Playing for Keeps

by Rosa Temple

  AFTER

  From the wheelchair all I could see was people rushing around from the waist down. The tail of Anya’s dress was floating back along the corridor as she swept along it at a speed I’d never seen on her, telling everyone to step aside, very important delivery coming this way.

  ‘Move! Now!’ she bellowed at a woman pushing a tea trolley, causing the poor woman to cower against the wall, the contents of her trolley shivering and rattling in Anya’s wake.

  Anthony, who was pushing the wheelchair, squeezed my shoulder from behind and Mother squeezed my hand from the right.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It won’t be long now, darling.’

  Mother said this as if in no time at all I’d be out of the hospital and back at the church for the wedding as if nothing had happened.

  The wedding plans had begun one Saturday at Rhythm ‘N’ Brews. I started talking about a summer wedding and designing my own wedding dress. Anthony threw a date into the equation and the wedding planning began in earnest. Little did we know that a surprise announcement would follow the wonderful news that Anthony and I were finally getting married. You see, I discovered very soon after we’d decided to tie the knot that I was pregnant. We thought we could combine the two things: a summer wedding followed by a summer baby.

  ‘How lovely would that be for our baby to be at the wedding,’ I said to Anthony one evening over two very large bowls of ice cream.

  ‘Well, technically, the baby won’t be at the wedding,’ Anthony corrected me, reaching over to my bowl of ice cream and stealing some of my triple chocolate chip. ‘He or she will still be a bump so does that really count?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, scooping a chunk of his mint and pistachio. ‘It all counts. Bumps count. Now stop stealing my ice cream. I’m eating for two.’

  Months ago, when I was still in the throes of opening the flagship shop in the King’s Road and Anthony was getting geared up to take on a commission in Italy, my and Anthony’s love life had taken a turn for the worse. While I obsessed about opening the shop and Anthony stressed about opening a studio and art gallery, we started pulling away from each other, emotionally and physically, without realising it was happening. And, of course, when he left for Italy for over a month, there was absolutely no action between the sheets at all.

  I calculated that our little bundle of joy was conceived the night Anthony returned from Italy, the night I had no idea Anthony was coming home. We celebrated his return, the birth of Anya’s baby and the opening of my shop with a long-awaited love-making session. We’d thrown all caution to the wind that night (or should I say birth-control precautions?) and made up for a lot of lost time.

  On the day of the wedding the bump refused to stay a bump and decided to put in an appearance. I’d thought the twinges in my stomach were just the jitters but I was wrong. I was at Mother’s house the night before the wedding and the fact that I was going into labour on my wedding day was a reality I couldn’t escape.

  ‘Magenta, you’re going to have to postpone. You can’t get married while you’re in labour,’ Mother implored.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘I’ll get that,’ said Father, who was standing at the bedroom door watching me doubled over in pain in my frothy wedding dress while Mother, Anya and my three sisters flapped around me. I suppose he was only too happy to leave us to it.

  ‘I can get through the wedding, Mother. I’m sure I can. No one will know,’ I cried, gripping my lower abdomen. Mother raised her eyebrows.

  ‘And when the priest asks if you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband,’ she said, rubbing my back, ‘what will you do? Shout "I do" at the top of your lungs because the baby has moved down the birth canal?’

  ‘You don’t have to be so graphic, Mother. First babies take ages to be born. You told me that. I could have hours to play with. Enough for the ceremony and at least part of the reception.’

  Mother’s hands flew up, a flutter of Chanel blowing my way as she turned in despair. ‘You talk to her, Anya. I can’t get through.’

  Anya pulled me to the armchair and sat me down, my baby bump hard and round under my chiffon wedding dress.

  ‘Your mother is right, Madge. Let’s get you to the hospital. I can call Anthony now and get him round there. Then your sisters and I can run around and tell them all the vedding is postponed… at least until you get your stitches out.’

  ‘I’m not having stitches!’ I exclaimed. ‘And this baby is staying put. Well, for now anyway. Do you know how long this wedding has been in the planning stages?’ By now Mother and my sisters were all in a circle around me, either kneeling or standing around the chair in their wedding clothes, looking stunning but regarding me with eyes that said, ‘Get over it, Magenta, this wedding is not happening today.’

  I could no longer go on being stubborn. The next contraction, a contraction from hell I might add, put paid to that.

  ‘Okay, call Anthony,’ I said through gritted teeth, my eyes tightly clenched too. ‘We need to get to the hospital.’

  By the time they’d walked me down to the car, a silver Bentley with a white silk ribbon around it, my waters had broken.

  ‘Mother?’ I said, standing by the open door.

  ‘It’s all right, in you get, everything will be fine.’

  I guess I went into panic mode around then. The pain was more intense, and I was definitely about to miss my wedding.

  I was relieved when I saw Anthony bounding out of the hospital doors as we got to the maternity wing. All six of us – Mother, Anya, my sisters and me – exited the wedding car, an explosion of pastel pink, peach and white chiffon, me climbing bow-legged out of the back seat.

