The only child of a schoolteacher and a circus clown, Christina Jones has been writing all her life. As well as writing novels, Christina contributes short stories and articles to many national magazines and newspapers. Her first novel was chosen for WH Smith’s Fresh Talent promotion, and Nothing to Lose, was short-listed for the Thumping Good Read Award, with film and television rights sold.
After years of travelling, Christina now lives in Oxfordshire with her husband Rob and a houseful of rescued cats.
Find out more about Christina Jones and her books by visiting her website:
www.christinajones.co.uk
Also by Christina Jones
Going the Distance
Running the Risk
Stealing the Show
Jumping to Conclusions
Walking on Air
Nothing to Lose
Tickled Pink
Copyright
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-7481-2918-8
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Christina Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
www.hachette.co.uk
Contents
Also by Christina Jones
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Prologue
As this isn’t the Oscars, I’ve had to cull the list of thankyous as they could – and should – have gone on forever. However, I must give a huge vote of thanks to everyone at Piatkus for not giving up on me, especially Gillian Green, my wonderful editor, who never, ever nagged, screamed or cried when I gave her ample opportunity to do all three. And to Emma Callagher for being equally wonderful and for steering me towards HUBBLE BUBBLE as a title instead of the awful one I’d come up with.
Thanks, of course, to Rob who never stopped supporting me in spite of everything. And to Laura, whose butterfly career changes gave me the insider low-down on the paramedic and dentistry backgrounds. Also, to all my friends who gave non-stop encouragement and who, to a man, believed HUBBLE BUBBLE would be written when I didn’t.
Thanks also to the lovely staff and customers at the Weasel and Bucket who thought me being a novel-writing-barmaid was a good laugh and never complained about my spilling things on them; and my Nan (the herbal poisoner of Wessex Road) for giving me the HUBBLE BUBBLE idea and the inherited information, and last but by no means least, Nora Neibergall (Brit-Fic supporter extraordinaire) for kindly allowing me to nick the name of her feisty cat to become Mitzi’s ex-husband. Lance – you’re a feline star!
Chapter One
Peering through her farewell bouquet of mop-headed chrysanthemums, Mitzi wondered if it might just be worth serving ten years in prison for slaughtering Troy Haley.
True, it was neither the time nor the place: mid-afternoon in the foyer of the bank, surrounded by Chardonnay-clutching colleagues and customers – not to mention minor dignitaries and a smattering of the local press – was probably not the best venue to turn into an assassin. A dignified, middle-aged assassin, true, but an assassin nevertheless – and surely she’d be doing the financial world a kindness?
Troy Haley, looking about eighteen with his spiky gelled hair and acne scars, was peacocking – much to the apparent delight of every female employee under the age of thirty – around the nineteenth-century vaulted and chandeliered interior of the Winterbrook branch of the bank as if he owned it. Which, Mitzi supposed gloomily, was not too far from the truth. He was the new manager after all.
Mitzi shook her head in disbelief as she watched him – confident, laughing, joking and shaking hands. Troy Haley was far, far too young. Oh, not that she had anything against youth in general, of course. She had always been proud of her own youthful appearance and outlook, and enjoyed the company of younger people; she admired their optimism while at the same time pitying their misfortune to be struggling through to adulthood in the uncertainties of the current climate.
She’d always considered herself doubly blessed, so much luckier than today’s generation, having had a secure and snug 1950s childhood followed by the fabulous teenage freedom of the 1960s. It was all so austere now, grim and sort of scary for young people. But her overall empathy with youth still didn’t detract from the fact that Troy Haley was surely far too immature to be in charge of anything. He was probably about the same age as her daughters.
Mitzi winced at the thought. Her daughters, Lulu and Doll, were scarcely able to manage their own lives, let alone the financial dealings of a high street bank. Yet somebody, in all their fiscal wisdom, had given this boy the chance to play God with the lives and accounts of hundreds of customers.
But then Troy Haley, Mitzi knew only too well, had been fast-tracked. She’d heard the term often enough since his shock appointment had been announced, along with her own early retirement, a month earlier. She’d gathered it was corporate speak for ‘business graduate with loads of qualifications but sod-all experience’.
Whatever had happened to working your way slowly up the ladder? Learning your trade rung by rung? What had happened to earning promotion, not to mention gaining knowledge and dignity and respect as you went, and what sort of name was Troy for a bank manager, anyway?
Mitzi bit her lip and almost laughed at herself. She was in very grave danger of wandering into Victor Meldrew territory here – she who prided herself on her flower-child take on life and her equanimity. Equanimity was fine in its place, she decided, but when it encroached on one’s own survival maybe it was another matter altogether.
She could see herself reflected in the bank’s darkening windows, with the crystals of the chandeliers casting small flattering shadows. Trim and neat, and with her fashionably choppy hair gleaming in a dozen shades of dark red, she surely didn’t look old enough to be someone about to retire. Didn’t retired people wear a lot of buff and shuffle?
Was this it, then? The end of life as she knew it? Were daytime telly and pensioners’ luncheon clubs the only thing left for her?
