Losing You

by Susan Lewis

  Make that two bottles with vodka chasers!

  Chapter Two

  ‘I LOVE YOU,’ Polly sighed wearily as Emma passed her a brimming glass of Sauvignon Blanc on Tuesday evening at six. She was a petite, attractive woman with wispy blonde hair and large brown eyes, and had always managed to look much younger than her age (today, like Emma, she was fast approaching forty-two), until the loss of her husband had etched the sadness of its story into her creamy complexion. ‘You don’t know how much I need this. Honest to God, I swear I could be losing my mind along with everything else. Anyway, cheers,’ and after clinking Emma’s glass with her own she took an enormous, gratifying sip of the deliciously chilled wine before letting her head tip back against the sofa. This was a characterful item of furniture that Emma had brought from the cottage, and though unabashedly shabby, it still managed to exude a dignified sort of elegance with its fading claret stripes and hand-carved bowed legs.

  ‘Well come on, out with it,’ Emma prompted, sinking into her only armchair which, Polly had remarked when they were moving it in, looked as worn as an old tart, or as grand as a pissed-up duchess, she wasn’t sure which and anyway who cared? ‘What’s going on?’

  Groaning loudly, Polly kept her eyes closed as she spoke. ‘Just give me a minute. I need to try and get my head round it all so I can work out where to begin. Actually, it’s more what’s not going on,’ she decided in the end, sounding unusually downbeat for her. ‘Oh God, listen to that phone. Is it yours or mine? If it’s mine it can go through to messages.’

  ‘One of us needs to change our ringtone,’ Emma told her, heading off to the hall to check their coat pockets. ‘It’s yours,’ she called out. ‘Are you sure you don’t want it?’

  ‘Absolutely positive,’ Polly called back, and downing another generous mouthful of wine she helped herself to a handful of cheese and onion crisps from the bowl Emma had set on the table. ‘I don’t know how the heck I’m managing to eat when I feel so awful,’ she grumbled. ‘Maybe all this stress will help me to put on some weight.’

  ‘Will you please stop hedging, and tell me what on earth’s going on,’ Emma demanded, going to sit down again.

  Polly’s eyes closed as she swallowed hard. ‘I have to shut down the nursery,’ she blurted, and then winced as though the words themselves were as painful as the reality.

  Emma gaped in disbelief. ‘You’re kidding me,’ she cried. Polly had run the local nursery for as long as Emma could remember, and had turned it into as integral a part of the community as the village hall and the pub – the post office, too, before it had been forced to close down. What a royal pain it was trying to get by without that – however, one way or another, they were all managing, but it was hardly likely they would without Polly’s Playtime. In fact with no nursery hereabouts the world would very probably go straight to hell in a handcart. Everyone, but everyone, with small children depended on it; they couldn’t work if they weren’t able to leave their precious cargo at one of the best-run nurseries in Bristol (this was official, according to a survey carried out for a local magazine a couple of years ago). And what about Polly’s impressively capable staff? This was going to leave them without jobs. No, it simply couldn’t be happening. Then, suddenly suspecting the worst, Emma’s heart slowed horribly as she said, ‘Oh my God, please don’t tell me someone’s been caught doing things to one of the ...’

  ‘Oh Christ no!’ Polly jumped in quickly. ‘No, no, no. It’s nothing like that.’ She looked quite faint. ‘Just imagine ... No, we can’t even go there. In fact, I’m starting to feel a bit better now because no way is what’s happening as bad as that.’

  Feeling awful for even suggesting it, Emma said, ‘That’s probably your phone again.’

  Polly pulled a face. ‘I should go and turn it off, because they’re all calling to find out if the rumours are true. God knows how it’s got out there already, but obviously it has.’

  ‘But you surely can’t be serious about closing.’

  ‘I don’t have a choice. I’m broke – or apparently I will be if I carry on running at a loss the way I have been this past year.’

  Stunned, Emma said, ‘But you’re always full and you’ve got a waiting list as long as the M4.’

  ‘Not any more. It started falling off months ago, and now, thanks to this bloody recession, I’m almost never at full capacity and at least half of those who’ve stayed are struggling to pay me – if they pay at all, and unfortunately a lot don’t. Or can’t, is what I should probably say.’

