by Jenni Keer
‘Touché,’ and his lips twitched as his eyes narrowed. ‘She does have a knack of making you feel like that, though. Even if it is nonsense.’
‘I agree. Did you know, many years ago she helped the police discover the location of a buried body? She has never talked about it to me, but several of the locals have mentioned it in passing. There is something about her not of this world, but I’ve never once felt uncomfortable about it. She is my best friend and I love her. Which is why…’ Lucy’s voice tailed off as she thought about what the future had in store. She sighed. ‘I know it’s dementia, more to the point she knows it’s dementia, and that it is only going to get worse.’ Although she remained composed as she said this, a tear escaped and dribbled a salty path down her cheek.
Without saying anything, George closed the space between them and wrapped his arms around Lucy, and for a moment she allowed herself to mould into his embrace. The soft cotton of his shirt and the clean smell of his soap, mingled with some undoubtedly ludicrously expensive aftershave, were comforting. His arms were like the boughs of the ancient trees in Brenda’s garden and just as solid.
After a few moments, George cleared his throat and his arms went stiff. She realised he felt the embrace had gone on long enough and she pulled herself upright, but another tear crawled from her eye to her chin. Lucy lifted a hand to wipe it just as George swung his arm up, possibly also to brush away the tear. Their arms bumped.
‘Sorry.’
‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not good with emotions. Not had much practice with people.’ He forced a smile. ‘Only-child thing. Bit of a loner.’
‘I’m not exactly Renborough’s It Girl myself.’
‘Only child?’
‘No, but the inadequate one. Anyway…’ Lucy looked at her watch to signal that she needed to leave, and to avoid any probing questions about her last statement. ‘I should make a move.’
‘Your other mad friend paid me a visit while you were away,’ he said, following her down the hall. ‘Knocked at the door and invited herself in. She doesn’t get the whole “I’m busy right now” thing, does she?’ Lucy thought George was hardly in a position to comment about the subtleties of the English language. ‘I swear she talked at me for an hour, but in a far more intrusive way than Brenda. Would you believe she even asked what my salary was?’
‘If it was Jess – probably,’ Lucy said, rolling her eyes and wishing that however well-meaning Jess’s intentions were, her friend would leave her to work this thing out by herself.
Chapter 28
‘So, Daniel said he was sorry again and handed me a huge box of posh chocolates. Prefer Cadbury’s myself, but I suppose he was trying.’
Jess was upstairs at Lucy’s desk first thing pretending to query customer discounts.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand men,’ said Lucy. ‘Talking of which, George mentioned you stopped by at the weekend?’
‘Yeah, I totally forgot you were away and called in after picking up some shopping for Mum. I’m such a scatterbrain. You weren’t there so I thought I’d pop in on your hunky neighbour and see if I could lay some more groundwork for you. Big you up. Talk about your outstanding qualities. That kind of thing.’
‘Thanks, but I’m doing enough damage in that area for the both of us. How is your mum?’ Lucy asked, not wanting to dwell on George for too long.
‘Still doing shifts at the chicken processing factory and still getting through boyfriends like they were the bloody shifts.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Lucy recognised she was lucky to have a stable home life growing up. Jess’d had a tough time as a kid.
‘I need to get out of there, Luce. I’ve tried so hard to put money aside for a deposit, but you know me – I’m not great with finances. Ironic, as I work in the accounts department. I do love her, but she’s holding me back. And perhaps if I got out, she’d have to up her game and start acting like a responsible grown-up.’
Jess’s eyes flashed across to Richard Tompkins’ office as a serious-faced Sam strode towards them both. She gathered her folders and was out the door before their boss got within reprimanding range, but Sam had bigger fish than Jess to fry.
