It wasn’t true, of course. I’d asked him nothing of the sort. But I’d already annoyed him enough for one night so I figured, if I wanted to keep my job, it would be best to let it go unchallenged.
But I needn’t have bothered. Because at the end of the shift, as I went to get my coat, Donald called me back into the bar.
“Don’t come in tomorrow,” he said.
“Oh? But I thought my day off was Monday? Tomorrow’s Friday.”
“I’m well aware of what day of the week it is,” he said, his eyes looking anywhere but at me. I had a bad, bad feeling I wasn’t going to like what was coming next.
I was not wrong.
“Look, I’m sorry. But it can’t be helped. Here’s what I owe you for the hours you’ve worked.” He handed me an envelope, looking about as sorry as a fox in a henhouse, and added, “Less, of course, the cost of Gerald’s pint.”
“But it’s not pay day, is it? I don’t understand…” I began, but I should have saved my breath. I could tell from the way he pointed his finger at me that he was a fan of The Apprentice. This was his Alan Sugar moment and he was milking it for all he was worth.
“You’re fired,” he said.
Chapter Eleven
“You’re firing me? But why?” Donald wasn’t known for his sense of fun, but this was a joke, surely? I’d only had the job for two days. Dad was going to go ballistic. And Mum was going to insist I spent more time in the salon.
“Well, not exactly fired,” he mumbled. His Alan Sugar moment over, he now reverted to type and refused to look at me. “It’s – well, the thing is, it’s more a case of being made redundant. After all, I warned you the job was only temporary, didn’t I?”
“You did. But there’s temporary and then there’s downright unfair.” I struggled to keep my cool. My second job loss in as many weeks. I could see a pattern forming, and it was not a pretty one. If it followed the path of the previous one, he’d soon be telling me it was hurting him more than it was hurting me.
Only he didn’t. In fact, he said nothing at all. Just stood there and looked terribly embarrassed and so miserable I could almost have felt sorry for him, if I hadn’t been so busy feeling sorry for myself.
“But – but you said your wife wasn’t due back from her cruise for a couple of months,” I said.
“Well, yes I did, I know. But the thing is, Katie,” he picked up a beer mat from the counter and began pulling it apart. “The thing is, you weren’t replacing my wife, but my other barmaid, who’s been unwell but is now fit for work again. I – I thought I’d explained that.”
“No, you most certainly didn’t.” My words came out as an indignant squawk. “You can’t do that.”
He flinched at my raised voice, placed the shredded remains of the beermat in a neat pile on the counter and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll find I can,” he said, his voice so low I had to bend my head to hear him. “And – and, well to be perfectly honest, you’re not really what I’d call barmaid material, are you? People come in here for a quiet drink, you know, not to be given the third degree by some smarty-pants college kid playing Cluedo. And before you bite my head off, that’s not my words but how one of my customers described you. And I’m sorry, Katie, I really am. But I’ve got to act on my customers’ complaints. Otherwise I’m out of a job as well as you. S-sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
I stared at him for a long moment, waiting for him to say that he’d just been winding me up and it was all a joke. But, of course, he didn’t. Instead, he just stood there, jingling the loose change in his pocket and not quite looking at me in his vague, abstracted way.
I snatched up my coat and stomped off, knowing that as soon as I told Mum, she’d have me back in Chez Cheryl’s before you could say highlights, seeing as Sandra’s feet were still giving her gyp, as she put it, in spite of her very expensive visit to that tip-top chiropodist.
Of course it was obviously creepy Gerald Crabshaw who’d made the complaint about me. He’d been livid when I’d asked him if he’d seen Marjorie the day she died, which was, on reflection, a pretty over-the-top reaction to such an innocuous question. Particularly as Donald had made it pretty clear I’d asked everyone in the bar the same thing.
