Five Wakes and a Wedding

by Karen Ross

  ‘First of all,’ Gloria topped me up with a generous glug of Malbec before I could get my glass to the safety of the sink, ‘listen to me a moment.’ I knew what she was going to say, and sure enough … ‘It’s always easier to get a job when you’re already employed.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘So why not go marching in there tomorrow and apologise for your momentary lapse in professionalism which interrupted his bereavement consultation, or whatever it is he’s calling it this week …’

  ‘Intake appointment,’ I muttered.

  ‘Whatevs. Anyway, my point is that you can stick to your principles without becoming a martyr. Take your salary for a few more weeks, while you get yourself sorted somewhere else. And leave with a good reference.’

  I could see the logic in what Gloria was saying. And thinking about it, none of my erstwhile colleagues had gone to work for rival funeral directors. One took a job as a cosmetics consultant at the Westfield Centre, another went travelling, and the third member of what used to be our team said there were no decent jobs out there, just junior positions with zero hours contracts, so he went off to retrain as a hotel manager.

  None of that was for me. I couldn’t imagine not doing what I do.

  My job is part of who I am.

  What was I going to do?

  What was I going to do?

  I closed my eyes for a few seconds and visualised. It’s a really useful technique I use whenever I need to adjust to change. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself going off to work as … as … all I could see was Siberia, the miserable little back office at work where, less than twelve hours ago, I had been – frankly – a lot happier than I was right then.

  So maybe my brain was telling me change was unnecessary. But in my heart I already knew that if I kept drawing my salary, even for a little while, it would be a betrayal of my profession.

  ‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll just go and type my resignation letter. See how it feels to put into words the fact that Jason is a blemish on our industry. Perhaps I’ll suggest he’s the person who should quit, rather than me.’

  Before Gloria could say anything more, the doorbell rang.

  So far as I knew, we weren’t expecting visitors. Not unless …

  By the way Gloria leapt to answer, I wondered if Thrice-Wed Fred had decided to pay an unscheduled nocturnal visit.

  But no, Gloria came back alone. An envelope in her hand. ‘Came by courier,’ she said, sliding it across the kitchen table to me.

  Inside the big brown envelope with my name on it, there was a small white envelope with my name on it. And inside that, a single sheet of paper. Also with my name on it.

  Dear Ms Sherwood,

  Please accept this letter as formal notice of your dismissal for a wholly unacceptable act of gross misconduct committed today.

  Our HR Department will calculate any outstanding salary and holiday pay and remit to your bank account in due course, and your personal belongings will be forwarded to you by courier tomorrow. I should add that you are no longer welcome on our premises.

  On a personal note, I am extremely disappointed by your behaviour and respectfully suggest you are probably better suited to employment in a not-for-profit enterprise.

  Jason Chung

  There went my chances of a glowing reference. Wordlessly, I handed the letter to Gloria.

  By unspoken mutual consent, we opened a third bottle of wine. And since there was no longer any need to debate whether or not I needed to resign, we soon moved on to discuss Gloria’s favourite topic of conversation. Fred Carpenter QC. Visiting Professor of Law at one of London’s most prestigious universities. Older than Gloria and me by at least ten years. George Clooney hair. The fathomless brown eyes of a Labrador puppy. A silver tongue that effortlessly charms juries, judges and almost every woman under the age of eighty. And an ego the size of Uranus.

  Also answers to the name of Thrice-Wed Fred. Or rather he doesn’t. That’s what Gloria and I started to call him when he appeared on the scene late last year, before Gloria got embroiled with him. Foolishly embroiled, if you ask me, although whenever I’ve tried gently to remind Gloria that Fred’s a married man, she turns somewhere between defensive and downright shirty.

  Then again, who am I to judge?

  Two months ago, I had a one-night stand with Jason Chung.

  5

  Jason and I happened because of a train strike. That and a serious, alcohol-fuelled misjudgement.

