by Carmen Reid
‘I’ve asked the techies to come and take a look at my computer, by the way, it’s on a permanent go-slow these days, so just get them to give me a call if they need to access any password areas.’
‘When are you going to file your copy? Tonight?’ Jeff asked, hand hovering over a ringing phone, wanting to catch her answer before he picked up.
‘I’ll try. Otherwise, I’ll be in early tomorrow morning.’
‘Simon coming to the birthday party?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ Slight grimace at the thought of the evening ahead of her.
‘Have fun.’ Jeff answered the phone now, telling the voice at the other end: ‘Newsdesk one second,’ then turning back to Jo with the words: ‘Stay off the sauce. It just makes things worse. And anyway, I want you in fresh as a daisy tomorrow. You’ve got a lot on.’
She smiled sweetly at his concern, then went to gather her belongings together and have one final supervisory chat with her team.
When Jo got into her car it was with the customary glance of annoyance and resignation at the state of chaos. Child debris, newspaper debris, every single one of the side door pockets stuffed with six different types of rubbish. Even the ashtray was full: she hadn’t emptied it since a particularly stressful day on the road several weeks ago.
The car needed all sorts of basic maintenance: the window washing stuff had to be topped up, the oil light was flashing intermittently at her, which couldn’t be good, she never checked the tyres, the thing was running on fumes alone because she still hadn’t been to the petrol station and yet again had no time to go this evening because already it was 5.15 p.m.
Simon used to deal with the car stuff, and Jo hadn’t got into the habit of doing it herself yet. Oh bollocks to that, she could just find a helpful car valeting service, couldn’t she?
She threw her stuff into the passenger seat and got in behind the wheel, then took a deep breath and mentally tried to leave the office behind and psych herself up for Simon.
Her eye fixed on the car’s badge in the centre of the steering wheel. Funny to think it was right here in this driving seat, five months ago now, that she had made the decision to tell him their marriage was over.
They’d been coming home from Christmas at his parents’ house and she’d insisted on driving because she’d needed the distraction. If she hadn’t driven, she was certain she’d have spent the entire journey screaming at him to relieve the intolerable tension that had built up in his family home over their four-day visit.
Yes, it had probably been a mistake to raise her alternative health views at the Christmas dinner table in the presence of two GPs, a consultant and a psychiatrist.
But on the other hand, the conversation had needed a bit of a jog along, she’d thought – or maybe that was the ninth glass of champagne talking. Added to the powder keg of the day was the fact that her children hadn’t liked anything their grandparents had given them, sending grandmother Margie into a childish huff. Because of this, Jo had ignored all blatant hints from Margie to come and help in the kitchen with the preparation of the Christmas dinner. Instead, she’d hung out with the men in the front room, getting lashed.
As it was entirely Margie’s fault that her husband and two sons were such unhelpful chauvinists, Jo had reasoned, she was damned if she was going to suffer the consequences.
So, she’d almost quite enjoyed the first part of the day: tipsy on the fizz, she’d briefly managed to forget the insult of her Christmas gifts from Simon.
She’d given him a black cashmere coat. His favourite label, his size, a thoughtful replacement for the one he’d worn for years. Just to be generous, she’d bought a luxurious velvet scarf to go with it.
And what had she unwrapped from him? – oh and in department store wrapping paper, by the way, he’d not done any of that himself: a stainless steel vegetable steamer. The glamour.
‘You kept saying you wanted something for the kitchen.’ He’d shrugged, when she’d found it hard to feign delight.
Indeed. And that’s why she had been heavily hinting: state-of-the-art cappuccino machine, retro-chic coffee grinder, a Kitchen Aid mixer in a witty pastel colour.
Two metal pots, one with holes pierced in the bottom, were not the same. And the second parcel was worse: a black and pink baby-doll about three sizes too big and well, frankly, just a disastrous cut for someone with hips and no tits.
Words had failed her. She had gawped. Not least because they hadn’t had sex for almost three months now and if he thought this was going to solve the problem. . .
‘D’you like it?’ he’d asked. Always slow with the signals, Simon.
‘No,’ she’d said, adding, ‘I bloody hate it,’ for good measure and then, ‘Right now I bloody hate you too.’
‘Merry bloody Christmas then,’ he’d said, slumping back onto the sagging, insomnia-inducing, pocket-sized double bed in the second spare room. They’d retreated there to unwrap their gifts to each other in peace after the mayhem of the early morning Santa-fest.
But by the time the Christmas meal was on the table, Jo had been in a booze-induced good mood again, until the alternative health debate had cracked out over the plum pudding.
Then, closely following that row, came the killer Margie remarks.
Maybe Margie had been at the sherry, maybe she wanted to get back at Jo for not helping, or for bringing up such ungrateful children. For whatever reason, committed doctor’s wife, housewife and mother Margie had launched into a Mary Whitehouse style rant about the children of today: all they ever watched was telly, all they cared about was pop music, all they ate was junk, their dreadful parents neglected them and left them stuck in nurseries all day long.
