The Woolly Hat Knitting Club

by Poppy Dolan

  My phone vibrates again with a ring this time, rumbling against the countertop: maybe Becky has a biscuit order for me? But the name Ben flashes on the screen and the phone starts to wiggle from side to side a little as I steadfastly ignore it, my breath held. Nope, not today.

  Chapter 6

  Chester may be small but he is perfection. Utter perfection. His fingers are pink and delicate but also have a kung-fu grip of steel when he winds them round your thumb. His cheeks are fuzzy, like one of those super-fluffy yarns at the shop and if I was going to pick a colour from the Baby Knits range to match his skin it would be Peaches and Cream. He is so wonderful, I could stare at him for hours.

  ‘Say hello to Delilah,’ Becky coos down at the baby as I sit with him held in my arms on their grey sofa, a muslin draped over each of my shoulders and a pack of baby wipes tucked under one elbow. I feel with all this kit, I should be bandaging soldiers alongside Florence Nightingale, rather than anticipating a milky burp. Mind you, the sitting room in front of me is its own kind of war zone: there’s a torn-open gigantic pack of nappies spilling its contents all over the carpet; empty crisp packets and a pizza box are sticking out of the bin by the coffee table; and both Becky and her bloke Matt look like they’ve been on a hundred dawn raids in a row, with heavy grey bags hanging under their eyes. But this can’t be a war because I’ve never seen two people look happier. Grey bags, yes, but their smiles are brilliant white and beaming. With every stretch or gurgle Chester makes they both jump up and down in excitement, marvelling at how that’s his seventh arm stretch, his tenth yawn so far and that they are almost certain he smiled at the cat yesterday so he’s going to be a vet, probably. It is one of the most delightful things I’ve seen in a long, long time.

  I brought chocolate fingers and tortilla chips with dip and some frozen pizzas for them to eat later and you’d think I’d just presented a fancy hamper by their cries of ‘thank you’. They’ve been back for three days and hoovering up all the supplies friends and family drop over to keep their sleep-free bubble of love functioning. ‘I brought something else, too. In my bag…’ I gesture with my head towards my black leather bag, seeing as both my hands are full with the gorgeous Chester. I bought this particular bag on New Bond Street a few months ago because it was big, with enough room for a laptop, but also flashy, made out of the kind of slippery-soft leather that you know has cost big bucks. I wanted it to be a statement at work: I am here to win; remember me. I have to swallow suddenly, as I watch Becky root about, the bag conspicuously empty of a laptop now. I clear my throat awkwardly, ‘There’s a book bag in there – it says Keep Calm and Carry Yarn. It was the only spare bag JP had. Yup, that’s it. Have a look!’

  Becky squeezes the bag and gives a playful wiggle of her eyebrows as she brings it over. ‘If all the stress and lack of sleep that comes with a baby means that you get presents, I can almost live with it.’ Then she flops down on the sofa next to me and tips the contents onto her lap. It’s like upending a bag of jelly beans for all the colours that come tumbling out. Seven tiny, knitted baby hats from JP’s craft community: yellow and blue and green and even a pink-and-purple striped one. Her hands reach for the striped one first, feeling the fabric of closely knitted stitches under her thumbs, then tracing the delicate rows with one finger.

  I laugh and set off a little startle in Chester who luckily recovers and drops back to sleep. ‘Someone didn’t read the notice about Chester being a boy, hope you don’t mind. The thing is, JP so wanted to knit something himself, only he can’t while he’s stuck in the casts, so he asked his buddies that he knows through his vlog. And people sent these in just a week, can you believe it? More are coming soon, if you’ve got room for them.’

  Becky looks at me, her face as pale as that day in the supermarket again, her mouth opening and closing without making a sound. Matt coughs behind me and as I look he’s turned away and is furiously rubbing at his eyes in that way men do when they are trying to stop themselves crying.

  ‘Dee,’ she whispers, ‘Dee.’ She’s still holding the stripy purple hat.

