Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café

by Milly Johnson

  She had recalled lots of small instances which she hadn’t flagged up as anything dangerous at the time, yet she had remembered them all the same. For instance, how Ivanka had started to flex her bossy muscles, asking Della if she would just file this whilst she was over by the cabinet, or take a bag of rubbish down to the bins as she was going out of the door on her lunch break. Ivanka was on a quest to squeeze Della out and Jimmy had to be condoning it, she could see that now. They were both treating her like trash. How else could the events of the previous day be explained? They had booked a last-minute holiday and then played out a ridiculous drama to sneak off on it so that no one would suspect, for which Della had had to cancel an event she had been looking forward to for weeks.

  ‘Della, I’ve been up all night, thinking. I don’t want you to leave Diamond Shine,’ said Connie, after taking a long drink of her coffee.

  Della froze mid-swallow, her head scrabbling around for why that would be, although it wasn’t hard to stab at a guess. Connie wanted to use her to get rid of Ivanka. And when Ivanka was gone, Connie would then get rid of Della.

  ‘Sorry, but my mind is made up. End of,’ replied Della, moving her head decisively from side to side. ‘Nothing will make me stay, I can assure you of that. I can’t work with Jimmy any more.’

  ‘Will you work against him then?’

  The words dropped like a stone into a still pool of water, sending shock ripples out to the four corners of the room.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Della eventually, doubting her ears were working properly.

  ‘I have a proposition for you,’ said Connie, holding her cup as if she were pulling the warmth from it. She’d had the idea at exactly ten past three this morning. It had popped into her brain and woken her and she’d got out of bed, opened up a pad and started to plot. It was an insane, ridiculous, idea. So nuts that it might just work. Connie took in two huge lungfuls of air before her next words. ‘What would you think about going into business with me?’

  Della’s eyebrows rose and she pulled her chin back into her neck. Was she hearing this correctly?

  ‘Into business with you?’ She repeated the words slowly to make sure.

  ‘Yes,’ said Connie, nodding. ‘With me.’

  Della tried not to let a sarcastic smile warp her mouth. ‘What sort of business?’ She couldn’t imagine.

  ‘Cleaning, of course,’ replied Connie, as if the answer was obvious.

  ‘Cleaning?’

  ‘Let me explain.’ Connie tucked a stray strand of her dull-blonde hair behind her ear. Her voice was calm and controlled as she spoke, even though inside she had started to shake. Once the words were out, they couldn’t be taken back. ‘I’ve been thinking about the situation I now find myself in. My years of loyalty to my husband obviously mean nothing to him either. Now, I could sit back and wait for Jimmy to tell me that he’s divorcing me and let him give me the scraps from his table as a divorce settlement or I can walk out of my marriage with some dignity, some pride and something of what he owes. I don’t see that I have any other option but to show him that I’m not taking what he has done to me lying down.’

  Connie released a deep sigh and she waited to see what Della’s reaction was. She knew she had taken a massive risk in telling Della what she intended to do. She was gladdened to find she had Della’s full attention.

  ‘Go on,’ Della prompted eventually.

  ‘I thought of a plan. I am going to open up a rival cleaning firm. You stay in your job in Diamond Shine and dismantle it from the inside. You filter all the best clients to me and all the best cleaners. I undercut Diamond Shine’s prices at every turn. I don’t need to make a profit; I can run the business at a loss if I have to, at least for a while. I searched the net and found an office in Maltstone which the business can operate from. It’s a room above a place that used to be a bridal shop. I was on the phone this morning first thing to them and I’ve fixed up an appointment to have a look at it this afternoon.’

  ‘You don’t let the grass grow under your feet, do you?’ said Della, with some admiration.

  I didn’t want to give myself the chance to back out, Connie didn’t tell her.

  ‘Let me just ask: what, pray, do I get out of it all? And what’s to stop you telling your husband that I’d be causing chaos from within?’ Della wasn’t born yesterday and she wouldn’t be used by another of the Diamond family. After all, Connie owed her no loyalty.

