‘Ah.’
‘So I brought a celebratory lunch. Think you could handle a small glass of Prosecco with a Ploughman’s bap?’
‘I think I might manage that quite well,’ replied Connie with a grin.
*
‘Ivanka, will you ring me back urgently,’ barked Jimmy into his mobile. ‘My battery is nearly dead and it doesn’t help that you have your phone switched off so I have to leave a succession of bloody voicemails.’
Jimmy threw the mobile down on the passenger seat and tore away into the stream of traffic.
Where the hell had he heard that name Marilyn Smith recently and why was there a picture of his wife up at Savant’s house in the newspaper? Why did they think her name was Marilyn Smith? And where the hell was Connie, because she wasn’t picking the house phone up. He rang her mobile – not caring now if she realised he had one of his own – but she didn’t answer that either. What the fuckery duckery dock was going on?
He tried to think. He was associating Marilyn Smith with Lady Muck for some reason. The answer drifted tantalisingly past him and every time he made a grab for it, it shot off and flipped him the bird.
‘Oh Jesus, this is all I need.’
Jimmy was half-way down the M1 slip road when he saw the gridlocked traffic clogging up every lane.
Wenda. It was part of that conversation with Wenda.
Then he remembered. Marilyn Smith worked for Lady Muck, Wenda had said. But the woman in the paper was definitely Connie and she didn’t work for Lady Muck, that would be unthinkable. So why had that mistake been made? This was a box full of jigsaw pieces from at least three pictures. None of it made any sense at all.
Chapter 96
Connie reapplied her make-up and studied the result in her small handbag mirror.
‘I’m nervous,’ she said.
‘Just be yourself,’ said Della. ‘Literally.’
‘I can’t remember who I am any more,’ smiled Connie. ‘It’ll be a relief to stop lying. I’m sorry you missed out on a redundancy package, Della.’
Della flapped her hand dismissively.
‘Don’t you worry. Jimmy would have managed to wriggle out of paying me somehow. Plus, I don’t deserve one after all the damage I’ve done to the company.’
‘Because I dragged you into my mess,’ said Connie.
‘I have my own mind. It was my decision to join you.’ Della picked up the two empty mugs from which they had drunk their tepid Prosecco. Despite that, it had been delicious. It tasted of victory and new starts – and an unexpected friendship that was growing like a hardy flower from the tilled, turned soil of their lives.
‘I can see Hilda’s car pulling up,’ said Della, nudging the window blind to one side. ‘The rest of the convoy can’t be far behind. Are you ready?’
Connie stood up and smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt. ‘As I’ll ever be.’
*
Jimmy’s phone battery was now completely dead. His temper, however, was thriving. He had been trapped on the motorway for over two hours and to add to all of his troubles his bladder was bursting. At last the traffic started to move and he was furious to find that there was no overturned lorry, no pile-up, no car on fire to explain why he had been stuck in a car, desperate for a wee and prohibited from discovering why his wife was being called one of two ‘sex-slaves’ in the Daily Trumpet.
When he reached Diamond Shine, he couldn’t spot Ivanka’s Audi in the car park, but he didn’t care about anything but peeing. He jerked his zip down so fast that it stuck, but his bladder had already commenced releasing and was past the point of no return.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Jimmy screamed at his penis. ‘Are you revolting as well?’
That was certainly Ivanka’s opinion when she deigned to make an appearance fifteen minutes later with two armfuls of shopping bags.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Jimmy screamed at her.
Ivanka wrinkled up her nose in disgust. ‘Why have you peed yourself?’
He didn’t answer that. ‘I’ve been ringing you. And you’ve been shopping. I don’t pay you to shop. I pay you to work, and if you haven’t noticed, the company is on its arse.’
‘You are a bastard, Jimmy Diamond,’ said Ivanka, stabbing him in the chest. ‘I am your best girl, am I?’
‘Of course you are. What are you talking about?’
‘So how come your wife is your best girl and Della is your best girl.’ Stab, stab, stab.
‘Ow. You’re the only one I say it to and mean it.’