  ‘You don’t have to use that one, if it bothers you.’

  Becky blinks. ‘I will use it. We’ll use them all. I just… I can’t… someone made these – for us?’

  I nod.

  ‘Those weeks on the ward, you’re stuck in this limbo. Will he be OK? Will we ever get home? And then you see a flash of real life – a bus going past the window, the shoppers with their trolleys, when I bumped into you that time. Normal people, doing what normal people do, while all the time your life is held together by a hope. You think no one knows what you’re going through. They’ve got their ordinary, straightforward life and your heart is breaking quietly, out of the way. We were the lucky ones, Chester is fit and healthy, but we knew how close we were to being seriously not lucky. But these people, you told them about us and they made these?’

  She grabs a handful of the hats now, holding them to her chest tightly.

  ‘Yes. I don’t know much about what these crafty people do, but I do know they’re pretty generous.’

  Tears are plopping down onto the red bobbly hat, the sunshine-yellow one. Becky smiles. ‘You don’t know how much this means. We needed tiny stuff but it’s the idea that they’ve never met us and yet they’d spend their time making these. God, the stitches are so small! How do they do that?!’

  I roll my eyes. ‘I’m literally the last person to ask. But come by the shop soon with Chester, when you feel like a stroll with the pram. JP would love to tell you all about stocking stitch at great length.’

  Becky laughs. ‘I will. Blimey, if I tried to do something as complicated as this…’

  ‘Um, I think you’ll find making this,’ I nod my chin down towards her darling son, ‘trumps anything that can be put together on little bamboo sticks. You have made an entire human person! And he’s perfect.’

  The flush returns to Becky’s face and she peers down at Chester, still snoozing with a face of utter Zen calm in my arms. ‘He is, isn’t he? Good things come in small packages, as my mum keeps reminding me. Who would have thought it was possible to swing from such total happiness to panic, to terror and then right back to blissful in about a fortnight?’

  I would hug her right now if I had free arms. ‘You’re doing a great job, you know.’

  She shakes her head and bats the idea away.

  Matt coughs again. I’ve not met him before but I’m already picking up that he’s a man of few words who prefers to use grunts to express himself. Fair enough. ‘You are,’ he says with a hoarse voice. ‘You’re an amazing mum.’

  ‘I’m going to make us some tea before I cry again.’ She hops up and heads to the kitchen.

  I catch Matt’s eye and he nods. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘And please tell the others thank you. From the three of us.’

  * * *

  I leave with as much spring in my step as I’ve felt since heading into that meeting with Devon. Some things in life are bigger and I know I will remember that baby cuddle for the rest of my life. I’m going to see Becky at least once a week while I’m here, I vow to myself, and help her out with whatever she needs: biscuits, baby winding, a solid shoulder to absorb tears. She let me take a quick picture on my phone of Chester in one of his collection of new hats, with her and Matt leaning their faces in close and doing a big thumbs-up to the camera, the international hand gesture of, ‘Thank you – we are chuffed to bits!’ I can email it on behalf of JP to those kind knitters who sent in the mini beanies. I might get it printed and framed for JP’s living room, too: a reminder of all the good he does for others. He’s always been like that: when my favourite Cindy got run over on the drive and totally crushed when I was seven, he pulled the head off his GI Joe doll and put Cindy’s head on its body so I could have a replacement. OK, so he had been the one to put Cindy just behind Mum’s car wheel to see if she would survive but at least he had the compassion to make amends. He’s a gentle soul. I’m not sure I’ll ever
grow out of feeling like I should protect him because of it. These thoughts are tumbling around in my head as I approach the shop on the way back from Becky’s. Someone really should scout this place for a Dickensian drama set: the ancient higgledy-piggledy row of shops looks like a set of piano keys all out of place, black and white and jumbled. But somehow there is a beauty to it, even if the doorways are tiny and the window frames bow in the middle. The locals keep up the old traditions of black timber and white limewash, so that the postcards sold at the newsagents of Fenwild in 1800 really don’t look all that different, bar a lonely phone box in the here and now. It’s exactly the kind of place you expect to find a haberdashery, if not a blacksmith and a shoeshine, and JP runs his shop with all the reverence to local tradition that the village requires. He hangs tasteful Christmas decorations in the window in December: berries and cinnamon twigs and the like. And he always knits a few things for the summer fete’s tombola. He fits here like a hand-knitted glove.

