‘I ain’t eaten nuttin. I can’t understand it! Them scales is wrong, sister. Plain wrong!’
Yes I know the feeling, Chanisse. My scales are always wrong too.
‘Or the red check shirt. No, it’s a bit …’ Helena said.
‘Too casual?’
‘Exactly.’
I took another bite of pizza and watched the woman on television argue with the size zero nutritionist about what constituted a healthy breakfast.
‘What about a plain white T-shirt?’ I suggested.
‘I’d spill something on it within five minutes. I’m going to be so nervous,’ Helena said. ‘I’ll go and look again.’
She rang off and I carried on flicking through the channels, got mildly absorbed in a house renovation project where an eco-obsessed couple wrangled over how ecologically friendly their taps and floor coverings were but failed to notice their grubby child was drinking E numbers out of the can just behind them.
I returned to the American diet show in time to see the tearful reveal. The star of the show had been hauled into a corset so her bosom was propelled up around her ears like a life jacket and was wearing purple lamé and platform shoes like trotters and she came into the room to whoops and cheers.
‘Hey, you is beautiful girl! Hey, Momma, you is hot!’
She cried, her family cried, I nearly cried. Perhaps that was the sort of exciting adventure I should go on? A month at a boot camp followed by some more supportive underwear? Perhaps just the underwear, after all it’s many a long year since I bought any and I’m absolutely sure I’m one of the ninety per cent of women wearing the wrong size.
I did another trawl of the cupboards and with a whoop of my own found the remains of a half-bottle of brandy I had bought to add to my Christmas pudding.
I returned to the sofa with a hefty measure in a glass and continued my search for entertainment. I found a programme where women from some sort of religious commune who had never had their hair cut went to the hairdresser. You wouldn’t think this would be such a cause for drama, but the tears were flowing as their Rapunzel-like tresses fell to the floor.
‘I feel like I’m reborn. I’m light as air.’
I was just wondering if I too should consider a pixie crop and blue streaks when the phone rang. Yet again it was Helena.
‘It’s me. I’m going to wear trousers, the dark grey ones, and the top I got in the Joules sale. The pale grey one with silver stars.’
‘Yes, it would look fantastic.’
‘Really? Do you think so?’
‘I do. He’ll be thrilled. And so he should be.’
‘Or I could wear the black roll neck?’
‘No, stick with the other one.’
‘OK. I don’t want to look dull though.’
‘Helena, you won’t look dull. You’ll look gorgeous.’
‘I look so young! Ain’t no one gonna tell me I can’t praise the Lord with short hair. I can’t believe that’s me!’
‘Right, so you’re sorted?’ I said.
‘Yes. Definitely,’ Helena said sounding rather uncertain.
‘Good.’
‘What are you watching? I keep hearing cheering in the background.’
‘I’m drinking cooking brandy and watching an ex-nun having her hair cut.’
‘Very funny!’
‘No I mean it – you wouldn’t believe it.’
‘You’re bored aren’t you?’
‘Very,’ I agreed with a sigh.
‘Are you missing Oliver?’
I did a double take.
‘What? Oliver? No! Yes! No! Why should I be missing him?’ I said, startled by the suggestion. ‘And why would he look twice at someone like me anyway?’
‘Because you’re lovely? I just thought there was something. You know. A bit of a connection. He was patronizing. You were sarcastic. Seems like a good start?’
‘Rubbish! You saw Pippa: size six, blonde, and swishy. That’s the sort of stick he goes for. Not ordinary-sized women like me. Honestly just because you’re loved-up doesn’t mean we all are. I’m enjoying being single actually. No, I absolutely love it.’
‘OK, Billie, if you say so.’
I could hear the giggle in Helena’s voice.
‘I’m going now,’ I said with as much dignity as I could muster. ‘I have an important programme about cats climbing up people’s curtains to watch.’
I cut off the sound of her laughing at me and turned the TV back up.
I was glad for her, really I was. Helena is lovely: bright, kind, and pretty. Nick would be lucky to get her. She deserved someone who would be devoted to her and he seemed the sort. Slightly old-fashioned, thoughtful, and sensitive without being too wet.
