by Lucy Diamond
On the Tube, off the Tube, into the office, up in the private lift that only management were allowed to use. Another round of ball-breaking, hustling, schmoozing and million-pound transactions was about to begin. Bring it on.
Hugo Warrington’s office was on the floor above Polly’s. The floor of power. Up there, the carpet was so thick a war could break out and nobody below would notice a thing. Up there, the walls were wood-panelled, as if this was an exclusive members’ club – which frankly it was. Up there, Warrington’s team of PAs looked like they’d been mass-produced: chic, lithe women with perfect nails and the steely power that came from being gate-keepers to the fortress.
He’s expecting you,’ said the humourless redhead whose desk was outside Warrington’s office. ‘Go ahead. Can I get you a coffee, or … ?’
‘No, thank you,’ Polly replied, striding briskly past the clone. She was hoping she might be treated to something fizzy once she made it over the threshold. Rumour had it Hugo Warrington had a very well-stocked private fridge.
She knocked on the door and went inside. Warrington’s inner sanctum had an even more clubbish, intimate feel, with its dark green walls lined with bookshelves and tasteful ornaments, and his beast of a mahogany desk. A golf trophy gleamed ostentatiously behind his head, while a decanter full of ruby-coloured liquid and a collection of cut-glass tumblers sat a discreet distance to his left on a polished silver tray.
He was behind his desk, frowning at a computer screen, piggish eyes screwed up in a flabby face. At Polly’s entrance, he motioned her over. ‘Take a seat.’
‘Thank you,’ Polly said, tucking herself neatly into the black leather chair opposite his. He smelled of cigar smoke, pungent cologne and wealth.
‘Now, Polly, I know you’ve worked hard for us over the years,’ he began without preamble, scratching his jowls with stubby fingers. ‘You’ve built up a solid client base, you’ve shown commitment and professionalism, and you’ve certainly earned your place on the board.’
Polly felt the hairs on her arms stand on end as she listened to him. Oh my goodness. Praise from Hugo Warrington himself. Result! He was going to give her a massive bonus, she could almost smell it. Maybe even promotion. Get in!
‘However,’ he went on, and that single word was enough to banish her visions of showering banknotes and luxury treats. However? Had she heard that correctly? ‘We find ourselves in difficult times, as you know. The financial world has changed. Stability is at an all-time low, and businesses everywhere are looking to make cuts.’
There was a sudden tightness in Polly’s throat as the words sank into her brain. Ripples of alarm spread through her. Why was he saying this to her? What, exactly, was he building up to?
‘We at WFC have had to take a long, cold look at our figures, and unfortunately they aren’t as good as we’d like,’ he said neutrally. He might have been discussing the weather, or reading the shipping forecast, Polly thought, agitation needling inside her. ‘And so it is with regret that we have been forced to make a structural reorganization of the firm, which will unfortunately result in redundancies across the board.’
Redundancies. Shit. She hadn’t seen that one coming. Was he looking to get her view on suitable candidates perhaps, or … ?
‘I’m sorry to tell you, Polly, but your position is no longer viable here at the company,’ he said. ‘We’re letting you go.’
Chapter Two
Clare Berry was drowning. No matter how hard she kicked out against the water or how desperately she flailed with her arms, she kept being pulled below the surface, with the tantalizing shimmer of daylight remaining just out of reach above her head. Her lungs were bursting, her heart was pounding and black spots danced before her eyes, but she had to keep trying to push up to the surface and breathe …
Then she woke up in a damp sweat in bed, panting and gasping, her hands weakly scrabbling at thin air, a sob escaping her throat. God. That bloody dream again. How many times had she had it now?
She glanced at the clock. Quarter past five, still dark outside. She had to go back to sleep, must try to dream about something nice this time, something unthreatening and lovely, like fluffy kittens or roses blooming or … Yikes. She was turning into Julie Andrews, with her list of ‘favourite things’. Any minute now she’d start cutting up the curtains and stitching playsuits for the children, and then she’d officially be demented.
