Sign of the Times (30 page)

Chapter Forty Five

After her two hour break, Maria buckled down and felt certain she’d caught up again. It was important, she felt, to have the flexibility which working from home and running her own business afforded her
.
 
Today she’d cultivated an important friendship.
 
With the kids at her mother’s for dinner, she could work on until six, when they’d be delivered in time for a bath and a story.
 
Maria positively whizzed through her actions and then made a start on the washing and ironing.

“Mummy, look what Gran gave me,” burst in David.
 
He was holding a bright yellow racing car in one hand and a remote control in the other.

“I’ve got a new Barbie,” Amy said, clambering onto the sofa to kiss her mother.
 
Maria’s mother smiled at the children’s obvious pleasure at their gifts and sat down heavily in the recliner.

“You OK, Mum?” Maria was concerned.

“I’m fine, just a bit tired,” her mother confessed.

“If having these two is too much for you, let me know,” Maria said once the children were out of earshot.
 
Her father, the designated chauffeur, had crept in quietly and after acknowledging her briefly, was happily watching TV.

“No, not at all. You know I love having them.
 
Amy has just been wild all day.”
 

“Do you want a cup of tea, Mum?” she asked kindly.
 
Her mother did look a bit pale.

“That would be great, but I can’t stay too long. Coronation Street’s on soon.”

Maria hid her irritation.
 
If it weren’t for her grandchildren, her mother would live through that television, she thought.
 
Her poor father.
 
Only two years until he retired. He never got to watch what he wanted, as his wife had the evening all planned out.
 
If he were lucky he was allowed to watch the occasional nature programme or movie, but the rest of the TV viewing was worked religiously around her mother’s beloved soaps.
 
The only time he managed to have a say was when he was at her house.

The children played happily with their new toys until their grandparents left.

“Right guys, bath time.” She caught Amy round the middle, as she made to run past her.

“Oh no, you don’t,” she laughed at her daughter.
 
“C’mon, bath and then a story.”

Reluctantly the children filed into the bathroom.

Soon the entire bathroom was sopping wet from the children sloshing water over one another with plastic beakers.
 
Maria was absolutely soaked.
 
But the kids enjoyed themselves and if it helped tire them out, then it was worth it.
 

As she tucked them in, she thought how tired they must have been.
 
Both of them had fallen asleep during their stories.
 
Tomorrow she’d have Amy in the afternoon after nursery.
 
She couldn’t wait to get stuck into her novel again.

Next morning after dropping the kids at school, Maria checked her emails.
 
There was one from Tom, Holly’s fiancé.
 
He’d been her main contact since Holly went off to Italy to do research for her book.
 
Even after Holly returned from Italy, Tom had remained involved.
 
Maria wasn’t arranging the whole wedding for them, but she had been asked to take care of the cards, flowers, cars and kilt hire.
 
Holly and Tom wanted to manage some aspects of their wedding, so they had approached venues about costs and menus offered, as well as using their own photographer and videographer, who was a media friend of Holly’s.
 
Maria wished more of her weddings could be as uncomplicated.
 
No doubt she’d be receiving another call from the Fairbairns tomorrow.

The Jameson/Matthews wedding wasn’t until Spring, due to Holly’s winter book tour.
 
Maria liked Holly.
 
There were quite a few of her clients who returned to her and Holly was one of them.
 
They first met when she arranged Holly’s thirtieth birthday bash and since then, Holly and Tom’s engagement party and she was now involved in the book launches.
 
So, over the years, they’d socialised a fair bit. With a lump in her throat, she thought of how she’d met Holly when Stuart was still alive.
 
She still thought of Stuart every day.
 
They said time was a healer and although it didn’t heal, hell, she didn’t want it to ‘heal’,
that
would be tantamount to forgetting, she learned to live with it.
 
Life was as good as it got without Stuart.
 
She had two amazing children and she was financially secure.

Maria looked at Tom’s email.
 
It was funny how different men and women were, even in something as simple as composing an email.

Tom’s email:

Hi Maria.
 
We’ll need a videographer after all.
 
Can you suggest one and advise pricing please? Tom.