This clearly wasn’t aimed at Simon’s new sister-in-law, who was heavily pregnant and had just finished telling the table that she planned to take two years’ leave ‘because it’s so crucial for their development, the first two years’. No, the tirade was obviously aimed at Jo.
At the start, she let it ride, sank her glass of wine, nudged Simon’s dad for a refill and exchanged looks with him, seeing some sympathy in his glance. But as the words flowed on, she locked eyes with her husband, urging him to tell his mother to stop, interrupt the flow . . . at least put up some sort of defence against this.
Simon had held the look, but had then calmly picked up his own wine glass and drained it, in defiance of her. How had this man, so outwardly handsome, so superficially charming, who had once meant so much to her, become so hardened and cold? In that moment it had occurred to Jo that maybe whatever they’d had before wasn’t coming back. Maybe it wasn’t a phase. Maybe it was over.
‘Margie—’ she’d decided to interrupt the diatribe, feeling angry heat rise in her cheeks. ‘Could you be quiet now, because you’re really upsetting me?’ She could have stopped there, then she would have remained in the right at the dinner table, could maybe still have elicited a little sympathy from her husband and others, but no, no, she had to continue, go in for the kill and add totally gratuitously: ‘Anyway, what you’re saying is complete rubbish. Maybe if you just put down the Daily Mail and took a look around you once in a while you’d work that out, you silly woman.’
‘Jo, that’s enough,’ Simon had snapped and her disappointment with him had crystallized.
He’d waited until night-time, back in the saggy spare bed, to argue with her in fierce whispers. She’d argued just as fiercely back.
‘How dare you tell me off?’ she’d whispered in fury. ‘Why didn’t you say one word to defend me? Your mother can be a complete cow. I don’t think she’s ever liked me, she’s always disapproved of me, and you know what? I’m beginning to think you’re on her fucking side.’
‘Have some respect Jo. She’s my mother.’
‘Have some respect yourself. I’m your wife. I’m the mother of our children. How dare you let her belittle us like that.’
‘She’s having a hard time at the moment. Her sister isn’t well, she’s worn out, she can
’t look after this big house by herself . . .’ Simon had begun in her defence.
‘What about me?’ Jo had broken in. ‘Why do I never deserve any of your sympathy? I’m working all bloody hours, I’m doing the majority of the housework, the cooking, the girls come to me first for everything, not you, I need your sympathy too. I need your support or . . . I just don’t think I’m going to be able to carry on like this. I’m exhausted and I’m spending my precious, frigging holiday time driving up and down the country, sleeping badly in a crap bed, being insulted.’
‘Your life is your choice,’ were the only words that Simon gave in reply.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ he’d hissed. ‘Maybe you’re trying to fit a single person’s job into a married mother’s life. Maybe it just won’t work.’
‘And what about you? You work even more hours than I do,’ she’d snapped.
‘So, maybe you should rethink what you’re doing.’
‘Maybe you bloody should.’
‘Jo . . .’ and out it had come, the justification that he so steadfastly believed gave him the upper hand: ‘I’m a doctor.’
‘Simon,’ she’d spat back. ‘You’re a wanker.’
That had been the end of the conversation and they’d both lain fuming in silence, back to back, wide awake in the uncomfortably small bed. Another day ended with another unresolved row. Jo had found herself unable to block thoughts of how once, so long ago now, they’d made love so enthusiastically they’d managed to snap the leg off this very bed.
It was only on the long drive back to London that it had occurred with clarity to Jo that her life was too busy, was too stressed, was too unhappy and that it didn’t have to be like this.
She could decide what she really wanted to keep and to focus on, and she could get rid of the rest. It wasn’t her job she needed to ditch – the job that gave her purpose, fulfilment, a very important reason to get up every morning – it was her husband: the man who brought her down, upset her, depressed her, didn’t support her . . . quite obviously didn’t love her any more. Or didn’t love her as much, or enough.
A winking light from the dashboard interrupted Jo’s thoughts now. She’d just turned the key in the ignition and the petrol warning gauge had come on. She’d risked driving around like this for two days, she would have to stop and refuel and be definitely undeniably late for Mel’s birthday party.
She put the car into gear and pulled out of the parking space unable to stem the flow of thoughts about her ex-husband although it was beginning to feel as if she and Simon had fallen in love and married in a different lifetime. It was almost hard to imagine they’d once worked side by side, known true team spirit and been united by a cause. Well, that’s how it had felt, anyway.
Simon and Jo had met at work, when as a junior doctor he joined Bolton Royal Infirmary, the hospital where she was working as a theatre nurse.
Oh yes.
Secret nursing past of newspaper reporter Randall. Jo couldn’t stop herself from lighting up a cigarette at the sight of the traffic in the run-up to the tunnel.
She’d spent several years studying intensively, followed by another five years in the hospital, working the grinding treadmill of the NHS, watching Simon go from promotion to promotion while she carried on doing the same stuff day in day out for the same unbelievably bad pay. His salary went up as his hours went down, yet nothing changed for her. She was still working shifts, days, nights and weekends, for an hourly rate little better than when she’d joined.