  I was supposed to travel to Nottingham to collect a hearse from another business in our group. (We’d acquired a National Logistics Director who continually shuffled vehicles from one branch to the next, ‘To ensure maximum capacity at all times,’ as he so charmlessly put it.) The strike meant I couldn’t go, but rather than leave it an extra day, Jason announced the two of us would drive there together.

  ‘A great opportunity for me to brief you about the new commission opportunities from engraving,’ he threatened. ‘We’ve partnered with a firm that’s going to pay us by the letter.’

  I’m afraid my immediate thought was that Jason’s Holy Grail of a client would be a recently deceased nanny whose compliant relatives could be persuaded to put ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ on her tombstone.

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  Okay is one of the most useful words in my vocabulary. It can cover a multitude of sins. On that occasion, it meant that since I had no choice in the matter, I’d do my best to behave like a good employee.

  As it happened, our journey up the M1 was a revelation. Jason’s A–Z lecture about payment-by-the-letter – all I remember now is that capitals were apparently more valuable to the firm than words in lower case, so make that ‘SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS’ – drew thankfully to a close just before we reached Dunstable. Then, to my surprise, the further we got from London, the more he started to relax.

  I’m a good listener – another part of the job – and Jason is a great talker. Most of what he says is total bollocks of course, but on this occasion, he chose a topic that aroused my curiosity. He started talking about himself.

  ‘I know you think I’ve got it easy, Nina.’ Jason shrugged his shoulders and gave me a sidelong glance that also incorporated the interior of his ridiculous, show-off Porsche. ‘But at least you’re doing this job because you choose to.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I don’t have any choice. It’s either this or my parents threatened to banish me to bloody Beijing.’ That was the first time I’d heard Jason swear. ‘It’s not as if I’ve ever set foot in China in the first place,’ he continued. ‘We’re the American side of the family.’

  My wet-behind-the-ears boss was a nephew of the ultimate owners of our business and beneficiary of unimaginable wealth, luxury and jobs for the boys. Or so the office grapevine had it. But once Jason started talking, a different picture emerged.

  Boarding school in New Hampshire. Business school in Pennsylvania. ‘And then they told me – told me – I’d have to do this job for the next three years. And that unless my sales figures were fifteen per cent higher than every other manager in the group, I wouldn’t have any say in my next assignment.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Not okay, at all. I wish you’d stop saying that. It really pisses me off.’

  Blimey. Jason Chung was suddenly turning into a human being, right before my eyes.

  ‘Okay.’ But this time, I giggled as I said it, and Jason laughed, too. ‘So what is it you’d rather be doing?’

  ‘What I really want is to be a landscape gardener. When I told my parents, you’d have thought I wanted to run away and join the circus. Or the Democrats.’

  By the time we arrived in Nottingham, Jason was babbling on about the joy he gets from growing flowers and vegetables in containers on his balcony. I’d learned about the correct time of year to set out poppies, plant onion sets, and seed sweet peas. Also about a bumper crop of strawberries, fit to grace Wimbledon. And then there was Jason
’s relentless fight against super-slugs the size of a prizefighter’s fist. It was almost like having a conversation with Gloria, whose latest project involved making a wildflower meadow in a dustbin lid.

  Once we’d arrived at our destination, the paperwork for transferring the hearse to our branch took about twenty minutes.

  Back in the car park, Jason watched me get into the hearse and adjust the vehicle’s seat and mirrors. I wound down the window and said, ‘I’ll race you back to London!’

  Jason produced the keys to his Porsche. ‘Okay.’ A grin. Then, ‘Tell you what. We’re almost into the rush hour so the M1’s going to be really busy. I know a nice little place just off the motorway. Follow me there and we’ll grab a bite to eat.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. Driving in the slow lane surrounded by packs of impatient lorries and white van fleets isn’t my idea of fun, so I was super happy to agree to divert myself with food until the traffic thinned out.

  Twenty-five minutes later, I was beginning to wonder if Jason had changed his mind. I had no idea where we were – maybe he’d decided to take the scenic route back to London – but just as I heard my stomach rumble, he pulled over into a little red brick development that boasted both a Little Chef and a Travelodge.

