The Woolly Hat Knitting Club

by Poppy Dolan

  I get up and join her, pulling a chopping board from the middle drawer. ‘I know, I’m just using humour to deflect. See it all the time at work. But no need to panic, I’ve got a great interview lined up for tomorrow. The Dee train is back on its tracks. Destination: The Big Smoke. JP’s place is here, with his Zen knitting and alpaca yarns. My place is in the City with a nervous breakdown on every corner and every kind of sushi you could dream of. It’s all going back to the way it’s meant to be. Now, let me give you a hand with the slicing. Nice and thin for the ratatouille, yes?’

  I know Mags is looking at me long after I finish talking, as I cut into courgettes and tomatoes and onions. But she’s never really understood why I’d want to fling myself into the world of high-rise offices and even higher bonuses. She’s always wanted me to be a garden designer, after my brief obsession with Gardeners’ World when I was little. Her world is here, and the people in it. And thank goodness she is here to help JP while I get back to my nine to five. Or seven to nine, more likely. She can keep him fed and watered while I keep the bills paid. We’ve all got our roles and mine is to earn a whole bakery’s worth of bread.

  Chapter 7

  The coffee shop in the basement of the Glenross building makes a pretty decent flat white. With each sip my spine is feeling that bit straighter, my nerves that bit steelier, as if the caffeine is my Popeye-like fuel for bringing out the big guns. And I got guns, baby. This interview is mine for the taking. In my head I see me doing a little Beyoncé hand gesture to Devon across the boardroom table. ‘Boy, bye!’

  I know just who I’m waiting for, thanks to Elaine’s LinkedIn profile: curly brown hair and stylish tortoiseshell glasses. I’m scanning the glass lifts for a likely candidate, my carefully rehearsed but oh-so-casual sound bites about my career so far on a loop in my head: ‘For me, it all starts with the client. Find their key need and the strategy writes itself. Of course, that’s not something they teach at Trinity college!’ Cue good-humoured chuckling. ‘And now I’m ready to spread my wings, take what I’ve learned over my seven years and reach new clients, solve new problems. It’s all about moving forward. You adapt or you get left behind.’ And then segue into a reference to Elaine’s speech at the recent ‘Recruitment in the Digital Sphere’ conference. Nice.

  But as I mouth the last bits over and over to myself, checking for any leftover croissant on my Whistles skirt, I still can’t see any curls, any angular specs. And it’s getting on for five past eleven.

  I check my watch against my iPhone – maybe it’s fast? Might just hook my iPad up to the cafe Wi-Fi, so I can ping her my CV in an instant, when she asks for it.

  ‘Hey.’

  I hold my iPad to my chest, the nudge at my shoulder for a second putting me on bag-snatch alert. Once a London girl, always a London girl. ‘Christ, Petey, you scared the breakfast out of me. Good to see you though!’ I slip my iPad into my bag and smooth my hair quickly. ‘Have you come for a debrief? I wouldn’t mind an insight into Elaine’s style – is she jokey, formal, does she like to be friendly or just cut the shit?’ I look over Peter’s shoulder, my eyes peeled for my interviewer in case she’s hot on his heels.

  ‘That’s the thing, Delilah. Um, oh God, I don’t know how to say this. Elaine’s time is pretty rarefied, you know how it goes. She did some ringing round about you this morning and… and she’s not coming down. I’m sorry.’ He rubs his chin and I can see pinched lines at the corners of his eyes. It could be the sleepless nights of having several small kids. It could be that he knows he’s about to ruin my day.

  ‘What? Why?’ Suddenly the caffeine has gone from giving me Popeye’s killer muscles to Olive Oyl’s knock knees. I can feel it rattling around my bloodstream with nowhere to go but jitter through my limbs.

  Pete looks up into the tall, empty atrium. ‘She didn’t tell me much beyond headline but, but— hell, I know this can’t be right, but what she heard is that you formed an unhealthy relationship with your client at TechBank. That you went too far and when the client pulled back, you freaked. There was talk…’ His eyes flick pointedly to my stomach and back. ‘But, I mean, that’s what she heard from a contact. Sorry.’

  I suddenly need to sit down. But I’ll be damned if I give in to any Jane Austen style fainting right here, right now. Not while my peers stride around this marble floor, in between meetings or out to lunches or actually meeting interviewers in the flesh. And that would definitely only feed any crazy thoughts that I might be pregnant!