Holly’s last email on the other hand had started off by asking Maria how she was, how business was going, telling her about her travels and then after about three paragraphs, she finally reached the matter in hand.
 
Although it obviously took her far longer to read Holly’s email, she’d choose Holly’s over Tom’s emails any day.

The phone rang off the hook all morning.
 
Maria knew she needed to address this staffing issue soon.
 
She
could
call her mother and ask if she could take Amy, but she didn’t like to.
 
Her parents did enough for her.

When she picked Amy up from nursery at lunchtime she was still way behind.
 
Again they found David with Angelika.
 
Angelika was having dinner with them and Czeslawa would collect her about six.
 
Angelika and David though had other ideas. They wanted to go now.

“No sweetheart.
 
You have school this afternoon.
 
Angelika will be coming home with us after school,” Maria said.
 
Saying goodbye to Angelika, they headed home for lunch.
 

After lunch, Amy and Maria dropped David at school and went into Kilburn.
 
The problem was she always ended up getting more than she came for when she came into town.
 
She’d nipped into the tearoom and bought a lovely sponge cake to welcome Angelika, something light, not an E number festival.
 
Since she was here, she’d nip into the supermarket, stock up on cleaning goods
.
 

She completed her supermarket shop in record time.
 
“Mummy. I need a pee pee,” Amy tugged her arm.
 
She’d almost forgotten her daughter was there; she’d been so well behaved.

“Can you hold it just a minute?” she said as she paid for her shopping.
 
Shoving her hastily packed bags in the trolley, she pushed it with one hand, grasping Amy’s hand in the other and walked towards the Customer Toilets sign.
 
A few customers let her go before them, when they saw Amy hopping from foot to foot.

“Mummy, I need a poo as well,” Amy said loudly.
 
Maria was glad she was inside the cubicle, as she could hear titters on the other side.
 
Amy was always mortifying her, she thought.

“Mummy, I want to watch Bob when I get home,” Amy said.

“That’s fine.
 
You can watch Bob.”
 
Maria would have promised her anything at that point. Her discomfort increased further, as Amy started singing Bob the Builder at full volume.
 
Maria was cursing the builders, as there was no window to use as an escape route.
 
Finally, Amy was finished.
 
Maria was scarlet and as she opened the door, a round of applause broke out.

“Well done, young lady,” one elderly woman told her.
 
“What’s your name?”

“Amy,” she said proudly.

“Well Amy, that was a great performance,” she said, grinning at Maria.
 
Maria red-faced dragged Amy off to the wash hand basins before she combusted.
 
As the door closed behind her, she heard shrieks of laughter from within.
 

Angelika and David let Amy play with them, which Maria thought was pretty magnanimous.
 
Amy made them copious amounts of tea from her tea set and plied them with plastic fried eggs and sausages.
 
When Maria brought out the cake, Angelika’s eyes lit up.

Chapter Forty Six

“Hi Czeslawa, come in,” Maria ushered her indoors.
 
“Would you like some tea?” Seeing Czeslawa hesitate, she said, “I’m making some anyway.”

“OK.
 
Thank you,” she replied.

Maria returned a few minutes later with two cups of tea and the remainder of the sponge cake.
 
She remembered that Czeslawa took it black.

“Oh, I forget,” Czeslawa said.
 
She pulled out a box of Matchmakers from her bag.

“This for you.
 
You bring me home other day and you ask Angelika here.
 
Thank you.”

“You didn’t need to do that,” Maria was touched, “but thanks.”

She dived right in.

“You know you told me you were an Office Manager?”

“Yes?”

“Well, I wondered if you might like to come and work for me.”

“You have company?”
 
Czeslawa was surprised.

“Yes,” stated Maria matter-of-
factly.

“What is business?” asked Czeslawa.

“My company mostly deals with weddings,” Maria began, trying to keep her language relatively simple.
  
“Now the company is bigger.
 
We deal with most aspects of weddings: flowers, photography, hotel, church.”

Czeslawa was riveted, but couldn’t help bursting in. “Sounds good.
 
But,” she broke off, before continuing, “what you think I can do?”

Maria had thought this through over the last few days.
 