  Anthony rushed over with a wheelchair.

  ‘Quick, get in this,’ Anthony said and started a supercharged run back into maternity, past the reception desk and down a corridor. Anya batted people aside like the fly half on the rugby squad until we reached the delivery suite.

  ‘This is Magenta Bright, soon to become Shearman. Her baby is coming. Help us,’ she yelled.

  A midwife came out of nowhere and hooked me under my arm.

  ‘That’s it, love. You’re with me now. I’m Carol. I think we met at an appointment?’ All the time she was walking me into a delivery room, the whole wedding party was following close behind. ‘It’s only birth partner from here,’ Carol said, stopping at the bed to address everyone who had amassed behind us like a game of follow my leader.

  ‘That’s me,’ said Anthony with his hand raised.

  ‘And me,’ said Mother with her hand raised too.

  ‘Off the rest of you go then,’ said Carol with a smile.

  Despite Anthony and Mother’s best efforts it was Carol who made sure I was at my ease.

  As it turned out, by the time baby Azura came into the world, I could have argued that we would have made it through the ceremony and had time to cut the cake at the reception. That is if I could have puffed and panted my way through the order of service without putting the guests off and clung to Anthony’s neck with my fingernails during the first dance.

  But she was here and I was happy. Anthony and I both were. Azura would be at our eventual wedding proper, not just a bump, after all… that is if we could get our acts together and make it to the church next time. Whatever happened, though, it would be the three of us, together, for keeps.

  If you loved Playing for Keeps then read on for an excerpt from Playing by the Rules, Rosa’s first Magenta story…

  PART 1

  THE LAST DAYS OF SUMMER

  Chapter 1

  On the 3rd of August 2015, I died. I was in the London offices of solicitors Bartholomew and Tooke, along with my family: Mother, Father and my three sisters. It was no ordinary death. After losing control of all my bodily functions, my eyes rolled back in my head and I stopped breathing altogether. I crashed to the floor and heard the high-toned, continuous beep of a heart monitor and imagined the great big flatline across the screen, con
firming the inevitable. I was dead.

  But I wasn’t attached to a machine; there was no beep and no flatline. In fact, I wasn’t actually dead. But I could easily have been. One minute the incredibly handsome (for a sixty-year-old) Mr Bartholomew was reading Nana Clementine’s last will and testament, saying I’d just inherited £250,000 and in the next breath he was saying that I couldn’t actually have it.

  In a matter of seconds, I’d gone from exhilarated at having landed a vast sum of money for doing absolutely nothing and then back to being flat broke and desperate. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved and adored Nana Clementine and couldn’t have been more heartbroken when we lost her, but she was far too astute for a ninety-year-old for my liking. You see, if there was one member of my family who knew me well, it was Nana Clementine – and that’s why the will reading hadn’t gone to plan.

  Nana had come to England from Ireland as a six-year-old with wild flaxen hair and rosy cheeks. She came from strong, Northern Irish stock and a family who knew how to work hard and get ahead. Her father, Damon Burns, also knew that if his beautiful Clementine was ever going to do well in England and be able to rub shoulders with English gentry, she’d have to get rid of the thick accent and smooth out that hair.

  Damon Burns signed Clementine up for elocution lessons and had the Queen’s English drummed into her until she could pass for a member of the royal family. Damon worked as a handyman in a women’s underwear factory and his wife was a seamstress in said factory. Damon worked an additional two jobs so that their only daughter could go to private school.

  He didn’t stop working until he and his wife eventually bought out the underwear factory and, in years to come, thanks to some astute business sense from the Irish couple, the small factory became one of the largest women’s lingerie designers and wholesalers in Europe. When Nana Clementine took over the company at age twenty-one, she made it a global success.

  Unlike Nana Clementine and her Irish family, I hated to work. A fact she was fully aware of. But yet here she was, and from beyond the grave I might add, trying to drum some of those hard-nosed, working-class family values into me.

  In her will she had left her estate to Mother, her only child, and to each of her granddaughters she’d left a tidy sum of £250,000. My sisters – Amber, Indigo and Ebony – all got away scot-free with their stash but there was a proviso attached to my payout. As Mr Bartholomew put it:

  ‘Magenta Clementine Bright will take possession of her inheritance at age forty-five; but at any age prior to her forty-fifth birthday, she may take possession of the inheritance if she has been in continuous employment for the same employer for exactly 365 days.’

  The mention of waiting to get hold of the money until age forty-five had caused the failure of my bodily functions; that is, I felt faint and I needed to wee. I was twenty-eight for crying out loud. The words ‘continuous employment’ had caused my eyes to roll back in my head. The loss of breath occurred straight after he’d said, ‘same employer’, and I’d crashed to the floor as if dead when I heard him say, ‘365 days’.

