‘Oh, Mrs Abbot!’ Carrie, her office manageress. In tears. Carrie was wearing a yolk-yellow sleeveless top. She looked like a headless chicken, and squawked like one, too. ‘What a terrible thing! I can’t get over it! The shock!’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Bea, who was still reeling from the shock herself. ‘I’m so glad you could come in to help, Carrie.’
‘It’s all too much! I know you said I should ring round and tell the girls we’ll be open as usual tomorrow, but I can’t see how that can possibly happen, so I told them not to come in as the agency would have to close till further notice.’
‘What!’
Someone appeared in the doorway to wave at her. ‘Hi, Bea! I’m upstairs if you need me!’ And vanished. Piers? Her ex-husband? Bea wondered what he was doing, and then forgot about him.
‘Now, Carrie, I don’t think—’
‘I said to them, we’re all going to have to start looking for other jobs—’
‘Carrie! Stop!’
Carrie wasn’t listening. Her colour was high – too high? She flapped her hands around. ‘That man! Harry whatever-his- name-is, ordered me … ordered me! … to go into the girls’ desks to retrieve their personal belongings! I said to him, “How dare you!” and he said men were coming to take them away, and I said to him, “Over my dead body!” as if he had the right to …’
Bea met Anna’s eyes. Hysteria?
Anna nodded. Looks like.
‘There, there!’ A youngish dark-haired woman, heavily pregnant, appeared from nowhere. She put her arm round Carrie and bore her away to the kitchen, saying over her shoulder, ‘Hi, there, Bea! Everything’s coming on a treat, isn’t it?’
Bea’s mind reeled. What on earth was Leon’s niece, Dilys, doing here? She was supposed to be at home nursing her bump and cooking tasty meals for her IT genius of a husband, Keith, who …
… rose from behind a mountain of boxes, hair and beard curlier than ever, to shout out, ‘Bea! Good news! The hub for your Wi-Fi is in the hall so, with a bit of luck, we can get everything back on line, though I can’t say exactly how long it will take!’
Keith had been one of the first people Bea had called, once she’d decided to keep the agency working. Keith was not only able to make IT systems dance to his tune, but he was a good, dear man who’d made Dilys a very happy – and now very pregnant – wife.
‘Mind your back, there!’ Another desk arrived and was dumped just inside the doorway. ‘Where you want this, eh?’
Bea tried to think. ‘By the fireplace for the moment.’
‘Coming through …!’ Another desk.
‘Excuse me, missus!’ A large chair pushed Bea back to the wall. However many removal men were on the job?
Hari appeared in the doorway. ‘Your old office furniture. Down below. Did I say? The insurance man said once it’s been soaked in water and foam, it’s no good. “Rip the lot up,” he said. “Get in new stuff.” I promised the removal men triple time, right? Bung it on the insurance bill. It’s less expensive for them than your going out of business. I asked that useless …’
He was clearly going to call Carrie a ‘cow’ but just prevented himself in time. ‘I asked your manageress to rescue any personal possessions and she had a hissy fit. I’ve got a couple of salvage men arriving in half an hour to start taking the old furniture out by the area stairs. Then we can start on …’ He vanished again.
‘He appears and disappears just like the Cheshire Cat.’ Bea started to laugh, recognized hysteria in her own voice and made herself stop.
Anna said, ‘Now, what can I do to help?’
‘If I retrieve possessions, would you like to extract a list of the girls’ phone numbers from Carrie and send her home in a cab? Then phone the girls to say we’ll be open as usual tomorrow.’
Anna said, ‘Can do,’ and set off in search of Carrie.
Bea said, ‘Where are you, Keith? Shall we put four girls round the big table, and have the other desks in a double line down the room? Does that work for you? I know we probably won’t get the landlines working again straight away, but in an emergency in the past we’ve used our mobile phones and we can do so again. What’s more, we always back up to the Cloud last thing on Fridays, so all our data is in storage, waiting to be accessed tomorrow. Right?’
