Wonder Women

by Fiore, Rosie

  Mel watched as the figure disappeared into the stairwell, and she waited to see if she would come out of the station exit and walk up the hill towards the building. She did, and as she stepped under a streetlight, it was instantly clear that it was Serena – Serena in ordinary clothes, not school uniform. She was walking with a tall, skinny person, almost certainly male, although Mel couldn’t tell for sure because he or she had a hoody on with the hood up concealing their face. It wasn’t someone Mel recognised. Serena was laughing, and she saw her point at Mel’s building and say something. On the corner of the main road, she said goodbye to the tall person, who headed off up the high street. Serena jogged in the opposite direction, obviously hurrying to get home before Mel left the office.

  Mel felt cold. There was no way Serena could have gone home after school, changed, caught the Tube into town and got back by 5.15. She must have bunked school. Mel had obviously been kidding herself. Whatever Serena was up to, it obviously wasn’t totally innocent, and it wasn’t harmless. She was going to have to do something, something decisive and firm, before Serena went off the rails completely. The trouble was, she didn’t have a clue what.

  9

  JUNGLETOWN NOW

  They had all learned a great deal in the few days they had been open, not least that there was an endless amount of tidying and cleaning involved in the day-to-day operation of the shop. At 7 a.m. on the day of the launch party, Jo was crawling around the shop on her hands and knees. She had a bottle of white spirit and some cosmetic cotton pads, and she was cleaning scuff marks off the walls where crowds of energetic little boys had kicked and scraped them. They were all exhausted to the point of slightly hysterical giggling. Lee stood at the counter compiling press packs, Zach was playing quietly with a puzzle and Imogene was asleep in her pushchair. Holly and Mel were filling balloons from a helium canister they had hired, occasionally breathing some in and launching into a chipmunk-style rendition of ‘I will survive’, and Mel’s fifteen-year-old daughter Serena, who had reluctantly been dragged along, had been sent to stand outside the coffee shop and bring back caffeine and sugar supplies the minute the place opened.

  When Serena returned, she was greeted with a cheer and they all gathered around the counter with their cups and muffins to go over the plans for the day. ‘The photographer will be here at nine,’ Jo said, checking her list. ‘She’ll get some shots of the shop before people arrive. The cupcake lady said she’d deliver between nine and nine thirty. What time is the face painter arriving?’

  ‘I asked her to be here before ten to set up. I thought we could put her table over there,’ Holly said, pointing to one of the back corners of the shop.

  ‘Maybe on the other side,’ Mel said. That’s right in the way of the coconut ball-throwing game. She might not appreciate being hit on the head with a coconut, even if it is a soft foam-rubber one.’

  ‘Good point,’ said Jo. ‘On the other side then. Mel, what are the RSVPs looking like?’

  ‘Well, if everyone who’s said they’re coming comes, we’ll have people queuing outside all day,’ said Mel.

  ‘That’s great. We can probably count on half to two-thirds of them actually showing up. As long as there’s a buzz in here the whole day, I’ll be happy.’

  ‘What’s the final word on the press?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Both local papers are coming – that reminds me, they’re also bringing photographers. But they said they want candid shots of the shop full of people, not set-up shots. We’ve got two listings magazines coming – both have said they’ll do an editorial piece on us if we buy an ad, and at last count, about five mummy bloggers.’

  ‘That’s amazing!’ Holly said admiringly.

  ‘Well, that was my job.’ Jo smiled. ‘Getting bums on seats.’

  ‘Fabulous,’ Holly said. ‘Now, if we’re all done, I want to check stock one last time. We made quite a few late sales yesterday, and I want to make sure we have everything out that we need.’

  ‘Balloons,’ said Mel. ‘Serena, can you give me a hand? We need another twenty or so.’

  As her team headed off to complete their tasks, Jo reached for her bottle of spirit, but Lee put his hand on her wrist and drew her into his arms.