The injustice of it began to jar. She and her colleagues were well trained, highly experienced, available round the clock for operations, patient care, drug monitoring, baby delivering. But where was there to go? Meanwhile Simon was at endless training courses, conferences, lecture rounds, getting better and better at his job while she felt as if she was stagnating.
When she had Mel at the age of 28, she’d felt better about herself. Finally she could see more clearly how the future was going to look. It wasn’t simply about her still being in nursing overalls at the age of 52 waiting for her retirement day to arrive.
But it was the brush with the press that happened when she went back to work from maternity leave that caused the monumental decision. She’d known perfectly well that the hospital was badly run, but when it was obvious that large chunks of funding were disappearing into a services company run by none other than the hospital Chief Executive’s wife. . . well, then it was time for an investigation.
A friend of hers worked in admin, so Jo had ‘borrowed’ a key and actually sneaked into the offices one evening for a rifle through the filing cabinets. Whenever she thought about this, she still couldn’t believe she’d done it. If anyone had found her, she’d have been sacked on the spot with attempted theft put on her record. But she had burned with the injustice of it. Probably something to do with her new, post-natal state of mind.
Now that she had a baby at home, life had finally come into focus. Nothing was vague or ‘so what’ any more. Everything mattered. If she was to be away from her baby for hours on end, she wanted those hours to matter; she wanted to be doing something that mattered, something that inspired her.
And shovelling doctor shit around a run-down hospital while the Chief Executive took the piss with public money had begun to really, really annoy her.
She’d used the office photocopier to make duplicates of the relevant documents, carefully replacing everything in the files. Here was contract after contract for jobs that had never been done: waste recycling, incinerating, window cleaning, ward repairs. None of it had been carried out. One quick tour of the hospital and anyone would know this was a money-making scam.
Just one quick tour. That’s when it had occurred to her how to get this situation resolved. She hadn’t had much of an idea what to do before – a tribunal? An internal complaints committee? – but now she knew. She would phone the Evening Echo, meet one of their reporters, give them the documents, then show them the tour.
That’s how Jo had met Gayle Adams, the woman who was to change her life. Well, that’s how it might have looked, but probably her life changed the moment she pushed Mel out into the world and noticed, through the haze of exhaustion and ecstasy, that Simon had been giving career advice to the junior house doctor at her pushing end far more earnestly and enthusiastically than he’d been helping her through this.
It was one of those moments in a marriage that you observe quite dispassionately and then file away under T for troubling. To be brought out and re-examined when another one crops up. She never said anything to Simon about it. What was there to say? ‘You were more interested in a house doctor than in your own wife in labour’? He would just have denied it, would have laughed off the suggestion and soothed her in the slightly smug ‘I’m a doctor’ way that would have made her feel she was being silly.
Gayle Adams arrived in a pocket-sized convertible red sports car, wore a headscarf to keep her unruly copper hair out of her face while she drove, and was surely the closest thing to Susan Sarandon that Lancashire was ever going to produce.
She was fiftyish with a smoker’s husky voice, a firm handshake, ready smile and enormous handbag.
‘So where do we start, my love?’ she’d asked. Jo had felt the grip of dread, holding her ever since she’d made the call to the Echo, loosen.
Gayle was all right. She was going to be OK, she would do this the right way, Jo felt instinctively.
‘I’ll tour you round. I’ve just come off shift. If anyone stops us at any point, asks what we’re up to, you are lost and I’m showing you to . . . depends where we are, wherever makes sense.’
‘What about the people who know you’re off shift?’
‘Oh I’ve told them I’m showing an investigative reporter round the hospital,’ Jo had replied. ‘Don’t worry. Joke! They think you’re a friend applying for a job here.’
‘At my age!’ Gayle had fired back. ‘Well don�
�t worry, I’ll be quick, I won’t ask any awkward questions until we’re back outside again.’
‘Does anyone here know you?’ Jo had asked.
‘We’ll have to wait and see. I’ve met some of the management staff but I could still be lost while visiting someone. Let’s not worry about it too much. If it happens, it happens.’
‘It’s after six, chances of office staff being around are quite slim.’
Backhanders scandal at the Royal.
Chief Exec Pays Wife’s Firm to do Nothing!
Exclusive.
That was how they ran it exactly four days later. Gayle had needed extra time to check the story out fully, to have a photographer wait outside the chief’s home to surprise him and his wife with an early morning photo call.
She’d also had to put the accusations to the couple to see what they had to say.
‘Outrageous suggestions . . . I’ll be conducting a thorough investigation . . . no truth in these allegations whatsoever . . .’ had been the chief’s line. ‘Some operational difficulties . . . technical problems . . . may be behind schedule in some areas,’ the wife had said. It was fudged enough for there to be no criminal investigation, no criminal charges. There was some sort of botched NHS-style internal inquiry, as a result of which ‘procedures were tightened’.
The wife’s company didn’t get any more work, did at least carry out the work it had been paid for and the Chief Executive was promoted to a non-executive post. Promoted! He was earning more money for doing less. Jo had almost been sick at the news. She couldn’t carry on, doing the same old thing for even smaller wages, because she was part-time now.