Summer Daydreams (11 page)
‘Ready?’ Olly asks.
‘Yes.’ I feel decidedly unsteady. ‘Don’t go too fast.’
‘I just pray that we don’t see a police car on the way home or we’re dead meat.’
Olly kicks the Vespa into life. ‘Try to look inconspicuous,’ he shouts over his shoulder to me.
Impossible. I’m struggling to hold onto the bin bags and they’re flying out like wings into the night. I should have ‘wide load’ stamped on my back.
‘Woo hoo!’ I shout.
‘You’re mad,’ Olly yells. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too!’
If this is what being a handbag designer feels like, then bring it on!
‘Woaw!’ Olly says when he comes into the living room at the end of his late-night punk gig. ‘It looks like a sweatshop in here.’
He’s not far wrong. A week after we brought them home and the black bin bags filled with handbag shells are still stacked in the lounge awaiting a more permanent home, I’m not sure where. I have all my trimmings and diamanté bits and bobs spread out over the floor. My trusty glue gun is at hand.
The ever reliable Phil lent me his posh camera and a few days ago I took some photographs of a beautiful, battered cod and some very cheeky chips nestling in newspaper. Today I picked them up from the printer who has transferred the images onto cotton for me. Despite the hour, I just had to make a start on them.
‘How did the gig go?’ I ask.
‘The landlord is still pissed off with me for being so late last week,’ Olly says as he pulls off his wig and roughs up his own hair.
That’d be the day we collected the handbag shells.
‘I’m trying to win him round again, but it’s a bit of an uphill struggle.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘That was all my fault.’
‘It had to be done.’ Olly sighs, and then flops down on the sofa. ‘I just wish there were more hours in the day.’
His lipstick is smeared, his mascara smudged. My heart squeezes for him. I wriggle along the floor with my work until I’m sitting with my back against the sofa where he’s flaked out. ‘It’ll be worth it,’ I promise him. ‘You’ll see. All this hard work won’t last for ever.’
‘We’ll both be in an early grave if it does.’ Like his dad, are the words that are left unspoken.
I know that the premature death of his father still sits heavy in Olly’s heart and I can understand why he likes his life to be as laid-back and as stress-free as possible. But sometimes you have to let the past go and embrace the future, and I see a different future for us. I see one where I’m sitting in the front row at Paris Fashion Week sipping a champagne cocktail and watching a catwalk show featuring my latest, hugely successful, collection with an immaculately dressed Olly and an impeccably behaved Petal at my side.
‘I could kill for a Pot Noodle,’ Olly says, breaking into my fantasy. ‘Any in the cupboard?’
‘I’m sure there must be. Want me to look?’
‘No. I’ll move myself in a minute. I just need to work up the enthusiasm.’
Olly strokes my hair while I cut and trim and sew and glue.
‘Look.’ Ten minutes later, I hold up my first completed handbag. As it’s made from a bought and already finished shell, there’s no diamanté clasp, the lining material is silver rather than the hot-pink of my dreams and the name tag I’d envisaged in cool steel is a hand-stitched, padded star instead, but it’s nearly there. The pukka article will have to come when we have some more cash behind us. ‘Number one!’
‘Wow.’ Now he sits up. ‘For real?’
‘Yeah.’ I think it looks good. Standing up, I parade the inaugural Nell McNamara signature Fish & Chip handbag round my front room. ‘Think it will sell?’
‘I’m no fashion expert,’ Olly admits. ‘But I think it should go like hot cakes.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘Hmm.’ He winds his arms round my thighs. ‘I think such genius calls for a celebration.’
The look in his eyes says that he doesn’t mean Pot Noodle for two.
He slides off the sofa and pulls me to the floor with him. We lie down amid my fabric and trimmings and sparkles. Olly finds a tiny feather from somewhere in the heap of the mess and starts to tickle my face and neck with it. Then he moves lower and lower and lower.
‘If we make love here,’ I warn him as my breath quickens, ‘you might get a needle in your bottom.’
‘I’ll risk it,’ Olly says. He kneels above me and peels off his God Save The Queen T-shirt.
Despite our advancing years, his body is still taut; his six-pack – honed through years of karate practice – is still in place even though he has zero time to exercise any more. Mine, in contrast, shows the signs of childbirth and too many chocolate bars.
‘God, you’re beautiful,’ Olly says.
As he leans in to kiss me, I’m so glad that he never notices my flaws. Then, just as I’m reaching for the buckle of his belt, the living room door flies open.
‘I’d like milk,’ Petal announces. ‘I’d like it now.’ Then remembering that nothing is forthcoming in this house without the ‘p’ word she adds as an afterthought, ‘Please.’
Olly groans before we both dissolve into fits of laughter.
‘I don’t know what’s funny about that,’ our daughter complains. ‘You forgot to give it to me before I went to bed, Mummy.’
‘I did not, Petal. Don’t tell fibs or your nose will drop off.’ My child looks terminally unconcerned that this tragedy might befall her. ‘But if you go straight back to bed, you can have a
tiny
bit.’
‘And a biscuit?’
