Wonder Women

by Fiore, Rosie

  It was for that exact reason that Jo had come here today. In a fit of masochism, she wanted to ask her mother’s opinion on the proposed plan for Lee to give up his job and Jo to take up Richard’s offer to expand her company. She knew that her mother would predict the worst possible outcome, and wouldn’t hold back from articulating the worst of the things that Jo herself might fear. So far, Laura Morris had not disappointed. It wasn’t enough for her to imply that Jo was a spoiled brat who was hell-bent on emasculating her husband. Clearly she wanted to break her children’s hearts as well.

  ‘What about Zachary and Imogene?’ she asked plaintively. (Zach’s name on his birth certificate was just Zach, not Zachary, but she refused to call him anything else.) ‘Imagine how they’ll feel when all the other children have their mum come and collect them from school and they’re left with their dad? Everyone will think Lee is some kind of unemployed layabout.’

  ‘Will they? And if they do, do we care?’ Jo couldn’t resist saying.

  Her mother gave her one of her Looks. It was a brilliant maternal Look, which incorporated disappointment, pity and disapproval in a single glance. The Look used to devastate Jo, but she was kind of over it now.

  ‘Really, Joanna,’ Laura said. ‘You don’t seem to be taking this seriously at all.’

  Jo’s father chose that moment to wander into the kitchen. ‘What isn’t Joanna taking seriously?’ he said. ‘Is it laundry related? Or anything to do with potty-training? If it’s either of those, I’m going back into the living room to watch the golf.’

  Jo opened her mouth to answer, but she should have known better than to try. Her mother was much quicker off the mark than she could ever be. ‘Joanna has come up with a hare-brained scheme where she goes off and becomes a high-powered career woman’ – Laura said ‘high-powered career woman’ in much the same way she might say ‘streetwalker’ – ‘and she’s making Lee give up his job and stay at home to babysit the children.’

  ‘Firstly,’ said Jo, hating herself for rising to the bait, ‘it was Lee’s idea to give up work, not mine. Secondly, I’ve had a significant offer of investment and help to grow my business and it’s a great opportunity, and lastly, a father does not babysit his own children.’

  ‘Do you want to take up this investment offer?’ said Jo’s father.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jo, rather surprising herself. ‘Yes, I do. I’m proud of Jungletown, and I’m flattered that someone else sees so much potential in it. And I think if I didn’t go for it, I would spend the rest of my life wondering what might have happened.’

  ‘And Lee offered to give up working?’

  ‘His company is in trouble. If he takes voluntary redundancy, he’ll get a reasonable payout, because he’s been there so long, and he’ll still do some freelance work for them. He mainly sees it as an opportunity to pursue some projects of his own though.’

  ‘Projects like what?’ Jo’s mother cut in.

  ‘Artistic projects,’ said Jo, expecting and getting a disdainful maternal sniff.

  ‘Moneywise?’ said her father, always a man of few words.

  ‘The offer I’ve had on the business would pay me a regular salary. That’s something I haven’t been able to take so far. It’d be slightly more than Lee currently earns, plus we’ll have Lee’s payout and anything he brings in as a freelancer, and if Imi doesn’t go to the childminder, that saves us quite a bit too. We’d actually be a little better off.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Jo’s father. ‘Well, I don’t see a problem.’ Jo’s mum blustered and made all sorts of noises, but she knew she had lost the argument.

  Jo resisted the urge to cheer. It wasn’t that she needed her father’s approval, and it wasn’t just from saying it all out loud, hearing her mother’s objections and defending against them. The whole thing had made her realise that not only was the plan possible, it was something she really wanted to do. She wanted to take this new leap of faith in her life with Lee. It was huge, it was scary, it was potentially risky, but she wanted to do it, and she was so excited now she could barely wait to get home, grab Lee’s hand and jump.

  PART THREE

  18

  HOLLY NOW

  Holly had not slept for four straight nights. Judith’s pain medication made her restless and she groaned and cried out through the night, even though most of the time she was still asleep. Holly had moved rooms, into the bedroom next door to her mum’s, and contrary to the family habit of a lifetime, they slept with both doors open so she could hear Judith if she needed her. Because there was no way to tell if Judith was calling her or merely shouting out in her dreams, Holly got up every time she heard her. For the last four nights, she had been up pretty much every hour. It wasn’t even as if she had the days off to sleep and relax: she was still trying to get work done, and the house was still like a train station with medical personnel coming in and out, and a stream of people from Judith’s church.