  By 365 days Mr Bartholomew meant a year. A whole year of work. Since I was twenty-three and had left university, the longest I’d held down a job was two months. In between jobs there’d been months of unemployment – not a good look for any curriculum vitae. Five years of living precariously doesn’t look good for anyone but I’d been consistent in the type of job I’d had. I’d always been a PA of some description. I can’t organise myself for shit but I’m brilliant at organising other people. Well for two months at a time, it would appear.

  ‘Magenta, get off the floor,’ my mother said as I lay prostrate on the Persian rug in Mr Bartholomew’s office, which smelled of Shake ‘N’ Vac.

  ‘Ignore her,’ Mother said to the solicitor. ‘Just carry on.’

  My sisters sniggered.

  Mr Bartholomew cleared his throat. ‘Any monies owed will be authorised for payment and all contracts to transfer properties to the beneficiaries will be drawn up. You’ll have to allow several months for completion of the transfers, especially the foreign ones, but it will all be in hand.’

  My family made a combined sound as they prepared to leave the office, shuffling in their seats and gathering their jackets and handbags.

  Just to give you a little background about my family. My mother and father were divorced. My two older sisters, Amber and Indigo, were both married and worked for one of the family businesses: the lingerie company, now owned by Mother. My younger sister, Ebony, was single like me but unlike me, she had a career outside the realms of the family empire and was doing very well indeed.

  The four of us girls looked pretty much alike, but in varying dress sizes. We had all acquired the same sandy brown complexion – a combination of my Jamaican father and Irish mother’s genes – black-brown hair of varying wave texture and very posh accents after having attended the same private boarding school as Mother and Nana Clementine. The school was supposed to have made us well-balanced, well-educated, ambitious young ladies. For my sisters that had worked well – for me, not so much.

  Nana Clementine had wanted my mother – her only child, Scarlett – to marry well. Mother had been worth a considerable amount of money since before she was conceived so, of course, nothing but an appropriate suitor would do. Fortunately for Nana Clementine, Mother met Father, the son of a rich and influential businessman, at Oxford University.

  As a young man, my father, Carl Bright, was destined to inherit a large amount of land and two thriving guest houses in his native Jamaica, which he later developed into a chain of hotels in various islands in the Caribbean – the second of our family businesses. Father was as posh as Mother because of his upbringing: prep school, Eton, Oxford – the whole shebang. Father sounded a bit like Trevor McDonald reading News At Ten but he broke into his Jamaican vernacular when he was upset or angry. We heard a lot of Jamaican patois in the lead-up to their acrimonious divorce, five years ago.

  ‘Mavis will see you out,’ said Mr Bartholomew as they all left, most of them having to step over me to get to the door. Completely ignoring my dire situation, none of them cared that I might choke down there with all the Shake ‘N’ Vac I’d inhaled.

  ‘You’ll have to get up now, Magenta. I have a meeting in ten minutes.’

  I heard Mr Bartholomew tapping documents into a neat pile on his desk.

  ‘How can I get up?’ I asked from the floor. ‘You just signed my death warrant. I have to work for a full year before I get to spend a penny of my inheritance.’ I proceeded to rise from the dead; that is, I sat up and tried to arrange my big hair into the smooth, presentable style I’d arrived with. I blinked large, hazel eyes at Mr Bartholomew but he was sorting out files and papers and missed my ‘with-these-eyes-I-can-get-anything’ look, which worked like magic on Father when I was a little girl.

  ‘Mr Bartholomew, isn’t there anything you can do?’ I was on my knees and peering at him from the other side of his desk. ‘Do you understand what it means to hold down a job for a whole year?’

  ‘I’ve been a solicitor for thirty years.’ He got up and dropped a file into one of the wire trays on his desk, walked to the mirror on the far wall and began straightening his tie. I followed him, put my arms around him from behind and fixed his tie.

  ‘I mean a year for a normal person,’ I said. His hairline was receding and his suit was terrible but he was still handsome. ‘You don’t understand,’ I went on. ‘Nana loved me the most. There’s no way she’d give Amber, Indigo and Ebony all that money for nothing and make me work for mine.’

  He unwound himself from my vice-like grip on his shoulders.

  ‘I don’t have the power to alter your grandmother’s will, Magenta. You know that.’ He put papers into a thin case, fastened it and held his hand towards the door where Mavis had just come in to hurry her boss along.

  My shoulders slumped down like they used to when I was thirteen and someone in my family had ruined my life. I picked
up my Hermès Vintage Tote and left the office just ahead of Mr Bartholomew. We walked out onto Lancaster Gate together and he waved his hand in the air to hail a taxi.

  I stopped to watch him get into the back seat and wondered for a moment if he had any jobs going back at Bartholomew and Tooke. Realising very quickly I hadn’t exactly led with my best foot forward and there was no way he’d ever employ me, I waved at him. He waved back and I gave him the thumbs up sign. He gave me a puzzled look as the taxi shot off.

  I was left holding the tote bag in front of my legs with both hands, rocking backwards and forwards on my Manolo Blahniks and wishing I’d asked if I could use his toilet before we’d left.

  If you enjoyed Playing for Keeps, then why not try another romantic story from HQ Digital?