If Czeslawa accepted her proposal, she could help with Admin until her English improved.
 
This, Maria felt, would happen very quickly, once she was using it daily.
 

“Well, although you wouldn’t be Office Manager, as the company’s not big enough for that and we all work from home, I was just about to place an ad with the Job Centre for an Admin Assistant.
 
Would you be interested?”

Czeslawa’s face was flushed with excitement.

“I interested.
 
Please tell me more.”
 
So Maria did.

“And you happy to offer me job?” Czeslawa was unable to take it in.

“Yes.”

“I not know yet what to do, but if show me, I learn fast,” Czeslawa stopped.

“There only one problem.”

“Yes?” asked Maria.

“My English,” Czeslawa said anxiously.

“Well, I’ve thought about that and I was going to suggest that once you start working for me, you also go to English classes.
 
It will make you more confident.”

“I good at languages,” said Czeslawa. I speak Russian, German and French, just no good English.”

“It’s not a problem.
 
I am prepared to hire you now and hope classes and speaking English daily will help your confidence.”

“Very good. We have deal.”

Maria could see the young woman’s eyes held a question.
 
She imagined it would be regarding salary, so she jumped in and started telling her what she could afford. Czeslawa seemed very happy at that.

“Thank you, Maria.
 
This means lot to me.
 
Wojciech will be so happy.
 
He not want me to take inferior job.”

She hugged Maria fiercely and then breaking off, she said, “Angelika would like David come play at our house next week.
 
Is OK?”

“Of course.”

An ecstatic Czeslawa left promising to return on Monday to meet the others.
 
Maria felt as if she had done something really worthwhile.
 
It wasn’t right that Czeslawa should be reduced to cleaning toilets.
 
She should be able to put her skills to use.

Kids in bed, Maria emailed her team and asked them to be available on Monday at ten o’clock to meet a new employee.
 
She’d barely pressed Send when her mobile rang.
 
It was Sandra.

“What new employee?”

“What are you doing still working at this time?” Maria accused her.

“Oh, I had a bit of an incident today and had to bow out early, so am making up for lost time tonight.
 
What new employee?” Sandra asked again.
 
Maria filled her in.

“You are so impulsive, woman!”
 
Maria wasn’t sure if it was a slight, but she didn’t let Sandra rile her. She wasn’t sure if Sandra was miffed at her for not discussing it with her before hiring Czeslawa, but if she was put out, Maria would sweeten her up on Monday.
 
Czeslawa wasn’t arriving until ten thirty and Sandra was always ridiculously early.
 
Maria would be lucky if she were home from dropping the kids off before Sandra knocked on the door.
 
She explained her reasons to Sandra, not that she felt she had to justify herself, it was her company after all and Sandra seemed suitably mollified by the time she hung up.

*

Maria was exhausted.
 
She had run herself ragged all day and now she was at the rehearsal for the McKillop wedding.
 
All of the key players would be in attendance.
 
Everything was in order.
 
There should be no hiccups tomorrow.

Maria was dressed in black boot cut trousers and a pink V-neck blouse.
 
She could see the groom and another man striding down the aisle towards her.
 
As the other chap resembled the groom, she assumed he must be his brother and hence the best man.
 
A gaggle of girls then entered, led by the bride and a couple of tots brought up the rear.
 
The flower girls, she presumed.
 
The minister arrived and the rehearsal began.

That went without a hitch, thought Maria, as she packed up her things.
 
She always brought props for those who would be carrying things, flowers, a detachable Velcro train that sort of thing, so that the participants could get a proper feel for it.
 
OK, little Marisa had tripped over the train, but she felt confident she’d be all right on the day.
 
Time to go home.
 
Tomorrow would be a long day and she wanted to get the whole family to bed as early as possible, since she’d have an early start.

The rain battering against the windows woke Maria up repeatedly during the night.
 
As she shoved her head deeper into her pillows she prayed for it to stop by morning.
 
It didn’t.
 
It was still torrential when she got up at six.
 
It should have been light by now, but the rain clouds blocked the sun’s endeavours.
 
A gloomy mist hung over the village.
 
It could have been a November morning.
 
Typical summer weather.
 
