by Lucy Diamond
Clare put her hand on the phone. ‘It’s probably a no, right? I should just get it over with.’
‘Do it.’
Clare punched in the number while Polly leaned against the kitchen counter, her arms folded across her chest. She couldn’t help feeling jittery herself now as she heard the burr-burr of the ringtone.
‘Hi,’ Clare said, her cheeks turning pink. ‘This is Clare Berry. May I speak to Kate Hendricks, please?’ She pulled a hideous eye-rolling face at Polly. ‘Oh, Kate, hi. I gather you called me?’
Polly held her breath.
‘I see. Uh-huh … Right.’ Then Clare gasped, her whole body jerking in sudden shock. ‘They did ? You do? Oh, wow! That’s wonderful!’
Oh my God, thought Polly, incredulous. She’d only gone and bloody got it.
Clare’s eyes were like stars and her mouth kept dropping into an O of amazement. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, scribbling some figures down in a daze. ‘And when would you need them by?’
Whoa. Polly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. No way! Her little sister – one of the suppliers for the new Langley’s hotel? Her little sister going into business with a national hotel chain, while Polly was stranded on the scrapheap? She felt sick with jealousy, right to the middle of her stomach. Oh … bollocks. This was so unfair.
‘Okay, fine,’ Clare stammered. ‘Of course. I’ll be in touch. Look forward to it, Kate. Thanks again, bye.’
She put the phone down, then screamed. ‘She loves the products, she thinks they’re a great fit with the Langley’s brand. It’s a YES!’
Despite her all-consuming, stabbing jealousy, Polly dredged up every last scrap of self-control and managed to throw her arms around her sister. With stupendous will power, she even managed some magnanimity. ‘That is AMAZING, Clare!’ she cried. ‘God, well done. You did it!’
Clare was laughing and then she was crying. ‘Fuck, this is mad,’ she said. ‘Seriously mad. I didn’t just imagine that, did I? She really did call? Shit!’ She clutched at her head. ‘And now I’ve got to produce three months’ supply of everything, plus she wants to meet me next week to talk about further options.’ She looked stricken. ‘What the hell have I just agreed to? I won’t be able to do it!’
‘Wow, three months’ supply – so we’re talking hundreds of soaps and bubble baths?’ Polly said, taken aback. It was a massive order, way beyond what they’d hoped for in their plans. ‘And you said you could deliver that? Whoa.’
‘I know.’ Clare’s face crumpled. ‘I’m never going to manage it, am I?’
No, probably not, Polly thought. But her leadership instincts came to the fore. ‘You are’ she told her sister. ‘And I will help you. Now sit down and tell me every single thing she said. Then we’ll start drawing up a plan of action.’
The following morning Polly woke feeling bleary-eyed and thoughtful. Clare had invited their parents and her friends over the night before, and she’d asked them all to muck in with her new venture. The magnitude of what she’d signed up to was obviously beginning to sink in, especially when Polly pointed out that suppliers would need paying in advance and there might be a cashflow situation. It was all very well snipping bits of lavender out of the garden when she was making a few tubes of hand cream for her mates, but when she was being asked to make nine hundred mini bottles of shampoo and bubble bath and nine hundred bars of soap … Well, it didn’t take a genius to realize that it was all going to add up to one long mutha of a shopping list. An expensive mutha of a shopping list at that.
Talking about costs up front had sobered Clare right up. In fact she had changed the subject pretty quickly, Polly had noticed, skimming over the details as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to confront them head-on. The problem was, there was no money to spend on supplies. Clare was skint, she was always going on about how much Steve owed her, in between stressing out about not being able to afford new school shoes for the children or the gas bill.
Despite her somewhat ungracious feelings towards Clare’s career, Polly did genuinely wish she could help out financially. When she thought of the piles of money she’d squandered over the last few years – stupid money on stupid things that meant absolutely zilch to her now – she could have kicked herself for not squirrelling more of it away, for not allowing herself a buffer of savings. All those times she’d lavished money on so-called friends (so-called friends she hadn’t heard a peep from since she left London, incidentally) – Oh, this one’s on me. My round – no, I insist! – and as a result it meant she couldn’t do the same for her skint, scrabbling-for-coins sister now, when she really needed help. Even if Vince rang back that day and said that someone had offered the full asking price on her flat, the money would take weeks to come through, of course, with the surveys and whole legal shoobydoo of the property purchase process.
