tried on the dress that Natasha had insisted she buy. She emerged from the dressing room, watching Anna’s expectant smile segue into something akin to pain.
‘Do you want me to be honest?’ Anna asked hesitantly.
The old Anna had never been very good at not being honest, as Tam remembered.
‘It’s . . .’ Anna seemed to struggle to find the correct word. Her head moved from side to side as if she were tossing various options around, but the unsaid said more than enough.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ agreed Tam. ‘Now let me show you another one.’
‘Yes, please do, and spare my eyes,’ Anna called out as Tam returned to the dressing room.
A few minutes later, Tam came out wearing the lovely boho dress she’d called ahead about and asked the assistant to put aside.
‘Now, that is you to a tee,’ exclaimed Anna. She opened her mouth to say more but closed it again. It wasn’t like her to hold back.
‘I love this dress so much,’ prompted Tam.
Anna, still seeming to tread carefully in their newly reignited friendship, asked, ‘And so the problem is . . . ?’
The shop assistant nodded with approval. ‘It really does look much nicer than the other one. I thought that the last time you came, but your friend was so . . . convinced—’
‘What friend?’ asked Anna, whirling around in disbelief. ‘You can’t possibly have a proper friend who thinks the best look on your wedding day is that of a miniature Abominable Snowman.’
Tam snorted.
‘Surely,’ Anna went on, ‘the question is . . . what dress do you want to wear at your wedding?’
‘This one,’ breathed Tam, and she sighed heavily as she took in her reflection in the long mirror.
It really looked as lovely as she remembered.
It was her wedding and the dress part of it was the most important of all for her – as well as the groom, of course.
She could put up with the prawn and lobster and the buuurrrfff main course, but she wanted to wear a dress that made her feel like she was feeling now.
Even if it was too understated to fit with all the arranged grand components of the day.
Anna helped her pick out some shoes, ivory lace pumps. In those shoes, she could stand up all day and dance all night. No cathedral-length veil either, but a circlet of silk flowers – pink-and-yellow Battenberg colours, with not a hint of oliveeeeen.
They went for lunch in the busy shopping mall and when they were relaxing with a mocktail, Anna said, ‘I’ve been talking to Jack about you this week. He told me that you’d been put in charge until he came along. He doesn’t give praise lightly and he was very complimentary about you, Tam.’
‘Oh?’ Tam took a gulp of her drink and tried to look unbothered, but she wondered what else he had said about her.
‘He said you cared about people. He likes that. He’s always seen kindness as a strength, not a weakness like some that I’m sure we have both worked with over time. Anyway, if Jack said you were exceptional then he meant it.’
‘How long have you been together, Anna?’
‘Eh?’ Anna’s eyebrows rose so far up, they almost lodged in the light fittings.
Then she laughed. ‘You’ve totally got the wrong end of the stick there, love.
We hit it off when we worked together, but only as friends.
We had quite a bit in common, going through divorces at the same time.
Me and Leo – it was good, then it wasn’t any more.
But Rosella chewed Jack up like a combine harvester. ’
Tam leaned forward, eager for details.
‘Even clever, intelligent people like Jack can find themselves in the thick of an unhealthy relationship, wondering how they got there. Sometimes you don’t see the goalposts shifting until it’s almost too late.’
Tam knew that – the same had happened to YorkMart.
‘Is that what happened to you too?’ she asked Anna.
‘Not me. Leo and I just grew apart. We split, it was hard but right. My divorce was a walk in the park compared with Jack’s.
He was successful, his wife was certainly that, but she didn’t want him to be more successful than she was and competition like that in a marriage .
. . well, it’s a blood-red flag, isn’t it?
As you’ll know, I’m sure, a good couple will encourage each other to shine and grow.
They don’t want to change each other, they don’t want to fix what isn’t broken.
They cheer you on, focus on the good that you are.
And you’re allowed to disagree on things without them trampling you into the ground.
I’ve learned this over the years, Tam, and I wouldn’t settle for anything less. ’
Tam nodded. ‘Of course, me too,’ she said.
Harris had been happy for all her various successes, it was just that he didn’t want to see her advancing beyond her capabilities or, as he put it, ‘getting above herself’ and then falling from grace like Idle Dick or Martin Middlewood had.
He absolutely had her back. And from what Anna was telling her, Jack did too.
She’d been working closely with him that week and seeing him as if with a different pair of eyes.
He might have been a ‘hatchet man’ but his weapon didn’t fall in the wrong places.
He’d shared his detailed plans for the company with her based on what he’d learned about it from all the info he’d harvested and from her more personal – if rash – insight.
He was intent on shifting people around to where they would perform best and wanted her to rebalance the work–life expectations, because at present some pockets of YorkMart demanded blood in exchange for a pay packet.
He had told her in the lift that he was on the same page as her and it hadn’t been BS.
He knew that people drove the business and he wanted to get the best out of them, through being transparent, consistent, and respecting every individual in the company, from the cleaners to the heads of departments, for their contribution.
‘The years since I saw you have made me a much stronger person,’ continued Anna. ‘I’m kind of grateful for any crap, if you know what I mean.’
‘You were always strong,’ said Tam honestly. ‘Much stronger than I ever was.’
Anna laughed at that. ‘I don’t think so.
I was vulnerable, just hiding behind a brash front, but you .
. . you were driven and had a style all of your own.
And I know that you were at odds with where you came from, but you were content in your own skin and I envied that.
You knew what you wanted to do with your life.
I might have convinced you that I did too, but I didn’t back then. Not really.’
That threw Tam. She’d been truly taken in by Anna then, fooled by her facade of self-worth. And that was weird, seeing herself through her friend’s eyes. Enlightening, actually.
Anna was rolling something around in her mind, Tam could tell from her expression, and so she had to ask the question.
‘What is it?’
‘I know it’s been ten years but it threw me when I first saw you in the restaurant.
You looked like you but also . . . not, if that makes any sense.
I always knew you’d end up in a high-powered position, but I imagined you in orange suits, bright green, smelling of that lovely flowery perfume.
You were always so unique and quirky – exceptional, as Jack said.
Please don’t tell me one of those frogs stamped all that out of you. ’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Tam smiled, but it was the one that made her look as if she had wind again.
Back home, Tam took off her jacket to hang it up in the wardrobe and the blandness of her clothes in there hit her as if she were seeing them for the first time.
She remembered then telling Anna years ago she would never own a single item of black clothing.
She’d arrived for her first day at YorkMart in a kick-ass red suit, coordinating Mary Jane shoes and her beloved Ruby Woo on her lips.
She rocked up in reception so bright she could have been seen from the International Space Station.
Her boss’s first words to her were ‘You look as if you mean business, Mrs,’ and she’d beamed, because she did.
Now, all that was staring back at Tam from her wardrobe was a dull, drab wall, as unexceptional as it was possible to be, give or take the Louboutins.
She remembered the shirt she had that made her look like a Piet Mondrian artwork and the lime blouse with the long collar.
She’d stood out from the crowd back then.
Stood out enough for a banker to be attracted to her four years ago, drawn to her colourful energy.
At least, that’s what she’d always presumed.
So why had their coming together marked the start of the colours in her wardrobe fading to this plain, plain, plain?