“Will still be there in the morning.” Mags strode into the room, rounded Jac’s desk, and grabbed her hands. She pulled her away from the desk. “Come on. I’m calling this an intervention.”
Jac slapped at her hands. “Call it what you like, I’ve got work to do.” She turned her back on Mags, continually putting the back of her chair between the two of them as Mags kept trying to intervene. She would cave and leave soon.
“Fine.”
Victory is mine.
“She’s all yours,” Mags shouted to the outer office.
Shit.
Sophie strode in, champagne flute in one hand, party hat in the other.
Double shit.
Sophie pressed the glass into Jac’s hand, then strapped the gaudy purple party hat over her head, pinged the elastic strap under her chin just a little harder than necessary, then grabbed her hands and pulled. Mags’s hands on the back of the chair prevented Jac from spinning away and out of reach again.
“I know that you know what date it is today, Jac McGrumpy, because you’ve typed it on every single one of those bloody emails you’ve been firing at me all day.”
Double-dog shit.
“And I know you’re good enough with numbers to have figured out what that means.” Sophie tugged her out of her corner office and into the main space. The cubicles where the staff worked were strewn with streamers, balloons, and a banner. Oh yes, they’d even got a banner.
Sophie’s lips were warm on her cheek, and Jac knew she’d have a lipstick mark there, a fire-engine-red one. “Happy fiftieth birthday, you old git.”
It wasn’t really her birthday. Jac had no idea when that was. No one did. Except the mother who had abandoned her. Instead, this was the anniversary of the day she was found. Doctors had estimated her to be more than a couple of days old, but probably less than a week. It was difficult for them to say, and there had been precious little for them to go on. No one ever came forward to claim her. It was just another thing she would never know about herself, one more thing she had no way of ever knowing. She hadn’t even celebrated her birthday for much of her life. What’s to celebrate about being abandoned anyway? It wasn’t until Sophie came along and spun her negative thoughts around. They were celebrating Jac being found. Being saved. Being alive. And everything she had achieved all by herself ever since.
The woman was more like a sister to her, and the closest thing to family that Jac had ever known. “Bitch,” Jac said with a grin.
“Back at ya, babe.” After a quick squeeze of Jac’s shoulders, Sophie pushed the glass towards her lips. “Drink up. It’s part of your anti-aging regime now.”
“What’s that?”
“Pickling oneself in alcohol.”
Jac sniggered but dutifully swallowed the champagne. Noting for a change that it actually was champagne and not Prosecco. Sophie’s arm slid around her waist, while Mags wrapped one about Jac’s shoulders from the other side.
“How does it feel?” Mags asked.
“Why? Worried you won’t make it another month to yours?”
“Nah, wondering if I should start seeing a shrink now or wait till after the big day.” They laughed together.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Mags,” Sophie quipped. “You’re too late. Start counselling for sixty in about, I don’t know, two weeks’ time should just about work for ya.”
Mags feigned indignation. “Oh, the baby of the group has her claws out.” She grabbed for Sophie’s hand and held it up. “And what claws they are too. Lauren must walk with a permanent limp.”
“Who says I use the claws on my lovely wife?” Sophie smirked and licked her lips suggestively. Jac snorted and almost spit out her drink while Mags blushed fiercely.
Clapping Mags on the shoulder, Jac said, “You should’ve learnt that lesson by now, mate.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She swallowed the last of her drink and held up her glass. “Refill, ladies… Oh, and Soph?”
“Funny,” Sophie deadpanned, “but yes.” She held out her glass for Mags to take, then curled her fingers into Jac’s. “Come on, old lady, go mingle before we have to get you back to the nursing home. Your staff wants to pick what’s left of your brains before you retire.”
“Yeah, right.” Jac trailed behind her.
“Don’t pout. I made them get you red-velvet cake.”
Jac brightened at the mention of her favourite treat of the moment. “And Baileys cream?”
“Yes, though how you think that combination works together is beyond me.”
“Have you tried it?”
“No. The smell of Baileys makes me want to jump in the canal.”
“Drama queen.”
Sophie appeared to weigh up the insult, then shrugged, as if content to accept the accolade. She handed Jac a plate and a jug with the cream in…just for her. “Don’t say I never give you anything.”
“I don’t. You give me heartburn, palpitations, and an ulcer regularly.”
Sophie backhanded her in the stomach and walked away as one of the staff members sidled up to Jac. “We’re all heading out to Coyote’s,” Tanya said. “Want to join us?” Tanya was twenty-six, blond, slim, and working for them on reception…while trying to pick up jobs as an actress. Jac sighed inwardly but smiled widely at her.
“Thanks, Tanya. I’ll have a think about it, but probably not. I’ve got an early start in the morning, and Sophie—the bitch—tells me that at my age I need all the beauty sleep I can get.”
Tanya giggled and ran a hand down Jac’s arm. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.” She smiled coyly and wandered back over to her friends as Mags handed Jac a full glass, eyebrows raised in question.
“Don’t go there. I said no.”