  Holly was an atheist, but she had a grudging admiration for the effort the church people made. There seemed to be a rota, and someone came to visit every morning and evening. They never came empty-handed – everyone brought food. It wasn’t as if Judith ate anything really, and Holly hadn’t cooked for herself in weeks, but as twice a day, a meal for roughly four people was delivered, she couldn’t keep up. There was so much food that the fridge and freezer were full and Holly had begun to palm dishes off on Miranda, on Mel and Jo, in fact on anyone who stood still for more than five minutes.

  One morning, she found herself standing in the kitchen, staring blankly at an enormous apple crumble on the kitchen table. She had no idea where to put it. The fridge was crammed, the freezer was full and it was too warm in the house to leave it out. It smelled delicious, but she’d already had breakfast: one of the other church ladies had brought a basket of warm croissants. She could hear the soft sound of singing from Judith’s room. There were four or five women up there, singing and praying around the bed. Holly’s mobile rang. She answered without looking to see who it was.

  ‘Hi, Holly,’ said a male voice, deep and quite attractive. ‘Are we still on for eleven?’

  Eleven? Who was she supposed to meet? Was it work or a social engagement? How could she have made a date with Mr Nice Voice and not remembered it? And who was it? She pulled the phone away from her ear and glanced at the screen to see if caller ID could help. Daniel. Daniel? Did she know a Daniel? She must, if the name and number were stored on her phone.

  ‘Um, eleven …’ she said slowly, her brain befuddled with lack of sleep. She was too sluggish to make small talk to buy her a bit of time.

  ‘If eleven isn’t convenient, I can come earlier or later. I just got a car so I’ll be driving over with all the samples.’

  Daniel! Monkeyman T-shirt Daniel! Of course! Now she remembered that they had made an arrangement weeks before for him and Chris to bring her a selection of new T-shirt designs to choose from. She felt awful. She knew the Jungletown contract meant so much to Outtake, and this meeting would be something Daniel and Chris would have worked hard to prepare for. She felt doubly bad because the shop did need new T-shirt stock. Postponing the meeting would let Jo down as much as it would the boys.

  She snapped into action. ‘Look, Daniel, I don’t know if you know, but I’ve had something of a family crisis recently. My mum’s ill …’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Daniel quickly. ‘I didn’t know. Would you like to reschedule? I completely understand.’ He tried to sound professional, but Holly could hear the disappointment in his voice.

  ‘No, no, no. I just wanted to say, if you don’t mind, could you come to my house in Ealing instead of us meeting at the shop?’

  ‘No problem. Give me your address and postcode. I have a satnav, so it’ll be easy to get there. What about parking?’

  ‘There are no restrictions in our road,’ said Holly, grateful that he was being flexible and nice about the whole thing. If they were coming to see her at home, that meant she had a good hour to shower
, drink two cups of coffee and wake up. And by eleven, the church singing should have stopped and her mum would likely be having a nap.

  The best-laid plans, however, are so often thwarted. She was on her way up the stairs to shower, second cup of coffee in hand, when the doorbell went. It was two blokes who had parked their extremely large delivery van across the driveway. Another gift from David, Holly surmised. She wished her brother would let her know when stuff was arriving. He was obviously feeling guilty that he wasn’t able to spend much time with his mum, so he kept throwing money at the problem. He’d sent a sheepskin mattress cover to prevent bedsores, a massage pad, and a walking frame to help Judith to get into and out of the shower. The latest offering was a simply enormous recliner chair with a motor, so that if the person sitting in it was too weak to stand up by themselves, the seat would tilt from horizontal to vertical and lift them into a standing position. It was a very thoughtful gift and must have cost a lot, and Holly was sure Judith would be grateful, if she ever came down into the living room to sit in it. But however wonderful the chair was, it was sodding gigantic and extraordinarily heavy, and it took two deliverymen fifteen minutes of huffing, puffing, manoeuvring and swearing to get it into the house. Holly knew Judith would worry about the paintwork in the hall, so she darted around nervously, trying to stop them scuffing every surface on their way in. Once it was finally in the living room, one of them insisted on explaining to Holly how it worked. He did this extremely slowly, pointing at the pictures in the brochure as if she was a slightly backward small child. Two or three times, he said, ‘Just give the instruction book to your hubby, and he’ll get it going.’ Just standing next to the delivery chauvinist made her eyes water. The man was clearly a stranger to the morning shower and to antiperspirant. So while she would have loved to take the instruction booklet, roll it up and shove it where the sun don’t shine, she wasn’t getting any closer than she absolutely needed to. He then produced a wodge of paperwork, pulled a pen from behind his ear and ponderously insisted on her initialling each page and signing to show she had received the chair in good order. Through all of this, Holly kept glancing nervously at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. Daniel and Chris would be arriving in a very short time, and she was still unshowered, her teeth were unbrushed and her hair was scraped into a scruffy topknot. She was also wearing holey tracksuit bottoms and an ancient faded red T-shirt, and she was, she realised from the goggle-eyed stare of the deliveryman’s gormless mate, braless.