Ivanka folded her arms across her chest, a gesture that managed to look both aggressive and defensive at the same time. ‘I have been busy investigating for you and then I find out that in your heart you have no more affection for me than a fat woman and a dried twig.’
Jimmy opened his arms up. ‘Don’t be silly, love,’ he forced himself to say because he really wanted to yell, oh shut up being dramatic you daft cow and tell me what you’re on about.
Ivanka moved into Jimmy’s embrace, almost tripping over her bottom lip.
‘You would be so proud of me, Jimmy.’
‘What for? What have you done?’
Ivanka pushed him backwards. ‘You stink of pee.’
Jimmy raised his hands like an American TV evangelist and implored her, ‘Please, Ivanka, just tell me for fuck’s sake, love. I’m not only at the end of my tether, I’m five miles past it.’
Ivanka gave a theatrical pause before her big reveal. ‘Della and Connie are friends.’
Jimmy waited for more and when none came he laughed.
‘That’s it?’
‘Well . . .’
‘It’s bollocks. They hardly know each other.’
‘I saw them hugging. In Maltstone. They are friends, I could tell from watching them. They spent an hour and a half together.’
Ivanka had his interest now.
‘Where?’
‘Outside the old bridal shop on the main road. Jimmy, Della was the person who put the dye in the bottles. It wasn’t Roy Frog. She says she isn’t Lady Muck, but she is working with her, I know.’
Jimmy’s eyebrows rippled in bafflement. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘I followed Della yesterday. Then I sat and worked everything out last night. Except for who this Lady Muck is. She is the missing piece.’
‘Who could she be?’
A face took over his whole brain. Surely not. No, that couldn’t happen . . . Jesus, no.
‘Get your coat, Ivanka, we’re going to Maltstone.’
Ivanka’s eyes glittered with delight. ‘I’ll tell you everything I know on the way there, Jimmy. You will see I’m yur best girl.’
There was nearly an hour until Lady Muck said she’d be at the office, but he bet she’d lied and would be there early. He changed into the spare suit trousers and underwear he kept in the office. His intentions were brave enough, but he was shaking when he palmed his car keys and his charging phone.
*
Della opened the door and invited the women in. Every one of them rounded her eyes at the sight of their old office manageress and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ to each other in various formats.
‘All will be revealed in the meeting,’ replied Della, shepherding them up the stairs, They twittered questions at each other until Della called for order.
‘Good afternoon, ladies, we won’t keep you long,’ she said. ‘We don’t have many chairs, but there are a couple for anyone who might need them more than others.’ She noticed that Hilda had taken up residency on one already.
‘I’d like to introduce you to Lady Muck,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve all been curious about her. Well, here she is.’ Della’s hand gestured towards the small kitchen at the back from where the woman they all knew as Marilyn Smith emerged, except this version was preened, perfumed and much more petite than the Marilyn they were used to seeing in her voluminous frocks. Utter confusion was etched on their faces.
‘Please, let me explain
,’ said Connie, her voice vibrating with anxiety in the sudden charged stillness that filled the room. ‘My real name is Connie. I am Mrs Jimmy Diamond.’
Connie allowed the subsequent uproar to air for a few seconds before calling for hush. ‘Please, hear me out. I’ve been married to Jimmy for twenty-four years. And for twenty-four years he’s screwed around behind my back, spent all our money on other women, and today he’s going to leave me for Ivanka.’
‘I told you,’ said Astrid, throwing out her arms as if she had just sung an opera and was waiting for the applause to commence.
‘And he had planned to get rid of Della so that Ivanka could take her place.’
‘Yes, yes, I knew zis too. I said, did I not? Woman’s intuition. I have more oestrogen than all of you put together.’ Astrid was jubilant beyond measure, until everyone starting shushing at her.
‘So, at the end of February, we decided to set up in opposition to him,’ Connie went on.
‘Is it a fake firm?’ cried Wenda with panic in her voice.
‘No, no, it’s a proper, legitimate firm. You’ll all have jobs with us as long as we can keep going. But we’ve got storms ahead. We can’t stop Jimmy buying Cleancheap, we’ve delayed it all we can but when he does he will undercut prices ridiculously to drive us out of business. I promise you though, we will do everything in our power to survive.’