  ‘How come you’ve never mentioned any of this before?’ Emma protested.

  ‘Because you had enough going on with all your own stuff, you didn’t need me loading all my crap on you as well. Anyway, I kept telling myself it would get better, things would turn around, a miracle would happen. How delusional was that, because it turns out I can’t even meet this month’s wages now, and nor can I avoid the eviction notice I had served on me last Friday.’

  Emma’s jaw literally dropped. ‘But you use the church hall,’ she protested. ‘How can they evict you?’

  ‘Really Christian, isn’t it, chucking me out like a dirty old sinner just because I’m a few weeks behind with the rent. OK, it might be months, but most of us live in this parish, for heaven’s sake. You’d think they’d try to help us through our rough patch, but no, apparently it can’t be done. The vicar assures me he feels really terrible about it, but it’s no longer in his hands, he’s simply carrying out orders from on high. I asked if he meant God and if he did then what had happened to suffering the little children to come unto me.’

  Emma choked on a laugh. ‘I bet that went down well.’

  Polly’s smile was weak. ‘He gave me one of his withery, vicarish, looks that I think was supposed to tell me that I’m not nearly as funny as I think I am, and maybe I’d like to mend my ways by coming to church on Sunday. Instead, I took myself off to see my father-in-law, who as you know does my yearly accounts, and so he delivers the crushing no-brainer – if my clients don’t pay their bills, I can’t pay mine.’

  ‘So why aren’t they paying?’

  ‘Why do you think? This bloody recession, and they’ve got to know, all these parents who keep ringing me up, that I can’t go on running my business as if it’s a flaming charity for ever. I mean, I feel sorry for them, obviously, it’s terrible to lose your job, or to have your hours and pay cut, and if you don’t give your kids to a minder how are you going to find more work, or hang on to the bit you still have? I swear I understand their problems, but they have to try and see it from my point of view too. The last thing I want is to find myself refusing to take little Cathy or Brett until the bill is settled, but that’s what’s been happening. I’ve even had to physically push some mothers out of the door, or run after them down the street with their baby bawling in my arms saying I can’t take him until she pays. Honest to God, I’m turning into the person everyone loves most to hate, and when those that do pay find out I no longer have any premises they’ll probably whisk their little darlings out of my grasp faster than you can say what’s the name of that other nursery, the one that won this year? Give me some more wine, please, or just hand me the bottle.’

  Dutifully refilling both their glasses, Emma picked up the newspaper she’d knocked to the floor, as she said, ‘I wish I could offer to help, and honestly I would, if I weren’t ...’

  ‘Don’t even think it. I know you’re as strapped as I am, and anyway it’s not your responsibility. It’s mine. And if I had any sense in my head I’d have made it clear as soon as the first bill wasn’t paid that I don’t do credit, but hey, what do I do instead? I say, oh never mind Mrs Must-have-a-career or Mr Single-parent, or Sir Benevolent of Brokesville, I’m sure it’ll all work out, just you leave little Christie or Fabio with me and pick them up at your usual time. Well, I’m afraid that can’t happen any more. From the end of this week Polly’s Playtime will have gone the same way as Polly’s bloody business sense, straight down the pa
n and all the way out to drown in the sea.’

  Having been in virtually the same position when the businesses she’d catered for around Brentford and Isleworth had started going under, Emma couldn’t have felt more empathetic. ‘Pol, we have to do something,’ she decided. ‘Maybe if I lend you a few hundred ...’

  ‘Please, don’t even think it. Banks are for lending money, not friends.’

  ‘And if you can get a loan out of any one of them right now you’ll make headlines.’

  ‘True, but we have to face it, they need every penny they charge us for our accounts and everything else to pay out all those multimillion-pound bonuses and inflated salaries. So, come on, it’s wrong of us to expect them to put us, the customer, the taxpayer, the people who bailed them out of their shit, first. Whatever will we think of next? No, I just have to accept that the only way out of this mess for me is to remortgage the house, if I can, but even if it does turn out to be possible how can I be sure of making the repayments when they kick in, when I can’t be sure my clients themselves are going to stay in work? No, the fact is I’m stuffed, and the sooner I face it the sooner I can move on.’