  ‘There might not be time to say it later, and we’ll probably be too knackered tonight, so I’m telling you now that I’m so proud of you my heart could burst.’ He kissed her sweetly and then more passionately, and for a second they forgot the shop, the other people in the room and their two children in the back office. Serena broke the spell by snorting and yelling, ‘Get a room!’

  Jo giggled and stepped away, but as she turned she saw both Holly and Mel looking a little wistful.

  From nine thirty, half an hour before they were even due to open, there was already a small crowd outside, peering in through the windows. Mel and Serena had done an impressive job with the balloons, and the shop looked like party central both outside and in. Daniel and Chris arrived to lend a hand and to bring additional T-shirt stock, for which Holly was very grateful. The last-minute tasks took them right up to ten o’clock, when Jo gathered everyone together. ‘This is it, people,’ she said. ‘Thank you for all your work and patience. Today is make or break. Let’s make it count!’ Then she took a deep breath, walked over to the door and turned the key.

  First through the door were Lee’s parents, who had come to fetch Zach and Imogene and take them back to their house in Pinner for the rest of the day. They were full of admiration, and Lee’s mum insisted on buying a few T-shirts for Zach, even though Jo said she shouldn’t, and that Zach had all the clothes he needed. At points in the morning, the shop was uncomfortably full, and Lee, Daniel and Chris took turns to be doorman and restrict the flow of people into the room. At the busiest point, Serena said a mumbled goodbye and slunk off, pretending not to hear Mel’s questions about where she was going and when she might be home. The photographers from the local papers had arrived, and were struggling to get shots in the crush, and Jo had to elbow a few paying customers aside so they could take the pictures they needed. Mel was on hand to smooth ruffled feathers with a free cupcake and an offer of face-painting for the little ones, and everyone seemed to go away happy.

  Miranda came with her children and Holly’s mum, who was a little overwhelmed by the noise and buzz, not to mention the constant risk of being knocked flying by a fast-moving small boy at waist-height. Holly eventually ushered her next door to the coffee shop and got her a cup of tea and a bun. Miranda oohed and ahed, and bought a few things for Oscar. Holly was rushed off her feet refilling the racks, answering questions on sizing and giving advice to customers. Chris and Daniel had stuck around and they proved invaluable, fetching and carrying, and it turned out Chris was a dab hand with an iron (he told Holly he had learned in the cadets at school), so eventually he just stayed in the back room, pressing things and putting them on hangers for Daniel to bring out.

  There was a brief lull around lunchtime, but only long enough for Mel to run a Hoover around the floor and for everyone to do a quick tidy and regroup. The afternoon rush was slightly less frantic than the morning, but the shop was still constantly full. At around three, Jo looked up and saw Louise, the woman who had run the business course, come through the door, holding the hand of a little boy of about three, with flaming red hair. She was no longer pregnant, and the tall man she was with, who was handsome and greying, had a tiny baby in a sling on his front. There was another couple with them, with toddler twins in a double buggy. Louise came over and greeted Jo with a hug and a kiss.

  ‘You did it! This is absolutely fantastic!’ she said with warmth and enthusiasm. ‘I’m not even slightly surprised you got it off the ground, but it’s even better than I could have imagined! And I’m so thrilled you connected with Daniel and Chris. They emailed to tell me you gave them their big break.’ She introduced her husband, Adam, and her little boy, Peter. Adam shook Jo’s hand, and gently tipped forward to show her the sleeping infant on his chest. ‘T
his is Florence,’ he said. His voice was deep and Scottish, and the pride he clearly felt was unmistakable.

  ‘This is my sister, Rachel, and her husband, Richard,’ said Louise, indicating their companions, ‘and their twins, Jago and Xanthe.’

  Jo left Louise and her entourage to have a look around, and went to spend a little time chatting up one of the influential local mummy bloggers who had just arrived. The blogger wanted a few pictures, so Jo asked Louise if she could borrow her little boy, who was very sweet-looking. They slipped one of the Monkeyman T-shirts on over what he was wearing, and he posed patiently for a few pics, playing with some of the equipment, holding a balloon and having his face painted.

