The Woman Who Knew Everything

by Debbie Viggiano

  ‘Leave my friends out of it, Chrissie. I don’t know why you get so worked up about them. They’re nice enough.’

  Chrissie snorted. The memory of Mick’s hand on her breast was still fresh. ‘Odd friends you keep. I reckon if you groped one of their wives you’d get a smack in the mouth for your efforts.’

  Andrew rolled his eyes and pushed past her to the toilet. ‘You shouldn’t make up stuff like that,’ he said, over the sound of relieving himself. ‘It’s bang out of order.’

  ‘Andrew, I think it’s about time we had a frank chat.’

  ‘Don’t you mean “nag”? He shook his privates before tucking everything away. He was about to move past Chrissie, when she blocked his exit.

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but you told me you weren’t aged two.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘As you’re not two years old and can easily reach the flush on the toilet, how about you go back and pull the chain?’

  ‘Oh for–’

  ‘And wash your hands afterwards.’

  ‘What are you? My mum?’

  ‘Sometimes I feel like it,’ Chrissie snapped. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘If it’s not any trouble,’ said Andrew sarcastically. ‘Toast would be nice, too.’

  Back in the kitchen, Chrissie put away her cleaning bucket and washed her hands again. They were cracked and sore in places. Even though the maisonette was as shiny as a new pin, she still felt it was dirty. She wanted to get out of this place. It was definitely time to move. She placed popped two slices of bread into the toaster. As an afterthought she added another for herself, even though she wasn’t really hungry. There was too much anger festering away in her stomach to allow much food in there right now.

  Andrew pulled out a chair and flopped down at the ancient Formica table. He rubbed the heels of his hands over his face a few times, and then regarded Chrissie with bloodshot eyes. ‘I think I have a hangover.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chrissie acidly, ‘and I expect your mates have one too.’ The toast popped up and she busied herself with the spreading of cheap margarine.

  ‘Any chance of a couple of eggs? Think I need something to mop up the alcohol.’

  Reaching inside a cupboard for the frying pan, Chrissie’s mouth set in a thin line. She needed to stop doing that with her lips. It was becoming a habit. If she wasn’t careful her facial muscles would end up permanently set in that expression, so she looked like a twenty-seven-going-on-sixty-seven-year-old battle-axe. She spoke over her shoulder to Andrew as she poured oil into the pan and cracked the eggs.

  ‘Today I would like us to spend some quality time together.’

  ‘Doing what?’ Andrew sounded horrified. ‘I have business to do.’

  ‘What business?’

  ‘Just…business.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Chrissie, flipping the eggs, ‘you mean dodgy business.’

  ‘So?’ Andrew’s voice was surly. ‘What does it matter to you? I’m trying to make a few extra quid.’

  Chrissie scooped the eggs out of the pan and set them on the almost-cold toast. ‘I don’t want you doing anything illegal.’

  ‘It’s not illegal.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘You’re splitting hairs. On this estate, it goes on all the time. The police are always parked down the road. They see everything and don’t even bat an eyelid. As long as Mick bungs them a few notes, they’re as good as gold. They appreciate that people like us need to make a living.’

  Chrissie could feel herself getting frustrated. ‘What exactly are “people like us”? And are you lumping me into that category? Because you can think again. I’ll have nothing to do with dubious drug deals, Andrew. Nor do I want you having anything to do with these people either. You’ve got a job, for heaven’s sake.’ She sat down on the chair opposite and bit into her toast.

  ‘Yeah, but my job doesn’t pay enough.’

  ‘Well if you binned those shady mates, your job would more than pay enough. You’d save a fortune not buying a pub’s worth of booze every week, not forgetting,’ she felt her lip shift from thin line to sneer, ‘your mates’ luxuries.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Andrew sighed.

  ‘You’re right, I don’t.’

  ‘Don’t emasculate me, Chrissie. I can’t live here and not join in. We’d end up being targeted. Is that what you want? A brick through the window?’

  ‘Don’t you think you’re being a bit of a drama queen?’

  Andrew’s face darkened. ‘No. You have no idea what these guys are like. It’s good to keep on the right side of them.’

  ‘Then the sooner we move from this place, the better.’

  ‘We can’t. Not yet. Apart from anything else I…er…owe them a bit of money.’