‘Have you seen the file Daniel dropped off yesterday afternoon for the supermarket ClickIn order, Lucy? Adam doesn’t have it and I’ve just had their MD on the phone double-checking delivery dates as they are going nationwide on the nineteenth?’ Lucy shook her head. ‘He wants the superhero units in their twelve hundred stores the week before, so I checked and the order hasn’t been processed.’ Sam was clicking the end of her pen in and out as though that would speed up the recovery of the file. ‘It’s delays like this that make me determined to update our system. The reps should be able to access it from their laptops, not be phoning in orders or dropping paper copies off. This company hasn’t moved on from the Nineties.’
‘We talked about the order when I arrived this morning, but I assumed he still needed it for some reason and would pass it over later. Either that or he’d given it to someone else to process.’ Lucy noticed the usually calm and together Sam pulling at her bottom lip with her teeth.
‘Damn. I don’t want us to look unprofessional or people will take their business elsewhere. Our entire contract with a national supermarket hangs on this. They are used to dealing direct with manufacturers, so Tompkins having the exclusive UK distribution was a major coup. If the order turns up, let me know immediately.’
Lucy double-checked the papers on her desk but knew Adam hadn’t handed the order over, so focused her search elsewhere, even checking the company’s photocopier – a place missing documents had turned up on previous occasions.
A Mexican wave of unease travelled through the office as Sonjit distributed the mid-morning coffee. Pat dialled Lucy to say Connor had overheard Adam talking about redundancies to Richard, and she also mentioned she’d spotted Daniel was fiddling about at Adam’s desk that morning, so Lucy rang him to rule out every possibility.
‘Please tell me you haven’t pulled one of your stunts and hidden the order when you were in the office earlier?’ she said, the pornographic screen saver and cling film incidents still fresh in her mind.
‘No way. My little pranks are harmless. I certainly wouldn’t muck about with work stuff. This affects me as much as him. In fact, more so. He’s just misplaced it. It’ll turn up. However, if he gets a bit of a shock later, that might have something to do with me.’
‘Now is not the time for you to be pulling stupid pranks, Daniel. You really need to grow up.’ Surprised at the anger in her voice, Lucy ended the call abruptly and bashed away at her keyboard like a frustrated concert pianist. By this point, tensions were so high no one could even be bothered to reunite Igglepiggle and Shaun the Sheep, who stood bereft, staring at different corners of the office.
A little while later, Adam shot up from his chair with a small shriek. Daniel had rigged up a simple circuit with some crocodile grips and an old camera capacitor to give him an electric shock as he touched the metal handle of his desk drawer. Sonjit was straight on the phone to Daniel and everyone but Sam, who was in Richard’s office, heard her tear him off a strip or two. But what was interesting, thought Lucy, considering Sonjit always had a smile on her face when she bantered with Adam, was the angry thump on her desk when she told Daniel how close she was to reporting him.
‘Dare I ask if there’s been any sign of the file?’ Sam asked, returning from another private conversation with Mr Tompkins.
Lucy shook her head as a thought occurred to her. ‘The ClickIn shipments come over weekly. The order needs to be placed before five o’clock today to catch the shipment.’
‘Yes. Thank you, Lucy. I am fully aware of that.’
Lucy blushed.
‘I’m sure you had it last,’ Adam said to Lucy. He’d been darting around the office like the steel ball in a pinball machine all morning, as if the file was an animate object he could catch out by rounding a corner with sudden speed.
‘I’d bet my grandma’s grave on it.’
‘I honestly didn’t see the file after our conversation,’ Lucy said, for the umpteenth time.
‘Well, there’s a damaged link in the chain somewhere and I’m determined to winkle it out before the guillotine blade falls. I don’t want my head in a basket.’ Adam spun around and began to do another aimless circuit of the office.
‘I know we don’t want to admit to the supermarket that we’ve misplaced the order, but I was wondering if I could ring their office and say I wanted to double-check the figures,’ Lucy suggested. ‘If I did it with a junior member of their office staff, rather than you or Mr Tompkins having to speak to someone at the top, perhaps it would go unnoticed? There was a lady there called Rachel who I got on with quite well when they altered Daniel’s appointment. We both knit.’