  ‘But what about the clients who are still paying? At least it’ll be some sort of income.’

  Polly didn’t deny it. ‘Actually, I’m planning to keep those kids on for the time being, provided the parents are happy about me running things from home, but it’ll still mean having to lay off the staff which I’m really dreading, because I love them all so much and now they’re going to be out of work too. Where’s it all going to end, Emma? What the hell is happening to this country? More wine, please, before I top myself. Or no, I probably ought to check my calls first, because that wretched phone’s obviously not going to stop and I suppose it could be Melissa trying to get hold of me.’

  As she disappeared into the hall, Emma picked up her glass and stared pensively down at the faux coal fire that she’d finally learned how to light without blowing herself up. This sitting-cum-dining room was by far the largest space in the house, with windows either end looking out front and back, and a pale-coloured carpet throughout that she might have chosen herself if it hadn’t come with the house. Though the furniture had mostly come from the cottage it didn’t really suit this modern interior, but she didn’t particularly mind, and at least it was something to be going on with until her fortunes changed.

  Probably best not to hold her breath for that.

  Hearing Polly’s muted voice as she rang someone back, Emma felt quietly stunned all over again, not only by the crisis in her friend’s business, but by the way she had asked for, ‘More wine, before I top myself.’

  After what Polly had been through with Jack it was hard to believe she could trot out such a flip remark as though its only reality was an attempt at dramatic effect. In fact, Emma knew, it was yet another indication of Polly’s incredible inner strength and refusal to make her future all about her past. Jack would have wanted it that way, there was no doubt about that, which was perhaps what made it easier for Polly to go on the way she had.

  It hadn’t been depression that had driven Polly’s beloved husband to take his own life, or the loss of his job, or the breakdown of his marriage, it was the shocking, and then terrifying, diagnosis of motor neurone disease. It had taken them months to come to terms with the truth of it, going through second and even third opinions, spending hours on the Internet finding out all they could about it, and finally, as the symptoms became more and more pronounced, the acceptance that it really was a part of their lives now, and always would be, because there was no cure. In the end, unable to face what it was going to mean for Polly – and Melissa – when he was no longer able to do anything for himself, Jack had taken it upon himself to spare them the agony of watching his disintegration and go while they could still remember him as a strong, capable and loving husband and father.

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded looking after him,’ Polly would cry, usually when she’d had one too many, or the loss crept out of the shadows to smother her. ‘It would have been better than not having him at all.’

  The point was, as Polly knew very well, that he’d have minded, very much, which was, perhaps, what made the act selfish, but however it was labelled Emma knew that in her heart Polly could never, and would never, believe that he’d done it with anything but love for her and Melissa in his heart.

  How tragic their story was, Emma was thinking, as Polly, still on the phone, came back into the room to sit down, and how meagre it made a divorce seem. Not that it was a contest – no one in their right minds would ever want to be top of the league when it came to suffering – but the way Polly had coped during these past four years had shown Emma what true strength and courage was all about.

  And now this damned recession had come knocking at Polly’s door, which just went to prove that there was no justice in the world, because if one person should be exempt from this ghastly downturn after everything she’d been through, it absolutely ought to be Polly.

  ‘OK, sweetie, I’m sorry,’ Polly was saying, as she reached for her wine. ‘It’s true I ran away after nursery today, and I know I shouldn’t have ... I swear it never occurred to me that they’d start ringing you, but don’t worry ... No, I promise, I’ll get back to them as soon as I finish speaking to you ... Melissa, I’m doing my best here, OK? We all are ... All right, it’s not your problem, I get that, but ... Yes, I am at Emma’s.’ She glanced at Emma and rolled her eyes. ‘No, Lauren’s in London, I thought you knew ... OK, don’t bite my head off, I was just saying ... Melissa, Melissa, I’m forty-one years old, which makes me perfectly capable of deciding how much I have to drink ... All right, I’ll stay here tonight if it makes you happy. I take it you’re at Lucy’s and her mother’s dropping you at school ... Right, her father ... And I’ll be there to pick you up ... OK, darling, love you too, no, of course I’m not mad with you, as long as you’re not mad with me.’ She gave a laugh. ‘Call before you go to sleep,’ she said, and as she rang off her eyes returned to Emma. ‘Is this the point,’ she queried, ‘at which the parent–child role reversal starts to take place?’