It had made her feel pretty lame. Pretty shallow. And boy, hadn’t she felt the weight of everyone’s expectations last night when the subject of money came up. Her parents had both looked straight at her, obviously waiting for her to pipe up that she’d cover Clare’s costs, no problem. But she hadn’t been able to say any such thing, which had made her feel such a miserly cow. Her ears had burned after they’d gone, and she was sure it was because her parents and Clare’s friends were bitching about what a tightwad they thought she was, all the way down the road.
Her own sister, and she can’t even put her hand in her pocket!
I thought she was meant to be loaded as well.
Always the rich ones who are the stingiest, isn’t it? Typical.
It was no good. She was going to have to pull her finger out and make some kind of contribution to this Langley’s endeavour. She had to, otherwise she’d be hounded out of the village by Clare’s angry mates, brandishing flaming torches as they ran.
And so, with a heavy heart and a dragging reluctance in her step, Polly headed out that morning, well aware that what she was about to do marked an all-time low in her career. She’d called Vince in the hope that he’d had a better offer on the flat, but he hadn’t heard anything yet. She’d double-checked her last remaining shares and bonds before she came out, just in case they were miraculously on the up and she could cash some in, but no; they were little more than worthless right now. Another gigantic waste of money. Another humongous cock-up in Polly Johnson’s laughable personal financial management. For a so-called risk expert, the risks she’d taken with her own money hadn’t exactly paid off.
It was crushing how dire things had become. She never would have believed it six months ago, but yes, she was actually walking towards the King’s Arms at eleven o’clock in the morning. And yes, in all seriousness she was fully intending to swallow her pride and ask about that cleaning job. Although when she did venture inside, blinking in the gloomy half-light, she very nearly lost her bottle and asked for a large glass of Chardonnay to swallow instead.
Dutch courage. She’d never been more in need of it.
The landlord looked surprised to see her walking in, bang on the stroke of eleven. They’d only just opened and he was poring over the sports pages of the Mail, which he’d propped against the beer pumps, with a steaming cup of coffee by his side. She felt as if she was interrupting something.
‘Hi,’ she said, clearing her throat awkwardly. ‘Are you the landlord here?’
‘I certainly am,’ he replied, eyeing her. He was burly and short-necked, looked as if he’d once been a rugby player with his broken nose and solid arms. He turned the page of his newspaper, still gazing at her. ‘Who wants to know?’
She swallowed. Could she really go through with this? Had she truly sunk to this new low?
Then she remembered the disapproving looks exchanged between Clare’s friends last night, the surprised disappointment in her parents’ eyes when she hadn’t volunteered a cash injection for the fledgling business. ‘Um … I’m Polly. Clare Berry’s sister. Karen and Graham’s daughter.’
‘Ah.’ His interest piqued, he stood up a
little straighter, newspaper forgotten. ‘The high-flier returns.’
She hesitated. The high-flier crash-lands and wrecks the plane, more like. ‘Um … something like that,’ she said. ‘Only … well …’ Oh God, this was excruciating. ‘Can you keep a secret?’
He leaned forward and tapped his nose. ‘A pub landlord has many secrets,’ he assured her.
She made a split-second decision. He looked trustworthy enough, she supposed. A decent bloke. It was a risk she’d have to take. Another one.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to promise not to tell my mum and dad, right? Or anyone else. Seriously. But I’ve kind of fallen on … hard times.’ She swallowed again. It was like a confessional. ‘And I was wondering if the cleaning job here was still free?’
