Just Between Us

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘He’d forget about you if…’ prompted Stella gently.

  ‘If he had a new family,’ finished Jenna, and raised her chin at Stella as if to say ‘you can’t deny it’.

  ‘Could you imagine your father forgetting about you under any circumstances?’ Stella asked.

  Jenna’s pretty face was unsure.

  ‘Because I can’t. He loves you, adores you, Jenna.’ Stella felt unbearably sorry for this mixed-up girl who could even imagine that her devoted father would neglect her. ‘He’d never forget you and he wouldn’t be much of a father if he did. And he’s a good dad, isn’t he?’

  Jenna nodded tearfully.

  ‘But you hate me,’ she said suddenly.

  Stella sighed, feeling guilty. ‘I don’t hate you, Jenna. And I’m really sorry if I’ve made you think that, honestly I’m sorry. I dislike the fact that you’re rude to me and do your best to make my life difficult.’

  Jenna had the grace to look ashamed.

  ‘But disliking your behaviour isn’t the same as disliking you. Whereas you haven’t really given me a chance from the start, as if you blame me for the fact that your parents are divorced.’ There, she’d said it. Stella held her breath. With Jenna being honest with Stella for the first time ever, it had seemed like a good idea to clear the air once and for all. But had that been a mistake?

  ‘Mum said…’ Jenna stopped.

  Stella definitely didn’t want to get into any conversations about what Wendy thought, so she swiftly moved the subject on. ‘What does Sara think about your father and me?’

  ‘Sara told me not to be stupid and that it was never going to happen: they weren’t going to get back together again.’

  Jenna looked sadly at the floor. She looked up to her big sister and had felt like some stupid kid when Sara had talked like that to her. ‘What planet are you on?’ Sara had said angrily. ‘Mum and Dad are better off apart. Have you forgotten all the yelling and screaming? I haven’t. It’s nice to have a bit of peace and quiet. Just because Mum decides she wants Dad back doesn’t mean he’s going to go. And would it be any better? Grow up, Jenna.’

  Jenna had always kept that hope alive in her heart, the hope that everything might work out and she’d have her mum and dad together again. Most of the time, she knew it was a childish dream, like when she looked into her snow globe from Disney and dreamed what it would be like to be inside it for a moment. She knew parents who split didn’t magically get back together but Mum had made it sound as if it could happen.

  ‘You want your Dad back, pet, don’t you?’ Mum had said that day after she’d been out with Aunt Clarisse. Mum had been crying and she’d been drinking. Jenna hated Clarisse, stupid old bat, always talking in a put-on posh voice, except when she thought nobody could hear her.

  Clarisse must have told Mum that Dad wasn’t happy and that they could make him come home again, if only they tried.

  ‘Clarisse says she knows you hate that woman and you’ve made it obvious from the start,’ Mum said.

  Jenna had felt ashamed then, to think that someone as horrible as Aunt Clarisse thought she’d been a bitch on purpose. I mean, hello? Jenna was angry because nobody told her anything, she was treated like this kid and expected to go along with everything. Dad had known Stella for ages before he’d told Jenna. Even Amelia, who was a kid, had known about it. And then when she’d met Stella, she’d behaved badly and Stella had looked so dismissive of her, like Stella couldn’t imagine why anyone would be so awful. Jenna had felt like a worm. Worse than a worm, a maggot.

  Stella was so calm and elegant, she looked like the sort of person you could tell stuff to but Jenna couldn’t, not after that first time. She couldn’t become Nice Jenna when she’d started out as Horrible Jenna.

  Stella put her tea cup down on the coffee table and sat down beside Jenna. ‘I wasn’t trying to be your mum, Jenna,’ she said. ‘I love your dad and I only wanted to be friends with you. That’s all.’

  ‘I love my dad too,’ said Jenna and burst into tears. She jumped up and rushed into the bathroom, slamming the door.

  Stella sighed. Oh well, she’d tried.

  When the door rang just before six, Stella knew who it would be.

  Wendy Cavaletto was slim, with frosted blonde hair in a pageboy cut, light blue eyes expertly made up, and was dressed immaculately. Her skin was tanned and certainly showed her age, but what surprised Stella was how attractive she was. Somehow, the idea of Wendy had developed into a screaming harpy with claws out and a dissatisfied expression on her face. To be faced with this stylish woman in a black linen trouser suit was a surprise.