  Once she had shoved Stinky Hardy and his pervy friend Laurel out of the door, she headed for the stairs again. Surely the church ladies must be on their way soon. But it seemed they were well in the groove, because the singing reached a new, almost gospel fervour, and she could hear someone proclaiming loudly as they sang and prayed. She tiptoed to the top of the stairs. Could she make a dash to her bedroom to grab some clothes without being seen? And what if the boys arrived when she was in the shower? Would the church ladies know to let them in, and would they terrify the living daylights out of them? She’d better skimp on the shower and just brush her teeth and tidy herself up … and put on a bra. She was going to be meeting with two hormonal teenage boys. For the love of God, definitely put on a bra.

  She stepped on to the top step, remembering too late that it creaked. Naturally, it did so in a rare moment of silence in the prayer-and-song marathon in her mum’s room. She’d have to make a run for it. She was in mid-scuttle when someone popped out of her mum’s bedroom. Holly’s heart sank. It would have to be Angela, a large-boned Nigerian lady of formidable temperament. Angela would stare you down through her thick, Dame Edna spectacles and would tell you what you thought about anything. She was also very hands-on. ‘Oh, Holly,’ she boomed, and grabbed both of Holly’s hands firmly in her own, ‘you are suffering so much. You are crying for your mother day and night. I know. I know.’

  ‘Oh, I—’ said Holly weakly, trying to claim back her hands and failing.

  ‘She is bad, your mother. What do the doctors say? It will not be long. I know this.’

  ‘They don’t know—’

  ‘Of course they don’t know. Doctors know nothing. Only God knows. And God is calling her. He told me.’

  Holly didn’t even attempt to answer this. She was quite sure that if anyone was being told what to do in Angela’s relationship with the Lord, it was God doing the listening.

  ‘I will pray for you in your suffering,’ Angela announced and, keeping an iron grip on Holly’s right wrist, placed a heavy hand on Holly’s forehead, closed her eyes and began to intone, ‘Oh Father, look upon this poor girl, so broken with grief that she is not even dressed at eleven in the morning, and be merciful …’

  God was listening, it seemed, and He was merciful, because at that exact second, the doorbell rang. ‘I’m so sorry,’ breathed Holly, and slipped out from under Angela’s weighty hand. ‘I have to get that. Um … Amen.’

  There was no time to go to her room and tidy up. She ran down the stairs, and took a moment to tidy her hair and rearrange her T-shirt so it was slightly less apparent that she was hanging free, as it were. Daniel and Chris would have to come in and then excuse her for a moment or two. She opened the door, and was a little surprised to see only Daniel there. He noticed her glancing past him, and said, ‘Oh, it’s just me. Chris is back at the workshop, printing T-shirts for a band. I hope that’s okay.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Holly, smiling tightly, very conscious of her unbrushed teeth. ‘As you can see, I’m not really …’

  ‘You said your mum’s ill …’

  ‘Yes. She’s upstairs and some of her church friends are there. This morning things have all gone a bit mad …’

  As if to confirm this, Angela boomed, ‘Hallelujah!’ from the bedroom upstairs. It was so loud that Daniel jumped a little and a dog across the road barked. Holly couldn’t help but giggle, and that made Daniel laugh too. ‘Look, come in,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry it’s like this. Go through into the kitchen. The tea things are all out on the countertop – help yourself, and give me ten minutes upstairs to sort myself out, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ he smiled, and bent to pick up the box of T-shirts at his feet. She pointed him in the direction of the kitchen and then raced upstairs. Not even Angela could stop her now. She dashed into her bedroom and grabbed a pair of jeans, underwear and a top, then whisked into the bathroom and locked the door. She took two minutes in the shower, brushed her teeth, tidied her hair, put some clothes on and was back downstairs well within the ten-minute limit.