  Unhealthy relationship? I sold my soul for that client. The squash I learned to play, the weird Swedish cuisine the director was into (fermented fish is not my idea of an ideal business lunch), but more importantly the brilliant plan I masterminded over months and months of laboured research and expert insight: none of that was unhealthy, none of that was improper. That was my job! And just what is ‘unhealthy’ meant to mean? Romantic? Sexy? Stalkerish? Just because I’m a woman working with a man it’s suddenly got to get filthy? Bloody Fifty Shades of ‘sodding’ Grey has a lot to answer for. How could anyone assume that kind of thing from the professional work I was doing? Who in their right mind would leap to all those conclusions, rumours that paint me in such a bad light? Unless they weren’t misunderstanding, because they wanted to spin it. Oh.

  Oh.

  Ben.

  He knew about the squash games. He knew I wanted to take the client on solo, no longer teaming up with Devon, and that freaked him out. That threatened his fragile public-schoolboy ego. And so he painted me as the crazy lady of Canary Wharf. Bloody Ben! With having to miss just one meeting and seeing those baby hats on my phone, Devon was ready to forget all my pedigree and believe I could be having a client’s baby, for Christ’s sake. No wonder he booted me out the door before I had the time to say anything – just in case I wanted to take a year of maternity leave and really mess with his profitability. And now he’s been spreading it around his executive friends, for good measure. Bloody Ben and bloody Devon and the bloody bullshit of being a woman in business!

  I would love to scream at the top of my lungs right now, to blow out this steam, but instead I take a deep breath. ‘Well, that is not true. Any of it.’

  Peter shifts from foot to foot. ‘Then take them to court, Dee, give them what for and make the lawyers sweat. And then pay.’

  I shake my head. ‘I signed things in my contract that stop me doing exactly that. I’ve seen a few old colleagues try it but get bled dry by the legal fees and then end up precisely nowhere. Just an even more tarnished reputation to take home. Nope, I’ll have to think of another way.’

  Peter makes his uncomfortable apologies and leaves me to ruminate over the last cold dregs of my flat white. I should make a move, back to the village. I should swing by my flat and pick up more clothes. I should do something, anything productive, but my white-hot rage has me glued to the spot, as though my best block heels are shod in lead all of a sudden.

  How dare he? And how stupid are people for believing him?! I know my industry isn’t the most forgiving to women, but I genuinely thought if I did my share of the toil that no one would ever try these kinds of petty games on me. And now it seems I’ve been blacklisted, through the careful whispers in some elite drinking club I wouldn’t be allowed into, because my chromosomes aren’t quite the ticket. Well, I won’t have it. I bloody well won’t. Somehow… I mean, I literally have no clue how because I’m just jelly-like with shock and anger right now… but somehow this is going to be put right. And Devon and Ben will be put right out on the street, with tears staining their Italian leather loafers.

  I purse my lips together as tightly as I can, an old childhood trick to stop myself even leaking one tiny tear. If I’m spotted weeping in the ground floor of the Glenross building it will not help turn the tide on my tarnished name. I put my coffee cup in the bin, smooth my skirt down at the sides and pull my shoulders right back. This is one ‘filly’ they won’t see broken.

  I’m two steps towards the revolving
doors when I nearly trip and face-plant onto the hard, shiny floor. Easy, Dee, easy.

  Coming through the highly polished glass is a highly polished smile. One I wish I didn’t know so well. And he’s actually smiling at me, with everything he’s done.

  Ben waves at me. He actually waves, like we’re meeting up for tennis at his arsing country club with Tarquin and Jemima. ‘Dee!’ I hear him call as the large revolving circle comes close to spitting him out near me. He must be here for my interview. Sod this. I’m not having a showdown before I’m well and truly ready for it. You don’t see a Western ending with a gunslinger at noon mumbling to his opponent, ‘Oh, hang on, I left the bullets in my other pair of chaps.’ He’ll get his comeuppance, but only when I’m good and ready. I’ll keep this short and sweet. So I leap into the next opening before he can walk out of his and I jab against the wood, causing the door to hit its automatic stop.

  It’s something JP and I used to do to wind each other up in department stores when we were bored tweens, trapping each other in the revolving set of doors while Dad was too busy looking for marked-down shirts. We were once in there for a full ten minutes, before a security guard grassed us up.