  ‘Come in, Wendy,’ Stella said. ‘I’m Stella Miller.’ She didn’t hold her hand out, not knowing whether the gesture would be repudiated or not.

  ‘I know, hello. Thank you for this.’ Wendy managed a brief smile but she was tense too, Stella realised. The other woman’s jaw was set firmly with unease despite the smile.

  ‘This way.’ Stella led the way into the room where Jenna stood anxiously waiting for her mother.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ said Jenna.

  ‘What was it this time?’ demanded Wendy, glaring at her daughter, the cool persona gone. ‘Who did you cheek today, madam?’

  Stella’s pity for Jenna went up another notch. It was easy to see how Jenna was a touchy child who flared with anger at the drop of a hat. She’d learned it from her mother. ‘Would you like some water or coffee, Wendy?’ she asked, keen to be out of the room for this confrontation.

  ‘No thank you, we’re going.’ Wendy’s voice was clipped. ‘Thank you for picking her up. I was with a friend and hadn’t bothered to turn my phone on but I know you had to leave work early. I just hope Jenna appreciates it, although she never appreciates anything I do for her.’ This sounded like a familiar tirade.

  ‘It wasn’t a problem,’ Stella replied quickly. She felt downright sorry for Jenna now. She couldn’t imagine how she and Amelia would get on if she dressed Amelia down in public like Wendy did with her daughter. Shouting at Jenna wouldn’t solve this problem.

  ‘Bye.’ Wendy whisked round and headed for the door, clearly just as uncomfortable as Stella was.

  Jenna didn’t move. ‘Thanks, Stella,’ she said quietly. She looked up and gave a grin, so small and quick that Stella wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it or not. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ Jenna added.

  Stella didn’t know how to reply but followed Jenna to the door. She probably wouldn’t see Jenna again, not if she and Nick decided to finally end their relationship.

  Wendy had already climbed into her car and Jenna swivelled on the doorstep to talk to Stella.

  ‘Jenna!’ called Wendy from the car, her tone impatient.

  Jenna shrugged. ‘Got to go, bye.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ Stella answered. Some impulse made her reach out and clasp Jenna’s shoulder in encouragement. As soon as she’d made contact, she regretted it. How many times had Jenna spurned such a gesture. But Jenna didn’t wrench herself away this time.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said in a small voice, and ran down the path to her mother’s car.

  Stella shut the door and wondered if she’d finally managed to break the ice with Nick’s daughter – or if Jenna was merely happy because she thought Stella and her father were going to split up? Since Stella had mentioned the possibility, Jenna had been verging on the polite, which was possibly a sign that she was delirious. But, had there been a hint of something else, a sense that Jenna didn’t mind Stella quite as much as she’d done before? No, probably not, Stella reflected. Jenna hated her far too much for that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Holly waved at Bunny across a rail of tweenie denim jackets and sparkly T-shirts. Bunny, who looked fed up with spending the day getting ready for the launch of the summer sale, raised her eyes to heaven and then went back to checking that no toddler party dress went unpriced. The August sale proper would start tomorrow morning but this evening, at six, Lee’s would be stampeded by th
e shoppers who had store credit cards and were being treated to a special twenty per cent pre-sale evening. Both Holly and Bunny were veterans of this pre-sale night and it was usually miles more frantic than the actual first day of the sale. The store card customers were zealous shoppers and would fight to the death for the chance to buy classic items at massive discounts. In anticipation of this deluge, Lee’s had been closed all day while the staff marked everything up for the sale. The actual pricing of all the stock had been worked out painstakingly a week earlier, but making sure that every item was reticketed was exhausting and time-consuming work. It was now just five and Holly hoped that Bunny would be ready to grab a quick cup of coffee in anticipation of the caffeine-free three hours shopping to come.

  She hunkered down beside her friend. ‘Have you nearly finished?’ she asked her friend.