‘Crack on!’ Keith disappeared into his boxes again as a typing chair staggered into the room over a pair of jean-clad legs … followed by a mountain of boxes, ditto. Bea rescued an empty carton from the pile on the floor. She darted into the kitchen to find some rubber gloves and some plastic bags … where she was pleased to see that Anna was already talking on her phone, and that Dilys was soothing a weeping Carrie.
Carrie had gone to pieces, and how! Bea had to admit she’d misjudged the woman. She’d thought her manageress had been aiming to take over the agency one day, an idea Bea hadn’t much liked, though she hadn’t been able to understand why. Had she felt, subconsciously, that Carrie was a fair-weather friend who would run for cover when stormy weather hit? Bea began to wonder whether or not Carrie might turn up on the morrow.
Bea descended the stairs to the twilight zone in the basement. No lights. Everything blackened by fire and foam. Bea took a deep breath and started to retrieve anything that could possibly be considered personal – or useful – or that belonged to the business.
Clothing first. Carrie’s jacket had already been removed. Bea bagged up all the other items her staff had left: the odd mac, cardigan, sweatshirt, umbrella. Everything would need cleaning but should be wearable again.
Then personal items. She allocated a different plastic bag for each desk.
Anna came down the stairs, holding out her phone. ‘Betty; wants to know if you’d like her to come in and help?’
Betty was a single-parent mum, quiet of voice and solid of presence. Bea said, ‘Bless her. Yes, please!’ and went back upstairs for another roll of plastic bags. Carrie was nowhere to be seen: good. Dilys was cleaning the kitchen and feeding Winston: also good.
Bea opened every drawer in every desk, removing anything she thought might be salvable, including the odd mobile phone and charger which had been superseded by the new generation of technological wonders, but which might still be usable under the circumstances. Perhaps she’d have to throw most of it away again later, but for now … keep busy, keep busy, don’t stop to think why … or that Leon has run away … well, not exactly run away, but …
No, I’m being unreasonable. He had to attend to his own business.
To prove he’d been put out of action, he need only to have faxed the tox reports to the director who had heard the rumour of his misbehaviour. Leon had had no real need to see him in person. Had he?
Now, come on, Bea! He wasn’t thinking straight. He’d been drugged, hospitalized, didn’t know what was happening.
He ran away.
DON’T THINK ABOUT IT NOW!
It was also best not to think about going upstairs to see what had happened to her lovely, peaceful, sanctuary of a bedroom, because all her sitting-room furniture was now stored there.
She left the stationery cupboard alone. For now. It had always been Winston’s refuge in times of trouble. He could claw the door open by himself, shut himself in, and bounce out when he felt better able to cope with the world. The cupboard was made of oak and was untouched by fire, though the doors were slimy with foam. It was firmly anchored to the wall, which meant she couldn’t move it. It must have been there for fifty years or more. The carpet had been cut away around it. So … leave it for the time being.
The side office, used mostly for interviews, had suffered almost as much as Bea’s own room, but there was nothing personal there, so she left it alone.
Her own office … charred chairs and desk. Ugh. She put her head down and got on with it, trying not to think. How fortunate it was that she had still been using Hamilton’s old oak desk, because it had preserved everything inside it pretty well. She tried humming a nice, bright tune to herse
lf. Office chequebook and address book. Both smelly but usable. Would the bank accept a singed cheque? It was all right, surely? Just charred around the edges. Where was her personal chequebook? Ah, in her big handbag in her bedroom, presumably.
Anna came down again, phone in hand. ‘Betty’s on her way. She says she’ll bring in a flask of coffee and some bottled water. I just thought – have you rung your son, Max? If he hears about this from someone else …’
‘You’re right. I’ll do that straight away.’
Anna disappeared.
Bea flexed her neck muscles. This was not going to be easy. She told herself that Max was a good boy, a hard-working Member of Parliament with a pretty if prickly wife and two delightful small children. But – and this was a big ‘but’ – he always thought he knew best about everything, and in Bea’s opinion he was nearly always wrong. Max would not want to hear that his mother was in trouble, and he would find excuses not to help.