Chapter Eighteen
Over the next few weeks Clare attempted to take control of her new business and get things rolling. Karen and Graham lent her five hundred pounds so that she could put in an initial order of ingredients and, with clammy hands and a gnawing terror inside, she applied for a bank loan of another two thousand pounds. Polly had done the sums and assured her that she would be able to pay it all straight back, plus the interest, once she’d delivered her first order to Langley’s. (If they approved it, of course. Clare was not even going there with thoughts of failing their quality-control tests.) She’d met Kate again at the hotel and had shakily co-signed a purchase-order agreement, binding her to deliver three months’ supply by the last week in August – eight weeks away. If the hotel and their customers were satisfied with the products, Kate said they would then extend the contract, after which time either side could renegotiate terms.
‘We’re so proud of you,’ Karen had said tearfully, when Clare had showed her the contract the Sunday after her meeting. She, Polly and the children had gone over for a barbecue, and Karen had splashed out on Prosecco for all the grown-ups, and lemonade for the children.
Her dad was at the barbecue, merrily charring the sausages, and raised his tongs at her in a salute. ‘Two businesswomen in one family,’ he’d cried. ‘Thank goodness you both inherited your old dad’s brains, eh?’
Even Polly had been nice about Clare’s bit of success. Complimentary, no less. ‘This is going to be amazing, Clare,’ she’d said, with what sounded suspiciously like genuine warmth in her voice. ‘Well done. And if it all goes to plan, you’ll be quids in. You can take the kids on an awesome holiday when the dust has settled.’
If it all went to plan. For such a small word, the ‘if’ carried an almighty weight. Clare still wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to manage to pull this off, and was already having sleepless nights with worry. But the thought of an awesome holiday was a sweetener, at least. She, Leila and Alex had endured a week’s camping in Dorset last year, where the rain had sheeted down relentlessly. They’d spent more money on drying clothes and sleeping bags in the campsite launderette than they had on suncream or ice lollies. The word ‘awesome’ hadn’t really been appropriate.
Whereas the idea of jetting away somewhere hot, lounging on a beach, feeling sunshine on her skin again … Well, that definitely worked as a carrot on a stick.
A routine developed. She worked her hours at the surgery as usual, cooked dinner and looked after the children, then once they were in bed at eight, began work all over again in the kitchen, with Polly as her assistant. The bottles and soap moulds she’d ordered had arrived, and if the two of them really went flat out, they could make up two batches of bubble-bath mixture – fifty small bottles’ worth – and a batch of twenty soaps, which had to be left to harden overnight. Lydia, Debbie’s eldest, who had just finished her A-levels, came along to help when she could and proved to be a bit of a star in the production process. ‘I won’t be able to pay you until I’m paid myself for the order,’ Clare had said, wringing her hands. Luckily Lydia had been sanguine about the situation. ‘No worries,’ she’d replied. ‘It’s my uni fund. Stops me spending it before I’ve left home, I suppose.’
It all meant long days of hard work, but Clare got a massive thrill from seeing her finished bottles building up, box by box. Her parents and friends pitched in whenever they could, and both Roxie and Luke asked her regularly for updates. God, she was lucky to have them all helping her, she thought frequently. Tracey hadn’t been joking when she’d called them Team Clare.
Still, she wasn’t there yet, not by a long chalk. With the end of term imminent, she had the usual working-mum juggling act to contend with for six weeks, which was always tricky. She’d signed Leila and Alex up for week-long drama and football clubs in Amberley, and her friends and parents had agreed to look after them at other times. She also wangled some shift-swapping with Roxie and put in for a fortnight’s annual leave in August, hoping fervently that she’d be able to spend some of this time doing fun things with the children. It was going to be a strange old summer, all right.
That weekend it was Steve’s turn to have the children. Usually Clare felt somewhat vulnerable about him coming to the house and taking the children away, but today she realized she felt different and wondered if it was because her new-found ally, Polly, was going to be in the house with her. Clare wasn’t daft; she’d seen the way Polly had flinched when the Langley’s phone call had come. She knew her sister envied this piece of success that had come her way, and she had wondered if Polly might descend into an almighty sulk over it, or perhaps try to belittle the business. But Clare had been wrong. Against all expectations, Polly had mucked in just as much as anyone else and had worked really hard. The initial tension that had simmered between them now seemed to be melting away, and Clare was surprised and happy that Polly seemed to be the newest recruit to her team. Who would have thought it?