  Chrissie’s jaw stopped rotating. ‘What for?’

  ‘Just…well…nothing major. A couple of card games. It was a bit of fun.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Well, all right, it was a lot of fun.’

  ‘I mean,’ said Chrissie, her voice dangerously quiet, ‘how much money do you owe?’

  ‘Oh. Ah…give or take a tenner…about two thousand pounds.’

  ‘Two thous–’ Chrissie nearly choked on the remainder of her toast.

  ‘Yeah. So it’s important I do a few deals for them until I’m square.’

  ‘You mean drug deals?’

  Andrew pushed a loaded fork into his mouth so he didn’t have to answer. Chrissie glared at him. What on earth was she doing with this man? He was rapidly turning into the biggest loser she’d ever met. Where was the sweet young lad she’d first met? It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  ‘Andrew,’ she cleared her throat, ‘I don’t want to know about your dodgy deals. Just promise me you’re going to stop.’ Andrew ignored her and carried on eating. ‘I can’t live with someone who is behaving not just criminally, but immorally.’

  Andrew finished chewing and swallowed. He regarded her coolly. ‘Perhaps it’s best you don’t live with me then.’ Chrissie was so shocked, for a moment she couldn’t speak. She stared at Andrew incredulously as he put his knife and fork together. Scraping back the chair, he reached for the jacket hanging off the back.

  ‘W-where are you going?’ Chrissie stuttered.

  ‘I’ve already told you. I have things to do.’

  Chrissie’s eyes filled with tears. She was over-tired, overwrought and hacked off. ‘What about us, Andrew?’

  Andrew regarded her for a moment. When he spoke, the words were careless. ‘What about us?’

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Monday morning rolled around, it was three very subdued young women who drooped through the old-fashioned doors of Hood, Mann & Derek.

  Amber’s hangover had lasted the entirety of Sunday. Although she was now headache-free, it had taken its toll on her. Under her eyes she had enormous grey circles, and her complexion was the colour of putty. She’d cried herself to sleep on Sunday night. This morning, her mouth was cast down like an upside-down crescent moon.

  Dee’s eyes were puffy and bloodshot from yesterday’s sob fest. This morning they resembled two mini-doughnuts with jam-ring centres. She’d been astonished how much water could flow from tear ducts. She still had a pressure headache from bawling. Emotionally, Dee was feeling more fragile than her granny’s prized porcelain teapot.

  Chrissie was so pale she looked like a ghost with joke Halloween red eyes. To the casual onlooker, Chrissie was physically sitting at her office desk. However, her inner essence was a universe away. She looked like somebody in deep shock.

  Amber was the first to speak. ‘Well, girls. You both look how I feel. And I suspect I look how you both feel.’

  ‘Words like “dog” and “pooh” come to mind,’ Dee muttered.

  ‘Chrissie?’ asked Amber. ‘What about you? Hello? Earth to Chrissie!’

  ‘Hmmm?’ Chrissie regarded Amber vacantly.

  ‘Oh for goodness sake,’ Amber huffed. ‘Look a
t the state of us. We’re like chuffing zombies. How can three men reduce us to this? I’m going to put the kettle on and make some strong coffee, and then we’re going to tell each other exactly what happened yesterday.’

  ‘Morning, girls,’ said Steve Hood, sweeping through the open plan office en-route to his own.

  ‘Morning,’ Dee and Amber replied. Chrissie didn’t answer. Instead she continued staring blankly at her monitor, which she had yet to switch on.

  ‘If you’re off to the kitchen, Amber,’ said Steve, ‘I’ll have a coffee, please. And then if you could pop into my office, I need to go over some urgent files with you.’ Steve gave a mischievous grin to Chrissie and Dee. ‘Sorry, ladies, but your big chat about putting the world to rights with Amber will have to wait a bit.’ He disappeared into his office leaving Dee with eyes threatening to brim over. Chrissie remained gazing into space.