‘That could work,’ said Sam. ‘Good thinking. Leave it until two, just in case it turns up, and then make the call. And can you pull Daniel into the office first thing tomorrow? We’ve come up with some temporary procedures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.’
Daniel was not impressed. ‘But I’m playing golf with a customer just outside Romford tomorrow.’
‘Golf? I think this is more important, don’t you? You need to be here at nine.’
‘Get you, Little Miss I Can Be Bossy When I Want To. What’s happened to the compliant little girl who blushed every time I entered the office?’ When she didn’t bite, he continued, ‘Then I suppose I’ll have to reschedule.’
‘Stop moaning, Daniel. It’s only golf. You can do that any time.’
‘You don’t understand the politics and etiquette of the wider business world, my little sales office superstar. It’s not merely a game of golf. It’s networking and cosying up to the client. But don’t worry your pretty little head about the complicated aspects of my job. You sit in your comfy office, with tea and coffee to hand, air-conditioning and your en-suite toilet facilities.’
‘If you want to swap places, Daniel, you name the day, because, quite frankly, I would rather be out and about launching tiny white balls into sandpits, than up here sorting out everyone else’s mistakes. If you want to liaise between disgruntled warehouse staff, demanding bosses and impatient customers, be my guest.’ Her unusually angry tone surprised even her.
‘Fair point. See you at nine.’
Rather unreasonably, Lucy thought, Adam suddenly decided to send her on an errand. They’d run out of C5 envelopes and he apparently needed to get something in the post that afternoon.
‘Don’t stand there so stationary – get it? Stationery? Stationary? Get accounts to give you some petty cash and pop to that independent office supplier in town. There’s a love.’
‘Can’t it wait until the delivery tomorrow? Or use the smaller envelopes and fold whatever it is in half?’ Lucy suggested.
‘I don’t know why you’re whingeing. You never used to make so much fuss about the things you were asked to do. You must appreciate I can’t possibly nip out as the place would totally fall apart without me. Pat would probably have a coronary if she had to undertake that amount of exercise – no offence, Pat-a-Cake. Sonjit is up to her…’ Adam’s hands were at nipple level, but he declined to name the exact level of her workload. ‘And Connor, well, it isn’t really a man’s job, is it?’
Lucy decided to run the errand as a chance to escape outside was a bonus. The air-conditioned office made her temporarily forget that summer was so close she could practically reach out and touch it. She could see the sun through the window across from her desk, but it wasn’t until she was outside that she could feel it sink into her skin and warm through to her very bones. It made her realise what an artificial environment she worked in. She rolled up the sleeves of the red cotton top she’d bought on impulse last week. And then, because no one was looking and she was on an isolated footpath that cut through the back of the industrial estate and into town, she did a Miranda gallop.
Returning to the office feeling brighter and fresher, she handed Adam the pack of white envelopes.
‘Well, well, the troublemaker returns.’ He stood with his hands on his hips, tapping his left foot. ‘Sometimes, Lucy-Lou, I think your brain is as woolly as that knitting you spend every lunch hour doing.’
Lucy gave a nervous smile. Adam was often cryptic, but he’d lost her this time.
‘You have some serious explaining to do, young lady. Guess what I found on your desk, under a pile of jumbled papers, while you were gone?’ he said in a voice that was certain to attract the attention of every single person in the office.
Lucy’s heart thumped and fell to her feet.
Chapter 29
‘I don’t understand.’ Lucy’s mouth went dry.
‘I think it’s perfectly obvious. I handed the order to you this morning and you lost it in that total pigsty of a desk.’
The comment was unfair. Her desk was much more organised since Sam had been working there. Full was not the same as untidy.
‘I knew I’d passed it over to you. Fancy making me doubt myself.’
‘The missing order has been found?’ asked Sam, standing up and walking over to them.
‘Oh yes. And everyone was so quick to point the finger at me…’ Adam crossed his arms, the foot still tapping away.
‘No one accused you, Adam. You were the last person who remembered having the order, that was all.’
