Wonder Women (15 page)

Her mother was the least of her problems, however. She had almost run out of money, and she had to find some
work. She had never looked for a job in the UK, and except for her short tenure at the dress shop in Johannesburg, had never really been employed. She'd considered starting up a dressmaking business in London, but it would have meant looking for clients, advertising, maybe getting a market stall, and to be honest, she just didn't have the energy to start that all over again. Besides, taking the cover off her sewing machine and pulling out the well-used Doradolla patterns just reminded her of what she had lost. It was all too painful, and she quite simply couldn't do it. Eventually she walked down to Ealing Broadway and went from clothes shop to clothes shop, asking if they were looking for staff. Her CV was far from average, but she had little conventional retail experience, and many of the shops were reluctant, but eventually she struck lucky, and a small branch of one of the chain women's stores took her on.

Her life seemed better almost instantly. Just the day-to-day routine of getting up, going to work, getting a coffee on the way and chatting to customers lifted her black mood. She was naturally sociable and she enjoyed the work, even though she thought the clothes were uniformly dull and often badly made. She was at least six or seven years older than the other sales assistants, but they didn't seem to mind and dragged her on nights out to clubs in London, and to karaoke evenings at a local pub. She wasn't earning a lot, but then she didn't need a lot. Her mother would only accept a token rent, and she didn't have commuting to pay for. She felt like a thirty-year-old school-leaver, earning a starting salary, living at home, spending her money on drinks and partying. It was far from the life she had had, and light years
from any life she might want in the long term, but it was a good transition and quite healing, after the appalling conclusion of her time in South Africa.

But what did she want to do? There was a question she couldn't answer. As far as men were concerned, she couldn't have been less interested. She got plenty of offers on her nights out, but Damon had broken something in her, and she knew it would take her a long time to heal. Damon himself had, quite simply, disappeared. Holly knew that through his business he had connections across Africa, as well as in the Middle East and China. His mother rang her about once a fortnight and wept over the phone, begging Holly to tell her if she knew anything at all about his whereabouts. It was awful and heartbreaking, and she dreaded the calls because she never had anything new to tell Mrs Vermaak. It gave her another reason to hate him, and made her more determined to avoid any romantic entanglements for a very, very long time.

Besides, she didn't feel she was much of a prospect at the moment. In terms of her career, she'd lost all the progress she'd made in her twenties and she was starting again. She thought about it every day as she walked to and from work, and resolved that she would plan a career path that involved all the things she'd loved about running Doradolla and exclude the parts of the business she hadn't enjoyed. She decided to write things down as they occurred to her. She had loved the designing, and enjoyed the sewing, to a certain extent, but she didn't want to be responsible for all of it. While she didn't mind her retail job now, she had no real enthusiasm for the selling part of the job, both pimping
her clothes to stores and boutiques and the physical grind of standing at a market and interacting with customers. As for the business side: hiring people, managing the money, carrying the burden of debt, well, she could do it, but she wasn't sure she ever wanted to again. Damon had broken that part of her too.

One sunny autumn Sunday, she and her mum made the interminable trek from Ealing to Finchley to have lunch with Miranda and Paul and the kids. It should have been a twenty-five-minute journey, even in heavy Sunday traffic, but Judith, who insisted on driving, crawled along at exactly twenty-eight miles an hour for the entire journey, even when Holly, sweating with stress and jittery from the honking drivers behind them, pointed out that the speed limit on that stretch of the dual carriageway was fifty. ‘I can't be remembering every time the speed limit changes, dear,' said Judith mildly, oblivious to the man in the four-by-four screaming obscenities and flipping her the finger as he roared past. ‘I like to drive at this speed, because then I know I'll never be caught speeding.'

A pensioner on a mobility scooter would be more likely to be caught speeding, thought Holly, as she slid down in her seat and resigned herself to a long journey.

