The Hopes and Dreams of Lucy Baker

by Jenni Keer

  As Lucy swung open the kitchen door, a black head poked out from under the cluttered table.

  ‘Oh darling, not a cat. They bring in dead things.’ Her mother scrunched up her face. ‘Mind you, anything left on this table wouldn’t be discovered for weeks.’ She moved a pile of knitting patterns to the side and put her Jasper Conran handbag down.

  ‘I’m only looking after it until I can get in touch with the rescue centre in the morning.’

  ‘You mean it’s a stray? Lucy! It will be riddled with fleas and goodness knows what. You really don’t think these things through. Sometimes I despair of you.’

  Yanking the cafetière from the back of the cupboard, Lucy nearly knocked over several precariously balanced mugs in the process. As she began making the coffee, her shoulders slumped and her mother was perceptive enough to notice.

  ‘Oh sweetheart, I know it seems I am constantly scolding you, but it’s only because I care. You’ve got this lovely cosy flat now, and the little job at the toy shop, or whatever it is. You’re right, you’re still young. I love both my girls so much and you know how much I… Eurgh, it’s coming towards me. Make it go away.’

  Lucy plunged the cafetière with too much force and the coffee gurgled in the glass jug. Okay, so perhaps she wasn’t a successful regional manager living in a chocolate-box house, deep in the Hertfordshire countryside, but she enjoyed her job at Tompkins Toy Wholesaler and felt at home in her cluttered little flat.

  She poured two strong coffees and persuaded her mother to decamp to the living room, closing the door on the malnourished cat.

  ‘You’ve knitted some more of those dolls. Very, erm…accomplished. Perhaps you should pass them on to the girls to play with,’ her mother said, referring to her granddaughters, ‘because you’re running out of seating in here.’ She piled the knitted figures up on one end of the sofa and sat down.

  ‘They aren’t toys, they—’

  ‘Boy dolls too, I see. How very modern.’

  Lucy let out a tiny but audible sigh. ‘So, this party then?’ She steered the conversation away from her knitting and back to the party in order to gauge the extent of the inevitable horror that was a large social function.

  ‘Yes, Emily thinks it’s a simply marvellous idea. I thought it would be a splendid opportunity to gather all the family. Uncle Ted can fly over from Ireland, and all the cousins could come. Then there’s family friends, the bridge club, your father’s work colleagues at the bank…’

  ‘Exactly how big is this party going to be?’ Lucy’s eyes were dinner plates, never mind saucers, and her voice came out in a squeak.

  ‘That’s the exciting bit. I’ve booked Mortlake Hall for the entire weekend. I’ve got that money from Aunt Freda and I thought: why not, Sandra? One in the eye for Stuart’s snotty mother.’ Stuart was Lucy’s brother-in-law and, as far as her mother was concerned, he was the sprinkles on the six-foot-high, frosted cupcake of her eldest daughter’s many achievements. Lucy felt like a stale digestive biscuit in comparison. ‘And I was thinking you could keep your father amused while I undertake the socialising he so loathes. The pair of you can mope together in the corner.’

  ‘I might have a boyfriend by then. Stranger things have happened.’ For a fleeting moment Lucy reconsidered her new neighbour, purely to get her mother off her back, but then dismissed the idea and took a tentative sip of the bitter coffee. Although boyfriend acquisition was top of her mother’s agenda for Lucy’s life, it wasn’t high on hers. Of course, she hoped to be part of a fulfilling romantic relationship one day, but her immediate dreams were more small-scale: doing well in her job and conquering her debilitating lack of confidence – although she suspected both were linked.

  ‘Oh, do you think you could?’ Her mother smiled in delight and leaned forward to put her hands up to her daughter’s cheeks. ‘It would make the seating on the top table so much easier. And it would stop that uncle of your father’s continually hinting that boys aren’t your thing.’ She sat up straight and clapped her hands together. ‘It would be simply marvellous if you could manage to find someone. I’ve always said you have the potential. And I’ve often thought how ironic it is Emily got the dark hair when it’s the blondes, like you and me, who are supposed to have all the fun. Smarten yourself up a bit and get out there instead of playing the wilting wallflower. If only there was someone suitable who wouldn’t mind.’ She raised a hand to her mouth and tapped her top lip. ‘I’ll have a word with Emily…’

  As Lucy waved her parents’ car into the distance an hour later, she had a vision of her mother introducing her to everyone at the Big Birthday as her twenty-five-year-old spinster daughter who had a little job in a toy shop and spent her spare time knitting dolls.