While Nick didn’t make the sun shine for me, I had to admit I was rather wistful watching their blossoming romance. I hoped it was going to work out for them. I hadn’t been a bridesmaid since I was eleven; I quite fancied being one again, especially if I could have a nice outfit.
With that in mind I skipped through a few channels looking for one where bridesmaids choose their dresses and joined one where the chief bridesmaid was in the middle of an epic meltdown and had just slung her complimentary champagne over the bride.
A programme showing puppies in the snow followed this and by the time it finished I was well sozzled and had to go to bed.
*
The following day I woke just after ten-thirty with a headache and serve me right really. There was still no food in the house and it was still raining. Out in the garden next door’s cat was hunched up under the garden bench looking bad tempered.
I dressed, went out into the cold feeling rather martyred, fed next door’s cat with another of its tins of foul-smelling plap, and then walked round to Polly’s corner shop where I stocked up.
‘Morning, Billie! What a day eh? Nice weather for ducks, isn’t that what they used to say?’ Polly said.
I filled my basket with some eggs, bacon, bread, milk, and cheese and went to pay. Then I grabbed a huge bar of nut chocolate that had been reduced in price and hid it under the bread.
Polly started ringing up my things.
‘Awful about the shops isn’t it?’
I tried to focus through my hangover. ‘What shops?’
‘The shops at the end of the high street. You work in one don’t you? The bookshop?’
‘Yes.’ I was confused. ‘Why, what’s happened?’
Polly looked at me as though I was simple.
‘The floods? The river? The lower high street is under water, has been since Thursday morning. Going to be a heck of a clear-up. It was on the local news. Some girl turned up with a camera crew and a microphone to talk to the local peasants. Got very stroppy when everyone ignored her. Colin Pearce drove his tractor through, swamped her fancy boots. Funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.’
‘I’ve been away,’ I stuttered. ‘I didn’t know. I was due back to work this afternoon.’
Polly pulled a face. ‘Well there’s no chance of that, I can tell you! The water’s up over the windowsills at the butcher’s shop. The council came along with some sandbags, but it didn’t do no good.’
Oh bloody hell. Surely Uncle Peter would have told me? Ah. Wait a minute. He only ever phoned on the house number. I hadn’t checked for messages there.
I raced back and dumped my shopping in the kitchen and then after a long and irritating search I found the house phone under a pile of laundry. Yes, there were four messages. The ground-floor shop was flooded. He and Godfrey had managed to move most of the stock upstairs to the storeroom, but it was going to be some weeks until the shop would be open. Well it was certainly a surprise associated with water, but it wasn’t exactly wonderful. That would teach me to try and cherry-pick my astrological sign.
Chapter Twelve
I put my shopping away, found some wellingtons, and went to see if there was anything I could do to help at the bookshop. I found Uncle Peter standing in the middle of the shop in a pa
ir of rather dramatic fisherman’s waders, looking absolutely devastated.
‘Oh hello,’ he said trying to smile. ‘You’re back. Did it go well?’
I sloshed through the water to give him a hug. ‘This is awful. What can I do?’
He pulled a glum expression. ‘Well thanks, pet, but nothing really. Godfrey’s upstairs in the sitting room stacking the hardbacks we managed to rescue and making space for the stuff off the shelves. The insurance people are coming round later. I would ask you to put the kettle on but there’s no electric.’
‘Leave it to me,’ I said and sprinted off up the street.
Well, sprinted as fast as a woman in her ex-boyfriend’s wellingtons can sprint. Which isn’t terribly fast. Still I was back in ten minutes with a cardboard tray and two lattes and a camomile tea from the coffee shop at the top of town, plus three overinflated lemon and poppy seed muffins. I waded into the shop and put the tray down on a beautiful table that used to hold bestsellers and was now water stained and empty except for a thin film of mud across the top.
Uncle Peter’s face lit up when he saw the muffins. They always were his favourite.