‘Well, it turns out it was young Lucy here who had it all along, under the pile of English translations for the Fizz, Boom, Bang sets.’
‘Oh dear, Lucy, how unfortunate, but luckily you had a plan B up your sleeve – well done. Crisis over. Back to work, everyone.’
As Sam walked over to her desk, Adam muttered, ‘Even though you’re responsible for this cock-up, you still come up smelling of pineapples. Unbelievable.’
Feeling down that evening, Lucy didn’t even have the enthusiasm to get on with Brenda’s birthday present – an idea that had come to her when she’d flicked through the Elliott Landy book with her friend earlier in the week. Sprawled across the sofa, the comments from her dad about Emily were bothering her like a wasp buzzing around a jam pot and refused to be swatted away.
She checked Facebook for any clues that things were not as rosy as she had previously assumed, but her sister’s posts were all upbeat and motivational. So she called her.
‘I’m so pleased you’ve rung.’ Emily sounded tired.
‘Just wanted to see how you were doing. How’s the bump?’
‘Oh, you know, not much has changed since I saw you last. The news is official as I’m thirteen weeks and the scan looks healthy. I can cope with feeding the cat now without vomiting all over the kitchen floor at the smell of tinned cat food, but this third pregnancy is still an absolute pig. I don’t know how I get through the long days at work though. Give it a couple of months and I’m going to have trouble getting behind the steering wheel. Not good when I’m averaging four thousand miles a month.’
‘How did work take the news?’
‘To be honest, it’s rather awkward. They weren’t too enamoured by the request for a third round of maternity leave…’
Lucy thought she heard her sister’s voice break, and decided she needed another face-to-face to reassure herself Emily was coping.
‘I know it’s short notice, but I wondered if I could come down and see you? I haven’t seen my nieces in weeks and I could do with a change of scene. Say if it’s not convenient. I don’t want to add to your stress.’
‘Oh, Luce, that would be wonderful. Could you? Could you really? Stu’s got some work thing this weekend but let me have a word with him and I’ll get back to you. It would be lovely to see you. A bit of girl time would be good.’
‘You sound stressed. Are you sure things are okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s the hormones. I have a wonderful life, an adorable husband, a fab job and two beautiful girls. I’m being silly and self-centred. What’s not to love
?’
Oh dear, thought Lucy, Dad was right.
Visiting Emily would mean two weekends away in a row and Lucy’s first thought was Brenda. Now they had the diagnosis, Lucy noticed the forgetful moments and blank looks more. A Facebook memory had flashed up in the week: Brenda sitting next to her supporting the Renborough primary school coffee morning a year ago. The photo shocked her because until that point she hadn’t realised how gaunt Brenda had become in those twelve months. What would another twelve months bring for them both?
‘I’m going to visit my sister this weekend, so I won’t be able to pop in.’ She tried to make the announcement sound casual, but Brenda wasn’t fooled.
‘And you’re worried I will take a naked walk up to the town hall with a flowerpot on my head while you’re gone?’
‘No, I’m worried that you’ll make a move on Gorgeous George, and once he’s had a taste of the best, he’ll abandon the rest. I’m not sure he can cope with the predatory advances of a sexually liberated woman who made the Sixties her own.’
Brenda chuckled and dropped her defensive attitude. ‘I always liked your sense of humour. And as for Gorgeous George – don’t tempt me.’ She wiggled her eyebrows, but her smile vanished and she let out a long sigh. ‘It’s so important to laugh when all you really want to do is cry.’
‘Please don’t say that…’
‘There, there.’ Brenda patted Lucy’s arm. ‘I don’t want you worrying, or feeling that I am somehow your responsibility…’
‘No, never that. You are my friend.’
‘I know, I know. And you mean more to me than any person alive.’ There was a pause as a strong emotion bubbled in Brenda, but she successfully combated it and swallowed, refocusing. ‘But back to the hunky…erm…’ She scrunched her hands into tiny fists in frustration, searching for a name she had only recently used but was now temporarily camouflaged in her brain and refused to step forward.