by Beth Abbott
“Good for Lacey.” Suzy bit out.
“Suzy, c’mon!” Matt pleaded. “You’re making this much harder than it needs to be. We just need to find a simple solution to all this.”
“There’s an obvious solution.” Suzy stood up and took her cup to the sink, rinsing it and placing it on the drainer. “When we go down to London on the weekend, you get the guys together and explain to them that you need more support up here. They need to deploy a second director up here to take some of the weight off your shoulders, even if it’s only for six months, until the new contract beds in. You can’t keep doing this alone, Matt. It’s destroying us.”
Matt knew she was at least partly right. He did need help, although just handing some of the work to someone else wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
“I’ll try and arrange a meeting with the guys next week to discuss it.” He nodded. “I can’t do it this weekend because I’m slammed with meetings.”
Suzy stood up so abruptly that her stool flew backwards, hitting the cabinet behind her.
“What do you mean you’re slammed with meetings this weekend?” She hissed. “We’re staying with JT and Alice this weekend because there’s a big family party for all the babies born at the same time last year. Sam and Aisha are flying in especially with Cody, so we can celebrate with Abbey, Jordan and baby Jackson. Hell, half of the family are flying in.”
What the fuck?
Matt pulled out his phone. He scrolled through his calendar, and all he could see was business meeting after business meeting.
“Matt, I put the date in your calendar myself, months ago.” Suzy’s voice was finally getting louder.
“There’s nothing there, Suze!” He turned the phone around to show her. “There must be some sort of glitch, because there’s nothing in the calendar for this weekend.”
“Well, you can just cancel your business appointments.” Suzy insisted. “You are not blowing this off, Matt.”
Matt stared at his phone in anguish. This was what they called being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“I can’t cancel, Suzy.” He said quietly, noticing that Rory had fallen asleep in his high chair. “The owners are flying in from Singapore for the meeting. It’s too late to cancel.”
Suzy stared at him, a look of shock on her face.
“You’re picking work over family? Again?” She whispered.
“I have no choice.” He held his hands out defensively. Surely, she’d see it couldn’t be helped.
“We all have choices, Matt.” Suzy said quietly. “We just have to make the right ones.”
He watched as she turned and picked up her purse and keys.
“Where are you going?” He stood up.
“The kids need to be picked up at half past three.” Suzy ignored his question. “Don’t forget to go and get them.”
“What do you mean? Where are you going?” Matt frowned. “I have to get to the office by lunchtime. Will you be back in time?”
“I’m going out.” Suzy nodded, as if the decision was only just forming in her head. “Don’t expect me back until I get here. I’ll be very busy doing important things.”
“Like what?” Matt watched his wife put her coat on. “What the hell have you got to do that’s so important?”
“Christmas shopping.” Suzy announced, as though that were suddenly of the utmost importance. “You can’t be a domestic Goddess at Christmas without doing the shopping first.”
“But…” Matt stopped speaking as Suzy was already out of the door and halfway down the hall.
The front door slammed shut and he watched through the window as she ran to her car.
He cringed as the tyres span on the gravel drive as she sped out of the gate and down the lane.
Well, he’d made a great job of that!
Matt glanced at his son, fast asleep in his high chair. How the hell was he going to work from home with a one-year-old sitting on his lap?
He switched his phone back on and pulled up his contact list, scrolling until he found Lacey’s number.
“Hi Matt.” Her cheery voice answered before the second ring. “Are you on your way in yet?”
“No, sorry Lacey.” Matt stepped into the hallway so as not to disturb Rory. “I completely forgot I promised to watch Rory today, so Suzy could go and do some Christmas shopping. Can you cancel my appointments and pass on my apologies? Tell JT I’ll try and dial into the conference call this afternoon from home. Oh, and can you arrange to have my car picked up from the stadium and dropped off at the house? I think there’s a spare set of keys in my desk drawer.”
“That’s not a problem, Matt.” Lacey assured him. “But if you like, I have a friend that works for a childminding service. I’m sure if I gave her a call, she would be able to come over and watch Rory for you, so you can come into the office. It would save you wasting the day at home with him.”
For the first time ever, Matt felt a flash of annoyance with his PA.
“Thank you, Lacey. But I don’t think of spending a day with my son as a wasted day.” He replied, probably a little more sharply than necessary. “And I wouldn’t invite a stranger into my house to look after any of my children without thoroughly vetting them first. You’ll understand that when you have children of your own.”
There was a short silence before Lacey’s voice came back on the line, still sounding falsely cheerful.
“Of course, Matt. What was I thinking?” She sighed. “I’m sure you and Rory will have a lovely day together.”
“I’m sure.” Matt rolled his eyes. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
As he strolled back into the kitchen, he couldn’t help but wonder whether his irritation with Lacey had been triggered by Suzy, or whether she’d genuinely pissed him off.
Either way, it made no difference.
He was gonna have a playdate with his son, whether the little nipper wanted one or not.
Chapter 7 – Megan
As Megan reached the driver’s door of her little Fiat Uno, the first notes of the Welsh National Anthem started coming from her coat pocket, and she struggled to open the door, throw her bags in, and collapse her umbrella before the ringtone stopped.