  To her surprise, she found Daniel up to his elbows in the sink, washing up the dirty cups, plates and mugs that seemed to multiply alarmingly every day in the kitchen, even though Holly herself hardly ever had time for a hot drink and her mum never wanted one. ‘You didn’t have to …’ she said.

  ‘It’s no bother.’ He smiled at her over his shoulder. ‘My grandpa was ill for about two years … emphysema. We spent a lot of time at his house. There was always something going on – carers, or someone helping him with oxygen, or deliveries – and the one thing I could do to help and stay out of the way was wash up. It always needed doing.’

  ‘Emphysema? I’m so sorry. That must have been very hard for you to see.’

  Daniel nodded. ‘It’s horrible, listening to someone gasp for breath, and eventually just run out of air. Awful.’

  ‘Was he a smoker?’

  ‘Two packs a day for forty years. I tell you what, I don’t need warnings on the pack to tell me how bad it is.’

  ‘So I’m guessing you don’t smoke.’

  ‘No way.’ Daniel smiled. ‘Never have, never will. Well, except for the occasional …’ He touched his thumb and forefinger to his lips and narrowed his eyes, and then grinned at Holly.

  ‘Ah,’ said Holly, understanding.

  From upstairs, Angela let rip with an echoing and extended ‘Aaaamen,’ and the other women echoed it. Holly giggled. ‘Did you have the Amen Brigade coming to see your gr
andfather too?’

  ‘No, he was a socialist and an atheist. He wouldn’t even let the parish priest through the door.’

  Angela launched into a heartfelt rendition of ‘Kumbaya’.

  ‘He wouldn’t have been able to say no to Angela,’ said Holly, pointing to the ceiling. ‘Nobody does.’

  Daniel rinsed the last cup and put it on the dish rack, dried his hands and came over to the table. ‘I made you a cup of tea,’ he said. ‘I hope that’s okay.’

  He had wiped down the kitchen table too, and laid out the new T-shirt samples neatly in rows for her to see. Holly found herself looking at him closely. He was just nineteen, she thought, but he seemed older. He was quiet and considerate, not all over the place and self-obsessed like so many teenagers were. He was a lovely kid. His parents must be very proud.

  She turned her attention to the T-shirts. She picked up each one and examined every seam and every detail of the design. The quality of the shirts themselves was better than the first batch Chris and Daniel had done. The designs were a mixed bag: some were too edgy for small children, but a few were great. Monkeyman seemed to have acquired a sidekick called Super Squirrel, and the Super Squirrel T-shirts, all printed in white on bright red, green and cyan backgrounds, were surefire winners. Holly rather fancied one for herself. ‘You should so do these in adult sizes,’ she said, holding a crimson shirt against her front. She looked up and caught Daniel staring at her chest. He looked up and caught her eye and blushed a deep red. Bless him, Holly thought. Under the composed exterior, he was just another horny young guy.

  She made sure to keep her distance and act in a quietly professional manner for the rest of their meeting. She didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable. She selected some designs and sat down and wrote an order for the sizes and colours she wanted there and then. Holly knew that Daniel and Chris were still running their little business on a shoestring and that there was no way he could carry the cost of the order without payment upfront. She rang Jo and told her the value of the order, and Jo said she would transfer fifty per cent of the payment straight into Outtake’s account. When she told Daniel, he looked extremely relieved. He packed up the samples, and Holly walked him to the door. ‘Oh wait!’ she said suddenly. ‘I bet you and Chris could take care of something for me.’ She dashed back into the kitchen and returned with the apple crumble. ‘There isn’t room for this anywhere in the house. Please eat it, and get the dish back to me sometime, okay?’