39 Weeks

by Terri Douglas

  And on the subject of work Doreen was chirruping away happily every day, with the thought of George leaving soon. ‘Two weeks, only two more weeks’, she said excitedly to me and Jack. To which we smiled indulgently understanding how much it meant to her. The collection for George had managed somehow to net nearly eighty pounds and Norman dug into his pocket and made it up to a round hundred and then David Steadman added another twenty, so Doreen had bought a hundred pounds worth of garden centre vouchers, knowing how dedicated George was to his allotment, and with the balance she bought a bottle of champagne and a large card, all to be presented on George’s last day. She’d even arranged with Ted to start looking for his replacement and planned to start interviewing straight after Christmas. This was one guy who was not going to be missed, by anyone.

  Last Friday I’d had a visit from Tricia to say her and Daniel had broken up again, no surprises there really. She’d caught him out with some girl he worked with, not actually at it red handed as it were, but almost. When she went to meet him after work he was in the car park doing that leaning in thing blokes do when they’re on the pull, against this girls car.

  According to Tricia she definitely heard him saying to the girl something along the lines of meeting her on Saturday, and as he’d already told Tricia he wasn’t going to be able to see her that night because he had to go and see his Gran, which Tricia had thought at the time sounded a bit odd as he’d never even mentioned his Gran before, and then she noticed he wasn’t wearing his ring, it was pretty obvious what he was up to. Course he denied the whole thing and said Tricia was being hysterical and over reacting, and the reason he wasn’t wearing his ring was that he didn’t want to get it scratched. I mean, come on, didn’t want to get it scratched! You’d think for a womanising serial scumbag he’d have been able to think of something better than that wouldn’t you? After all let’s face it he’d had enough practise. But you’d have been wrong.

  Anyway Tricia broke up with him about an hour later, he’d wheedled and tried his best to lie his way out of it, but she was having none of it and didn’t fall for his lies this time. Course she was pretty devastated, not only because she’d broken off her engagement, or that she’d found out he’d been cheating on her, but because she’d been so stupid as to believe that he’d really changed all this time, that was the cherry on the two-timing scumbags cake.

  She arrived at mine at about eight on Friday night, only a couple of hours after the actual breaking up, and practically fell through the door sobbing so much she could scarcely see where she was going, how she’d managed to drive I dread to think. I phoned Shelley with the update while Tricia was in the loo and she said she’d come straight round, which she did, arriving about ten minutes after I’d put the phone down.

  Course both Shelley and I said all the usual things, you know, ‘you’re better off without him’ and ‘plenty more fish in the sea’ and ‘you were too good for him anyway’, all that kind of thing. But it didn’t do any good, well it never really does, does it? It’s just what you say. You know it’s not going to make any difference while you’re saying it, and the person you’re saying it to knows it’s just something you say, but still it has to be said. So Tricia kept right on crying, and Shelley and I kept right on commiserating.

  Rob put in an appearance in the middle of it all as we’d sort of previously arranged a quiet night in, but made a hasty retreat when he sussed what was going on. Seeing him did make Tricia forget her own troubles for a few short minutes and she stopped sobbing long enough to ask me how it was going, but when I said everything was great it started her off on another crying jag to think how I had Rob, and Shelley had Nick, and she had no-one.

  Tricia finally left at about midnight, she’d stopped crying by then, well for the time being anyway no doubt there was plenty more still to come, but she was already beginning to move on from the ‘being devastated’ phase, to the ‘being really pissed off’ phase and wanting to rip Daniel’s head off, which was a good sign as these things go.

  Rob and I didn’t manage to get round to having the quiet night in we’d planned, as we spent Saturday afternoon taking Harry and Flora to see Father Christmas in his grotto in town, and had to queue for nearly two hours for the privilege, while Marsha did some all important last of her Christmas shopping without the beady eyes of her two small children watching her. We might have had to queue for even longer but one of the elves, assuming that we were the parents and spotting my pregnant state, pulled some strings and arranged for us to do a bit of queue jumping.

