Wonder Women (20 page)

The rest of the day passed in a haze of narrowly averted crises, hurried conversations, friends kissing Jo and congratulating her, and endless, endless smiling. When they
finally closed the doors after the last customers had straggled out at six o'clock, Jo sank down and sat on one of the big ladybird beanbags on the floor. She was vaguely conscious from the ache in her back and legs that it was the first time she had sat down all day. Holly was tidying up and straightening garments on their hangers – surely, Jo thought, for the thousandth time that day, while Mel was cashing up the till. Lee had already left to fetch the kids from his parents' place and would return with two bathed and fed children, ready for bed in their pyjamas, and one of his mum's homemade lasagnes. Jo was, both literally and figuratively, finished. Holly eventually stopped tidying, went into the back room and returned with a chilled bottle of Cava and three glasses. Jo managed a faint cheer from her beanbag, and Mel nodded enthusiastic assent. Jo knew she should lead the others in some kind of post-mortem of the day, but she just didn't have the energy. There had been hitches, there were things she knew she wanted to change, but overall, the day had been a huge, storming success. She was going to have a glass of bubbly, limp home with her family and sleep for twelve hours solid. Everything else could wait until tomorrow.

After the launch, the first few weeks were rather an anticlimax. The bloggers and the local press were all very generous in their assessment of Jungletown, but it brought a trickle rather than a flood of customers. Jo wasn't worried; she knew the real success of the business would lie in word-of-mouth and building a loyal customer base and it would take a little longer, and sure enough, as they began their second month of trading, there was a noticeable rise in the number of customers, and more and more of them mentioned
that they had come because they had heard about the shop from a friend. They weren't bringing in millions of pounds, but they were covering costs and salaries and paying back the bank, and as far as Jo was concerned, that was all she hoped for at this early stage.

She and Mel had worked out a rota that suited them both, and most of the time they managed to balance working in the shop with their respective family commitments. For Jo though, the guilt was always there. She flew away from the shop every day as soon as her shift finished, taking paperwork to do when the kids were in bed. Even though Imi seemed perfectly happy at the childminder's and Zach loved nursery, she felt awful that she wasn't with them. On the days when the rota didn't allow her to pick them up at the normal time, and they had to stay later or go to a friend's, she was consumed with guilt and distracted at work. When she was with them, she found herself relaxing the rules, giving them more treats and letting them get away with naughtiness. As a result, Zach particularly pushed his luck and started answering back. Then she'd end up yelling at him, and she would be consumed with guilt all over again. One day, she was doing a lightning-fast handover to Mel, flinging things into her handbag as she prepared to rush out of the door. Mel followed her around, making notes, handing keys, phone and umbrella to her and generally looking like the picture of calm and competence. Jo stopped for a moment. ‘How do you do it?'

‘Do what?'

‘Balance it all. Serena, work … and as a single parent? Didn't you go out of your mind when she was small?'

‘Of course,' said Mel. ‘All the time. I felt bad I wasn't working harder, and awful I wasn't with her more. I felt like I wasn't doing anything well.'

‘That's exactly how I feel! So what did you do?'

‘What does anyone do? I fudged it, compromised and eventually learned to live with the guilt. Can't change it, have to live with it.'

Holly filled in if it was necessary, but she mainly concerned herself with keeping the shop well stocked with fresh and exciting clothes. In the lead-up to Christmas they did a roaring trade. Holly had not only sourced loads of cute novelty Christmas jumpers, hats and baby clothes, she'd also bought a selection of soft toy dinosaurs and jungle animals, and set up a temporary gift section. Harassed mums who had to take their kids shopping were thrilled to come to Jungletown and be able to browse in relative peace while their kids worked off some festive-season madness on the play equipment.

By the day before Christmas Eve, they had had a better month than November, even though they had only traded for twenty-three days. It was a good thing, as they received notice from the council that there would be major roadworks on the pavement in front of the shop between Christmas and New Year. It would be a real struggle to get customers in and out.

‘The last thing we need is someone falling or hurting themselves just outside the shop,' said Jo.

‘And we could do without everyone tracking in mud and cement dust,' Mel pointed out.

‘Let's close for a few days,' said Jo. ‘We were going to struggle
with staffing anyway, as you'll be away, Mel. We'll reopen on the second of January with a kick-ass January sale.'

The three of them went to the pub over the road for a Christmas drink after they closed. It was a frosty winter's evening, and through the pub window Jo could see her bright and sparkly shop. It gave her a warm glow inside, as did the mulled wine. What had been a dream in the summer was now a steadily growing reality. Contrary to her fears and worries, she seemed to be balancing the needs of her family with the business, and she had made two great new friends in Mel and Holly. The new year could only bring good things. She was sure of it.