  Returning to the hallway, Lucy heard scratching from the kitchen. The cat was clawing at the back door and she realised there was nowhere for it to do its catty business. She wondered whether she could improvise with a seed tray and some garden soil, but as she opened the back door to investigate the contents of the rickety shed, the cat made a dash for freedom and was through her legs before she could stop it. Momentarily stunned by the speed of its escape, she froze on the back step. But the night-black cat had vanished completely into the cat-black night.

  Chapter 3

  All thoughts of the bright yellow eyes and narrow vulpine face vanished from Lucy’s mind as Adam presented her with the usual list of crises before her bottom hit her swivelly chair at Tompkins Toy Wholesaler the following morning. There was a product recall for My Pretty Princess vanity cases, as the mermaid blue eyeshadow had caused an allergic reaction in a couple of isolated incidents. Three packs of the Hear Me Growl Tyrannosaurus Rex had been dropped off to an independent toy shop, instead of the three pallets they’d ordered. And fifty-six Water Fun Super Soakers had been delivered to the wrong branch of TopToys.

  Lucy subconsciously fed each of the polished agate stones on her bracelet through her fingers like rosary beads. She so desperately wanted to make her mark at work, but life kept jabbing twigs in the wheels of her bicycle and sending her flying over the handlebars.

  ‘Come on, Lucy, we can do better than this,’ Adam said, resting an overly familiar hand on her shoulder. ‘I need you to be one of Adam’s Little Angels. Drill down and see if you can’t get these problems sorted by ten. You ladies are always so good at dealing with these pesky hiccups. Must say though, I’m surprised you let that dinosaur order slip through. Tut, tut.’

  ‘Sorry,’ mumbled Lucy. ‘I’ll get straight on it.’ She was fairly certain that she’d put through the T-Rex order as pallets but she also knew the guy who picked for that delivery route was in the middle of a vicious divorce and it wouldn’t be the first mistake he’d made in the last few weeks.

  ‘Appreciated and all that. I’m so rushed off my feet at the moment, otherwise I would happily help you out, but I’m sure you understand the pressures I’m under. You can’t have an office of worker bees without a queen.’

  There was a titter from the other side of the partition.

  ‘It’s an analogy, Pat.’ Adam gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘You know we don’t do queer jokes in this office. I’m fully aware that we need to promote a politically correct and professional work environment. I read the memo.’ He rolled his eyes at Lucy. ‘And we don’t do fat jokes out of respect for you, Pat, so let’s leave the gays alone. Eh? Right, I must crack on. Time and tide…’ Adam walked over to his immaculate, empty desk and began colour-coding his paper clips.

  In contrast, Lucy’s desk was a jumble of Post-it Notes, stacks of brochures from manufacturers and scruffy notebooks that she used to record every order she took. It looked a complete dog’s breakfast, dinner and tea, but Lucy could usually locate the things she needed. Eventually.

  She stared absent-mindedly at the floor – a random jumble of carpet tiles in primary colours, as if to remind the staff they worked in an industry geared towards children. The internal line flashed on her phone.

  ‘
Don’t let him make you feel like any of those problems are your fault or your responsibility,’ whispered Pat. ‘It’s obviously another warehouse cock-up. Let them take the flak.’

  Pat sat at the desk opposite Lucy, but the partition, painted in what Adam referred to as a Motivational Yellow, meant unless they stood up they might as well have been in separate offices. A large lady who kept her tightly permed auburn head down and barely raised her voice above a whisper, Pat had only ever spoken about three sentences to Lucy’s face, yet conspiratorially contacted her via the internal line on a regular basis.

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ said Lucy. ‘Hopefully I can smooth things over with the customers. I’ll tackle TopToys first.’