  I was frankly somewhat disappointed at the state of Santa when we finally got to see him, I mean he was not the kindly old fat gentleman I’d been expecting, he was more of a gangly teenager with a lot of padding, the false beard I’d expected of course but you’d have thought that at the very least the beard would have been stuck on and not moving about so very obviously disconnected to his chin, and I certainly wasn’t expecting Santa to have pimples. I mean they’d charged a hefty five pounds per child for the opportunity to sit next to him, apparently sitting on his knee was no longer an option now in today’s phobic society, what was the world coming to when you had to protect your child from Santa? So you’d have thought they could have chosen someone a bit older, someone who vaguely resembled the real thing, well not the real thing but you know what I mean. But he did a lot of Ho Ho Ho-ing and tried hard to be convincing. He completely fooled Flora who was enraptured by the whole thing and was so excited when he gave her a gift she was almost sick, but Harry was not so easily fooled. He didn’t actually say why has Santa got a cushion stuffed down his trousers or why does his beard keep flapping about, but you could tell he had his doubts that this was the genuine article.

  Then Saturday night we helped Harry and Flora help Marsha decorate their tree, and ended up staying for dinner. I wondered if I should get a tree of my own, seemed a bit silly as there was only me, but that’s the thing it wasn’t just me anymore, it was me and Ella, although she wasn’t here yet to see if I had a tree or not, still though, it felt right somehow, like the start of my own family tradition or something. How bizarre to think I was starting my own family, and that I’d be visiting Santa and decorating a Christmas tree every year for the next few years to come, with my own daughter.

  So on Sunday morning I did a bit of Christmas shopping of my own and bought a small three foot plastic tree and a lot of baubles and tinsel. And then spent the rest of Sunday arranging it all. Rob came upstairs Sunday evening and admired my efforts but he couldn’t stay long as he had an early start in the morning, he was going back to Newcastle to re-shoot something and was going to try and get it over with as soon as, so he could get back the same day and wouldn’t have to stay overnight.

  It was getting close to Christmas and as of last weekend I still hadn’t done any Christmas shopping, well except for the tree of course, but the shops in town were all open until nine every night in the run up to the big day, so I stopped off a couple of nights on my way home from work to try and catch up. I’d got Mum another bottle of her favourite perfume, boring I know but it’s what she expected and liked to receive from me, the one year I’d deviated from that particular tradition she was decidedly disappointed, so nowadays I just went straight to the perfume counter and didn’t even bother looking at anything else.

  I’d got Dad the CD he’d been dropping some very unsubtle hints about recently, and Shelley and Nick a set of place mats that was part Christmas present and part a house warming present. I’d found a bath set in Boot’s professing to be the ultimate relaxing experience for Marsha, and a DVD of children’s favourite episodes of TV programmes I’d never heard of for Harry and Flora, that I thought might keep them quiet while Marsha did her relaxing thing. I’d bought a few of the inevitable boxes of chocs, and a couple of bottles of your bog standard smelly bath stuff, for the uncles, aunties and cousins I never saw anymore, but who still expected a present. I’d even bought my secret Santa gift for work, this year I’d got Ja
ck, and had got him a superman tee shirt I saw on sale that I thought he’d like as he’d just started going to the gym and was recently anyway driving us all mad by telling us how fit he was, and how all this working out he was doing was really beginning to pay off muscle wise.

  The only present I hadn’t got was the one for Rob. I couldn’t make up my mind what to get him. It had to be something nice, obviously, but on the other hand it couldn’t be too nice, or too expensive, I mean what would that say? It’d say I’m totally in love with you and hope this is going to last forever and ever, that’s what it would say. And although that wasn’t far from the truth it was the last thing I actually wanted to say, well not unless he said it first . . and he hadn’t . . so I couldn’t . . not even in the guise of a Christmas present. Course I didn’t know what he was going to get me. Maybe he’d get me something that said ‘I’m serious’ and then I’d feel bad that I hadn’t got him something equally ‘serious’. But maybe he’d only get me a friendly type pressy that said ‘ok you’re my girlfriend this year, so here’s your present’. God this was a minefield.