“To getting older and wiser, then.” Mags held up her glass.
Jac snorted but clinked her glass to Mags’s before swallowing it in one.
“Thirsty?”
“Something like that.” She put her plate down on the table, the cake untouched. “Back in a minute.” She held up the glass up indicate where she was going, but the open door to the balcony called her as she got closer to the drinks table. It was a no-brainer.
Jac stood on the balcony outside her office and stared out across the Manchester skyline. Lights twinkled in buildings towering over her head, and streetlights glittered three stories lower than where she stood. She fidgeted with her lighter, needing something to do with her hands but not having her usual cigarette to hand to meet the need.
“What’re you doing out here?”
Jac turned to look over her shoulder at the sound of the familiar voice. Sophie grinned and shook her long blond hair over her shoulder before crossing the balcony and leaning on the rail next to Jac.
“Nothing much,” she said with a smile.
“I should’ve guessed. How long’s it been so far?” she asked, pointing at Jac’s fidgeting hands.
“Couple of weeks.” Jac tapped the lighter against the rail and spun it so it was upside down before tapping and spinning it again. “What’re you doing out here?”
“Came to clear the air.”
Jac waved her hand. “No need—”
“Yeah, there is. I shouldn’t have stormed off like that.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just…” Sophie sighed heavily. “Lauren’s been on at me to go and see the doctor.”
“You’re ill? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She reached out and grabbed Jac’s hand. “Nothing unusual, anyway.” She grimaced. “Irritability, hot flashes, weight gain. Ring a bell?”
Jac chuckled, then cut it off instantly as Sophie’s eyes narrowed. She held up her hands in surrender. “Sorry.” She turned back to look out across the skyline, tapping her fingers on the railing.
“She’s suggest
ed HRT. I don’t know if I want to go down that route or just get it over with.”
They’d had this discussion before, when Sophie’s wife had started the change. Sophie hadn’t liked the idea of Lauren going on the patches, but Lauren was now a dedicated devotee of the treatment. Sophie still wasn’t convinced.
“Well, it’s your body, Soph. You have to do what’s right for you.”
“True. What about you?”
“I don’t think I’ve had any hot flashes yet.”
“Funny. I’ve been worried about you. You haven’t seemed yourself for a while.”
“No need,” Jac said with a soft smile. “I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh. So, last time you quit smoking, your bad temper led to a broken camera.”
Jac grunted her acknowledgement.
“The time before that it was that antique priceless vase Mags had inherited from her least-favourite aunt ever.”
They both laughed at the memory of a drunken, stumbling night for them all that led to the fake Ming vase—that had always been passed off as the real thing—ending up in shards.
“I could go on.”
“No need, babe. You’ve made your point.”
“Good. So…broken anything yet?”
“Not much.”
“Come on, what was it this time?” Sophie asked with a snigger tainting her voice. “That lead-crystal decanter Lauren insisted we get you last Christmas?”
Jac smiled sadly and shook her head. “I knew that wasn’t your idea.”
“True. My contribution was the whiskey you filled it with.”
“Good call.”
“I know you well, my friend. So come on. Tell Auntie Sophie all about it.” She nudged Jac with her shoulder, then froze, a look of mock horror on her face. “Please, God, don’t let it be another camera. The last one cost three grand to replace. Not to mention calming down the sound technician and the extra. Oh, and the frog.” Sophie offered up her prayer to the heavens and interlocked her fingers in a mock imitation of a cherub.
“Funny.” Jac scrubbed a hand over her face. “I smashed a couple of glasses.”
“Uh-huh.” Sophie shook her head. “Not buying it.” She wiggled a finger in front of Jac’s face. “This says you broke something bigger than a couple of glasses.”
“I might have dropped a bottle of vodka.”
“Might?”
Jac shrugged. “Nah.”
“I’m not going anywhere, so you might as well tell me.”
Taking her time, Jac stared out across the skyline again, then said with a sigh, “Fine. It seems I broke my relationship—”
“Shit.” Sophie put her hand on Jac’s arm. “Explains why she never answered my calls about this little soiree. You okay, Pan-pan?”
Jac shrugged and smirked a little at the old nickname Sophie liked to use when it was just the two of them. She had ever since she’d learnt of how and where Jac had been found. It was a gentle reminder of how Sophie accepted her without question or hesitation no matter how hard Jac had tried to keep her at arm’s length. Sophie had told her that she would have been Jac’s friend—her family of choice—no matter when they’d found each other; as children, adults, or into their dotage. She was there for Jac; always had been, always would be. She’d rotated through various permutations of Peter Pan over the years before landing on “Pan-pan”. From Sophie’s lips, it was like hearing, “I love you, I accept you, and I will never leave you”. Being abandoned tended to give a child a fear of abandonment, a sense of unworthiness, and feelings of being unlovable, in a way that was hard to shake. Sophie, and eventually Mags too, had seen beyond her painful past and proven to her that there were people out the who cared for her. Deeply.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“What happened?”
