A Spring Affair

by Milly Johnson

  In saying that, her unmarried fantasies had been more about staring into the eyes of Marco Pierre White, the candlelight between them emphasizing his saturnine glower as he savagely ripped up hunks of garlic-heavy ciabatta to feed to her, his lips glistening with traces of oil, balsamic vinegar and a blood-red Shiraz. He was the only man she and her old friend Deb would ever have fought over. Lou didn’t really go for tall men like Deb did, but he ticked so many other boxes on her list that she would have overlooked that aspect–if she’d been given the opportunity. A passionate, food-adoring Yorkshireman-cum-Italian…oh, especially the Italian part…

  The thought of Deb brought a smile to her lips and an unexpected lump to her throat. She coughed it away and turned her attention to Phil. The image of his shiny chin and satiated grin didn’t have quite the same effect on her as the enfant terrible of gastronomy–but that was real life for you. Her dreams were long gone.

  Lou cleared up the plates and slotted them into the dishwasher, slamming the door on the sickly, minty smell. No one could ever guess how much she hated lamb, what misery it stood for. She pressed the button and the machine whirred and sloshed into action. The suds hit the pans and the plates and the cutlery, obliterating all traces of the meal, just like the dinner lady did, all those many years ago. But this time there was no sense of the freedom that had sent her skipping into the playground, and no tidal wave of relief that her ordeal, at least for now, was over.

  Chapter 3

  Lou dropped her bag at the side of her desk, eased out of her overcoat and prepared to fortify herself with a coffee from the swanky new machine in the staff canteen. It looked very strong, very black, and had what looked like spit floating on top of it.

  ‘Who goffed in your coffee?’ said Karen, her work partner-in-crime currently sticking her chin over Lou’s shoulder. ‘Yuk! What is that?’

  Lou smiled. Their relationship wasn’t the deep alliance that she had shared with her once-best friend, Deb. It probably wouldn’t have survived outside the workplace, where age gaps and living distances, different focuses and commitments would have got in the way. But Karen was a true comrade in the office. She worked, as Lou did, job-share Monday, Thursday and Friday. Although their office manager had tried to alter that to split them up, she had failed. Karen made Lou laugh lots with her irreverence, her warmth, her gorgeously plummy accent and her big snorty chuckles. Plus their banter coloured the days that their common enemy, Nicola ‘Jaws’ Pawson, did her best to reduce to monochrome.

  Nicola was a weird one, that was for sure. Pretty and slim, she looked quite benign until she opened her mouth to reveal a gobful of metal that would have made her an indispensable tool to a plumber. There had been a lot of crude jokes about what she was supposed to have done to the Chief Accountant Roger Knutsford in the lift at the Christmas party with that mouth, especially when he lost his voice in the New Year and started talking like a eunuch.

  In stark contrast Karen was a dark-haired farmer’s daughter, built like an Amazonian warrior with shoulders that would have scared off Jonah Lomu in a scrum, but she had the most beautiful posh husky voice, thanks to good genes, old money and a grandmother who had been a private elocution teacher. Karen wore the brightest colours in the spectrum and the reddest lipsticks in House of Fraser, and decorated her largeness with no attempt to hide anything she had. In fact, the combined ingredients of Karen Harwood-Court cooked up to make one hell of a sexy woman. It wasn’t hard to understand why she was the object of so much male office-leering–not that Karen was interested in a relationship at this point in her life. But then, men were always drawn to what they couldn’t have.

  ‘You seem in an extra relaxed mood today,’ Lou said, taking a sip of her drink and wincing as it punched the back of her throat.

  ‘Nicola’s off. Can’t you tell? The room temperature’s up twenty centigrade and there aren’t any thunderclouds above us.’ Karen’s eyes floated around the room as if feasting on a tangible lightness.

  Stan Mirfield, the oldest office administrator, bounded in and threw his briefcase on the desk as if it were an Olympic finishing line and every nano-second counted, which with Nicola in charge, it did. He lived out in some country place and didn’t drive. That hadn’t been a problem until the last few months when the council had farted around with the timetables and the first bus of the morning got him into the town centre at ten to nine, leaving him with a paltry ten minutes to get to the office by nine. He was a physical and a psychological wreck by the time he’d reached the accounts floor.