  Chuckling, Emma said, ‘If it is, why don’t we send them out to battle the world on our behalf while we go back to school?’

  Polly seemed to light up. ‘What a damned good idea. I mean they’re already there, aren’t they, because when you know everything, the way they do, you can’t get anything wrong, can you? So it’s absolutely right for them to be in charge. According to my father-in-law they’re already running the country anyway – and I guess from his perspective the current Cabinet does look like a scene from The Simpsons. Or maybe he’s thinking of the way we’ve all gone soft on our kids in comparison to the discipline of his day. Who knows? Who cares? Let’s just drink to us and pretend that when we wake up tomorrow everything’s going to be fab and gorgeous and the way we really want it to be.’

  Upending the bottle again, Emma said, ‘Question is, how do we really want it to be?’

  Polly groaned. ‘Don’t get me started. Just tell me how your job search is going. Any interviews lined up yet?’

  Deflating horribly, Emma replied, ‘With agencies, yes, but none of the jobs I’ve applied for through websites have yielded a single positive response. Of course, they never say why I’m not invited in, just that they’re sorry but on this occasion my application hasn’t been successful.’

  ‘So what sort of thing are you applying for?’

  ‘Just about anything, from assistant restaurant manager, to lettings negotiator, to call-centre operator. The trouble is, I don’t have any prior experience at any of them, or IT skills, or a degree that seems to mean anything at all these days, or I presume it doesn’t, because so far no one actually wants to meet me. How can they not want to meet me?’

  Polly looked suitably baffled. ‘There are clearly greater things waiting for you out there,’ she decided. ‘Remind me, what’s your degree in?’

  ‘English, much good it’s ever d
one me. But what did it matter when my little sandwich round got going, my stopgap, as it were, between uni and some greater glory. The trouble was it took off and off and off, until I had a dozen people working for me including two events organisers and a full-time clown, and by that I don’t mean my ex-husband. Or maybe I do. Yes, I definitely do. Anyway, it’s all in the past now, and unfortunately a failed business doesn’t make me the most desirable new employee on the block.’

  ‘But you don’t put all the collapse stuff on your CV, right?’

  ‘I’m learning not to. Anyway,’ Emma went on, reaching for the paper, ‘I was going through the Evening Post just before you got here and here’s what I’ve circled so far: a store manager for Dixons (must be passionate about their products).’ She glanced up. ‘I can be passionate about plugs for thirty-five grand a year. Next: an assistant cook at a care home, must have natural rapport with the elderly and own transport; a customer service administrator for a bakery – just over seven quid an hour for that, which I know isn’t a lot of bread – sorry, terrible pun, but I couldn’t resist. Anyway, there seem to be vacancies, but there are so many of us going for them that either because of my age, my gender, my background – who the hell knows what the problem is – I’m apparently not even worth interviewing.’

  Sighing, Polly said, ‘It’s so depressing, isn’t it? How did we get to be this age and find ourselves in such a mess?’ Leaning forward to pick up another section of the paper, she said, ‘Oh dear, look at this and we think we’ve got problems.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘An appeal from the parents of that poor girl, Mandie Morgan, who was murdered over Thornbury way about six months ago. Twenty-two, she was. So young. Can you imagine how you’d feel if it happened to one of ours?’

  Turning cold at the mere thought, Emma said, ‘I take it they don’t know who did it.’

  Polly shook her head. ‘If they do they can’t have enough evidence to arrest him or they’d have done it by now. God, it really wrenches at your heart to think of what that poor couple must be going through.’ Sighing sadly, she turned another couple of pages and started to smile. ‘Now, here’s a job I’d love,’ she declared, turning the paper round so Emma could see the headline. Golden Angels Make Pensioner Fred’s Day. ‘Exactly who are these golden angels, as they’re calling themselves, is what I want to know? Everyone’s asking the same thing. They keep cropping up and no one seems to have any idea where they’re coming from.’