  Five minutes later, Amber returned with a tray of steaming drinks. She set a mug down first on Dee’s desk, and then put the tray down on her own desk before walking over to Chrissie. ‘Come on, sweetie,’ she murmured, and flicked on Chrissie’s monitor. ‘Get that coat off and get typing.’ Chrissie’s boss had obviously been in bright and early. There was a stack of files on her desk with three cassettes of dictation waiting. Unlike the big law firms in London, Hood Mann & Derek had yet to up their game and switch to digital dictation. ‘Let’s buck up. On top of everything else, the last thing we need is getting fired. Let me take this into Steve, and then I’ll give you a hand with those tapes.’

  But when Amber walked into Steve’s office with their coffees and her notebook, she realised it might be some time before she could help Chrissie out with her typing. Steve’s briefcase was open on the long console table that ran along one wall, and his desk was already strewn with papers and files.

  ‘Ah, coffee.’ He flashed a grateful smile, then did a double take at Amber’s face. ‘Wow. Heavy weekend?’

  ‘Cheers,’ Amber sighed. ‘I guess that’s your diplomatic way of letting me know I look rough.’

  ‘As a badger’s bum,’ said Steve, although his eyes were twinkling.

  Amber looked at her boss. He was giving off the inner glow of someone who’d run a couple of miles before work, breakfasted on organic muesli, and then showered in mountain water. ‘I’d rather talk about your weekend,’ she replied, deflecting Steve’s question.

  ‘It was great, thanks,’ Steve’s smile widened. ‘I took myself over to Trosley Country Park, and had a great hike with my mate.’

  Ah, yes, thought Amber. Spending the weekend, as usual, with his mate. ‘You’re very secretive about your mate,’ said Amber, taking a noisy slurp of coffee.

  ‘Do you think?’ asked Steve impishly. ‘In what way?’

  ‘In all the time I’ve worked for you, you’ve never even mentioned his name.’

  ‘Who says my mate is a “him”?’

  Amber arched one eyebrow. ‘Is your mate a “her” then?’

  ‘No,’ Steve grinned.

  ‘So why don’t you ever mention his name?’

  ‘He’s shy.’

  ‘You know, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Not in this day and age. Anything goes.’

  ‘Well thanks for reminding me,’ said Steve. ‘I’ll be sure to tell him.’

  ‘Ah, I see. He doesn’t want you discussing him with me.’

  ‘He’s never actually said that.’

  ‘Oh.’ Amber frowned, and took another sip of coffee. ‘So, it’s you who would rather not discuss him with me.’

  ‘My goodness, Amber, you have to get up early in the morning to get one past you, eh!’

  Amber sniffed. ‘Be like that then. It doesn’t bother me either way. You know,’ she leant forward and addressed Steve cosily, ‘You don’t need to be so buttoned-up about your private life. We’ve all been there.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes. It happened to me once. I was only sixteen. I got a bit…muddled.’

  ‘I’d never have guessed.’

  Amber nodded. ‘At the time, I was hanging out with,’ she paused and gave Steve a meaningful look, ‘a mate, but when she tried to…well, you know…I realised I wasn’t that way after all.’

  ‘Weren’t you?’

  ‘No, especially when I met Mark Stiles. He was just,’ Amber put her fingers together and kissed them, ‘absolute heaven.’

  ‘I think we might be at cross-purposes you know,’ said Steve. His eyes were dancing as if something was amusing. ‘And what about your pals out there?’ he jerked his head in the direction of Dee and Chrissie. ‘What’s up with them?’

  ‘Um, they had…a heavy weekend too.’

  ‘The three of you look like you could use an early night.’

  A shadow fell across Amber’s face. She didn’t want to think about going home. It would mean another evening of cold war with Matthew. She wished he’d stop sleeping in the spare room. They hadn’t spoken since yesterday afternoon.

  ‘So,’ Steve smiled kindly as he picked up a file, ‘it was fascinating hearing about Mark Stiles and when you were sixteen, but we need to get on with some work.’

  Amber drained her coffee, and selected a clean page in her notebook. Steve began with instructions to telephone the Land Registry, then diarise a client meeting, followed by amendments to an eighty-page lease with more clauses than Father Christmas negotiating a loft extension with North Pole’s planning department. Amber’s concentration fragmented when the shriek of a familiar voice was heard outside Steve’s office door.

  ‘Dah-lings! Can you guess what Madam Rosa told me on Saturday night?’