Judith spent an age carefully parallel parking in Miranda's pretty cul de sac, edging back and forth seven or eight times until she was satisfied she was a perfect six inches from the kerb. Then she spent another few minutes gathering her things, pulling in her wing mirror, painstakingly folding her coat over her arm and checking several times that all the windows were closed and the car was locked and that Holly
had not left any valuables in sight in the vehicle. Even after all the faff, they still weren't late: wary of possible disasters, Judith had insisted they leave Ealing a full hour before they were expected for lunch, so they walked up the path to the front door bang on time. Holly wondered if the sun was over the yardarm and she could demand a drink as soon as she walked through the door.

Thankfully, Miranda had decided they were barbecuing, to make the most of the last of the sunshine, and there was already a jug of Pimm's on the table on the patio.

‘Oh dear,' said Judith. ‘Are you sure it's warm enough to be outdoors, Miranda? Won't the children catch a chill?'

Miranda looked instantly horrified, as if she might have failed her children in some way. But Oscar, sitting in his pushchair on the patio, was wrapped in a padded suit so bulky it made his little arms stick out at right angles to his body, and his little cheeks were red with heat. Martha, also in a bulky coat, was riding her tricycle on the lawn in precise circles. ‘I think they'll be fine, Mum,' said Holly. ‘Let them get some fresh air while they can. Why don't you go inside and help Miranda in the kitchen? I'll watch the kids.'

It was a bit mean of her, as she knew Miranda would already have organised everything that needed doing, and that Judith would now wander around the kitchen and then the house, quietly asking questions that, however innocent they might sound, would undermine everything Miranda had done. ‘Oh dear,' she'd say. ‘Did you mix the mayonnaise into the potato salad while the potatoes were still warm? I always worry about salmonella, don't you?' or ‘Goodness
me, Miranda, isn't it wonderful how you young people don't feel the need to scrub off limescale any more. You're so much more relaxed than we were.'

But after the drive from Ealing, Holly desperately needed a break from her mum, and most of all she wanted to drink a couple of glasses of Pimm's very quickly without her mother commenting how young women now felt free to drink so much more than in her time – and in the middle of the day! Actually, make that three glasses, Holly amended. She wandered over to the barbecue, a monstrous gas contraption, where her brother-in-law, Paul, was expertly flipping burgers. ‘Those look good,' she said conversationally.

‘Organic beef. Miranda made them herself.'

‘Ah, and the sausages?'

‘Organic, free-range pork.'

‘I always feel so much better knowing I'm eating a happy dead animal,' Holly said sardonically, but she might as well not have bothered. Paul didn't have much of a sense of humour. He was a man who dealt in facts, so he just ignored her comment and kept minutely adjusting the knobs on his gigantic barbecue. Holly was convinced that if he got the right combination of buttons and switches, the thing would just take off. He was a big Arsenal supporter, so she went for football as a safe topic of conversation. A few well-chosen questions and he was off, droning about formations, players being kept on the bench and the reasons for their recent humiliating defeat by Man United. Holly nodded at appropriate intervals while she chewed on Pimm's-soaked chunks of cucumber.

In the end, Judith prevailed and they ate lunch inside.
The food was delicious, and Holly ate ravenously. She'd had enough Pimm's to be able to ignore her mother's barbs about her unladylike appetite, and Paul had served a quite simply lovely Chardonnay to complement the meal. Holly, pleasantly full of good food and booze, started to feel almost benevolent towards her dysfunctional family. She was sitting next to little Oscar in his high chair, who was gumming on a piece of bread roll and thumping his beaker of water up and down, loudly. He bashed his beaker close to Holly, and she reached over and banged the tray of his high chair with the flat of her hand. He jumped, a little startled, and then chortled delightedly, showing his two peg teeth at the bottom. He bashed again and Holly banged back. He let loose with an almighty belly laugh, a most delicious sound in the restrained atmosphere. ‘Holly, dear, don't overexcite the baby,' said Judith. ‘You'll make him ill.'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake,' said Holly shortly, forgetting to be polite. ‘I'm making him laugh, not bouncing him off the ceiling.'

She banged again, and Oscar laughed so hard that he inhaled a chunk of bread, went purple in the face and started coughing and choking. Miranda leapt to her feet and whacked him sharply on the back. The nugget of soggy bread flew out. Both Miranda and Judith looked at Holly with absolute horror as if she had choked the baby herself, but Oscar immediately turned to Holly. ‘Again!' he demanded.