  I’m so relieved that JP found the thing that makes him truly happy. A hard bullet of guilt still sits under my ribcage that I helped him into a law career that ultimately caused him to have a breakdown, but at least I could help him get this shop up and running with some investment capital. But as I think of the day I happily wrote him that cheque from my ISA account, I start to see the pounds and pence draining away the longer I go without a job. My ISA, my current account, my credit limit all running away from me like a tap you can’t switch off. I need a paycheque. I need to get back to work. I can’t be a drain on JP or Mum and Dad – I have to get my career back on track, and fast.

  * * *

  With a new jar of instant coffee open on the kitchen counter, the kettle boiling and the toaster working on two slices of granary bread, I open up my iPad and my personal email account. Time to get cracking and send some feelers out for a new role. Wallowing will get me nowhere. I bought the iPad years ago, it’s far from a new flashy model, but it will do the trick. I bought it to watch Netflix on work trips but then always seemed to have my head stuck in files and meeting prep, so I left it here with JP once and didn’t realize it was missing. I think he’s sneakily been enjoying the Netflix app still on here, but I can let that one slide seeing as he’s giving me board and lodging right now. He’s also lending me some of his hoodies seeing as I haven’t brought all that many clothes with me. Once I have a few interviews lined up in London for this week, I’ll sort out grabbing more stuff from my flat. And throwing away the milk and half a cucumber in my fridge that have probably started fermenting into something an East London restaurant would call a reimagined pickle yoghurt.

  The problem with reaching out to my work friends at other companies is that all their email addresses were in my work account, which I am now locked out of. My old work account. I need to practise saying that. And I need to practise explaining why I left so suddenly, and why I won’t be giving Devon as a reference. I’ll also have to cleverly fudge it on LinkedIn.

  I do a little detective work on the websites of my rivals, where some old uni mates now work. You take the URL of the helpdesk email address they give, then give it a bash with first initial dot surname and see what happens. With a few innocent but to the point: Hey, we should grab a sandwich, emails to old friends winging their way, it’s time to take a gulp of boosting coffee and call the recruiters. Sometimes slippery devils, sometimes asking you to interview for a job you’re clearly wrong for or that is wrong for you just to meet their target and therefore their bonus, recruiters can still do their bit – they are plugged into all the industry gossip and sometimes know about a role opening up before the poor blighter who’s about to be booted. Though I’m not sure any of them could have had so much as a whiff of my departure, seeing as I went from hero to zero in a matter of days. I concentrate on slowing my breathing as I stir my coffee a bit more and check my alphabetized list of recruitment agencies to call. First up: Clara Ambrose.

  She does some great ‘professional listening’ as I quickly breeze through my current situation: lots of ‘ya-hah’s and ‘OK’s punctuating my speech while all the time I can hear her keyboard click-clacking at her desk. But I don’t begrudge the multitasking – it’s exactly what I do in the office. The in-house masseuse refused to come and work on my neck knots anymore after he found me tweeting a client during a Zen head massage. But that’s just how I find my own personal Zen!

  I speedily – strategically speedily – explain that I had to leave my last job ‘rather abruptly’ but this doesn’t seem to bother Amber. In my line of work people are canned for a poor quarterly report more often than you’d like to believe and it’s professional courtesy to smooth over that and get on with what’s next. After I give her the headlines of my education and experience, I can hear her typing speed pick up. ‘Good, good,’ she says. ‘I’m sure we have something for you. In fact, I got a sense of something over at the big tech—’ but the tippy-tappy rhythm abruptly stops. ‘But maybe… ah… that might not be a smooth transition. Uh, yes. You know what? Leave it with me and I’ll get back to you.’ And just like that the line goes dead.