‘That’s lovely! Smile!’ A girl from the Winterbrook Advertiser suddenly clicked a camera inches from Mitzi’s face. ‘Now, would you like one of you and Troy together?’
‘I don’t think so, thank you,’ Mitzi moved the chrysanthemums to her other arm. ‘After all, I’m on my way out. I think your readers will be far more interested in the New Order. Perhaps one of – er – Troy with my replacement would be more appropriate.’
‘Yeah, right. Ta.’
Without apparently noticing the iro
ny, the girl pointed her camera towards Troy and Tyler, his freshly appointed, equally gelled and spotty assistant, who was allegedly incorporating Mitzi’s redundant post with Personal Banking, but who, as far as she could gather, had never taken shorthand or made coffee or organised a conference in his life.
Troy and Tyler! They sounded like presenters on a children’s TV programme – and all the bank’s recently installed nasal-voiced, call-centre girls seemed to have names like Chantal-Leanne and Lauren-Storm … and … Mitzi snorted fiercely into her bouquet, making the tissue paper rattle.
‘Are you all right, my dear?’ Mr Dickinson, the outgoing manager, touched her arm gently. ‘Not too upset?’
‘Upset, not really – angry, very.’ Mitzi shifted the chrysanthemums again and flicked at the wrappings. ‘I was just contemplating garrotting the sad little squirt with my stylish and trendy raffia tie thingy. Look at it. Not even a decent bit of ribbon.’
‘At least you didn’t get a bloody clock,’ Mr Dickinson sighed. ‘Why do they always give you a damn clock when the last thing you want to do is watch time slipping away?’
They looked at one another and pulled synchronised, sympathetic faces.
‘Hi,’ Troy Haley seemed to have shaken off the press, the fawning customers and his posse of mini-skirted admirers. ‘Are you enjoying yourselves?’
‘You really don’t want the answer to that question–’ Mitzi glared through the flowers ‘–do you? No, let me put it another way. How exactly do you think we’re feeling after giving the last thirty-five years of our working lives to this bank? Put out to grass while we’re still in our prime? Pensioned off while we still have years of useful life in us?’
Troy Haley shrugged. ‘Tough one. Yeah, at the end of the day I know how you must feel about all that, but it’s a whole new ball game, you know. Youth is the key. Technology is the new rock ’n’ roll. Times they are achangin’. What with call centres and computer banking and everything, no one wants banks with face-to-face one-to-ones – er – well, you get the picture.’ He slapped Mr Dickinson chummily on the shoulder. ‘Anyway, Nev, it’ll give you lots of time to potter in your garden and play golf, won’t it?’
Nev? Nev? Mitzi almost choked. In all the years she had been Mr Dickinson’s right-hand woman she had never once called him Neville – let alone Nev. Even when they were mere youngsters, and she was starting out as a trainee bank teller with Mr Dickinson as the senior clerk, they’d always called one another Mr Dickinson and Mrs Blessing. How dare this crass, arrogant child take such liberties!
‘I have no interest in gardening or golf,’ Mr Dickinson said stiffly. ‘I may find a little more time to do The Times crossword now, but even that seems a small recompense for being forcibly retired.’
Troy Haley grinned. ‘Look on the bright side though, Nev. At the end of the day you’ll have your pension before they all go tits up, and your lump-sum payment, and the world will be your oyster, so to speak. I’m looking forward to retiring, me. I hope to be able to pack all this in before I’m forty. There’s no way I want to sit at my desk until I’m – er—’
‘I’m fifty-five and Mr Dickinson isn’t much older,’ Mitzi said, her voice ominously steady. ‘We’re probably the same age as your parents. How do you think they would feel about being put out to grass at our ages?’
‘Actually, my parents are younger than you are and they’re already planning to step off the wage-slave playing field, thanks to their well-handled ISAs,’ Troy said happily. ‘You’re nearer my grandparents’ age – and they’re having a ball on the Costa Dorada. Why don’t you look into retirement homes in sunnier climes, Mitzi? At the end of the day, you’ve only got yourself to consider now, haven’t you? No point in wasting the rest of your life hanging around a deadend hole like Winterbrook when you don’t need to, is there?’
Mitzi took a deep breath. ‘Mr Haley, you know nothing about me. You know nothing about my hopes and dreams, my personal circumstances – nor my family, nor my responsibilities, nor my home life. You know nothing. Period. And if you find Winterbrook such an unappealing town why, may I ask, are you here in Berkshire?’
Mr Dickinson chortled into his clock.
Troy, clearly not offended, beamed. ‘Hey, chill out. Winterbrook is just a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Start off in the Berkshire sticks and aim higher. The bank’s new policy is for a swift staff turnaround. Eighteen months max in one branch, then onwards and upwards … You won’t catch me or Tyler still being here, stuck in the same old rut, when we’re your age.’
‘No, I don’t suppose we will,’ Mitzi nodded slowly. ‘So we must be thankful for small mercies.’