Was Gerald, then, the person Marjorie had said she was going to have it out with, once and for all? The person, she said, who was not going to be allowed to get away with it – whatever ‘it’ was? The man who’d got her dander up? And was he, then, the person Marjorie had met after John Manning had ordered her off his land? It was well known that he and Marjorie weren’t exactly best mates. Also well known was the fact that Gerald was as honest as a bent banker. Not to mention sleazy. And had eyes that were too close together.
As I walked home, along the village’s deserted main street, I tried hard to remember what Marjorie had said that day in the salon. It beat thinking about what Mum and Dad were going to say when they found out I was out of a job. Again.
Marjorie had wittered away the entire time I was rinsing her hair, but I’d been so caught up with what I was going to put on my job applications, I hadn’t really paid much attention, apart from murmuring the occasional, ‘No? Really? And what did you do then?’
Talk about making a drama out of a crisis. It was one thing after another with Marjorie, as though everything and everyone set out deliberately to annoy her. If it wasn’t the shocking state of the footpaths, or corruption in the Planning Department, it was the latest power struggle in the Floral Art Society.
“He’s not getting away with it,” I could remember her saying as I unwound the rollers from her hyacinth blue curls. “He’ll find I’m a force to be reckoned with once I’ve got my dander up. He’s been allowed his own way for too long. Acting as if he owns the place. It’s got to stop. And I’m going to make sure it does. It’s about time someone in this village had the courage to stand up to him. And I’m the one to do it.”
Who’d been acting as if he owned the place? Allowed to get his own way for too long? And what was it that had to stop? Did she mean Councillor Gerald Crabshaw, or Sir Gerald of Winchmoor, as he would no doubt like to be called one day?
The sound of my footsteps echoed along the quiet street until I came to the village pond, where the pavement gave way to grass. To one side of the pond was a rough patch of ground which had at one time, under an ambitious scheme piloted by our very own Councillor Crabshaw, looked set to be designated the Much Winchmoor Nature Reserve, on account of a couple of great crested newts that were thought to have been found in it. But when the newts turned out to be not quite so great, and definitely un-crested, Dintscombe District Council had had a change of heart and had withdrawn funding. Now it was nothing more than a bit of scrubby grass, a huge batch of brambles as high as your head and a couple of spindly bushes that had never recovered from being chewed by John Manning’s cattle on the day of their freedom march.
I froze. Something, or rather someone, was there in the shadows.
My fingers closed around my phone as a figure suddenly loomed out of the bramble forest and started towards me.
“Who’s there?” I called, sounding a lot calmer – and braver – than I felt. I hit the torch button on my phone and waved it in front of me.
“Is that you, Katie? Are you all right, girl?” The unmistakable figure of Shane Freeman shambled out of the darkness, his elderly Labrador plodding on behind.
“I – jeez, Shane. You startled me.” My heart was still pounding so loud I thought he could probably hear it. I directed the light towards the brambles, but could see no one else. “I – I thought I heard… who were you with?”
“Just Oscar here,” he said. “I was telling the old fool to hurry up because I was freezing my – I was freezing to death, waiting for him to make up his flipping mind whether he wanted to do anything or not. Dogs, eh?”
“Your dog? But I thought—” For a moment, I’d been sure I’d seen two figures over there. But I couldn’t see anyone
else now, in the shadows.
“Nope. Just me,” he said. “Now if you want to keep me company, while I wait for this damn fool of a dog to get on with it, you’re very welcome.”
“I – no thanks, Shane. I must get on,” I said quickly and hurried off, with his soft laughter ringing in my ears.
“Katie?” he called me back, his face suddenly serious. “You’re looking a bit nervous, sweetheart. Do you want some company? Straight up. No messing.”
I shook my head. “Thanks, Shane. But I’m fine, honestly I am. It’s just – well, this murder. It’s got me jumping at shadows.”
“Well, it shouldn’t. They’ve got the guy who did it, so there’s nothing to worry about, is there? Now, Oscar’s finished at long last. How about I walk you home?”
“That’s really kind, Shane. But, like I said, I’m fine. Thanks.”