Punching the pillow into a more comfortable shape, Clare rolled over and shut her eyes, but sleep evaded her and the usual worries crowded in like vultures circling. Steve hadn’t sent her any maintenance money for the last two months – she was going to have to chase him up, and that was always so much aggro. Threatening red gas and electricity bills had slithered through the letterbox within the last few days and she still didn’t have a clue how she was going to pay them. It was Leila’s birthday tomorrow, and the bike Clare had been hoping to nab on eBay had gone to a higher bidder at the last frantic second. Alex had been in trouble at school again for fighting, and his teacher had said, all-too-patronizingly, that in her opinion it was because he didn’t have a ‘good male role model in the family home’. To top it all off, the dog had worms.
No wonder she kept dreaming she was drowning. There was no need to call in Dr Freud to analyse that. She was drowning – drowning in stress and guilt and useless-parent feelings. The roof of the cottage was leaking, slugs were annexing the vegetable plot and destroying her lettuces, and the chickens, Babs and Marjorie, had some horrible infection that was making their feathers float off in drifts, and their eyes yellow and gummy-looking. (Why on earth had she agreed to take the wretched birds off Jay Holmes in the first place? Because they were rescue battery hens, and because she was rubbish at saying no to anything, that was why.)
An outsider stumbling upon Clare’s life might see the cottage, the vegetable garden and the chickens and assume she was living in a rustic, rural paradise. From where Clare was sitting, though, it was about a million miles from The Good Life. The Crap Life Where Everything Goes Wrong was more appropriate. Any second now, the proverbial wolf would burst through the door, licking his lips and brandishing a knife and fork, chicken feathers billowing in his wake.
Clare groaned and pulled the duvet further up around her ears. It had been a tough twelve months, ever since Steve had, in true midlife-crisis style, announced that he was leaving her for a hairdresser called Denise who lived in Basingstoke. He’d met her on the Internet, apparently, and it had been love at first click. Well, good riddance to the idiot. She should never have married him in the first place.
Oh, it was no use. She was never going to be able to fall back to sleep now. She’d get up and make herself a cup of tea, Clare decided, and try to think positively about the good things in her life, instead of lying in bed fretting about those she had no control over. She wrapped herself in her dressing gown and padded downstairs.
Reasons to be cheerful … Okay. Well, she had two amazing children whom she absolutely adored and doted on. Her parents were both still fit and healthy and she got to see them all the time, as they lived down the road. The village itself – that was another reason to be grateful. She’d lived in Elderchurch her whole life and never wanted to leave. Why would she? It was picture-postcard perfect, with its sweet tumbledown cottages made of red Hampshire brick, the best pub in the world and all her friends. Friends: yet another reason to count her blessings. Whatever happened, she had Debbie and the girls on her side, always had, always would have. And she had a job! Working as a receptionist in the doctor’s surgery might not be the most brain-boggling career choice in the world, but it fitted in with school hours, her colleagues were (mostly) lovely, and at least every day was different.
So what if she hadn’t got the bike Leila had wanted on eBay? She’d spent ages the night before making a chocolate-fudge birthday cake (Leila’s favourite), and her dad had said he’d seen a second-hand bike advertised in the paper the other day. That might do instead. It would be al
l right.
She poured boiling water into the teapot, feeling slightly better. Children, parents, friends, home, a job … Okay, so she might be feeling temporarily downtrodden, but all the big things were there in place, the things that mattered. Bills, a lying ex, disease-ridden pets, trigger-happy eBay rivals … they were minor irritants in the grand scheme of things. ‘We’re doing okay really, aren’t we?’ she said to Fred, their soppy old mongrel, who was curled up on his blanket in the corner. He thumped his tail sleepily as if agreeing. ‘It could be a lot worse.’
It was then that she noticed the trail of brown crumbs on the slate floor, and the cake tin lying under the table with its lid off. ‘Oh, Fred,’ she said, hurrying over in dismay. ‘Fred, you didn’t eat the cake, did you?’
Fred’s ears flattened at the change in her tone of voice and he hunched lower in his bed. Clare didn’t know whether to shout in rage or burst into tears when she saw that he’d somehow nosed the lid off the tin and scoffed the entire contents. ’Oh, great. Just great!’
Tears pricked her eyes. ‘I should give you away to the dogs’ home, you worm-ridden fleabag,’ she fumed, hands on her hips, utterly despairing. ‘So much for man’s best friend,’ she wailed. ‘I thought you were meant to be on my side?’