  Jo couldn’t help noticing, out of the corner of her eye, that Louise’s sister’s twins, now out of their pushchair, were a pair of destructive and under-disciplined monsters. The little boy – Jago, was it? – was a thrower: he hurled balls, bricks and anything else he could get his hands on. He almost flung a cupcake with deadly accuracy at a rack of white T-shirts. Luckily Holly, who was also watching in horror, stopped him at the last second. His sister was a whiner, and if she didn’t get her way, a screamer. The mother seemed mostly preoccupied with trying to placate her, mainly by pleading and offering all sorts of bribes. Louise’s brother-in-law, a tall, blond man who looked extremely posh, seemed too preoccupied to help with his children at all. He was walking around the shop, scrutinising every item of clothing, then squatting down to look at the play equipment. Jo was rather surprised. She wouldn’t have thought it was his kind of thing. He didn’t pick anything up, so he clearly wasn’t interested in shopping for his kids. Then she saw him make his way over to the counter and engage Lee, who was on till duty, in conversation. Jo turned her attention back to the blogger, who had finished taking pictures and had an enormous list of questions for her.

  The rest of the day passed in a haze of narrowly averted crises, hurried conversations, friends kissing Jo and congratulating her, and endless, endless smiling. When they finally closed the doors after the last customers had straggled out at six o’clock, Jo sank down and sat on one of the big ladybird beanbags on the floor. She was vaguely conscious from the ache in her back and legs that it was the first time she had sat down all day. Holly was tidying up and straightening garments on their hangers – surely, Jo thought, for the thousandth time that day, while Mel was cashing up the till. Lee had already left to fetch the kids from his parents’ place and would return with two bathed and fed children, ready for bed in their pyjamas, and one of his mum’s homemade lasagnes. Jo was, both literally and figuratively, finished. Holly eventually stopped tidying, went into the back room and returned with a chilled bottle of Cava and three glasses. Jo managed a faint cheer from her beanbag, and Mel nodded enthusiastic assent. Jo knew she should lead the others in some kind of post-mortem of the day, but she just didn’t have the energy. There had been hitches, there were things she knew she wanted to change, but overall, the day had been a huge, storming success. She was going to have a glass of bubbly, limp home with her family and sleep for twelve hours solid. Everything else could wait until tomorrow.

  After the launch, the first few weeks were rather an anticlimax. The bloggers and the local press were all very generous in their assessment of Jungletown, but it brought a trickle rather than a flood of customers. Jo wasn’t worried; she knew the real success of the business would lie in word-of-mouth and building a loyal customer base and it would take a little longer, and sure enough, as they began their second month of trading, there was a noticeable rise in the number of customers, and more and more of them mentioned that they had come because they had heard about the shop from a friend. They weren’t bringing in millions of pounds, but they were covering costs and salaries and paying back the bank, and as far as Jo was concerned, that was all she hoped for at this early stage.

  She and Mel had worked out a rota that suited them both, and most of the time they managed to balance working in the shop with their respective family commitments. For Jo though, the guilt was always there. She flew away from the shop every day as soon as her shift finished, taking paperwork to do when the kids were in bed. Even though Imi seemed perfectly happy at the childminder’s and Zach loved nursery, she felt awful that she wasn’t with them. On the days when the rota didn’t allow her to pick them up at the normal time, and they had to stay later or go to a friend’s, she was consumed with guilt and distracted at work. When she was with them, she found herself relaxing the rules, giving them more treats and letting them get away with naughtiness. As a result, Zach particularly pushed his luck and started answering back. Then she’d end up yelling at him, and she would be consumed with guilt all over again. One day, she was doing a lightning-fast handover to Mel, flinging things into her handbag as she prepared to rush out of the door. Mel followed her around, making notes, handing keys, phone and umbrella to her and generally looking like the picture of calm and competence. Jo stopped for a moment. ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Balance it all. Serena, work … and as a single parent? Didn’t you go out of your mind when she was small?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mel. ‘All the time. I felt bad I wasn’t working harder, and awful I wasn’t with her more. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything well.’