Miranda gasped. ‘He's never said that before!' She squeezed Oscar and kissed him all over his red little face. ‘Clever pickle! Do it again, Holly.'

Holly banged the high-chair tray, Oscar bashed back and
chuckled, then yelled, ‘Again!' to the delight of his captive audience. They repeated the sequence over and over. It never seemed to get old. He was a dear little chap, Holly thought. She'd not paid much attention to him before: she'd always thought babies were rather dull, but she liked his round little face and his raspy chortle. He seemed simpler and less self-conscious than Martha. If she had kids (and in her present situation, she couldn't imagine when that would ever be), she would like boys better than girls, she decided. Sturdy, fat-cheeked little boys like Oscar.

Even Judith's mood seemed to have lightened with Oscar's mirth, and for once, conversation seemed to flow in a slightly less stilted way. Paul asked Holly about her work, and she told him a little about the shop.

‘It's not a long-term plan, though, is it?' said Paul bluntly. ‘Is there an opportunity for you to climb the ladder? Maybe do some management training? You're not getting any younger, Holly.'

‘Paul!' admonished Miranda. ‘Don't be so rude!'

‘No, no, he's absolutely right,' said Holly. ‘I took this job as a stop-gap, just to give me time to think about what I want to do. I have to start again from scratch, but I might as well really think about what makes me happy.'

‘And what does make you happy?' asked Paul. Holly was glad of his abrupt, businesslike manner. It made her articulate her thoughts, think in a more focused way. It was better than the rather woolly wanderings she'd been having on her walk to work.

‘I want to design clothes …' she began slowly, ‘but I'm not entirely sure I want to run my own business. There were
aspects of the business side of things I didn't enjoy, and I wouldn't mind not having to do them myself. I'd quite like to work with someone else, and I definitely don't want to do evening wear again. Not for a long time.'

‘No evening wear?' said Judith. ‘Oh, Holly, that's such a pity! You're so talented.'

Holly gritted her teeth. She really couldn't bloody win with her mother.

‘Well, I'm talented in lots of ways,' she said tightly. ‘I can design other things, you know.'

‘I know,' said Judith. ‘I know you're very talented.' She stared at her plate. ‘I just meant …' but she let her sentence fade away.

Paul ignored his mother-in-law's interruption and kept his attention focused on Holly.

‘Knowing what you don't want to do is a start,' he said. ‘Now, how are you going to go about getting to do the things you do want to do?'

‘I … I don't know yet. I suppose I'll work up a portfolio, gather some of the designs I've done before, and then I'll start digging around on the net for personnel agencies in the field.'

‘Set yourself a time limit for each step of your plan. That would be my advice,' said Paul. ‘Don't let your goals slip, or you'll find yourself six months down the line and no closer to your goal.'

*

A few days later, Miranda was outside the nursery waiting for Martha when Jo came running up to the gate, breathless, her arms full of a big folder of papers.

‘Hello!' trilled Miranda. ‘Such a long time since I last saw you! You haven't been in the park much lately.'

‘No,' said Jo, still panting, and checking her watch in relief. ‘I didn't think I'd make it. I was in a meeting at the bank and it ran over.'

‘You can always give me a shout,' Miranda said, ‘if you're held up. Martha would love Zachy to come and play.'

‘Really?' said Jo. ‘That might be a big help. Imogene's going to a childminder a couple of times a week now, but I have another meeting on Thursday and I wasn't sure I'd make it back in time to get Zach.'

‘No worries,' said Miranda, and they swapped telephone numbers. ‘So, I'm curious. ‘All these meetings … what are they? Are you going back to work?'

‘Kind of …' said Jo, a little reluctantly, but then she seemed to make up her mind. ‘I'm starting a business. A kids' clothing shop. It's all in the early stages now, but it looks as if I'm going to get start-up finance from the bank. I've seen some premises in East Finchley that might be perfect if I can get the lease. If it all comes together, I'll be marketing like mad to all of you here at the school gate.'