‘Ah, a good deed in a naughty world,’ he said, patting me on my arm.
He went to yell for Godfrey who was still upstairs in their flat thumping about, and then came and took his tea.
‘So how was the retreat? Good fun?’
‘It went well,’ I said.
None of my silly stories seemed to matter now: the gripes I had about Oliver Forest; the wonderful progress Helena had made with her book; what I had done, the funny incidents that always came out of these things; the other people there. None of it was important compared with the sad sight of my uncle standing in the shop he loved, in waders, knee-deep in muddy water.
‘We had a celebrity actually,’ I said, hoping to cheer him up. ‘Oliver Forest turned up out of the blue.’
‘Oliver Forest?’
‘Better known as Ross Black. The Dirty Road, The Fool in Charge?’
‘Well I’ll be damned! Really? Goodness me that’s a bit of a coup isn’t it? We’re expecting his new paperback in soon. Glory 17. What was he like? Godfrey, come down here, listen to this. Billie’s brought you some coffee!’
Godfrey, normally dapper in tweed trousers, one of his many signature waistcoats, and a crisply ironed shirt came downstairs wearing a pair of baggy old moleskin trousers and a moth-eaten jumper.
‘Buns!’ he said cheerfully when he saw the muffins. ‘You’re a good girl, Billie, my favourite by a country mile! Now what’s all the shouting about?’
‘Oliver Forest, better known as Ross Black, came to her last retreat.’
Godfrey, a mouthful of muffin hampering coherent speech, raised his wiry eyebrows to signify his astonishment.
‘Go on, what was he like?’ Uncle Peter said.
‘Oh he was alright, a bit of a diva or should it be divo? He had come off his motorbike and had one foot in a boot thing. I think his PA just dumped him on us. He was nice enough in the end once he lightened up and realized he wasn’t the centre of the universe, but he was certainly hard work.’
Godfrey nodded his grey head wisely. ‘Celebrity does that to people. They start out perfectly normal and before you know it they’re asking for all the red Smarties to be taken out of the bowl and only drinking coffee after it’s passed through the guts of a civet cat.’
Uncle Peter finished his muffin and folded the paper up neatly before looking around for a wastepaper bin, and then shrugging and dropping it into the floodwater lapping around his boots.
‘Has Mum been round?’ I asked.
Peter gave me a look. ‘No she’s still not forgiven me. I know I should have remembered her birthday and I know she didn’t think much of the present, but I would have thought a book about Cheeses of the World would have been interesting?’
‘Obviously not. So what happens with the shop?’ I asked.
Godfrey sipped his coffee. ‘Well I suppose we dry the place out, wash off the mud, hope against hope it is indeed mud and not … you know. Put in an insurance claim, get the builders in. Die waiting for anything to be done. Same old, same old. I mean, look at this place: all the shelving is defunct, the walls will probably need replastering and then redecorating. By the time all that has been done and we’re back in business everyone will have forgotten us. The death of another independent bookseller. It’s not the end of the world but – well it’s a damn shame.’
He stopped at this point, obviously a bit choked. He pulled out a paisley patterned handkerchief and harrumphed and coughed for a bit and Uncle Peter slapped him on the shoulder.
‘Come on now, Godders old chap. Brave soldiers. No need for that. Ladies present,’ he muttered. ‘And there’s plenty of room upstairs to store things; that’s one blessing. And if we needed to, we could always open up the barn at the back and put the furniture there while we dry out.’
‘But there’s never been a flood before has there?’ I said. ‘Why now? And why so quickly?’
‘Well it’s been very dry for weeks hasn’t it? The driest autumn and winter on record or something, and then suddenly torrential rain for a week. The water couldn’t soak away fast enough. Well I think that’s the gist of what the firemen said. Lucky the school wasn’t flooded too I suppose. The school playing fields are unusable, so at least the little beasts won’t be out there playing football and swearing at each other like they usually do. So there’s another blessing,’ Uncle Peter said.