  In the end I got him a jumper, a real jumper and not a hoody zip up. It cost me a small fortune, well not that small actually, but it was really nice. I had to second guess his size but was fairly sure I’d got it right after wearing his borrowed ‘jumper’ that afternoon at the Willow Tree. And I was reasonably confident that it hit the right note in terms of ‘serious’ or not, I mean it was a real nice present, not too personal, not too expensive, not something you could keep forever like jewellery, just nice like ‘yeah I like you a lot’ and that’s all it said . . I hoped.

  32

  23rd December – Week 29 + 5 Days

  It was the last day at work before the Christmas break. Of course no one was working and hadn’t been working all day, it was enough that we’d all turned up. The Steadman brothers had only put in a brief appearance this morning before disappearing at about eleven o’clock, and the rest of us all confidently expected to be let out at around one as was customary on the last day before Christmas. I say ‘let out’ because that’s exactly what it felt like, somewhere between being let out of school at the end of term, and making a mass prison breakout.

  It had been a busy morning, what with listening to David Steadman’s little speech before he did the off, along the lines of how hard we’d all been working this year, and how it hadn’t gone un-noticed, and next year he confidently expected the sales figures and general growth of the company to be even better, and he hoped we’d all have a nice Christmas. Then Norman had his say about half an hour later which was almost a word for word reiteration of his brothers little homily. Then after they’d both left the building and we had the all clear from Clare, everyone could officially get on with the serious business of skiving, as opposed to the unofficial skiving we were all doing anyway under the guise of pretending to be working as if it were a normal day.

  There was a formal presentation for George of his gardening vouchers, and Grahame said his set piece when anyone was leaving that we’d all heard a million times before, course he tailored it a bit to suit George, and waffled on for a while longer than usual given that George had worked at Fishers for so many years and was retiring rather than leaving to work somewhere else, and we all clapped half heartedly, except for Doreen who was practically standing on her desk whooping for joy and had to be physically restrained by Jack. George didn’t say much, after years of making everyone’s life a misery if he could possibly manage it, today on his last day he looked almost contrite and sorry to be leaving. But it was too little and way too late, especially for Doreen.

  Then we did our annual secret Santa ritual of handing out all the gifts. Obviously pretty much everyone had already worked out who was buying for who, so it really wasn’t that much of a secret. Jack seemed to like his Superman tee shirt putting it on over the top of his shirt and tie and posing hands on hips like the man of steel, but Christopher Reeves he wasn’t, not even close. My not so secret Santa present from Jackie was a ‘Baby’s First Year’ book to record every minute detail of the baby’s life from first burp to first step. That would make a total of four of these things I had now. One from Mum, one from Dad, and one in the post from Aunty Phyllis that I hadn’t seen since my thirteenth birthday. If I used them all I could see I was going to be pretty busy, never mind the actual looking after Ella I’d have to do when she arrived, just filling in all these ‘First Year’ records was going to take up most of my time. But it was a nice thought of Jackie’s and of course I played along saying how much I liked it.

  We spent the last half an hour chit chatting with each other about what we would be getting up to over the break, most of us had booked a few holiday days so would be off for a whole week, while what we were actually doing was watching the clock and waiting for it to be one o’clock so we could all leave. George had opted for the meet him in the pub for a last drink get-together option, rather than having any sort of a formal do, so a few of us felt obliged to drop in at least, at the pub on the corner, even if we had no intention of staying for any meaningful length of time. And I couldn’t stay even if I’d wanted to as I’d already promised Shelley, Tricia, and a few of our gang that I’d meet them all at about two in Chicago’s. After a hastily consumed shandy, a hug from Doreen and another from Jack, and a polite best wishes for the future to George, I made my escape and drove to the other side of town to meet the girls, who as predicted had also finished work early.