  Not like a recruiter to want to end a call before you’ve agreed to interviews with at least five of their clients, but maybe she’s having a manic-busy day. Fine. On to the next.

  Zadie Benson says it’s a quiet month and she’ll add me to her list. Tristan Davies coughs quite a bit and then says he’s needed on the other line. I get another half-hearted brush-off from a European recruiter who have been pestering me every month for the last three years. Weird. But then, Brexit has done weird things to us all, I suppose.

  My list is struck through and I’m struggling to see the next steps from it. I was hoping for a notepad jammed full of times, addresses and company names. Half-promises of callbacks aren’t much to go on. As I stare at my inbox and prune back a few emails, something much more promising pings in. From Peter Foster, an old economics buddy from uni who I used to bump into at mixer drinks and who now works for one of my old rivals in management consultancy. Originally a rangy guy from Yorkshire who’d leap at any free booze on the go until he was physically thrown out of a joint, now he’s a respectable father of two and heads home to the suburbs each night, whether there’s still red wine in the bottle or not.

  To: Delilah Blackthorn

  From: Peter Foster

  Subject: Re: Hello stranger!

  Listen, in a bit of a rush but just grabbed the head of recruiting on her way to a lunch and she says she’d love to meet you (her words not mine), they’re on the hunt and coming from a rival doesn’t hurt, eh? If you can hang out in the lobby tomorrow at 11, she’s got half an hour free to talk. You can suss each other out. If you try and go through all the security crap to get inside the actual office, you’ll miss your window with her. So grab a latte and she’ll find you. Elaine Leibovitz.

  Good luck! Would be excellent to have an old mate on board. And you must come out and have Sunday lunch with us soon, Susie would love it.

  P

  Now this is more like it – action, direction, opportunity. I know enough about the firm already to hold my own but I have tonight to revise and polish. Starting off with researching this recruitment head. And then over to Bloomberg to track the share value. And then checking out Peter’s LinkedIn and who else from his team are on there.

  * * *

  ‘Earth to Dee! Earth to Dee!’ Maggie is making a loudspeaker with her hands, leaning right into my line of sight, blocking the laptop.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘How long have you been sat here, darling?’ Maggie’s cheeks are flushed from her walk up the hill from her bungalow to here. Her hair is wispy around her face, the bulk of her unruly slate-grey tresses tied up with a tie-dye scrunchy. Mags has always had this giggly youthful spirit to her, 63 or not. She’s an eternal optimist, which you’d have to be with all that she juggles – a poorly, elderly mum, a low income and now a godson in plaster. There are scant lines on her face, even around her eyes, and she�
��s always put her perfect complexion down to a lack of a man in her life to cause her worry. Maybe if that’s the secret to great skin I should delete my dating apps. Mind you, I haven’t been on them in six months, so I’ve probably been frozen out by now.

  I stretch one arm up over my head, then the other. My shoulders are heavy and stiff. ‘Just thought I’d look into a new job, over my lunch.’

  She tsks. ‘It’s gone half five! All that screen time can’t be good for you. I do wish you’d get outside a bit more – walk and get some air, maybe. Anything to stop you thinking about work. Or even a hobby like JP’s, to take you out of yourself, hmm?’ Mags dumps her Bag for Life on the kitchen counter and pulls out some celery.

  I try my very best, because I love her so much, not to roll my eyes. ‘Didn’t JP tell you? Me attempting to knit ends up in attempted bodily harm. It works for JP, he’s the chilled-out one. I chill out by… keeping very busy.’

  She presses her lips together and raises her eyebrows. ‘At least promise me you’ll video-call your mother tonight. She’s that worried! JP with broken wrists, you with—’

  ‘A broken career?’

  ‘That’s not at all what I was going to say, young lady.’ Mags is now pulling out courgettes and passata. I think her famous organic ratatouille might be on the cards tonight. Delish.