Of course I wasn’t fine. And I was pretty sure the other figure I’d seen in the shadows hadn’t been Oscar the Labrador but someone whose stocky outline put me in mind of the very man who’d been occupying my thoughts at the time. Councillor Creepy Crabshaw.
But what was he doing, skulking around the village pond at ten minutes to midnight? Not looking out for newts, great crested or otherwise. That was for sure.
My parents took the news of my dismissal from the pub with enthusiasm. Dad’s reaction was understandable. Even though I’d taken on board the little lecture Donald had given me on a barmaid’s need for discretion and hadn’t breathed a word to anyone about who was drinking what, how much and with whom – apart from telling Will about his dad, of course, but that was different – Dad had never been keen on me working there.
He said it was because working behind a bar was a waste of my talents, education and training. But the real reason, I suspected, was that he’d been worrying about Mum finding out exactly how many pints of Ferret’s Kneecaps Best Bitter made up what he called, ‘just a couple’.
Mum’s reaction was similar to Dad’s, but for a different reason. “Thank goodness for that,” she said.
“What’s to be thankful for? Being fired three days into a job?” I muttered, still stinging at the injustice of it all.
“No, that’s not good, I grant you. But I’m sure Donald must have had his reasons,” Mum said, who was always ready to see the other person’s side of things, particularly if it was to my disadvantage. “I’ve always found him a very reasonable man, if a bit on the drippy side. No, I meant from my point of view, it couldn’t have happened at a better time. Sandra came back to work today, as you know, but had to admit defeat and go on home as her bunion is now infected. You should see it. It’s the size of a cricket ball, and as for the colour…”
“Please, Mum. Spare me the details,” I cut in quickly, as my mum could, and often did, go on for hours about the sorry state of Sandra’s feet. “I get the picture.”
“Well, then, tomorrow you can help me in the salon. To be honest, I was wondering how I was going to manage, especially as Friday’s my busy day. I did think of asking young Millie Chapman, but she’s not what you’d call reliable.”
“And I am? That isn’t what you said when Elsie Flintlock accused me of pouring cold water down her neck and giving her the ‘new-monials’ again,” I pointed out.
“Yes, well, hopefully there won’t be a repeat of that.”
“But I was going to spend tomorrow doing job applications. It’s more important than ever now.”
“And one more day won’t make any difference, will it? Not at this point in the week. They won’t even look at your application until Monday at the earliest now, will they? Please, love, Fridays are always busy and I’m fully booked all day. I’ll pay you the going rate.”
It wasn’t like I had much choice in the matter. And, without the pub job, I needed the money. Even though my mum’s idea of the going rate was a million miles away from mine.
“Ok,” I sighed, knowing when I was backed into a corner.
“That’s settled then. Now, our first appointment is at half past eight so you’d better get off to bed, as you’ve an early start in the morning.”
I sighed as I contemplated the train wreck that was my life. What had happened to it? Not only was I back living at home with my parents, with no job, no boyfriend, no money, no prospects. Now I was even being told by my mother what time to go to bed. Things couldn’t get any worse, I thought.
But, of course, they could. And they did.
***
It was the first time in ages I’d put in a full day in Mum’s salon and by the time I took what was laughingly called my lunch break at half past three, I was beyond exhausted. My feet ached, my back ached, my fingers ached, my brain ached, while the smell of perm lotion, shampoo and hair spray leached out of every pore.
In between listening to people moaning about their husbands, in-laws, children and how there’s nothing worth watching on the telly any more, I managed to slip in the odd question about possible sightings of Marjorie Hampton on Tuesday.
But nobody I spoke to had the slightest idea who Marjorie could have been talking about that day. It could have been anyone. Almost everyone in Much Winchmoor had got Marjorie Hampton’s dander up at one time or another, even our mild, inoffensive vicar who wanted nothing more than a quiet life, tending his begonias and watching Countryfile on the telly.