  ‘Five more minutes,’ said Bunny. ‘I should have been finished ages ago but the new girl, Meg, wasted an hour putting fifty per cent off stickers on all the Pretty Mama baby gear which is their new season stuff, so I had to de-sticker it all. I don’t know what recreational pharmaceuticals Miss Jackson was on when she hired Meg. She’s very sweet and everything, but mentally, she’s away with the fairies. Ooh, here she comes.’

  Holly watched her replacement with interest. Meg certainly looked the part of a children’s department sales assistant, being in her early twenties and baby-faced with an engaging, lop-sided smile.

  ‘Bunny, you’re going to kill me but I forgot to take the box of flip-flops out of the stock room. There’s hundreds of them and I haven’t done them yet. Sorree!’

  Bunny tried to glare at Meg and failed.

  ‘We’ll do them together,’ she sighed. ‘By the way, Meg, this is Holly who worked here before you.’

  ‘Lovely to meet you,’ said Meg. ‘Bunny says you’ve gone to international fashion. I’d love to do that.’

  Bunny shot Holly a look that said Meg wasn’t likely to end up making the tea in international fashion if she mis-stickered things with incorrect fifty per cent discounts and left whole boxes of sale goods in the stockroom. It was one thing to do that with flip-flops and baby clothes, another thing entirely to do it with designer evening gowns where a fifty per cent mistake would pay most people’s mortgage for two months.

  ‘Get the flip-flops and we’ll have them finished in ten minutes, right?’ Bunny said to Meg. ‘I’ll join you in the canteen in fifteen minutes for a coffee,’ she added to Holly. ‘I’ve got to rush out to the car park for a ciggy first.’

  ‘Don’t talk about cigarettes,’ pleaded Holly, who was trying to give up. Since she’d applied for – and got – Gabriella’s job in international fashion, she’d cut down to five a day. It hadn’t been easy. There were times when she longed for her usual twenty a day and only iron will kept her from rushing out at every break and chain smoking. If she could keep this up for another month, she planned to give up totally. She made her way up to the canteen, thinking that so much had changed in the past few weeks. Her transformation to a five-a-day smoker was only one. The other change was one that wasn’t instantly obvious: it was in Holly herself. Somehow, Holly had discovered that most elusive quality of all: self-confidence. It wasn’t a flood by any means, more of a slow, gentle trickle. But it made all the difference to her.

  Finding out that she really was good at her new job also helped. She had an instinctive eye for what worked fashion-wise, an instinct that the department’s customers appreciated. They also appreciated Holly’s genuine kindness; she didn’t differentiate between a wealthy chauffeur-driven matron who could afford to buy everything in the shop and an In Style addict who’d saved like mad to buy one beautiful designer piece.

  In the canteen, Holly got herself some green tea and sat down beside Annmarie, one of her new colleagues in the fashion department.

  Exquisitely groomed and outwardly self-composed, Annmarie was the sort of person Holly would have been utterly intimidated by before. But now that they were working together, Holly found that Annmarie was nothing like she’d imagined, was friendly, bubbly and possessed of a wicked sense of humour.

  ‘Toffee?’ said Annmarie, proffering a bag of sweets.

  ‘I’d love one.’ Holly reached into the bag.

  ‘Take two,’ suggested Annmarie. ‘You’ll need the sugar kick.’

  She was right. By half eight, Holly had never been so tired in her life. The pre-sale night in children’s wear had nothing on this crazed, handbag-jabbing frenzy where grown women rampaged through rails of designer clothes, wailing with rage when they found that the perfect Prada suit only came in an eight when they needed a twelve. And who did they blame for this mean-spirited turn of events? The sales staff.

  The initial frenzy had calmed by now and the shoppers were more relaxed as they flicked through the rails. In their corner of international design, Holly and Annmarie allowed themselves to relax.

  ‘Remind me never to wear these boots again,’ said Annmarie, through gritted teeth. She held out a foot encased in a soft suede ankle boot with a heel like a dagger. ‘They may look nice but they’re not made for sale night.’

  Holly was about to reply when she saw two customers approaching and she put on her professional and welcoming smile; a smile which slowly froze into a rictus. One of the customers was Caroline, the other a woman who could only have been Caroline’s mother. She had the same petite frame, the same girlish blonde hair and the same pixie-ish sense of dress. Right now, they both also had the same slit-eyed expression on their faces.