She slid into the driver’s seat as she pulled her phone out of her pocket, swiping to accept the call as quickly as she could.
“Don’t hang up, Rob, I’m just getting into the car and out of the rain.” She yelled at the device, throwing it on the dash while she fought to close the door and block out the driving rain.
As she pushed the strands of wet hair away from her face, Megan picked the phone up and hit the speaker button.
“Rob? Can you hear me?” She gazed at the picture of her baby brother on the screensaver and smiled.
“Yeah, stop flapping.” Robbie chuckled. “I wasn’t going to go to the trouble of calling you and then hang up after ten seconds, was I? What would be the point in doing that?”
“I don’t know…” Megan chuckled. “You kids are all about instant gratification, these days. If you can’t have it now, you’ve already moved on to the next thing.”
“Well, seeing as I was calling my sister, then the only next thing I could’ve moved onto was calling my other sister, and I’ve had more of Cerys than I can stand for one day, thank you.” He snorted. “You’re by far preferable to that silly cow.”
Megan clucked in indignation.
“Thanks… I think.” She smiled. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure of this late-night call?”
“Late-night?” Robbie laughed. “It’s not even half-past eight, Meg. Hardly late, even by your standards. Anyway, you’re still out. Don’t tell me you’ve found a social life at last.”
“Hardly.” Megan wiped away the drop of rain that was running down the side of her face. “I finished work at eight, and just stopped off to pick up a frozen dinner to go in the microwave. The heating element blew on the oven last night, so I can’t cook anything properly until the landlord gets it fixed, which
could take days.”
There was a noise on the other end of the phone which she recognised as Robbie growling.
“I swear to God, you are the most stubborn woman I ever met!” Robbie’s frustration was obvious. “Why don’t you just let me buy you your own house? Then you could have all new appliances, and you wouldn’t have to worry about shit like this happening all the time.”
“Robbie, if I let you buy me a house then it still wouldn’t be my house, it would be yours.” She pointed out, reasonably. “And I’ve told you a thousand times that you should be putting your money away for your retirement, not frittering it away on other people. Careers in football can be very short-lived. You need to be planning for the rest of your life.”
“I’m already doing that, sis.” Robbie insisted. “But I am allowed to spend some of my money, at least, and I’d like to spend some of it on you, if you’d let me.”
“Well, if my scummy landlord hasn’t got my oven fixed by January, I’ll let you pay for the repair as a belated Christmas present.” She smiled. “How does that sound.”
“It sounds shitty, if you ask me, but I’ll take it, seeing as it’s the first thing you’ve ever actually told me you want me to buy you.” Robbie sighed. “It never ceases to amaze me that I can have two sisters, and they can be as different as it’s humanly possible to be.”
“Cerys’ blonde hair is straight out of a bottle.” Megan snorted. “Without her expensive hair salon, she’d have the same dark wavy brown hair as both of us.”
“I was talking about personality, sis, not looks.” Robbie insisted. “Cerys is a lazy money grabbing viper, happy to sleep with anyone to get what she wants, whereas you work your ass off at the hospital every day, won’t take anything from me, and haven’t had a man in your bed in more than a decade.”
Megan spluttered a laugh.
“And you would know that, how?” She squeaked.
“Meg, you got divorced ten years ago.” Robbie reminded her. “You were separated for a year before that. I haven’t known you to so much as date another guy since then. Or am I wrong? Have you secretly developed a fetish for sex clubs, and been experimenting with double-penetration in your free-time?”
“Robbie Jones!” Megan gasped, trying hard not to laugh. “If Joan and your dad could hear you, they’d wash your mouth out with soap.”
She heard Robbie chuckle and then there was silence for a few moments before he spoke again.
“D’you still miss him?” He asked quietly.
Instantly, Megan was thrown back more than a decade, watching her younger self standing at the door to their terraced house in Cardiff, anxiously waiting for her husband to come home from an eight-month tour of Afghanistan. When she spotted the taxi pull up, she’d expected him to climb out and rush her inside, ready for their typically passionate reunion.
He hadn’t even crossed the doorstep.
“I’m not coming in.” He’d said quietly. “I’ve met someone else. I’m leaving you, Meg.”
And that had been it. Her two-year marriage ended in twelve short words.
Ok, he’d had the decency to do it face-to-face, but still…!
“Meg?” Robbie’s voice sounded concerned. “Sorry, sis. I didn’t mean to upset you. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“It’s Ok, Rob. You didn’t upset me, I was just thinking.” She sighed. “It was a long time ago, so to answer your question, no, I don’t still miss him. I guess I just miss the idea of him. Of us. We had such grand plans when we got married, and then it was just over in the blink of an eye. No warning, no nothing. It felt like a bereavement, like he never came back from his deployment.”
“Did he ever marry the other woman?” Robbie had obviously never heard the full story before.
“One of my old neighbours told me there’d never been another woman.” Megan sighed. “She was talking to his aunty in the bingo one night, and she reckoned he’d never brought another woman home. So, unless it was someone he met on base, maybe in Afghanistan, and it fizzled out quickly, there never was anyone else. He obviously just wanted to get rid of me.”