  Ben’s not expecting the sudden halt and clonks his nose against the glass in front of him. Ha!

  ‘Right,’ I say between clenched teeth. ‘One, you don’t call me by my nickname. It’s only for friends and family. Two, actually, you just don’t talk to me full stop. I know your game, Ben. I know what goes on in that pretty head of yours. And it’s not cool. So enjoy your little victory. Because it’s going to be a short one.’ I narrow my eyes and turn my back on him, waiting for the doors to kick back into life.

  ‘Delilah,’ I hear him say flatly, ‘I don’t even—’

  But as the wood and glass starts to swing away in front of me, I’m out of there and his words spin in the air behind me.

  * * *

  When I get back to Fenwild, my hands red from dragging my little wheeled suitcase on the Tube and the train and then the cobbled streets, and my cheeks still ruby red from the anger boiling my blood. I need some of JP’s words of wisdom to give me perspective. Maybe he has a loom I can smash this time; I feel like something big needs to absorb all this rage. I may be the family organizer in our set-up, but he’s the sympathizer. If I’m CFO of our sibling relationship, he’s the HR director. I’m Martin the Money-Saving Expert and he’s Dear Deirdre. Actually, we’d make a great crime-fighting duo.

  The image of us in coordinating cape and tights has chilled me out somewhat as I sling my suitcase down in the living room.

  ‘JP? Are you in?’

  But he’s not. Which is odd, because he doesn’t have a hospital appointment. In fact, according to his wall calendar (one I found him for Christmas of a WI chapter in Devon who posed nude, except for carefully placed balls of yarn – ‘My dream combination, skin and skeins!’ he’d happily chirruped when he opened it) he had his OT appointment with Stan here this morning, so he had no need to go out. And a man with two broken forearms can’t get all that far on his own. Unless the bus driver is willing to dig the change out of JP’s back pocket, which I doubt. So he must be local. The pub will be open by now; maybe he’s telling a slightly adapted story of how he got his casts to the regulars at the Witch’s Nose. Seeing as he’s been re-watching a lot of action movies recently to kill time, it might involve terror plots, exposed plutonium and a hot girl running through the woods.

  I quickly get changed into my comfiest jeans. I had to dig deep back in my flat to find them, seeing as my usual rotation of clothes goes work-suit-pyjamas-work-suit-pyjamas with no time in between working and sleeping for anything like casual wear. But it’s nice to feel the stretchy denim around my waist. A lot more forgiving that a dry-clean-only outfit, anyway. And in my head it means I’m far, far away from the City and today’s lump of humiliation. I stuff my keys in one back pocket and my bank card in the other. I’ll think about my budget after I’ve treated myself and JP, and whoever else is at the bar, to a couple of dangerously strong G & Ts. Jeez, I need one.

  But I’m only a few steps from the front door when I recognize a tall guy and two arms in casts, through the window of Picture Perfect, the framers two doors down from JP’s shop. The old door creaks and the bell above it tinkles as I push my way inside. The narrow shop has the same floor footprint as our haberdashery but instead of being stuffed with racks of buttons and displays of seam rippers, this shop is one big open space. The only thing busy and full are its walls: bursting with framed charcoal sketches and oil paintings. A woman at the counter looks up through her floppy grey fringe. She’s got that really amazing dyed-grey hair that’s almost ash blonde, and it turns into a powder blue at the ends. Way too cool to be a Fenwild local – she must have got lost on the way from London to somewhere amazing. I nudge JP in the hip. ‘Hey, I’ve been looking for you.’

  He jumps about a metre in the air, which is impressive for someone carrying round two stone in plaster at the moment. He looks between me and the girl at the counter. ‘My sister,’ he blurts quickly. ‘This is my sister. Dee.’

  The girl nods, making her fringe bounce. ‘Hey. I’m Patti.’ She has a small, but very sweet smile.

  I nod back. ‘I’m actually Delilah, Dee, most days. Dee. Our parents didn’t really think through the names thing. Though you can’t deny Juli—’

  ‘Ha ha!’ JP barks loudly. ‘Anyway, sis. How was London? You look tired! Maybe go and have a sit-down and I’ll see you in a bit?’ His eyes are wide and I can see just a few beads of sweat at his hairline.

  ‘Um, are you OK though? You haven’t been overdoing it? I was a bit worried when I saw you weren’t at home.’