  Huffing like an old asthmatic steam engine, Stan wiped frantically at the sweat on his face.

  ‘Chill, Stanley, she’s not in,’ called Karen.

  ‘You what, love?’

  ‘She’s not in–Jaws. She’s away today.’

  ‘Ill, I hope,’ said normally kind-hearted Stan.

  ‘Apparently so. One of her cloven hooves has fallen off.’

  Stan punched at the air with a ‘yes’.

  Karen leaned into Lou. ‘Is it worth getting himself in a state like that for? He’ll have a heart-attack before he gets to his pension,’ she said, with some anger on Stan’s behalf. They both watched him go through his normal routine before settling down to work. He would graft quietly and efficiently at his desk like a well-oiled machine all day, without loitering around coffee-machines and circulating jokes from the internet, as did a huge percentage of the staff.

  ‘If I ran a department with people like him in it, I wouldn’t give a bugger if they were a few minutes late,’ Karen went on.

  ‘Has he had a word with HR to give him some leeway?’ asked Lou.

  ‘She has, apparently,’ said Karen, sneering on the ‘she’. ‘Stan said she told him that Bowman said it wasn’t an option.’ She pulled back her top lip, exposing the maximum teeth for her to do a Nicola impression: ‘“Human Resources have made it quite clear to me that the original contract you signed says you start at nine. By not starting at nine you are in breach of that contract.” Or words to that effect. Enough to dangle the sack over him as per normal.’

  ‘Poor old Stan,’ tutted Lou, torturing herself with another slug of coffee. ‘I bet she never told them that the guy hardly ever takes his full lunch-hour.’

  ‘No. Instead, she told him that he should take part-time hours, but that would affect his pension so he can’t–although she knows that, of course. Right, must get on,’ said Karen, rubbing her hands together in preparation.

  ‘Hmmm, that looks exciting,’ Lou said with sarcasm as she pointed to an enormous bound set of computer print-outs taking up most of Karen’s desk.

  ‘I have an anomaly to find. Rogering Roger has lost twenty thousand pounds somewhere in here and he can’t find it, so he gave it to lucky old me to do it for him.’

  Roger Knutsford had acquired his nickname in deference to his reputation for appreciating figures–of the young, female variety more than the numeric.

  ‘So much for being the big cheese. You should ask him for some of his salary,’ said Lou, adding slyly, ‘Course, you could always aim to be a senior accountant yourself…’

  ‘Shut up, Lou, and lend me your ruler,’ Karen sighed.

  Lou opened up her drawer, which was a veritable Aladdin’s cave of disorganized stationery. After five minutes of foraging and mumbles of, ‘Hang on, it’s in here somewhere,’ she handed over her rather grubby ruler.

  Clear that clutter.

  The thought came to her as surely as if someone had whispered it softly and seductively into her ear.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Karen asked five minutes later as Lou wrestled with the drawer, heaving it out from the body of the cabinet under her desk. Then she turned it over and emptied the contents out onto the carpet, dropping to her knees by the small mountain of detritus. She had had no idea her drawer could hold so much. It was like a Tardis. She would probably have her hand exterminated by a lurking Dalek in a minute.

  ‘Well, seeing as Jaws is not in,’ L
ou panted, ‘I’m having a springclean.’

  ‘You’ve timed it perfectly. It’s March the twenty-first–the first day of spring today,’ said Karen, tapping her desk calendar.

  ‘Yep, and I’m going to do something on this first day of spring that is long overdue.’

  ‘You’re NOT going to burn that burgundy suit at long last, are you?’ asked Karen, laughing hard at her own sarcasm.

  ‘Ha ha. No, I’m going to clear out some rubbish,’ Lou replied.

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘You really are a cheeky sod–there’s nothing wrong with my suit.’ Lou put her hands mock indignantly on her hips. The suit cladding them was functional, if a little old-fashioned, but she felt nicely inconspicuous in it. Twenty-somethings had a different clothes agenda. They didn’t want to melt into the background and couldn’t understand why anyone else would want to be there either.