“Well, it’s his loss.” Robbie said forcefully. “If he was too stupid to know a good thing when he saw it, then fuck him. He doesn’t deserve you.”
“There speaks a devoted brother with a potty-mouth.” She smiled.
“Potty-mouth?” He scoffed. “Where do you come up with these sayings?”
“That was one of Henrietta’s favourites.” Megan chuckled. “Do you remember when I was doing my training, one of my housemates was American? The Evangelist who swore we were all going to hell? If you so much as said ‘bum’ she’d call you a potty-mouth. We got rid of her after the first year, thank goodness, when she decided we were all too sinful and moved out, but the phrase stuck with everyone else.”
“Well, it makes you sound like a ninety-year-old.” Robbie teased.
“Thanks.” Megan sighed. “So, was there actually a reason for your call, or did you just phone to remind me of my failed marriage and non-existent social life?”
“Oh yeah, there was a reason.” Robbie laughed. “I was just checking that you would be on shift tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I start at ten tomorrow morning, and finish at eight o’clock.” Megan confirmed. “Why?”
“I’ll be stopping by tomorrow lunchtime with some gifts for the kids.” Robbie sounded so pleased with himself. “Some of the other players have agreed to help me give the presents out, and the club have donated a bunch of shirts and footballs which we’ve all signed. I just thought it would be cool if you could be there.”
“Of course, I’ll be there, if I can.” Megan promised. “Just please don’t let on we’re related. It doesn’t lend itself to a quiet life when everyone knows your brother is a mega-famous footballer. As proud as I am of everything you’ve achieved, I don’t want to be known as Robbie Jones’ other big sister, and have people asking me to get your autograph all the time.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let on I know you.” He laughed. “I wouldn’t want to have all the hospital porters hitting on you because they think you can get tickets to cup matches.”
“Thank you.” Megan smiled. “So, can I go home and get myself some food now? I’ve been on my feet since the crack of dawn, and thanks to having to park miles away from the hospital, I’m soaked to the skin. I need a hot bath, a foot spa and a hot meal, in any order.”
“Ok, nurse, I’ll let you get off.” She could hear Robbie yawning in the background. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Ok, Rob.” She smiled. “And Rob?”
“Still here…”
“I’m really proud of you for your generosity.” She said quietly. “You’re something special, kiddo.”
“Says the woman who spends her life caring for sick kids and making their lives bearable.” He scoffed. “Go home, sis, and get some sleep. If those bags under your eyes get any bigger, you’ll never find yourself a man.”
The click as the call ended made her jump.
Cheeky little sod!
Megan glanced up into the mirror and sighed.
She might not have bags under her eyes, but even in this light she could see the dark smudges reflecting how tired she was.
“C’mon. Shift yourself.” Megan gave herself a mental shake. “You’ve got a hot date with a frozen lasagne.”
Chapter 8 – Suzy
Suzy pulled into the drive of their family home and wondered what sort of reception she was going to get.
She’d driven off in such a rush, she hadn’t given much thought as to what she would actually spend the day doing.
In the end, since she’d told Matt she was going to do some Christmas shopping, she’d headed for one of the retail parks and wandered around, picking up some extra presents for the kids and the family.
She didn’t really need to get much more, because she was always meticulously organised for Christmas, weeks in advance, but she had to at least look like she’d nee
ded to take the full day out.
Three hours into her self-enforced exile from the house, she’d wandered into the local cinema and spent the next four hours watching a couple of the latest films, back-to-back.
She’d absolutely no idea what she’d watched, but then, the idea of going into the cinema had been to kill time, nothing more, and she’d certainly done that.
Before she had a chance to get her thoughts together, Matt was out of the front door and walking towards the car.
Shit! Just what she needed. Another argument!
She pushed the door open, just as he reached her, and before she could swing her legs out, he was right beside her, crouched down so they were on the same level.
Suzy stared at his face, trying to figure out what mood he was in.
“See anything good at the pictures?” His lips twitched.
Suzy’s jaw dropped. How in hell did he know she’d gone to the cinema? Did he have someone follow her?
“You paid with your bank card, Suzy.” Matt finally smiled. “Not exactly difficult to spot on our statement when it’s right there in pending transactions.”
She reached in her coat pocket and pulled out the stubs.
“I watched Aquaman, and Bohemian Rhapsody.” She read off the stubs.
“Any good?” Matt asked, like they were chatting about the weather.
“Yeah, I guess.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t really paying that much attention.”
“Killing time?” Matt guessed.
“You could say.” Suzy nodded, suddenly feeling guilty for messing up his day.
“Probably for the best.” Matt smiled. “We needed a bit of space, I reckon.”
“I didn’t mean to stay out this late.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t do it deliberately to worry you or anything. I just came out of the cinema as everyone was doing their late-night shopping. Then there was a flash storm with torrential rain. It only lasted minutes, but all the cars had to pull over because you couldn’t see a thing. Traffic was horrendous after that, all the way out of town.”