Fred whined, his eyes liquid and mournful. Then his guts gave an alarming-sounding gurgle … and the next moment, before she could react, he’d thrown up everywhere: foul-smelling chocolate-brown puke that splashed over Clare’s feet.
It was clearly going to be one of those days. Again.
Two hours later and the house had swung into its usual morning routine. Ten-tomorrow Leila sat bleary-eyed at the breakfast table, absent-mindedly spooning cereal into her mouth. Her body was definitely there in the kitchen, but her mind was still back in bed, caught in a dream. She always appeared wild and dishevelled first thing, her blonde hair a crazed tangle that looked as if she’d spent the night frenziedly backcombing it.
Meanwhile, Alex, aged eight, had decided he no longer liked any kind of cereal that they had and was turning up his nose at the granary toast, because of the dreaded ‘bits’ that freckled it. ‘Can I have pasta instead?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Clare snapped, feeling every minute of her too-early start. Why hadn’t she tried harder to doze off again? She was going to be grouchy and baggy-eyed all day now. ‘Toast or cereal, what’s it going to be?’
‘What about if I cook it myself?’
‘No, Alex, I said no. Toast or cereal?’
‘I don’t WANT toast OR cereal. I said I want PASTA!’ He kicked petulantly at the table leg and scowled at her, his brown eyes blazing beneath his shock of dark hair. God, he looked just like his dad when he sulked.
‘I am listening to you,’ Clare said patiently. ‘I know you want pasta, and I heard you say you didn’t want toast or cereal. But toast and cereal are what we’ve got for breakfast. That’s what we always have for breakfast. So which is it going to be?’
‘Pasta,’ he said, looking her straight in the eye. ‘That’s what it’s going to be.’
Paging Mary Poppins … paging Mary Poppins … a voice trilled in Clare’s head. If only. She glanced out of the window in the vain hope that the smartly dressed nanny was floating down with her umbrella, spit-spot. She wasn’t. The only thing coming down from the sky was the sheeting rain. Wonderful.
She took a deep breath and tried not to think about what Steve and Denise might be doing right now, in their mock-Tudor house with the flouncy peach curtains. They didn’t have kids (yet) so were probably still asleep, cuddled up together, her in some hideous nylon camisole, him in his M&S boxers, one hairy leg pushed manfully over her. He was very hairy, Steve: chest, back, legs – privately it had always rather repulsed Clare. She wondered how Denise felt about the issue. Maybe she’d taken one of the salon’s waxing sets home with her to strip him of his fur, to render him a plucked chicken instead?
Ugh. She wished she hadn’t just thought of that. Now she had the image of her ex-husband, naked and pimply, and …
Blinking the ghastly image away, she realized Alex was staring defiantly at her, still waiting for her to respond. She half-expected a klaxon to sound, signalling that the daily Battle of Breakfast had now reached stand-off stage.
‘Well, you’ll just have to go hungry then,’ she snapped. She couldn’t be bothered today. Just could not be arsed to go through the whole rigmarole for the seven-hundredth time. Let him go to school with an empty stomach for once, it wouldn’t kill him. It might even make him think twice about these ridiculous breakfast demands next time. ‘Leila, can you eat that a bit quicker, love? It’s nearly eight o’clock.’ Once again her daughter had managed to drag out a single bowl of Shreddies for almost thirty minutes. That had to be some kind of art form, surely? She’d end up as an installation in the Tate if she didn’t watch out.
‘I’m going to have a shower,’ Clare mumbled, pulling her dressing gown around her and heading upstairs. As she went, she heard Alex’s grudging reply – ‘Oh, OKAY THEN, I’ll have cornflakes. If I HAVE to’ – and smiled to herself. One day she’d laugh about this with him. If they were still on speaking terms, that was.
The surgery was busy that morning. There were two different bugs currently doing the rounds, and the patients in the waiting room were either clutching their stomachs and looking peaky or hacking up their throat linings in a revolting cacophony of coughing. ‘Morning,’ Clare said, sitting down at her desk and switching on the PC.
‘Morning,’ said Roxie, her colleague, who was twenty-two. She had peroxide-blonde pigtails and wore a salmon-pink, chiffon, cap-sleeved blouse with an enormous bow at the neck and a short peacock-blue skirt covered in mismatched buttons. Roxie had studied fashion at college and was now saving up to go travelling with some mates. She was economizing by making her own clothes, bleaching her hair with Domestos and using the surgery broadband for her extensive Internet and phone needs. ‘You all right?’