Godfrey finished blowing his nose and looked at me. ‘Sorry, Billie. You know we both love you working here but there won’t be much going on here for weeks as far as I can tell. Have you got any more retreats booked?’
‘Not until June and that’s just a weekend. But gosh, don’t worry! You have far more to concern you than my part-time job and me! I’ll find something else! I could get a job in the supermarket I expect. I could even spend all my time writing and get a three-book deal by the summer!’
Forgetting I had just about decided to give up writing, I pictured myself for a moment, wrapped in a duvet, eating out-of-date microwaved meals and burning old manuscripts to keep warm as I typed frantically on my laptop.
‘As soon as we hear something …’ Uncle Peter said.
‘Yes, yes of course. Don’t worry, really,’ I said.
‘I still want you to have your annual bonus,’ he said. ‘It’s due next month.’
‘There’s no need. Honestly.’
‘I insist. I’ll pop it through the door when I’m passing your place.’
‘You’re a sweetheart. Anyway, I’d better go. If I’m going to be job hunting …’
‘I’m going to sort out the history and self-help books. Thanks for the coffee and the muffins. You go and write!’ Uncle Peter cried dramatically, flinging one arm out as he prepared to go back upstairs to the storeroom.
‘Perhaps I will,’ I said.
I went back home and made myself a bacon sandwich. I would have to go out and restock properly later on, maybe drive over to the next town where there was a supermarket. I preferred to use the local shops when I could, but this was different. I needed to economize, spend carefully, and budget.
Some of my least favourite words.
*
Peter Moorhouse Books was suffering from the dodgy economy and so was I. All the vacancies at Superfine Superstores had been snapped up and there didn’t seem to be many other jobs going for which I was qualified. I thought back over my eclectic employment career and felt a bit depressed. I’d had so many jobs and not really been any good at any of them. I wasn’t stupid or lazy or stroppy. How had I got to this age and not known where I was going with my life? That was a bit pathetic, wasn’t it?
Luckily, I live in one of the cutest and prettiest Cotswold towns just north of Cheltenham and up to this point there were plenty of jobs available. I’d worked in a café, an estate agent’s, and a dental practice before Uncle Peter offered me a job. I have the horri
ble suspicion that Mum ordered her brother to take me on when I was sacked from the estate agent’s, but nothing was actually said. How shaming is that? To be nearly thirty and still have your mum organizing your employment.
I went over to Helena’s flat the following evening so I could paint her nails. She didn’t trust herself to do them without juddering with nerves and painting her knuckles as well. She’d bought some wine too, which was very welcome.
I bent to the task, applying the second coat of the third colour she had bought. I’m pretty sure she was decided on Russian Star, a sort of silvery lilac colour; it would tone in well with her outfit. I think we were both a bit giddy with the fumes by that point.
‘But what are you going to do for money?’ she said, lifting her wine glass with stiff fingers so she didn’t smudge her nail varnish.
‘I’m fine for the moment. Uncle Peter says he still wants to give me my annual bonus; I have some savings. I’ll start shopping at Superfine on Sunday afternoon when all the ready meals get marked down and I can fight with all the other bargain hunters for the lasagne. Perhaps I’ll become a vegetarian, or maybe I’ll take up pole dancing?’
I laughed. I sounded a lot more confident than I felt. We had a couple of writing retreats booked for later in the year, but they wouldn’t keep the wolf from the door. I needed a job and I needed one fast. And my financial situation was far from fine. There was a water bill due in at the end of the month and my water bills were – without fail – heart-stopping. Perhaps I should cut down on washing? Or only shower once a week?
We discussed what I could do (various things including cooking, washing up, bed making) and what I was actually qualified to do (not much actually). OK I had an English degree, but no teaching qualification. I did think about it for a few minutes once, but never did anything about it. And now you can’t clip kids for being rude I don’t think I would be suitable anyway.
‘You’re hard working and funny and cheerful,’ Helena said encouragingly.
‘So is a circus clown but I don’t want to be one,’ I replied.
‘Well you can cook. You make the best beef wellington ever. Any jobs at the school?’
A Year of New Adventures Page 10