  Connie had been prepared for this question, which was a fair one. ‘Okay then, let me turn that question around on you: what’s to stop you telling Jimmy what I plan to do? I’m trusting you with this information, aren’t I?’

  Della crossed her arms over her small flat breasts. ‘And why are you trusting me after what I told you?’

  ‘Because I have nothing to lose,’ replied Connie, a croak claiming her throat on the last word. ‘Look at me, Della,’ she spread her arms out to her sides. ‘Tell me that you didn’t see me yesterday and think “what a mess”. And you’re right. For more than half of my life I’ve looked after everyone but myself and I’m going to be thrown on the dung-heap for it. Well, it’s time for things to change.’ Her strength was gathering now.

  Della dropped her head, unable to meet Connie’s eyes. She had enabled Jimmy’s many infidelities and relished his disrespect for his wife because it made her feel close to him, closer to him than the woman he was married to because she was privy to his secrets. She’d judged him to be a lovable rogue rather than the total bastard she could now see that he was, stamping all over everyone in pursuit of his own pleasure.

  ‘Cast your eyes around my house, Della,’ Connie went on. ‘My bedroom window has had a plastic bag blocking up a crack in it for eighteen months. My clothes are cheap, my car is held together with rust – and I’ve put up with all of it because I knew that most of the little profit Jimmy made was ploughed back into the company. Hard times, he said. We’re lucky to be riding the recession; once we get to the other side, we can splash out a bit. He’s been saying that for years and I’ve been so proud of him for trying. Huh.’

  Her voice was loud now; spittle was flying off her lips in small energetic drops. She could have gone on and told Della so much more about why she was so angry, but bit back the words. She had told Della all she needed to know.

  ‘As for what you’d get out of it, well, you’d still get your salary from Jimmy and I’d match what he pays you – cash in hand.’

  Della studied the offer for a moment. There was a fatal flaw in the plan.

  ‘How will you be able to afford to do that?’ If Connie had any money, surely she would have bought some windows herself. ‘And you say you’d run the business at a loss?’

  ‘I don’t intend to run it at a loss for ever,’ Connie came back. ‘I’m prepared to run it at a loss until Jimmy is removed as a rival. My mother died last year. She had an insurance policy. Not a fortune, but enough to spend on this. I didn’t want to touch it. Jimmy asked me if I’d invest it into the business and I felt so guilty when I said no because I put it away for my daughter. But I think my mother would approve of what I’m going to do with it. You won’t lose out, whatever happens, Della. I’ll make sure you’re properly financially compensated.’ She turned to face the tall, spiky woman head on. ‘If I’m going to do this, I will have to throw myself headfirst into it. I want to close down Diamond Shine and end my marriage by May the first.’ Mayday sounded appropriate.

  Della coughed in shock. ‘May the first? That’s not very long.’

  ‘It’s long enough.’

  ‘You’re very calm,’ said Della, her eyes narrow as she studied Connie’s stone-face.

  ‘Maybe on the outside. I can assure you I am not on the inside. Well?’

  Della felt as if she was on the top of a very high diving board and if she took the leap, there was no guarantee of a safe landing. Then she thought of Jimmy and the way he looked at her, forcing her to believe that there was a connection between them. He had u
sed her. He had slipped under all her defence barriers and made her fall in love with him when he had no intention of opening his heart to her. The bastard.

  She caught sight of the calendar on Connie’s kitchen wall. There were just short of nine weeks to May.

  ‘You won’t lose money,’ she said. ‘You can undercut Jimmy’s prices considerably and still make a good profit. If nothing’s happened by Mayday, we part company and never admit that we spoke about this, all right?’

  ‘So that means you’re in, then?’ asked Connie, her chest thudding with palpitations.

  ‘It looks like it, doesn’t it?’ replied Della.

  Connie held out her hand and Della’s came out tentatively to reach it, but her handshake was firm and sure. The unlikeliest pairing in history had just been formed: a union of hate against a joint object of love.