But the general consensus was that it was probably John Manning, as one of Marjorie’s latest campaigns had been about the state of the local footpaths, in particular a blocked one somewhere on his land. Something that Will and John had sort of confirmed, although I wasn’t telling anyone that.
As I left the salon and went into the kitchen to find something to eat, I decided to pass on what Mum described as the ‘lovely quinoa and chickpea soup’ she’d left for me. It looked marginally better than the gloopy frogspawn she was still trying to foist on me for breakfast but I preferred a hunk of cheese and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. I was rounding it off with a couple of chocolate digestives when my phone went. It was Will.
“I thought you’d like to know, I’ve just been down to Yeovil and brought Dad back.”
“Oh, that’s brilliant,” I mumbled through a mouthful of biscuit crumbs. “I knew they’d realise he’s innocent eventually.”
“He’s not off the hook yet.” There was a warning note in his voice. “It’s more a matter of not having sufficient evidence to charge him, so they had to let him go. For now. They told him not to leave the area, though.”
“So he obviously thought better of making that phoney confession?”
“Yeah. The solicitor I found for him finally made the old fool see sense.”
“And how is he? Your dad, I mean. Not the solicitor.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that’s who you meant. He’s sober. And subdued. Keeps apologising.”
“Oh. Right. Well, that’s all to the good, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I suppose.” He didn’t sound terribly convinced. “Anyway, I wondered if you’re going to be in the pub this evening? I thought I might drop in for a quick one. Just me. Not Dad,” he added quickly. “He says he’s on the wagon.”
“Good for him. But, Will, you must be the only person in the village who hasn’t heard. Donald fired me last night.”
“The devil he did. Why?”
I decided not to tell Will it was because I’d been upsetting the customers by asking questions about Marjorie Hampton, because I’d then have to go on and admit that nobody had seen her after her encounter with his dad. Which I didn’t think would do anything to lift Will’s bleak mood. “He tried to make out I wasn’t barmaid material at first, but the truth of the matter is, I was only a stand-in while his regular barmaid was off sick. A small thing that he somehow forgot to mention when he took me on. How do you like that?”
“Tough. You must be seriously cheesed off.”
“Tell me about it. Especially as Mum’s had me working in the salon all day. It was pretty dire working in the Winchmoor
Arms, but this place is worse.”
“Ok, so how about we go into Dintscombe this evening? There are new people in the Queen’s Arms and they’re really making a go of it. They have live music on a Friday night and it’s that dreary folksy stuff you like.”
“I’m sorry.” I flexed my aching feet. A few more weeks of this and I’d be a martyr to them and able to compare symptoms with Sandra. “I’ve been slaving away since the crack of dawn and I’ve another couple of hours to go here in the torture chamber, by which time I’ll be fit for nothing, except collapsing in the bath and then falling asleep in front of the TV. Or maybe even the other way round. Another time, eh?”
“Sure. Let me know if you change your mind.”
“Ok, but don’t hold your breath. Oh and Will?”
“What?”
“I’m glad we’re mates again. I – I really missed you, you know.”
There was a tiny pause. “Yeah. I missed you too,” he said quietly, his voice suddenly croaky. “Enjoy your bath.”
***
I ended the call and was about to put my phone away when it rang again. A number I didn’t recognise came up.
“Is that Katie Latcham?” He had one of those soft Irish accents that could make a shopping list sound like a poem. “It’s Liam O’Connor here, from The Dintscombe Chronicle.”
My heart did a triple somersault. The Dintscombe Chronicle was the local paper and was among the first I’d sent my CV to when I came home. Dintscombe was a small market town five miles from Much Winchmoor and The Chronicle was a typical small town newspaper, more interested in advertising revenue than news. I’d gone there to do my work experience when I was at school and had enjoyed it.
Working on the local paper wasn’t exactly top of my wish list. That, of course, was a job back in my first love, radio. But it sure beat working in the salon and I figured it could well be a useful stepping stone.
I held the phone closer to my ear and hoped he wouldn’t hear the frantic beating of my heart.
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