  ‘It messes about with your shape. Makes you look dumpy.’

  ‘I am dumpy,’ said Lou. ‘Plus at thirty-five I don’t think anyone is looking to me to be a fashion icon.’

  ‘Good job.’

  ‘Don’t mince your words on my behalf,’ Lou huffed.

  ‘I mean it, Lou. Whoever sold it to you should be shot at dawn. In fact, why wait? Shoot them immediately for a crime as severe as that.’

  ‘Oh go and boil your head.’

  Karen twisted around in her chair to give Lou her full attention.

  ‘Lou Winter, you have great hair, great tits, and eyes that make you look about sixteen. Didn’t anyone ever tell you about diamonds and settings? If I had your attributes I’d be pushing them in everyone’s face. You just don’t appreciate what you’ve got.’ She stared down wistfully at her own A cups. ‘You are such an attractive woman. Why the hell do you insist on hiding yourself away?’

  ‘I’m not hiding myself away. But at thirty-five—’

  ‘Listen to yourself! Thirty-five isn’t old.’

  ‘You’re twenty-five–you’re supposed to say I’m ancient.’

  ‘You have an outstanding talent for not making the best of yourself, you know. You push everyone onwards but yourself.’

  ‘Keep your horses on,’ said Lou, but Karen was on a roll and had no intention of stopping now, not even to take the rise out of another of Lou’s Lou-isms.

  ‘You could have had Jaws’s job if you’d applied for it. So really it’s your fault we’re all so bloody miserable, if you think about it. We’d all much rather have worked for you than Sheffield-Steel Face. It makes me so cross to see ability go to waste.’

  ‘Oh, is that so?’ countered Lou, with the confidence of a defence barrister who has just discovered a loophole the size of Brazil in a key prosecution witness’s evidence. ‘Well, whilst we’re on the subject of “making the best of ourselves”…’ She walked on her knees over to her handbag, humming, ‘Hi ho, hi ho…’ then got out a leaflet and rustled it at Karen. ‘Here. I got you this.’

  ‘What is it?’ Karen took it tentatively.

  ‘Accountancy courses. I picked it up for you when I passed the college.’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t got time for all that education stuff.’ Karen dismissed it immediately.

  ‘One day a week, that’s all.’

  ‘When would I do my housework?’

  ‘Sod the housework.’

  ‘And what about the children?’

  ‘They’re at school, as you well know.’

  ‘And what do I do in the school holidays?’

  ‘Well, the college will have the same holidays, won’t it, twerp? And your mum and dad would have the children at the farm, you know that.’

  ‘What about the cost?’

  ‘You could go down to Human Resources. They’re always harping on about courses so they must have a decent budget for them. If not, this is a big investment in your future–you could do it. It would be a pinch but you could do it. Beg, steal, borrow it–you’d recoup your costs when you qualify.’

  ‘If. If I qualify.’

  ‘Come on, Karen! Roger Knutsford is sending stuff down to you that he won’t give to his own team. You won’t have the slightest problem. You’re a natural with numbers and you know it.’

  ‘You’re better than I am with numbers. Why don’t you go and do it yourself?’

  ‘Because I have no interest in carving out a career in accountancy like you do,’ Lou volleyed. ‘God may have given me a bit of ability with numbers, but my heart belongs to pastry.’

  Karen stamped down on the smile that was forcing itself out of her. ‘You’ve got all this worked out, haven’t you?’ Lou was so comical sometimes. Really nice and funny and such a warm person. She would have made some kid a fantastic mum.

  ‘Seriously, you would walk this course,’ said Lou with conviction. Slyly she tickled Karen’s Achilles heel. ‘And think of what you could do with a qualified accountant’s wage. You could dress your two boys in all the latest designer gear, give them a private education, buy them elocution lessons so they could drive their own office managers insane with jealousy one day…’

  ‘Unfair!’ said Karen. But Lou had a bulldog hold on her interest now.

  ‘You could work from home, get an au pair in…’

  ‘You really are a dreadful manipulative old bag, Lou Winter!’

  ‘No Jaws to contend with and your own coffee-machine coughing away in the background…’

  ‘Oh, pur-lease!’