  Surveying her muddle of a desk, and accidentally sending a nodding fluorescent orange alien flying, she located her computer mouse under a bundle of Beach Barbie promotional leaflets. She pulled the company details up on her screen and prayed she’d get the friendly older lady and not the ranty man who had a tendency to launch into a tirade listing every error made by Tompkins in the last twenty years whenever something went wrong.

  As she dialled the number, she gazed about the office and let out a slow and deliberate calming breath. It was hard to feel gloomy for long in an office where a one-legged parachuting Action Man dangled from the ceiling over the filing cabinet, and Igglepiggle was rogering Shaun the Sheep on top of the water cooler.

  By lunchtime, Lucy had managed to persuade a driver to return to TopToys to sort out the water pistol crisis, issued a product recall for the faulty vanity cases and arranged for the missing dinosaurs to be couriered out.

  Jess was impressed.

  ‘I bet you didn’t even get a thank you from Adam. Why he couldn’t sort out the problems himself, I don’t know. He’s supposed to be the sales office manager.’

  Jess was upstairs pretending to query an invoice, but in reality wanted to snatch five minutes with her best friend, their fair heads ducked below the partition to avoid detection.

  ‘He’s not so bad,’ said Lucy. After the short-tempered boss at her previous job, who regularly launched his telephone across the room when things got stressful, Adam was a welcome relief.

  ‘Honestly, he can’t even manage his trousers, never mind a sales team.’ Jess glanced across at the two inches of fluorescent socks that highlighted how short his trousers were as he completed another circuit of the office and approached them. Rumbled, Jess stood up and tried to look businesslike, shuffling through the folders she had in her hand and pretending to tick things off.

  ‘Ah, the Terrible Twins…’

  ‘Having the same colour hair hardly makes us the female version of Jedward.’ There was a pause as Jess considered the implications of this. ‘And if you start calling us Juicy, I swear I’ll stamp on each and every one of your newly sharpened pencils.’

  Adam threw an anxious glance at his pencil pot and then pulled his shoulders back. ‘Jessica Ridley. Riddle me this and riddle me that.’ He put his hands on his hips, like an unamused teacher. ‘What exactly are you doing upstairs in sales anyway? Haven’t you got numbers to add up and…divide by four, or something?’ He tried to avert his eyes from Jess’s slender legs, but the short, cotton skirt she was wearing made it difficult. ‘Back to accounts please and save the socialising until after work. My ladies are very busy.’ There was a muffled cough from Connor, often overlooked because his desk was tucked around the corner of the L-shaped office, and a definite squaring of the shoulders from Jess.

  ‘Actually, I was compiling a spreadsheet analysis of our fiscal input and was sent upstairs to access some computerised data from Lucy as she knows our CDAs. But if you’ve got five minutes, perhaps I can run it by you?’

  ‘Well, erm, I’m quite busy and Lucy is probably the best person, as you say. I think she has a handle on the CDAs, but make it quick. With Sonjit off today we are a man down.’

  One of the younger sales girls called Adam over and he immediately lost all interest in nomadic accounting staff.

  ‘So, what exactly are CDAs?’ Lucy queried.

  Jess shrugged. ‘He deserved it for ogling my legs again.’

  ‘I thought the whole point of a short skirt was for men to admire your legs?’ Lucy hadn’t worn anything above the knee since her year eleven gym skirt. ‘I’m not sure you can be picky about who gives you the appreciative glances.’

  ‘It’s part of my arsenal to lure the young, wealthy, single men.’

  ‘Like Dashing Daniel?’

  ‘Just give me a little more time, hon.’ She gathered up her manila folders, tapped the wobbly head of the bright orange alien balanced precariously on the edge of Lucy’s desk and gave her friend a cheeky wink. ‘Definite work in progress.’

  Chapter 4

  ‘Can I help you?’ Lucy asked as she peered around the door.

  It was rather late for house calls, but she answered the knock because a confused Brenda had called very late one evening the previous week, thinking it was early morning and clutching a bundle of borrowed Regency romances. Lucy was relieved to discover this visit was not from her disorientated friend, although was unsettled to discover the formally dressed man from number twenty-four on her front steps.