‘Max, dear, how are you?… Yes, I’m quite all right, but I thought you ought to know that there’s been a problem here. An arson attack. The agency rooms are unusable and we haven’t any electricity or gas for the time being. However, friends are being wonderful and we intend to keep calm and carry on.’
His response was predictable. ‘I’m horrified! What do the police say? They are on to the job, aren’t they? You’ll be covered by insurance, of course …’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘What a thing! If only I were in London! But you know we have to be up here in the constituency for a couple of weeks more before we go off on holiday. If only I’d known, I needn’t have let our flat in London and you could have moved in there, but I’m sure the insurance will put you up in a hotel … as for the agency, well, it’s about time you retired, anyway, isn’t it? You must keep me informed. And if there’s anything but anything that I can do to help, you must let me know.’
‘Thank you, dear. So kind of you. Yes, I’ll keep in touch.’
She knew that if, even if he’d been in London, and she’d asked him to come and help shift ruined furniture and set up new office desks, he’d have found an excuse not to do so. That was just the way he was.
She dialled another number. Two people whom she knew would help were youngsters she’d taken under her wing and watched grow up, Maggie to run her own business, and Oliver to university and some sort of research post in a field Bea couldn’t even begin to understand. Oliver was out of town at the moment and Maggie was heavily pregnant. They would still want to know what had happened.
Maggie first. She said straight away, ‘That’s awful. What do you need? Food? Hot water? I’ve got a couple of thermoses somewhere. I’m on my way!’
‘Don’t be daft. I forbid you even to think of it!’
‘Forbid away, but I’ll be over as soon as my dear husband has finished fiddling with something on the car … and if he doesn’t get it done in double-quick time, I’ll take a taxi, so there! Oh, and do you need anything else, specially? Ring me back if you do. Have you rung Oliver? Because he’ll want to help. Last I heard, he was taking a couple of days off in the West Country learning how to surf. Daft creature! What a physicist – or whatever it is that he is – was doing, trying to surf … ridiculous! He’ll probably knock himself out with his own board. But he can make it back to London in four hours or less. I’ll get on to him straight away.’
Much heartened, Bea returned to her task of salvage. The little radio she kept in her desk was a misshapen lump of plastic. The flat shoes she kept in a bottom drawer were charcoal, as was the rug she kept for the occasional afternoon nap. Her favourite pen … Forget it. In fact, there was nothing else to save. Move on. Never look back.
She stood up, easing her neck and shoulders. If she knew anything about it, the basement was going to be out of action for days, if not weeks. Once the sclodgy film of water and foam on the floor had been drained away, they’d know more, but the carpet would have to go, and the floorboards would probably have to be replaced. The wallpaper was going to have to come off the walls, and maybe the plaster under it would need to be hacked off. Then there’d have to be new electrics, new plumbing … it might be months rather than weeks before the basement was usable again. She wondered if it were the aim of the arsonists to put her out of business?
‘Missus, this lot ready to go?’ The salvage men; good-tempered. Calm and practical. She nodded. ‘Everything goes except for the built-in cupboard, right?’
They didn’t try to take the desks out in one piece but wielded a sledgehammer till they’d reduced each one to a stack of planks, which they took out of the area door and up the steps to the pavement in front of the house.
Bea didn’t watch, but turned her back on them to blow her nose and look out through the grille on to her wrecked garden. Someone – or perhaps two people? – had made a sort of pathway by the remains of the wall, crashing through and trampling down the branches, to get to the back of the house. The arsonists?
She despised people who gave way to self-pity. Weeping wouldn’t do anyone any good. She used her hankie again. She thought that soon, very soon, Leon would ring and she could talk to him, and tell him how awful everything was. She mustn’t put pressure on him. No. He had his own troubles to bear. But he would listen and sympathize.
‘Mrs A, some good news!’ Hari appeared behind her, still smiling, still full of energy. ‘The generator has just arrived. I’d like to put it in the garden, if you don’t mind, and feed cables up to give you power in the kitchen and your new office to begin with. Later, I’ll take another cable up to your bedroom.’
Bea’s voice cracked. ‘Hari, you’re a wonder-worker. How do you do it?’