  Chapter 11

  Connie parked her car on Wheatfield Lane, down the side of the old empty bridal shop in Maltstone. Standing outside and waiting was a man with a clipboard who she presumed was the estate agent. She reckoned he would have been in his early twenties, a man blossoming from a boy. He had a slim frame, long arms, long legs and was sporting a sharp suit in bright blue with a pink shirt – brave colours for the fearless young with their whole lives ahead of them. The sight of him made her smile. Max would have been his age now. Her boy. With any luck he would have inherited his father’s wide cheeky smile and tall, handsome physique but have her sensitivity and less selfish heart. Sometimes she imagined him in uniform as a pilot, sometimes in a wig and gown breezing into court but if he’d been a road sweeper and happy it wouldn’t have mattered. He had been beautiful when he was born, ten tiny fingers with a dot of nail on them, dark eyelashes, a pink bud of a mouth . . .

  Connie snapped her thoughts back into the here and now, as she’d had to do so many times over the years to survive, and just remembered to slip her wedding ring off her finger and into the side pocket of her handbag before getting out of the car.

  The man came towards her with his hand outstretched in greeting.

  ‘Miss Smith, Tom Stamp,’ he said confidently. Connie had given the estate agency her aunt’s name. ‘How do you do.’ His handshake was warm and energetic. ‘Lovely day. Bit nippy, but nice and bright.’

  ‘Thanks for seeing me at such short notice,’ Connie replied.

  ‘No worries. I like someone who knows what they want. It makes my job a lot easier,’ said Tom Stamp, taking a key out of his pocket. ‘Let’s see what you think of it.’

  The entrance to the upper office was at the back of the property. Nice and private, Connie thought. The smell of fresh paint greeted them. The staircase was wide, the carpet on it looked new.

  ‘It’s all been done out recently,’ said Tom. ‘ To be honest, it was a bit of a mess when it first came on our books. The roof had leaked. We couldn’t have rented it out as it was so the owner had to put his hands in his pockets. Looks good, doesn’t it?’

  The room at the top of the stairs was much more light and airy than Connie could have imagined. The front windows were small; at the back they were much bigger and south-facing. The room was long and narrow with white painted walls and an entirely respectable, neutral-coloured carpet. Lines of pine shelving filled an alcove, which would come in handy, thought Connie.

  ‘There’s a toilet and a sink and a small kitchen,’ said Tom, beckoning Connie over to see them. The kitchen was smaller than the loo, but it wasn’t really needed at all. A plug point for a kettle would have sufficed, and there seemed to be lots of plug points around.

  ‘Phone line needs connecting, obviously,’ said Tom, pointing to the phone socket on the wall with a flourish worthy of an air stewardess indicating an emergency exit.

  ‘That’s fine,’ replied Connie. She would get on to that as soon as possible but for now, she and Della would be able to speak via two mobile pay-as-you-go phones which she had just picked up from Asda.

  ‘Our client would prefer a six-month rental agreement,’ said Tom, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘I think he was bitten by the last client. He’s asked for a five hundred pound bond and two months’ rent up front.’

  He winced a little, probably expecting Connie to back out at that point. But instead she said, ‘Understandable.’

  Anyone who had been cheated tended to lose their trust. That was one thing to which she could testify first-hand.

  Connie imagined sitting at a desk by the window. She wouldn’t need half the space offered, but it was in a perfect out-of-the-way location without being too far a drive from home. She had made another appointment to view a property in Penistone after this, but she decided she would cancel it. This was perfect for her needs. ‘And if I went ahead, how soon could I move in?’ she asked.

  ‘A few days, I should imagine,’ replied Tom, who from the expression on his face hadn’t been expecting that easy a deal.

  Connie liked it. It felt a good fresh space. Now she had to ask an awkward question which she knew was going to sound ridiculous.

  ‘And how private would my details be? Let me clarify,’ she went on, seeing Tom Stamp’s eyebrow rise like Roger Moore’s. Although she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to convince him now that she wasn’t a crime-lord. Maybe the best way forward was honesty? Then again, she had always respected honesty and where had that got her?