Steve hadn’t exactly seemed delighted to see Polly again. They’d never hit it off in the past: she’d looked down her nose at him, and he thought she was up her own bum. ‘Fridge-knickers’ he’d always called her behind her back. Good one, Steve, Clare thought now, remembering this; if a woman makes you feel intimidated, put her down by implying frigidity. What had she ever seen in the bloke? It was becoming harder and harder to remember.
‘Morning,’ Polly had said coolly when he walked into the kitchen. She was making coffee, but didn’t offer to pour him a cup.
His nostrils quivered at the mingled aromas of coffee, ginger, vanilla and lime, and his eyes swerved around the kitchen with interest, taking in the boxes of bottles stacked in a corner and the supplies of Castile soap flakes and liquid glycerine. ‘What’s going on in here then?’ he asked.
Nosey sod. ‘Work,’ Clare said shortly. ‘And if you don’t mind, I need to get on.’
‘What do you mean, work? What is all this stuff anyway?’ His lip had curled; she’d always disliked the way he did that. So supercilious. Well, she wasn’t going to give him the chance to sneer at her business, she decided, so she ignored his questions.
‘Leila! Alex! Dad’s here, hurry up!’ she yelled. ‘See you on Sunday,’ she added pointedly to him, walking out of the room.
The door closed behind the three of them ten minutes later and Clare braced herself, ready for the usual feelings of desolation to overpower her. It had been awful, the first few times Steve had taken the children away for his weekend ‘contact’, as the custody agreement termed it, leaving her all on her own, rattling around the place. She’d felt as if her heart had been ripped out. Even now, over a year later, she still wasn’t used to the deep, empty silence that swallowed up the cottage whenever they were away overnight.
This weekend, at least, she was not on her own and had more than enough to keep her occupied. Count your blessings, Clare.
‘Are you okay?’ She felt Polly’s hand tentatively alight on her back.
‘Yeah. Let’s get stuck in,’ she said briskly.
‘Is he always like that when he comes to pick up the kids?’ Polly asked, donning an apron and opening the kitchen windows to let in a breeze. The hot, heady smell of honeysuckle drifted throug
h. It was rampant all over the back wall at the moment, thick with fat bumblebees, its delicate pink-and-white flower heads open like mouths towards the summer sun.
‘What? A prick?’ Clare replied. ‘Yes, unfortunately. I look at him and can’t believe I ever fancied him now, let alone was madly in love with him.’ She shook her head. ‘Weird, isn’t it, how that happens. How can you think the world of someone and know them so intimately once … and then want nothing else to do with them, six months down the line.’
Polly looked blank. ‘Um … I suppose,’ she said, opening the freezer door and pulling out the trays of soap they’d made the night before. She prodded one delicately. ‘These look good.’
Clare eyed her curiously. Why was she being so obtuse? ‘You suppose?’ she echoed. ‘I know you’ve always kept your private life private, but there must be some vile ex-boyfriends lurking in your past, surely?’
‘Not really.’ Polly had her head down and was carefully pushing the little soaps from their moulds. Clare could smell their sweet vanilla fragrance as they slid onto the table.
‘Don’t give me that,’ she scoffed. It was like picking at a scab, pressing Polly in this way. A reluctant scab that didn’t want to be prised off by anybody’s fingernails, but Clare couldn’t help herself. ‘There must have been someone you loved. Someone you were really close to. Wasn’t there?’
Just for a second Clare thought she’d glimpsed a wistfulness clouding Polly’s eyes, a rarely seen uncertainty about her face. Then down came the shutters and she shook her head. ‘Nah,’ she said airily, as if she didn’t care. ‘I was always too busy for relationships.’
Too busy. What a cop-out. Since when did having a full-on job have to preclude any other kind of life? There must have been a degree of choice in the matter for Polly to have shunned all relationships completely. That was if she was telling the truth, of course. Clare didn’t believe a word of it.