‘With a platinum credit card. Come away, now. I have to wrestle open that grille over the windows. The lock won’t budge, so I may have to use brute force. Also, the salvage lads want to take the carpet up, and they’re double-parked in the street, causing no end of a traffic jam. I don’t suppose the neighbours will like the sound of the generator, either.’
‘Oh dear, you’re right. I’d better go round and apologize to everyone.’ She peeled off her rubber gloves. Her shoes were ruined; there were smudges of dirt everywhere. Probably on her face as well? She hadn’t time to change now, but she would wash her hands and face and call on the neighbours. They’d been inconvenienced enough.
She took one more look out of the window and realized that now the tree was down, she could see the spire of the church, even from here. An omen, perhaps?
She left the dim cavern of the basement as the salvage team started to tear up the carpet. ‘Have this up in a tick, missus. And you’ll be surprised how soon it will all dry out in this weather.’
At the top of the stairs she met Betty, the only member of the staff who’d volunteered to come in, with her twelve-year-old son at her back. They were halfway between ‘OhmiGod!’ and ‘Isn’t this a lark?’
‘Oh, Mrs Abbot,’ Betty cried, ‘what a dreadful thing! But, what a miracle, the new office is almost ready to go!’ She patted Bea’s shoulder. ‘Now, you find yourself a chair and put your feet up for a bit, while the lad and I see what we can do to help.’
‘Bless you.’ Bea managed a smile. Betty was a treasure, indeed.
The manic activity on this floor had slowed down. Keith was setting up new laptops on the dining-room table. Good. There was a double row of desks and chairs down the length of the room, and the pile of cardboard cartons had disappeared. The room did indeed look more like an office now. Anna was seated at the table in the window, talking on her mobile phone. She waved her hand at Bea but didn’t seem to need help, hurray!
Dilys, Keith’s pregnant wife, appeared from the kitchen, waving a dishcloth. ‘Yoohoo! Hari says there’ll be power back on in ten minutes, so I’ll pop out to get some fresh milk, shall I? Oh, and some more biscuits.’
Bea washed her hands at the kitchen sink. Cold water. It would have to do. All their dishcloths looked grimy, and so did the hand towel. As for
her dress …! Well, don’t think about it now. She must call on her neighbours and explain.
On her way out of the hall, Hari intercepted her, holding up a bunch of keys. ‘New keys for the front door. Two locks, top and bottom. I have more sets of keys which I’ll give you later, when I’ve fixed something up for the back door.’
Bea opened the front door and stood there, drinking in the quiet scene. The removal and salvage lorries had gone. Traffic moved sluggishly along. The sun shone. Neighbours walked dogs. Teenagers congregated. A red bus crossed the end of the road. Sunday afternoon and all was well.
Well, mostly.
She looked down at herself. Smudged with dirt and dishevelled.
Get on with it. She turned to the right, mounted the steps to the front door and pressed the bottom of three bells. Ding dong. The house next door was occupied, as far as she knew, by business people she only ever encountered in passing.
The front door opened. A man in expensive casual dress stood there. Bea seemed to recall that he was something in the City. He was not pleased to see her on his doorstep. He said, ‘You’re the woman from next door, aren’t you? You’ve got a nerve! Well, all I can say is, I’ll see you in court!’ He slammed the door in her face.
What!
Why …?
Perhaps he’d been woken from an after-lunch nap? She tried the house on the other side. This time the door was opened by a middle-aged woman who looked as if she’d had several facelifts. She didn’t look very friendly, either. ‘Oh. It’s you. Well, you’d better come in, I suppose.’
A hallway like hers, but painted in dark red with white trim. A through living room like Bea’s, but set up for a bridge party with four tables … waiting for guests to arrive?
A man – the woman’s husband? – was sitting by the back window in an elderly person’s high-backed chair, the sort for which you press a button and you get propelled to your feet. He was almost bald with a liver-spotted skin. A stout stick leaned against the chair. ‘Who is it? Who is it?’
‘The woman from next door, that’s caused all the trouble.’ Loudly.
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