‘No. No biscuit. Or your teeth will fall out.’
Not bovvered about that either.
Olly hauls himself from the floor. ‘I’ll get it.’
Petal slides her hand into Olly’s. ‘I love you, Daddy,’ she smoothes and I can hear his heart turning to mush.
I wonder if Petal is so determined to remain a cosseted only child that she hides behind doors all the time, just waiting for us to get down to it before she pounces. I don’t suppose that we’re the only celibate couple, but it certainly feels like it sometimes.
Passion thwarted once more, I turn my attention back to my handbags. Before this night is out, if I’m not going to get any hot sex, then I’m determined to have bags to sell!
The next morning, I swing through the doors of Live and Let Fry for my shift, feeling as if I’m walking on air.
‘I come bearing gifts,’ I tell Phil, Constance and Jenny.
After they’ve all hugged me to death, I hold out my new Nell McNamara handbags complete with pink-and-white candy-stripe protective dust covers.
Jenny and Constance take them and pull out the bags inside.
‘Oh, wow.’ Jen’s eyes are out on stalks. ‘You seriously didn’t make these?’
‘I seriously did.’
‘Nell, they’re fantastic.’
Phil, as he so often does these days, looks a bit teary. ‘Fish and chips.’ He examines the handbag that Constance is holding. ‘That’s funny.’
‘I didn’t think that you’d want one for yourself.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. It might suit me.’ He takes Jen’s bag and models it. ‘Aren’t man-bags all the rage?’
‘Thanks for being my inspiration.’ I mean that sincerely.
Phil returns the bag to Jen. ‘Well done, girl,’ he says to me. ‘Well done.’
‘I’ve got to sell some yet, Phil. Tell me well done this time next year if I’ve made it.’ I turn to Jen and Constance. ‘In the meantime, ladies, you are my walking billboards. I want you to wear these as much as possible.’
‘We can keep them?’ they chorus.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Thanks, Nell,’ Jen says. ‘You’re a star.’
The door opens and our first customer of the day comes in.
‘I hate to bring you all back to reality,’ Phil says, ‘but aprons on.’
With some muttering, the girls reluctantly slide their handbags back into their protective covers and we all don our aprons and prepare for the lunchtime rush.
Four hours of dishing out fish and chips and I’m done. The apron is stripped off again and I dash out as quickly as I can as I have a meeting with Tod Urban. I can’t wait to show him my finished product.
We’re meeting this time in a coffee shop and when I push, breathless through the door, he’s already waiting. As always, he looks cool, calm and collected as he sips his cappuccino. I plonk myself down in the seat opposite him.
‘Sorry, I’m late,’ I puff. ‘The entire population of Hitchin wanted fish and chips today.’ It took us ages to clean up afterwards and I could hardly just walk out and leave the others to it.
‘You look tired,’ he notes.
‘Late night too.’ I was cross-eyed from sticking diamanté sparkles on by two in the morning. Now I could actually put my head down on this table and fall fast asleep.
‘Let me get you something,’ Tod says and he lifts his tall, lean frame out of the bucket chair.
‘Tea,’ I say. ‘Just tea will be fine.’ What I could really do with is a double espresso, but I’m thinking it would just make me jittery and hyper. Cake would be good too. But Tod isn’t the kind of guy that you want to stuff your face in front of.
While he queues at the counter, I try to gather my thoughts and get out the Fish & Chips handbag that I’ve brought to show him.
Tod hands over my tea when he comes back and I show him the bag.
‘Impressive,’ is his verdict as he turns it back and forth, examining every detail. ‘You’ve done a good job.’
‘Thanks.’ I feel ridiculously pleased when I get praise from Tod. ‘I thought I’d take it into Betty the Bag Lady this afternoon to see if she’s interested in stocking them.’
‘Great idea. I’ve found you a fantastic web designer for when you’re ready to get that up and running. I’m sure you’ll love his style and he’s not too expensive.’
Always good to know.
Then Tod looks serious. ‘Some bad news though. I’ve drawn a blank on the grants. Cutbacks, I’m afraid. You know how it is. Everyone has used up their funding for this year.’
‘Oh.’ What am I going to make stock with? How can I get a website up and running? I’ve spent all night making handbags. Now what am I going to do with them?
‘It’s not dead in the water,’ he assures me. ‘There is money to be had. But it’s not worth applying again until next year.’
That’s months and months away.
‘This is business,’ Tod tells me sagely as he sees my disappointment. ‘You have to be prepared to take the knocks, Nell.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course.’ But my heart sinks nevertheless.
‘I’ll see you again soon.’ He finishes his coffee and so I glug down my tea. ‘Chin up. Rome wasn’t built in a day.’
But I just want to make handbags, I think, not build Rome.
I’m in Betty’s and, once again, I pull out my new design. I feel like giving it a fanfare. A bit of ta-da! After all the years of rocking up in here like the poor relation, now I’m coming in here as a business colleague!
Betty looks at me. I thought she’d be grinning, perhaps even jumping up and down. But no. The expression on her face is puzzled, slightly put out even. She examines my handbag as if it’s an unexploded bomb.