  ‘I must be totally frank with you, I have a stalker,’ she blurted out. Even her own brain was thinking, what the frigging hell are you saying? ‘It’s a police matter and the situation is being monitored, but I have to be careful, which is why I am moving out of my present offices. I would have to insist that you keep my details strictly to yourselves. It’s a very distressing situation so you’ll understand my concern. The police may be in touch with you to make sure that steps are taken to protect my identity.’

  Tom Stamp’s eyes were wide as dinner-plates. He hadn’t come across this scenario in his short career to date but his answer was slick and professional.

  ‘That’s awful. It’s my dad’s estate agency so don’t worry, I will make personally sure that all your details are kept off the main filing systems and secure in Mum’s office – she takes care of all the money.’

  ‘I will, of course, supply you with my real details and my present financial and personal credentials, which you will need.’

  ‘Brilliant, brilliant.’ Tom nodded enthusiastically as if all this was very exciting to him.

  ‘You could endanger my life if protocol isn’t followed,’ added Connie, just in case he was dying to brag to his mates down the pub what had happened today.

  ‘You don’t have to worry at all, Miss Smith.’ Tom gave her a conspiratorial wink. ‘You’re safe as houses with the “Stamp of Approval” agency.’

  And Tom Stamp once again held out his hand, this time for Miss Smith to shake on the deal.

  Chapter 12

  Sitting on the balcony, bathed in sunlight, Ivanka looked at the sparkly diamond on the third finger of her left hand and smiled. It really was beautiful – and so big. If Jimmy ever dumped her, at least she could sell it for a tidy sum, not that she wanted to. That was the problem. She had thought she would feel more secure when Jimmy bought her a ring of commitment but it had had the opposite effect. If a man could get engaged to a girl when he was married to his wife, how worthless was that arrangement really?

  Jimmy had introduced her to fine dining and hotel suites, spas and foreign travel, jewellery and fast cars. She couldn’t – and wouldn’t – give it up now for anyone. She had pushed and nagged for an engagement ring and got it – so she needed to push and nag for a wedding. Only as Mrs Ivanka Diamond would she have that security of never being without money again. She looked over at him lying supine on the sunbed, mouth open, snoring gently. She loved him. Or at least she thought she did. She liked the excitement of their relationship; pretending there was nothing between them in the office even when Della wasn’t around. Very rarely, when Della was out at lunch, he migh
t draw his finger once across the back of her neck or she might trace the line of Jimmy’s trouser fly, sit across from his desk and cross her legs Sharon-Stone style and it drove them both crazy that they were forbidden to touch each other until later. She enjoyed going to the theatre and drinking the champagne he bought and opening the presents he gave her, and going to bed with him was no hardship because Jimmy was generous and attentive to her body and she loved sex and he obviously adored her and she relished the power her youth and confidence had over him. That was love, wasn’t it?

  They had managed to keep their relationship boiling for almost a year thanks to the intrigue and surprises and sex, but Ivanka wasn’t stupid enough to think that the momentum would last for ever: a drop in temperature was imminent and so she needed to establish her place on a joint cheque book before that happened.

  It would be Lent on Wednesday and Ivanka Szczepanska decided there and then what she was going to give up for it: sex until she and Jimmy could carry on their relationship in the open. If denying him the delights of her body didn’t rush him to a solicitor for his divorce papers, very little else would.

  Chapter 13

  On Sunday morning, Cheryl shuffled across the mattress to snuggle up to Gary’s warm back and jerked fully awake when she nearly fell out of bed. She had been dreaming when she’d heard him say, ‘Cuddle up, Chez.’ Gary wasn’t there. This was the third morning she had woken up alone and once again, the pain was waiting for her eyes to open so it could pounce on her. She pressed her face into the pillow where her partner used to lay his head and as she breathed in his fading scent, she began to sob noisily.

  He hadn’t phoned or texted; she’d thought he might have. If he had, she would have caved in and told him to come back, given him yet another last chance just to plug up this hole of agony that his absence was inflicting upon her. But she had done too much of a good job on Thursday morning convincing him that it was over and she was beginning to hate herself for that.