  ‘That’s exactly how I feel! So what did you do?’

  ‘What does anyone do? I fudged it, compromised and eventually learned to live with the guilt. Can’t change it, have to live with it.’

  Holly filled in if it was necessary, but she mainly concerned herself with keeping the shop well stocked with fresh and exciting clothes. In the lead-up to Christmas they did a roaring trade. Holly had not only sourced loads of cute novelty Christmas jumpers, hats and baby clothes, she’d also bought a selection of soft toy dinosaurs and jungle animals, and set up a temporary gift section. Harassed mums who had to take their kids shopping were thrilled to come to Jungletown and be able to browse in relative peace while their kids worked off some festive-season madness on the play equipment.

  By the day before Christmas Eve, they had had a better month than November, even though they had only traded for twenty-three days. It was a good thing, as they received notice from the council that there would be major roadworks on the pavement in front of the shop between Christmas and New Year. It would be a real struggle to get customers in and out.

  ‘The last thing we need is someone falling or hurting themselves just outside the shop,’ said Jo.

  ‘And we could do without everyone tracking in mud and cement dust,’ Mel pointed out.

  ‘Let’s close for a few days,’ said Jo. ‘We were going to struggle with staffing anyway, as you’ll be away, Mel. We’ll reopen on the second of January with a kick-ass January sale.’

  The three of them went to the pub over the road for a Christmas drink after they closed. It was a frosty winter’s evening, and through the pub window Jo could see her bright and sparkly shop. It gave her a warm glow inside, as did the mulled wine. What had been a dream in the summer was now a steadily growing reality. Contrary to her fears and worries, she seemed to be balancing the needs of her family with the business, and she had made two great new friends in Mel and Holly. The new year could only bring good things. She was sure of it.

  ‘Cheers, girls!’ she said happily, raising her glass.

  ‘So, Holly, Mel’s off to Devon, I’m going to have a craaaazy time in Hertfordshire … what does Christmas hold for you?’

  ‘Oh, we’re all off to Oxfordshire, to my brother’s place. It should be a fairly toxic family Christmas, I imagine. I’ll be the embarrassingly single, quirky sister, to be passed around at cocktail parties and forcibly introduced to awful, unsuitable men fresh from their first divorce.’

  ‘So sorry,’ said Mel. ‘It does happen. If you resist for long enough, they give up after a while. My friends accept that I’m a dried-up old spinster now, and they leave me alone.’

  ‘You not spending Christma
s with family?’ Holly asked her.

  ‘No. I don’t see my family,’ said Mel, and her suddenly prickly tone made Holly realise this wasn’t a line of discussion to pursue. But then Mel brightened and started talking about her plans. ‘We have a long-standing tradition where we take a house in Devon with a crowd of friends. We take long walks on the beach, lie around and play board games, and we have a non-traditional traditional Christmas dinner: no turkey, because we all hate it, but a lovely roast lamb and plenty of wine.’

  ‘And no passive-aggressive family crap?’ Holly laughed. ‘Sounds like heaven.’

  ‘It is pretty cool,’ said Mel, her smile a little tight. ‘Serena’s always loved it, but she seems less keen this year. She says she’d rather we stayed in London. I’ve convinced her to go, but every year, she’s going to object more.’ She didn’t add that the only reason Serena had stopped yelling and sulking about the trip was because she had heard her dad was going to be there. Bruce came along about one year in every three. The old university friends Mel was going with were friends of his too, and it was a good way for him to see Serena over the festive season. Mel didn’t think Serena was keen to see her dad because she was such a devoted daughter. Mel knew Bruce had a new job and was making more money, and she had a suspicion he had promised Serena some kind of special Christmas present. Well, whatever it took.