  I got out of the hearse and said, ‘You certainly know how to spoil a girl.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Jason was flustered. ‘The place I was looking for seems to have disappeared.’

  He obviously wasn’t about to tell me he couldn’t find it.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I’m starving. Let’s see what the Little Chef has to offer.’

  It turned out the Little Chef was able to come up with a decent glass of wine, which washed down quite well alongside our meal. I’d meant to have mushroom soup, but when the waitress arrived to take our order, the words that came out of my mouth were, ‘I’ll have the foot-long hot dog with a side of beef chilli and as many chips as you can fit on the plate.’ Jason opted for a more sedate plate of ham, eggs and chips.

  By the time we’d finished eating, it was dark outside. Jason excused himself from the table and I thought he was settling the bill, but then our waitress arrived with another glass of wine. Five minutes passed … ten. Had Jason done a runner? No, there he was outside, talking intently on his phone. Ah well. I had nothing on that evening, so I might as well relax.

  I sat there thinking about my plans for the weekend – a trip to the cinema and Sunday lunch with Mum and Dad in Southampton – until Jason returned, accompanied by a pancake stack fighting for space on the plate with a giant dollop of vanilla ice cream.

  ‘Really sorry,’ he said. ‘Office stuff. I thought you’d be able to manage dessert, though. What’s that you were singing to yourself?’ he added. ‘Ah, got it! Mary Poppins! My mum loves that movie!’

  After we’d finished, we made our way back to the car park. ‘I’ve had a good day,’ Jason said. ‘Much better than being stuck in the office. See you tomorrow.’ He stood and watched me get into the hearse.

  But when I turned the ignition, nothing happened.

  ‘Must be the battery,’ Jason said. ‘Let’s take a look.’ A minute or so later he confessed, ‘I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. We’re going to need a garage.’

  And that was how – once we’d discovered the hearse needed a new alternator that couldn’t be located until the morning – we came to spend the night at the Travelodge.

  One thing I liked about Jason was that he seemed unruffled by the fact our simple errand was not turning out as planned. He took charge of the situation, booked us a couple of rooms and invited me to join him in the bar.

  Three drinks later, I was bold enough to say, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t tell me to sleep in the hearse while you drove back to London. Maybe I’ve misjudged you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m probably as bad as you think. Although not entirely without manners.’ Jason topped up our glasses. ‘But Nottingham can pay for the repair bill and the cost of our accommodation. And our dinner. I’m damned if it’s coming off my bottom line.’ This sounded much more like the Jason Chung I knew and was obliged to tolerate for forty hours a week. ‘But let’s not talk about work. Tell me about you, Nina. I know nothing about you.’

  As someone who’s much more comfortable operating a spotlight than basking in its glow, I hate it when I’m invited to talk about myself. But more than that … if I’m honest, my personal life has been a wilderness for longer than I care to confess.

  I’m an only child. I gave up line-dancing when it became evident I have two left feet. Apart from Gloria, I have a few close friends I met at uni – people I can call at four in the morning and know they’ll be there for me – but unfortunately none live in London. The pancakes I rustle up on a Sunday morning are infinitely superior to those of Little Chef. And the nearest thing I do have to a personal life, by which I mean a romantic life, is listening to Gloria’s ill-advised adventures with Thrice-Wed Fred.

  My continuing silence was becoming uncomfortable for us both.

  ‘Okaaaay,’ I finally began. ‘I live in Kentish Town …’ And within five minutes, I was telling a story about Gloria’s plan to infiltrate the Regent’s Park Garden Festival with a pop-up edible hedge that involves bareroot blackberries, cherry plums, crab apples and wild pears, all the while hoping Jason had forgotten he asked about me.

  Sure enough, it worked. Soon, he was jabbering about the ins and outs of sweetcorn, and I was beginning to think he might even shape up into a suitable replacement for Thrice-Wed Fred.

  But Jason had other ideas.

  And I had no inkling, until he walked me to the door of my room, took me in his arms and kissed me. Rather well.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to do that for hours,’ he murmured. ‘Mysterious Nina. Beautiful Nina.’ Then he kissed me again.