  ‘I hope you’re happy,’ hissed the older version at Holly, who recoiled at such naked rage.

  Annmarie’s perfectly waxed eyebrows arched.

  ‘There’s no point talking to her, Mother,’ sneered Caroline, her face just as contorted with temper as her mother’s. ‘She’s played a clever game after all. She thinks she’s won, but she hasn’t!’

  ‘Excuse me, can I help?’ said Annmarie smoothly, stepping in front of a shell-shocked Holly.

  ‘You can’t. Only she can help. She stole my fiancé!’ shrieked Caroline.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Holly, moving out from behind Annmarie. She wasn’t going to hide; she had nothing to hide.

  ‘You know!’ hissed Caroline Snr. ‘Don’t go all coy on us. I told Caroline you were a Trojan horse all right. And Tom was taken in by you, well, I’ll have you know that you’ll never be happy with him…’

  ‘I haven’t seen Tom since the night of the engagement party,’ protested Holly. What was going on here?

  ‘Don’t play games with me. You know what I’m talking about!’ shrieked Caroline. ‘You stole him from me! He moved out this morning. Just packed up and moved, said it wasn’t working out. Can you believe that?’

  Her mother glowered at Holly. ‘Tell her what happened when you asked was there anyone else,’ she urged.

  ‘Oh yes, I was just coming to that,’ Caroline snarled. ‘I said that I wouldn’t force him to stay if he didn’t want to, but that I needed to know one thing, just one thing – was he going to you!’ She almost spat the word ‘you’ at Holly. ‘At least he had the manners to look ashamed and he didn’t lie to me, not like you, you…you cow! Lying to me that you haven’t seen him when I know you have!’

  Annmarie shot Holly an anguished look and was surprised to find that the beginning of a smile was spreading across her colleague’s lovely face.

  ‘Caroline, I think you should leave,’ said Holly pleasantly. ‘You’re making a big mistake here. If Tom has left you, then it’s your fault, not mine. I haven’t seen him since your engagement party and that’s the truth.’

  For once, Caroline was speechless.

  ‘Tom and I have never been anything but friends,’ Holly added. She could say that with her hand on her heart. No matter what she’d felt about Tom, there had never been a moment between them where he’d betrayed Caroline or said anything untoward to Holly. For sure, she’d wished it was different, but what she’d wished
didn’t count.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you, the way he talks to you.’

  ‘Caroline, Tom and I have never done anything for you to be jealous of,’ said Holly.

  ‘Oh yes, well why did he say ‘sorry, sorry,’ when I asked was he leaving me for you?’ shrieked Caroline. ‘Why didn’t he deny it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Holly, feeling the excitement singing in her heart. Tom had left Caroline that morning; for her. He was coming to her, she knew it.

  ‘Liar,’ hissed Caroline’s mother.

  Annmarie took charge. ‘Madam,’ she said in a voice that dripped with icy politeness. ‘I’m afraid we do not allow our staff to be harangued by members of the public. This is clearly some sort of misunderstanding and if you don’t calm down, I shall have to call security.’

  The two women turned pink with fury at being outmanoeuvred but Caroline saw that Annmarie meant what she said.

  ‘Come on,’ she said to her mother. ‘We’ve said all we wanted to say.’ She shot one parting glance at Holly, a look that would curdle milk, then they stormed off.

  ‘You’re going to have to tell me what that’s all about,’ remarked Annmarie.

  Holly’s smile lit up her face. ‘It’s quite a story, all right,’ she said.

  Holly stopped at her favourite deli on the way home and stocked up. Definitely Italian tonight. As she carried her purchases to the bus stop, she sang to herself, not caring if anyone heard her or not.

  ‘You look happy,’ said the bus driver when she got off at the end of Windmill Terrace. ‘Got a date?’

  Holly beamed at him. ‘A hot one,’ she said.

  There were two ‘For Sale’ signs on houses near theirs on Windmill Terrace, plus a planning permission application stuck onto the gate of number 65. The revamp starts here, Holly thought. The area was about to be upgraded and no doubt the landlord was already working out how to entice his tenants into leaving so he could sell the house to developers. It was what Holly, Kenny and Joan had been dreading for months, but it didn’t worry Holly today. Everything was going to be fine.