Clare paused for a split-second as she debated going into a full-scale moan about the dog’s vomming episode, but then clocked the chocolate-chip muffin that Roxie had brought in for breakfast and decided it was kinder not to. ‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘You?’
‘Hungover and knackered, and a bit tender in the old nethers, if you know what I mean.’ Roxie winked. ‘Richard insisted on it three times last night. Him on top, me on top, then doggy-style. He could not get enough of me, I’m telling you. Yes, can I help you?’
Clare was always deeply impressed by how Roxie managed to segue so smoothly from spilling saucy sexual exploits into being Miss Butter-Wouldn’t-Melt for the patients. An elderly gentleman was at the counter, his eyes rheumy behind thick glasses, and his liver-spotted fingers trembling as he unwound his scarf.
‘Benson,’ he said. ‘Nine-thirty for Dr Aardvark.’
Roxie’s lips fluttered as if she wanted to giggle and she pinched them quickly together. Clare took over. ‘Mr Benson for Dr Arkwright, yes, okay, take a seat.’
He shuffled away and sat on a blue plastic chair, then sneezed into a voluminous white handkerchief.
‘Go on,’ Clare urged. ‘You were telling me about Richard. Which Richard is this?’
‘Oh, you know, the fit one who used to be in Spooks,’ Roxie replied. ‘He was a right dirty bugger. Very athletic. I was squealing like a pig within five minutes. The neighbours started banging on the wall after a while to shut me up.’
‘Ahh,’ Clare said, putting the kettle on. ‘Sounds good. Did you see Corrie, by the way?’
‘Yeah,’ Roxie admitted. ‘And Masterchef. Then I went to bed with the new Jilly Cooper. God, real life is boring sometimes.’
‘Isn’t it just,’ Clare agreed. ‘Cuppa?’
‘Cheers.’
The surgery where Clare and Roxie worked was in the small town of Amberley, a few miles from Elderchurch. There were five doctors and two practice nurses, and various clinics operated within the centre as well. Tuesday – today – meant t
he baby clinic, and the one day a week that Clare worked right through until six o’clock. Clare’s mum would pick up Leila and Alex from school on Tuesday afternoons and spoil them rotten for three hours. It was an arrangement that everyone was happy with.
‘Morning, ladies,’ came a voice just as the phone rang.
‘Good morning, Amberley Medical Centre, how can I help you?’ Clare said, picking it up and blushing as Luke Brightside strolled into reception.
‘Morning, Luke,’ Roxie cooed, batting her eyelashes at him. ‘Looking very handsome there today, if I may say so.’
‘Looking very … colourful yourself there, Roxanne,’ he bantered in return, rolling his eyes comically at Clare as he walked by, a sports bag slung over one shoulder. She felt herself light up inside at his smile. For all Roxie’s cheeky flirting, he was looking handsome. He always looked handsome. Luke was one of the GPs and he was lovely. He had such a kind face, such understanding, interested eyes and such a deep, sexy voice, she could see why he always had so many female patients flocking to see him. It was enough to make Clare fake an illness herself, the thought of Dr Brightside’s tender bedside manner being lavished on her. In fact, she was getting a hot flush just imagining it …
‘Hello? Are you there?’ came a petulant voice down the line, and Clare jerked back to the real world.
‘Sorry, yes, I’m here,’ she replied hastily. ‘Did you say you wanted an appointment? Let me see when we can fit you in.’
Debbie called mid-morning when she knew Clare would be on her break. Debbie had been Clare’s best friend since they were both five years old and had met on their first day at Elderchurch primary school. She still lived in the village too, with her husband Will, four kids, a horse and two dogs. If Clare’s life was the rural idyll gone wrong, Debbie’s was the real McCoy, with the Aga and the Labradors and full acceptance from the horsey crowd, not to mention the successful husband and happy children. It hadn’t always been so easy for Debbie, though – she’d had her first daughter, Lydia, when she was only sixteen, and had been chucked out of school. Then her boyfriend had done a bunk and joined the army, and Debbie had been left high and dry. Things had turned around for her, thank goodness, ever since she’d met Will, although she never took any of it for granted.