  Amber grimaced. You didn’t have to be Madam Rosa to work out that Cougar Kate had come to gloat.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Amber emerged from Steve’s office with a stack of heavy files, it was to find Cougar Kate still holding court with Chrissie and Dee – not that either of them looked like they were listening. Dee was wearing a glazed expression, and Chrissie was transfixed by the cursor flashing away on her monitor. She didn’t look like she’d moved since Amber had left her. To the side of her keyboard, dictation tapes and files remained untouched.

  ‘There you are,’ tutted Cougar Kate. She was perched on the edge of Amber’s desk. Amber bristled with annoyance. It was her desk. Right now, when her home life was so uncertain and precarious, that desk was a sanctuary. The last thing she needed was this blasted woman’s well-preserved derriere invading both her personal space, and her refuge.

  ‘Hello,’ said Amber curtly. ‘Shift your butt, please. I need to put these down,’ Amber nodded at the armful of hefty files.

  ‘Of course,’ said Cougar Kate. She jumped up, but repositioned herself at the other end of the desk.

  Amber flopped down on her typing stool. ‘Don’t you have anything to do?’ she asked meaningfully, reaching for her notebook. Just because she’d visited Cougar Kate’s house and got catastrophically drunk on the woman’s birthday booze, didn’t mean they were now best buddies.

  ‘No. Clive’s in a meeting until mid-day. Now that you’re finally here, Amber, I’ll have to repeat myself all over again.’

  It struck Amber that Cougar Kate had deliberately waited for her to come out of Steve’s office. ‘You’ll have to make it very quick,’ said Amber coolly. ‘Some of us have a heap of work to get through.’

  ‘Of course, I wouldn’t dream of holding you up.’

  ‘Unless you want to help?’ asked Amber slyly.

  ‘Oh no can do, dah-ling. My specialities are in probate law, not conveyancing.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I simply couldn’t be bothered to wade my way through a document like this.’ She picked up the eighty-page lease, held it aloft between her thumb and forefinger and regarded it as if it were dog turd. ‘I mean, look at all this waffle. Why can’t it be simplified? “No you cannot use the communal gardens to sunbathe in the nuddy, no you’re not allowed to park your car in an
y space other than your own, and yes you do need to get a rota going with neighbours about cleaning shared areas.” Whereas this,’ she smacked the lease with her free hand, ‘would likely send an insomniac to sleep.’

  ‘It’s only forty-year-old women that send me to sleep,’ Amber sniped.

  Cougar Kate gave a tinkle of fake laughter. ‘You’re so funny, Amber.’

  Amber rolled her eyes. ‘Seriously, I have to make some phone calls. What did you want?’

  ‘Well, as I’ve not had any sense out of this one,’ Cougar Kate jerked her head at Chrissie, ‘I wanted to chat about your reading. Dee tells me you all had pretty rotten news.’

  ‘Yup, but it’s obvious that Madam Rosa spouted complete tosh as a marketing ploy. The three of us had almost identical readings – and not pleasant ones at that. Surely fortune tellers should have a moral code of conduct to stop them wrecking people’s weekends.’

  ‘I’m sure they have,’ Cougar Kate countered, ‘but nobody was told they were going to die, so whatever she said cannot be immoral.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Amber snapped. ‘Telling the three of us our relationships are in crisis wasn’t–’

  Too late Amber caught Dee flashing a warning look.

  Cougar Kate pounced. ‘Madam Rose told you that, did she? That your relationship is in trouble?’

  Was it Amber’s imagination, or did Cougar Kate sound like she was purring? Amber shrugged dismissively. ‘Our relationships are all fine, thank you very much.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Cougar Kate sweetly. ‘Meanwhile, let me tell you about my reading.’ She smiled like a cat who’d been given cream bought at Harrods instead of semi-skimmed from Tesco. ‘Madam Rosa was absolutely spot-on. She told me all about my love life–’

  ‘That must have used up forty-four minutes of the forty-five-minute reading,’ Amber muttered.

  ‘–all the heartbreaks, all the disappointments. Then she gave me a message from my granny who said she was sorry she wouldn’t be able to attend my wedding, but she’d be there in spirit. Granny said it’s going to be a fabulous day!’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Amber sarcastically. ‘And have you met this husband-to-be yet, or is he still being sourced by supernatural forces before beaming into your life on Granny’s cosmic ray?’