‘But you’ll sink like the boat-load of sewer rats you are,’ said a male voice thrown across the room from behind them. They turned to see Jimmy Diamond at the top of the stairs, Ivanka in his wake.
Chapter 97
‘Et tu, Brute?’ Jimmy levelled at Della, staring her hard and straight in the eyes as he passed her, then his head swung forwards to his wife. At least he realised it was his wife after he had done a double-take, because Connie looked as if she’d had intensive plastic surgery since he last saw her that morning. She had eyes that shone with life and energy and a waist and a face that didn’t look twenty-four years older than the one he had fallen in love with in RumBaba’s nightclub. She was straight-backed and poised and elegant in a way that his Connie never had been. It was as if she’d been replaced by one of those aliens that grew in pods in that film, what was it called again? He did a quick rifle through his brain – Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that was it. It was slightly easier to think of her as a monster considering what he would have to say to her, because it didn’t have anything to do with spousal affection.
‘Well, I wouldn’t have believed it of you. Either of you. How long have you been planning all this then? When did you set this global enterprise up?’ He swept his arm around the spartan office with the single solitary picture of a flower on the wall and gave a sarcastic snort.
‘Since your wife found out you’d got engaged to Ivanka behind her back,’ quipped Della, which resulted in a ripple of disgusted female expletives.
‘You were going to throw Della and me out with the rubbish. Your best girl and your best girl,’ said Connie and pointed to Ivanka. ‘I suppose she’s your best girl as well.’
Ivanka’s lip started wobbling and she moved possessively closer to Jimmy.
Jimmy shook his head slowly, disbelievingly. ‘You did all those things to damage me? Roy Frog was totally innocent?’
‘Yup,’ said Connie.
Jimmy couldn’t believe she’d admitted it so easily. He’d thought it was more likely that Ivanka had got the wrong end of the stick. He’d hoped she had.
‘Do you really hate me that much, Con?’ He held up his hands as if ready to catch the answer when it was issued from her lips.
Under normal circumstances Connie wouldn’t have washed her dirty linen in public, but here, today, she was past caring what details anyone heard about the rag that her marriage had been reduced to.
‘I hate how you’ve acted, Jimmy. Do you remember how many times your daughter cried because you weren’t there at her school plays or her dancing concerts?’ Connie began, her voice stronger than she could have imagined considering the weight of emotion attached to her words. ‘And do you remember saying that we couldn’t afford to buy a car for our nineteen-year-old daughter, and yet you bought your nineteen-year-old “fiancée” a brand new Audi? How do you get engaged when you’re married to someone else, Jimmy?’
‘Tart,’ Wenda shouted.
‘And do you remember my mother, who worked way past the point when she should have done, when her arthritis was killing her, to help set up your business. What did you do with the money that we could have spent to make her more comfortable? How many of your “best girls” did you spend it on?’
‘Oh come on, Con. Your mum was too far gone to know where she was. Oak Lodge was a nice place. We did all right by her.’
‘Nice wasn’t good enough for my mum. It should have been the best place we could afford after all she did for us.’ Connie reined in the scream that threatened to hijack her control because she wanted to make every word clear so that every word counted. ‘ We could have had help with your own mum and dad but you left it all to me, Jim. You didn’t want to waste cash on paying someone to give me a break when you had hotels and fancy dinners to pay for, did you?’
‘I . . .’ Jimmy noticed that every woman in the room had eyes narrowed into slits trained on him. He wouldn’t have fancied his chances if Connie had commanded them to ‘Kill’. His instinct was to balance this up.
‘Come on, Con, think back. We didn’t have an easy start. I worked all hours God sent me whilst you . . .’ He stopped. Oh, no, what had he nearly said then?
Connie felt the punch of his intended words. She wanted to crumble to the floor in tears; then she spotted that silly little picture on the wall out of the corner of her eye and it was as if it was sending her strength.