  This last minute pre-Christmas get together was something of a tradition for us. Back in the day we would all meet on Christmas Eve for what we hoped and expected would be a legendary ripper of a night out, before having to be our more subdued selves with our families for the following couple of days. But in more recent years, what with wanting to spend Christmas Eve with whatever boyfriends of the time any of us might have, and for some of us anyway having to travel nowadays to be with our families over Christmas, the Christmas Eve ripper night out had transmogrified into an after the last day at work afternoon drink.

  Shelley and Tall Fran were already there when I arrived, and Chicago’s was so packed that there was nowhere to sit, so I almost didn’t find them at first. They were both full of Christmas spirit, literally as well as emotionally, and tall Fran immediately went to the bar on my arrival for another round including a non-alcoholic glass of white for me. I asked Shelley if everyone knew about Tricia and Daniel, I didn’t want to put my foot in it if Trish wasn’t telling anyone yet.

  ‘Oh yes everyone knows.’ Shelley said acerbically.

  ‘Why d’you say it like that?

  ‘Because even if she hadn’t phoned everyone last week I think they’d guess something was up today.’

  ‘Today? Why what’s happened?’

  ‘Well Daniel’s over there look, with his arm round some bimbo, might even be the bimbo Trish caught him with, or might be an entirely different bimbo, who knows. And Trish is over there.’ Shelley said looking in the opposite direction with an extreme look of disapproval on her face.

  I looked to where Shelley’s gaze had been directed and saw Tricia snogging the face off a guy I’d never seen before. ‘Who’s he?’ I asked.

  ‘No idea, and as far as I know Tricia has no idea either. He’s the third one just since we’ve been here, which is about an hour. She turned up only slightly worse for wear, evidently they’d been drinking at her work this morning with it being Christmas, and then when Daniel arrived with bimbo in tow, she downed her Smirnoff in one and grabbed the first bloke she saw, I mean literally, he never stood a chance poor guy.’

  ‘Oh that’s not good, and this is the third one you say? That’s definitely not good.’ I said completely transfixed by the sight of Tricia and whoever he was. ‘Why didn’t you stop her?’

  ‘Well in the first place I’m not her mother, she’s a grown woman and can make a fool of herself if that’s what she wants to do. And in the second place she wouldn’t listen to me and told me to push off,
well actually she said f*** off but we won’t split hairs eh.’

  ‘Oh God. I’m sure she didn’t mean it. She doesn’t know what she’s doing and she’s been drinking.’ I said. I could see Shelley was pretty miffed by the whole thing.

  ‘Yes I know that, otherwise I’d have told her exactly what she could do and where she could go, neither of which would have been very polite or ladylike.’

  ‘Do you think I ought to . . .’

  ‘You can try, but I don’t think she’ll listen. And the irony is Daniel, as far as I can tell, isn’t the least bit interested anyway.’

  I looked over to Daniel, who as Shelley had so rightly pointed out didn’t seem at all bothered and wasn’t even looking in Tricia’s direction.

  Tall Fran came back struggling to get through the crowd while carrying three drinks, and distributed them accordingly. Then Helen and Di arrived, to which Fran said I’m not fighting my way through that lot again, so Helen went to the bar for Di and herself.

  ‘I see Shelley’s bought you up to speed with the Tricia situation.’ Fran said to me catching my look of horror as I watched Tricia and partner.

  ‘Why what’s going on?’ Di asked. So Shelley, Fran, and I filled her in. ‘Well shouldn’t someone stop her?’ Di said when she had all the details.

  ‘Mm someone should.’ Shelley said still smarting from Tricia’s earlier dismissal at her attempt to stop her.

  Then short Fran arrived with drink in hand, obviously she’d detoured to the bar en route to join us, and the whole Tricia thing had to be explained again for her benefit, and no doubt would have to be explained a fourth time when Helen got back.