She’d never understand why anyone booked a wedding during this time.
 
May and September were far better months, she thought.
 
Maria hoped that the old Scots saying would come true today, ‘if you don’t like the weather in Scotland, wait fifteen minutes’.

Kids despatched, Maria smoothed down her suit and retouched her lipstick, before swinging into action. The wedding was at eleven o’clock.
 
Happy that all was on schedule she set off for the venue.

That changed not long after reaching the church.
 
Inside, she heard raised voices coming from the sacristy. Her heels echoed on the stone until she stood just outside.
 
Pausing a second to listen, she heard a voice, the groom, she guessed, say,

“I can’t do this.” Maria’s heart froze.
 
This had only happened to her once before.
 
It was natural to feel vulnerable and confused before the ceremony.
 
As the best man tried to reason with the groom, she turned away, but stopped when she heard him utter the unutterable.

“I have to tell her about Becky.”

“No, you don’t,” a voice said.

“She deserves to know.
 
Then she can decide if she wants to marry me or not.
 
But she won’t.
 
She’ll hate me and she should.”
 
His voice was full of despair.
 
Emboldened by the lengthening silence, Maria knocked on the door.
 
After a slight delay, the best man opened the door.
 
He looked as if he’d aged ten years since last night.

“Hi.”

“Hi. I couldn’t help overhearing.”

“Go away,” said the groom, almost in tears.
 
Maria ignored him.
  
She entered the room and closed the door behind her.
 
Soon the guests and then the bride would arrive, so she needed to get this sorted now.

“You love Carrie, don’t you?”

Angus nodded mutely.

“OK, so you’ve screwed up?”

Again, silent assent.
 
“But, that doesn’t need to be the end of your life, or hers.”

“It doesn’t?” he looked up at her.

“No.
 
This Becky, does your fiancée know her?”

He shook his head.
 
“She lives in Liverpool.”

“Where we had the stag party,” the best man added helpfully.

“And this happened only on your stag night?” Maria guessed.

“Just that one time,” said the groom.

“Well, Angus, you have two choices.
 
You come clean.
 
Your fiancée will probably hate you.
 
At best she won’t marry you and you’ll have humiliated her and your families.
 
Or, you learn to live with your little indiscretion, marry the woman you love and never tell her.
 
Ever.”

Angus looked at her with the kind of awe he’d previously reserved for his primary headmistress.
 
Maria broke in again on his thoughts, “When you think about it logically, you just want to assuage your conscience, but is that fair?”

He didn’t reply.

“If you genuinely love this woman and what happened was a one-off, then don’t let it ruin your lives.”

Angus rose to his feet. “Thanks. You’re right” and he hugged her.

“You’re welcome.
 
Now, go and freshen up.”

They scampered away and Maria exhaled heavily.
 
She would only feel relieved when they were pronounced man and wife.

Ten minutes later they were in their rightful places.
 
Maria helped the ushers show guests where to sit.
 
Every so often, she would make eye contact with the groom and the best man.
 
She received the thumbs up sign several times and she breathed more easily.

The bride arrived and the flower girls sashayed down the aisle without tripping.
 
The service was beautiful, quicker than she usually liked for a church service, but in this instance, relief that it had gone ahead replaced disappointment at the rapidity of it. As the bride and groom passed up the aisle, smiling at friends and relatives, Maria kept in the wings.
 
Angus’ eyes, however, sought out hers and his expression of gratitude was clear.

She was surprisingly organised on Monday morning for the meeting.
 
Sandra, true to form, was early.
 
Maria regaled her staff; Sandra, Maria’s sister, Wendy, Isla and Amelia with the exploits of Saturday’s wedding.
 
Wendy disapproved, but Maria silenced her by saying, “You only get one chance at happiness.”
 
No-one was going to argue with that.
 

The doorbell rang and Maria went to answer it.
 
Czeslawa was shy at first and insisted on repeating everyone’s name several times, to ensure she had them right. Sandra asked Czeslawa how she liked her tea and Isla offered her a choice of carrot cake or coffee cake, which she’d brought from the bakery in her village.
 
By the end of the meeting they were getting on famously and Maria knew she had done the right thing.