  ‘Or you could be running this place, making Stan’s life less of a misery, getting Zoe through a day when she wasn’t in tears.’

  ‘OK, OK, I’ll read it. If…’

  Lou knew what was coming, but was resigned to it.

  ‘Go on, say it then. Have your moment.’

  ‘You burn that suit.’

  Lou laughed. ‘You enrol on that course and I’ll burn all my suits and replace them with crop-tops and mini-skirts.’

  ‘That I’d just love to see,’ said Karen, opening up the college leaflet. ‘Now, I’m interested.’

  The magazine article had promised that clearing out unwanted items would dramatically improve her mood and energy levels. By four o’clock, Lou wasn’t quite convinced that clearing out a couple of drawers had been wholly responsible for her having had such a really good day. It could have been because Nicola wasn’t there, which had everyone in a mood jollier than The Sound of Music nuns, or because it was a Friday–and no ordinary Friday either, but one preceding a week where she had booked the Monday off to use up some holiday. But she had to admit it had made a weird contribution to her happy mood and sense of real achievement.

  There had been a healthy satisfaction in seeing all her paperclips and staples in their organized compartments, dead memos in the bin and the foolscap files in the drawer now emptied of all outdated paperwork. She had transferred all the information scribbled down on scrappy notes into her desk diary then she had wiped down her desktop and her computer screen and raised her eyebrows at the dirt residue on the cloth–shame old Tin Teeth didn’t have jurisdiction over the cleaners. And when she came to do some actual accounts work in the afternoon, the tidiness of her workspace somehow made her feel extra efficient.

  At the end of the day, she put everything she usually left out on her desk inside her drawer. It looked so fresh it almost made her want to sit at it and start working again.

  ‘Good God,’ said Karen, poking her head round Lou’s section. ‘I need my sunglasses on to look at your desk. Have you sold all your stationery on eBay?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know where to start doing that.’

  ‘Too technical for you pensioners, eh? At least you should get a cleaning job here.’

  Lou smiled. ‘Clean as a flute, if I say so myself.’

  ‘Whistle, Lou–clean as a whistle.’ Karen smiled. Lou should never have been given unsupervised charge of the English language.

  ‘You can put in a good word for me when you’re a qualified accountant and running the place.’

  ‘Knickers, dar
ling,’ said Karen, breezing out of the door, like the Queen on a day off. ‘Have a lovely long weekend and I’ll see you–without your burgundy suit, I hope–next Thursday.’

  Chapter 4

  Phil liked a curry on Friday nights after he had been for his usual workout at the gym, so the kitchen had a warm and exotic air as Lou stirred a selection of her own mixed spices into the pot of chicken which was bubbling away in its garlicky tomato marinade.

  Her text alarm went off. It was from her friend Michelle. OFF OUT TO SNARE DAVE. WISH ME LUCK That came as a bit of a surprise to Lou, as the last conversation they had had was that he was a complete dickhead and Michelle wouldn’t have him back if he walked across hot coals to deliver armfuls of rare orchids to her. Lou texted back GOOD LUCK! She knew in her heart of hearts though, that Michelle was heading for disappointment and would probably be on the phone tomorrow in tears.

  Michelle had fancied rugged builder Dave for ages and had got lucky one night, two months ago, when he was exceedingly drunk. However, since then, he had made polite but hurried exits from her company. Michelle had convinced herself that the more she was in his face, the more he would realize she was the woman for him, and thus pursued him at every turn possible. He was apparently the most gorgeous man she had ever met, although she had said the same about Colin–and Liam and John and Gaz and Jez, two Ians and a Daz. That wasn’t counting Death Row Dane she hooked up with on the internet (who was also a ‘kind, gentle soul in need of loving from a good Christian woman’ and had been falsely accused of slaughtering six gas-station owners). Lou’s advice to her that maybe she should be less keen had been interpreted in Michelle’s own special way, and now whenever she had managed to seek poor Dave out, she proceeded to ignore him–laughing loudly and flirting outrageously with anyone nearby. It was the sort of thing Lou had done with Andy Batty when she was fourteen. But then Lou was hardly an expert at relationships and, as such, in no place to preach.