“Just one of those things.” And it was. Jac knew that.
“I told you she wasn’t right for you, babe. I mean how old was she?”
Jac looked at her hands and spun the lighter again as she mumbled, “Twenty-five.”
Sophie chortled. “Good God, woman. You’re fifty years old. Don’t you think it’s time to find someone who will do more than look good on your arm and make you feel like a stud until she kicks your arse to the kerb?”
“I know,” she said under her breath.
“I mean, I know she was fucking hot, but seriously, Jac, did you ever actually talk to her?”
Jac opened her mouth to answer but Sophie just ploughed straight on.
“I tried once, when you brought her to the office party. I had a better conversation with the printer just afterwards. It’s got that new interface that lets you command by voice. Awesome. Anyway, where was I?”
“Dissing my choice in girlfriends.”
“Girl being the operative word there, babe. You need you a real woman. Someone who can excite you outside the bedroom as well as in it. A woman who can hold a conversation with you, who isn’t using you for what you can do for her career, and who isn’t looking to use you as a stepping stone to the next best thing that ever happened to her.”
While Sophie wasn’t telling Jac anything she didn’t already know, she was pretty sure she didn’t need to hear it put quite so…well. “Yeah, well I really appreciate you not saying I told you so, or anything like that. Good chat, Soph, made me feel tons better about everything.”
Sophie snickered. “See, that’s one of your best qualities, right there. You’re funny. But I can guarantee that the women you’ve been dating for the last few years sure as shit never picked up on that.”
Jac took a huge breath and let it out slowly. “I hear you, it’s just…well, how many new forty-slash-fifty-something women do I get to meet? Add to that a brain, interested in women, single, and somewhat attractive.”
Sophie nodded, but she carried on anyway. Jac needed to straighten some things out in her head, and she always did that best when she spoke. Usually with Sophie.
She shrugged. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask for, Soph, but it sure as hell feels like it.”
“Forty-slash-fifty-something is a big jump from twenty-five. You sure you’re ready for that, Pan-pan?” Jac just stared at her until she threw her head back and laughed. “Fine, fine. Point taken.” She kicked one foot onto the bottom rail of the balcony and settled her arms across the top rail, leaning over in a mirror of Jac’s own pose. “Maybe we need to get you on Tinder or something.”
“Fuck off. I’m a little bit lonely, not desperate.”
Sophie snickered along with her before they settled into a comfortable silence, both staring out at the orange-grey sky.
“When did she go?”
“Hmm. About three days after I stopped smoking.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Didn’t want to feel like any more of a loser than I already do.”
“You aren’t.” Sophie shook her head sadly.
Jac snorted derisively and refused to meet Sophie’s gaze, even though she could feel it boring holes into the side of her head.
“Do you miss her?”
Jac closed her eyes and swallowed the wave of guilt that threatened her. The one she felt because she really didn’t miss Vanessa at all. She didn’t miss the woman, she just missed their being someone at home waiting for her. Someone on the other end of the phone for her to call and talk about her day, or just hear about hers. And that made her feel all the worse for it. They’d spent eighteen months together, and now Jac couldn’t recall anything she’d truly miss about Vanessa.
“Let me guess,” Sophie said softly.
“Do you have to?”
Sophie smiled sadly when Jac turned to look at her. “No, we both know the truth, babe. Question is, what are you going to do about it?”
Jac shrugged again. “What can I do? I can’t magic women out of
thin air.” She tried not to picture Sasha Adams and her sultry voice, full curves, and smoky eyes that called to her. Again and again. She really did try. She failed. But she did try.
Sophie bumped her shoulder. “Oh, damn. That’s why I’ve been hanging around you all these years.”
“You don’t get any funnier, you know?”
“How long have we been friends?”
“Thirty years.”
“Right, and in that time, we’ve built an empire.”
Jac grinned. They totally had. Their production company was going from strength to strength. New ways of financing projects, new distribution methods and outlets had allowed them to break into markets that hadn’t even existed ten years ago. Now, they were successful, powerful women at the top of their game. And both Sophie and Mags had someone at home to share that with.
“And you have Lauren.”
“I so do. And if I had to choose between the two—”
Jac held up her hands. “I know. Me and the company are both very grateful Lauren is very accommodating of all the late nights. Trust me, I know.” She pulled Sophie into a hug. “I’m jealous as fuck, but I love you anyway.”
Sophie chuckled and pulled out of Jac’s arms. “You don’t have to choose either. When the right woman comes along, she won’t use you or make you choose. Maybe hold out for that for a while, rather than jumping on the next distraction that walks into your life.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve got a wife at home to help you out with those ‘distractions’.”
Sophie slapped her shoulder and said, “And on that note, I’m off home to wake up my wife and kiss her senseless.”
“Tease.”
“Only when she deserves it,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
Jac laughed and listened to the door close behind her.
Chapter 12
“You really didn’t need to do this, you know?” Sasha said as she met Jac at the gate. “I could have just got the bus into town and met you at the studio.”
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