  He lifts his chin just a fraction. ‘I’m totally fine getting about, thanks. Stan said I’m smashing it. And besides, I really wanted to talk to Patti about getting this artwork framed for the shop. More of an atmosphere, you know?’

  I peer at the, um, artwork. It’s two A3 Rothko prints, dog-eared and crumpled in places. I think they’re the ones Mum and Dad gave JP when they changed their dining room from cream and red to cream and green. Nice, but hardly worth splashing cash on having them properly framed beyond the usual IKEA jobs. It looks like he’s just grabbed any old thing to be framed. Patti seems just as doubtful, keeping them at arm’s length and cordoned off by different wood samples, while fiddling with her bottom lip.

  ‘I was just telling your brother that we can definitely frame them. If he’s sure. It’s my uncle’s shop, so he’ll actually do the framing. I’m just here for a bit of work experience before I head to a postgraduate art school, in Berlin.’

  Yup. Knew it. She’s super cool. Never mind too cool for school, she’s too cool for a regular university – she’s going to one in Berlin.

  Patti gives me a look beneath lashes slicked in electric-blue mascara which seems to signal, Is he for real?

  Time for some careful diplomacy. I’m a part-owner of the shop, after all, I should give JP a steer if he’s about to make it look like a dentist’s waiting area. ‘This is definitely one way to go,’ I start, ‘but I wonder if there’s something that would fit the place that bit better? Reflect what you do there, you know. Oh!’ I poke JP on the shoulder and he winces. ‘Those vintage patterns you found in the attic, that got you into knitting! They would look awesome.’

  Patti crinkles her very delicate eyebrows. ‘You knit? You run the haberdashery?’

  JP sucks in a deep breath. ‘Yup. That’s me.’

  She waits a beat, then says, ‘Cool.’

  He nods. ‘Yeah.’

  She flicks her fringe out of her eyes. ‘So if you want to take these samples back with you, compare them to the patterns and your shop interior, let us know what you think. And we can get busy. OK?’

  JP’s cheeks colour. ‘I don’t suppose you’d carry them round, would you? I’m a bit… er…’ he smiles his charming little-boy smile, ‘incapacitated right now. Fell off a ladder. An eight-foot ladder.�
� His eyes slide to mine and I get the distinct impression that I shouldn’t add any more accurate detail to that story.

  ‘Pfft. I’ll do that,’ I grab the sticks of varnished and painted wood. ‘I’m sure Patti can’t just leave the shop on its own. Don’t be a pain, JP.’ I roll my eyes apologetically at her.

  She smiles again. ‘Well, it’s not like anyone could make off with much. Unless they crave Plexiglas. Let me know what you decide. Bye, guys.’

  * * *

  I can tell from the way my brother huffs his way through both shop doors and kicks his boots off against the Welcome Knitters: Come Yarn, Come All welcome mat with two more huffs that he’s far from happy. I think if he could dramatically drop into the wooden chair behind the till and cross his arms, he would. As it is, he settles for accidentally knocking a revolving display of embroidery threads, so that it spins in waves of rainbow colours. I follow him to the counter.

  ‘What? I’m sorry I didn’t like your prints but they are a bit,’ I drop to a whisper, ‘middle-aged. Dude, Dad only chose them in the nineties because they went with his favourite shade of magnolia.’

  But as I say this, I look around me and clock just the same dull shade of beige on the shop walls too. It’s not the first thing you notice when you enter Blackthorn Haberdashery: it’s a tiny shop but filled with an incredible volume of craft stuff. There are twenty kinds of scissors, to start with: from tiny to crinkly to lethal-looking. Along both walls, up to chin height, are wooden pigeonholes stuffed with balls of wool, tubes of buttons, bolts of cotton fabrics and lots of colourful hardback books called things like Knit Me a New One and What a Stitch. The display units that run like two stripes up to the till have zips of five lengths, cottons in every shade (plus metallic ones that I can’t believe actually hold anything together), tailor’s chalk, pins, needles, sewing machine feet and then – bewilderingly – shoulder pads. I defy anyone with any kind of haberdashery conundrum not to come in here and have all their wishes made true. It is a little cluttered, if I’m going to be picky, and the decoration could definitely do with a spruce but I can tell JP is hardly in the mood to hear that now. I think he might actually be pouting. I haven’t seen him do that since the dog peed on his Tracy Island.