  It wasn’t the right time to tell my boss I hadn’t had sex for five years.

  Ever since …

  An image of my husband’s funeral. Ryan. His coffin, draped in the regimental colours, danced in front of my eyes. Was I really going to spend the rest of my life as a born-again virgin?

  Apparently not.

  Work 101: Never sleep with the boss.

  Never.

  Ever.

  (Not that we got much sleep.)

  When I woke the next morning, I felt …

  More than anything else, I felt reassured to know my body hadn’t seized up through lack of use. But I was under no illusion. The night before had been about opportunity and circumstance rather than any genuine emotional connection.

  And that suited me just fine.

  I know Gloria thinks it’s time I moved on with my life, even though she’s never put it quite that way. Mum and Dad, for their part, would be thrilled if I turned up with a new man, although they know better than to say so. We had that particular discussion the Christmas before last and it ended with me sobbing that unless I could be sure of a relationship as strong and long-lasting as theirs, I’d far rather spend the rest of my life alone.

  After all the pain I’ve been through – not to mention the guilt, however misplaced, that I was in some way to blame – why take any more risks? I only have to think how often Thrice-Wed Fred fails to deliver on his empty promises to Gloria. At least if I’m alone, the only person with the power to disappoint me is myself.

  I was having this conversation with myself because, thankfully, I had woken up alone. Jason was long gone. His Porsche, too. An hour or so later, while I was still waiting for the alternator and the mechanic to show up, I discovered a note in my jacket pocket. That was wonderful. You look beautiful when you’re asleep and I can’t wait to see you again. J xxx

  No!

  There was only one thing to do.

  I sent Jason a text. LAST NIGHT DIDN’T HAPPEN, it said. PLEASE DELETE.

  6

  Jason was never the same after that. He was worse. Never missing a chance to criticise my work, berating me for missing sales targets, and even giving me a ver
bal warning for being five minutes late.

  And yet …

  It’s Jason I have to thank for this huge makeover in my life. If he hadn’t fired me, Happy Endings wouldn’t exist and I wouldn’t be standing here in my new shop today.

  Actually, I’m sitting at my reception desk. It’s been two hours since Gloria and Edo left to take Mum and Dad out to breakfast, and I flipped the sign on the door from ‘Closed’ to ‘Open’. I’ve passed the time by making sure I understand the various software packages that came with my new computer, dusting the display shelves (twice) and making sure the fridge in the basement continues to behave itself.

  I’m on my fourth cup of coffee, which means I need to run to the loo again, but before I can leave my desk, the door opens and a woman comes in.

  She’s five foot nothing, dressed head to toe in a bright orange ensemble of blouse, skirt, tights and clumpy boots. Her outfit clashes magnificently with her thick, shoulder-length hair, dyed in that unfortunate yet ubiquitous shade Gloria and I always refer to as menopause red, topped by a purple fedora that adds several inches to her height.

  ‘Good morning,’ she says. ‘I’m Sybille Newman. Your neighbour.’

  The shop next door to mine is The Primrose Poppadum – ‘Modern Organic Indian Classics, Free from Dairy, MSG, Wheat & Egg’ according to its sign – and Sybille Newman doesn’t fit my image of a restaurateur. Then again, I’m probably not her idea of an undertaker.

  ‘Very pleased to meet you,’ I say cautiously.

  ‘So you’re the owner, are you?’ Sybille Newman has a cut-glass accent and she sounds cross.

  ‘Yes, I’m Nina Sherwood. Today’s my first day and—’

  ‘Never mind that. I’ve come about the roof.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The roof. My husband and I live above the dreadful Indian restaurant.’ Sybille gestures towards The Primrose Poppadum with a flash of her Guantanamo orange fingernails. ‘Make sure you never go there – I’ve seen them arriving with carrier bags full of stuff from Asda. Organic my foot! We’re trying to get them shut down because of the dreadful smells. My husband has a respiratory disorder and they’re making it so much worse. But that’s not the point. The roof is leaking and we need a new one.’ She looks expectantly at me.