  ‘Cat,’ he said.

  ‘Pardon?’ Had her new neighbour really barked a solitary word at her?

  ‘That damn cat from the other day is hiding in the utility and my eyes are swelling up faster than popcorn in a sodding microwave.’

  ‘The removal van stray? Oh, I was wondering what happened to it.’ She’d kept an eye out for it the previous night, periodically sticking her head out the back door and calling ‘cat’, but it hadn’t reappeared.

  ‘It’s backed itself between the washing machine and the tumble dryer and I don’t know how to get it out, short of shooting it and pulling the corpse free with the end of the broom.’

  Lucy narrowed her eyes and hoped this was just his dry sense of humour.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I can’t take it on and wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did.’

  Never allowed pets as children, Lucy and Emily had made do with a stuffed Scooby-Doo (great at the sit command – rubbish at fetch). Their mother wasn’t one for the mess and inconvenience that invariably came with animals: stray clumps of hair, unhygienic food bowls and muddy paw prints on her immaculate white tiled kitchen floor. But there was something about cats that appealed to Lucy. They were independent yet loving. They didn’t demand much apart from a lap and they didn’t judge you on your silly comments or untidy nature.

  ‘Fine, but it’s the third time I’ve caught it in my house and I’m losing patience, so I’m going with the shooting option…’ He shrugged his wide shoulders. Was he joking? And could she live with herself if he wasn’t?

  ‘Okay, I’ll find my shoes and come over,’ she sighed.

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Lucy mumbled under her breath as he walked out through her front gate.

  A few minutes later Lucy was at his front door. After some clumping and huffing, it swung open and he stood back for her to enter. When she realised she wasn’t going to get a word out of him, she stepped inside and followed him down the long hallway.

  As he strode away, the musky scent of Paco Rabanne lingered long enough to make her head turn like a hungry Bisto kid. Cross with her nose for leading her mind astray, she tried to peek through the open doors as she followed him without being obvious. There was nothing dotted about; no ornaments, no photographs, no personal objects whatsoever. What little furniture there was looked brand new and insubstantial. Goodness knows why it had taken the removers most of the day. Perhaps he hadn’t finished unpacking yet, although there weren’t any boxes lying about.

  ‘Through here,’ the slightly scary bear of a man said as he gestured to a door at the end of the corridor.

  Lucy walked into the utility and looked in the direction he was pointing. She bent down in front of the washing machine. Two of
the yellowest, widest eyes blinked back from the dark.

  ‘Come here, sweetheart.’ Lucy put her hand tentatively between the two machines and made kissy noises.

  ‘Huh. It will take more than that. I’ve been here half an hour and all I’ve got is an allergic reaction for my trouble.’ To make his point, he blinked his puffy eyes. ‘I’ve had to abandon the contacts and I’ll be damned if I can find my spare pair of glasses.’

  No one was more surprised than Lucy when the cat, head low and ears back, came towards her.

  ‘Well, I’ll be…’ He reversed like a cartoon elephant backing away from a mouse as the cat emerged from the gap. ‘We clearly have a Doctor Dolittle in the neighbourhood.’

  Lucy coaxed out the small black streak, but it bypassed her and walked over to the homeowner, rubbing around his legs and purring softly, even as he stepped away. Looking down at the animal though, his expression changed from alarm to compassion. He stopped his retreat and let it have a moment of contentment getting to know his trouser leg. His hand twitched, as if he was considering bending down for a stroke, but then Lucy heard him sniff. Reminded of his allergy, his whole body stiffened. She walked over and scooped up the cat.

  ‘So, just you in this great big house?’ she asked, hoping for more than a one-word answer.

  ‘Yes.’

  She persevered. ‘My house has been divided into three flats and I rent the ground floor. It gives me a bit of garden and the couple on the top floor are never there because they travel…’

  He looked at his watch, bringing it Mr Magoo-style close to his face. A combination of no contact lenses and the allergic reaction, she assumed. ‘Right. Look, I don’t do small talk. Nothing personal. Only child thing. Probably why I choose to be on my own,’ he said pointedly.