‘Er, yes …’ Troy looked uncertain. ‘Anyway, must get on. People to see and schmooze with.’ He held out his hand. ‘Have a long and happy retirement, both of you.’
Fighting the urge to ram her bouquet as far down his throat as possible as it would really not be the action of a ‘love and peace’ person, Mitzi glared with hatred at Troy’s retreating, reed-slender, pinstriped figure. No doubt he worked out. All young people seemed to overeat on junk food and then work out as justification. Under Troy’s regime they’d probably introduce a gym into the bank vaults. And a juice bar – whatever one of those was – and probably an Internet cafe.
Mr Dickinson was already shuffling towards the door clasping his clock. No one took any notice of him. No one said goodbye.
Picking up her sheaf of relentlessly cheerful cards and her other retirement presents – a rather pretty crystal vase and a quite substantial cheque – Mitzi suddenly wanted to be as far away from this party as possible. There was no point in staying. She didn’t belong here any more. She simply wanted to go home.
Home offered its usual warm welcome some twenty minutes later, in Winterbrook’s neighbouring village of Hazy Hassocks. Unlocking the door of the pre-war redbrick terraced house, as she had done daily since arriving there as a bride thirty-five years earlier, Mitzi stepped into a world of sumptuous colour, and bejewelled and beaded opulence.
The hall, midnight-blue and gold, hummed gently to the welcome refrain of the central heating. Picking up the morning’s post from the fluffy cobalt doormat, Mitzi leafed through it – circulars, junk, and a free-sheet – and instantly discarded it into the wastepaper basket as she pushed open the living-room door. Easing off her stretchy ankle boots on the blackberry and damson hearth rug and hurling her wool jacket over the back of the plum velvet sofa, she gazed at her living room with sheer pleasure.
The plush, voluptuous cosiness of her house was a source of constant delight. Of course, it hadn’t always been like this. When she and Lance were married it had looked much like everyone else’s house: nice magnolia walls, a Dralon three-piece suite in taupe, Cotswold stone-clad fireplace, beige carpets, Royal Doulton figurines tastefully arranged.
Only since the divorce, ten years earlier, had she decided to turn their house into her home.
The October afternoon was closing in, hinting at a chill night to come, and she switched on a selection of crimson-shaded lamps before clicking on the flickering flames of the almost-real-logs gas fire. The glow was immediately reflected in the profusion of jewel-bright glass ornaments and candles which adorned every surface, illuminated the row upon row of books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves and dripped from the exotic rainbow blooms of a proliferation of dried-flower displays.
Mitzi sighed contentedly as she always did in this room and pulled the deep-purple velvet curtains against the twilight. Autumn had always been her favourite time of year – the richness of the colours outside her window were echoed throughout the house – but would she love it quite so much now? With all day, every day, alone, and the uninviting prospect of the short dark days of winter only a few weeks away?
‘Get a grip, for heaven’s sake,’ she said sharply to herself. ‘You’ve coped with massive life changes before. You can do it again. You don’t really have much choice. And anyone who can handle being told about h
er husband’s mistress at her own silver wedding party can deal with a bit of early retirement, so there!’
Immediately after the divorce she’d felt bereft and afraid of the future without Lance, but of course Lulu and Doll had lived at home then too, and she’d had the bank. These had been constants in a world that had been rocked by Lance’s infidelity. Her daughters, the bank, her friends, and her daily routine had given her purpose and stability, and gradually she’d rebuilt her life over the next ten years, enjoyed her freedom, and eventually thoroughly relished living alone.
From today though, everything was going to be very different. The girls now had their own homes with their partners, and without the bank, without working, without a real reason to get out of bed each morning, she was left to her own devices. What on earth was she going to do to fill the hours? She tried not to think about the glaring difference between being alone and being lonely. She had a feeling this might just become all too apparent before very long.
With a snort at her own self-pity, Mitzi padded into the kitchen with her new crystal vase and the chrysanthemums. The flowers would look nice here, she decided, splashing water into the vase and snapping the woody stems, releasing their cold, bitter scent. The golds, bronze and russet shades of the tightly packed petals matched her kitchen perfectly. She plonked the vase in the centre of the kitchen table, which should, as in all good country kitchens, have been ancient pine, scrubbed white, but was actually MFI and covered with a vivid yellow cloth.
‘The fire’s on in the living room,’ she spoke to the washing basket.
The washing basket said nothing.
‘And in a minute, when I’ve changed, I’ll do supper. Okay?’
The washing basket didn’t reply.
Mitzi peered at it. ‘Yes, I know this is a bit out of routine, me being home early, but you’ll just have to get used to it. I’m going to be around all the time from now on …’
The washing basket rustled a bit. Two grey, fluffy, feline heads emerged from its depths. Four pale-green eyes blinked at her. Richard and Judy, almost-but-not-quite Blue Persians rescued by Mitzi when they were tiny, scraggy, half-starved kittens from the garage next door to the bank, stretched themselves, spilled slinkily from the basket and rubbed against her in delight.
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