Be Like the Sunflower. She was Connie Clarke, daughter of the formidable flower that was Janet and niece of the beautiful, sunshiney Marilyn. She had strong roots and her head should always be held high. Connie finished the sentence off for him and shamed him.
‘. . . Grieved, Jim. Say it: whilst I grieved for our baby son. You left me to cry alone in our bed whilst you crawled between the sheets of my best friend.’
‘Vanker,’ shouted Astrid.
‘I was in pain as well,’ Jimmy appealed to the audience. ‘I couldn’t think straight. We were just kids, love. One minute I was Jack the Lad, the next I was being pushed down the aisle because you were up the duff. If we’d known . . . I mean . . . Oh hell, I don’t know what I mean.’
‘Oh I do,’ spat Connie. ‘If only we’d known our baby would be born dead we wouldn’t have had to bother.’ She wasn’t sobbing but tears were sliding down her face, scalding her cheeks.
He had meant to say that, and he would have hated himself for it if he hadn’t had twenty-four years’ practice of pushing that realisation down. He would never let himself picture his young, broken wife lost in her heartbreak whilst he was between the legs of her perfidious friend Jesse. He’d told himself, and Connie, that he was confused and suffering, and he was, but he had been lucid enough to take what Jesse Mountjoy was offering on a plate to him.
Jimmy’s line of defence was always to attack; after all, that’s what strong people did: turn someone’s weapon back on themselves. He needed to save face, he couldn’t afford for the industry to learn that his own wife and his right-hand woman had trounced him – he’d be a laughing stock. Jimmy Diamond had to be seen to be a man that you didn’t piss off. The bottom line was that he was at war with a rival firm here and so he would fight them as he would fight anyone – dirty and relentlessly and he would win. He began to applaud slowly and walked forwards, to the beat, towards Connie.
‘Oh, you think you’re so clever, don’t you? But do you really believe that I am going to let you destroy in a couple of months what it’s taken me nearly a quarter of a century to achieve, ladies?’ He smirked nastily, like a shark circling a pair of injured seals as he took his phone out of his pocket. ‘I’d like you to observe your own dea
th. I’m going to make the call that will blow your stupid little company out of the water because, as soon as I take over Cleancheap, you are right – I will stand any losses I have to make to drive you out of business, and unlike you, I can afford to do that for ever if needs be.’ He swept his extended arm across the cleaners, like Elvis live in concert. ‘And the same goes for you lot. You won’t find any work in this town and you can trust me on that. All those years I gave you a wage and you do this to me. Well, you’ll see how I repay loyalty like that. Watch and learn.’
Jimmy sniggered to himself at the chorus of indrawn breaths. He pressed contacts: FROG and then speaker-phone.
Burr burr. ‘Good afternoon, Cleancheap.’
‘Good afternoon, can you get me Roy Frog, please. Tell him it’s Jimmy Diamond and I want to make him an offer for his company. Now.’ Jimmy’s voice was hard, firm and uncompromising.
‘One moment, please.’
Della looked at Connie. They both knew that Jimmy would do what he had to do to salvage his pride. Sunflowers didn’t stand a chance against a combine harvester.
‘Mr Diamond?’ The receptionist’s tinkly voice cancelled the equally tinkly hold music.
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Frog can’t come to the phone at the moment because he said he is playing golf in his office but to tell you to, quote: “piss off because he’s sold it already”.’
There was a blast of gasps and giggles as Jimmy hurriedly pressed the speakerphone button off.
‘He’s done what? Who to? Put me through to him now. Who’d buy his shit company but me?’
‘One moment please, I’ll ask for you,’ said the receptionist.
‘I did.’
There was a pin-drop silence as everyone turned to look at who had just spoken.
Cheryl.
‘Eh?’ Jimmy exclaimed.
Cheryl gulped. Her green eyes were wide as dinner plates. ‘It was me. I bought it from Mr Frog.’
‘You?’ Jimmy laughed hard. ‘Yes, love, course you did . . .’
‘Mr Frog said it was a Miss Cheryl Parker,’ said the receptionist into his ear. ‘Goodbye.’
Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café Page 41