‘Cheers, girls!' she said happily, raising her glass.

‘So, Holly, Mel's off to Devon, I'm going to have a craaaazy time in Hertfordshire … what does Christmas hold for you?'

‘Oh, we're all off to Oxfordshire, to my brother's place. It should be a fairly toxic family Christmas, I imagine. I'll be the embarrassingly single, quirky sister, to be passed around at cocktail parties and forcibly introduced to awful, unsuitable men fresh from their first divorce.'

‘So sorry,' said Mel. ‘It does happen. If you resist for long enough, they give up after a while. My friends accept that I'm a dried-up old spinster now, and they leave me alone.'

‘You not spending Christmas with family?' Holly asked her.

‘No. I don't see my family,' said Mel, and her suddenly prickly tone made Holly realise this wasn't a line of discussion to pursue. But then Mel brightened and started talking about her plans. ‘We have a long-standing tradition where
we take a house in Devon with a crowd of friends. We take long walks on the beach, lie around and play board games, and we have a non-traditional traditional Christmas dinner: no turkey, because we all hate it, but a lovely roast lamb and plenty of wine.'

‘And no passive-aggressive family crap?' Holly laughed. ‘Sounds like heaven.'

‘It is pretty cool,' said Mel, her smile a little tight. ‘Serena's always loved it, but she seems less keen this year. She says she'd rather we stayed in London. I've convinced her to go, but every year, she's going to object more.' She didn't add that the only reason Serena had stopped yelling and sulking about the trip was because she had heard her dad was going to be there. Bruce came along about one year in every three. The old university friends Mel was going with were friends of his too, and it was a good way for him to see Serena over the festive season. Mel didn't think Serena was keen to see her dad because she was such a devoted daughter. Mel knew Bruce had a new job and was making more money, and she had a suspicion he had promised Serena some kind of special Christmas present. Well, whatever it took.

She had never told Serena she had seen her the day she skipped school, hoping it had been the first time, but she had reinstituted the home-from-school calls with new firmness, and she made sure she walked with Serena all the way to school each morning. She didn't make a big deal of it – just said she needed the exercise and that now she needed to be at work a little later, it was a good way to stretch her legs. Serena grumbled and sulked, but Mel knew she was at least getting her through the school gates every day.

Mel pulled her attention back to Holly and Jo. Jo was describing Christmas at her parents' place in Stevenage. ‘I'm looking forward to some lovely free time with Lee and the kids between Christmas and New Year. But Christmas Day … oh boy. My parents know we see a lot of Lee's parents because they live closer, and to be honest, since my mum broke her hip, they're not up to babysitting the kids on their own. But they're jealous of how much Lee's folks see the kids. So if we're there for Christmas, they overcompensate horrendously. They buy them way too many presents, and tomorrow they'll want to drag us off to see Santa at every awful shopping centre within a twenty-mile radius. I haven't had the heart to tell them that Zach's decided he's terrified of Santa this year, so it's not going to go well.'

‘Oh dear.' Holly giggled. ‘Families, I ask you …'

But Jo was just getting started. ‘A few days of being together twenty-four seven will also give my mum plenty of time to criticise everything I wear, say and do. Oh, and my mother equates food with love, so there'll be snacks and treats and meals at hourly intervals from the minute we arrive, and she'll be mortally offended if we don't eat absolutely everything.'

‘Ah,' said Holly. ‘Your mum is the opposite of mine. My mum thinks enjoying food is somehow unladylike. We're all supposed to compete to have the smallest portions and leave the most food on our plates, so we can look elegant.'

‘Sound like we'll both be in food hell,' said Jo.

‘Sod that!' said Mel. ‘I love my food and I'm not afraid to say it. Anyone fancy sharing a plate of chips?'

‘I fancy the chips,' said Holly. ‘Don't fancy sharing.' She gestured to a waiter and ordered three portions of fries.

‘Aren't you mum types supposed to be home for supper?' asked Holly, licking ketchup off her fingers. ‘I told my mum I was out for dinner, so I'm off the hook. But aren't you expected to produce balanced meals for your families when you get in?'

‘Lee will have fed the kids before he comes to pick me up,' said Jo, mopping up a glob of ketchup with her chip. ‘We've been living on scratch meals ourselves for the last few weeks, both too tired to cook proper stuff. So this is the substitute for the stale cheese and chutney sandwich that would probably have been my dinner.'

‘Serena's staying at her friend Marina's house tonight,' said Mel.

‘Marina?' Jo smiled. ‘Serena and Marina?'

‘Yes, yes, I know,' said Mel, ‘when they were little we called them the rhyming twins. Anyway, Serena won't eat anything I cook at the moment anyway. It's all “disgusting”, apparently. She keeps trying to tell me she's lactose intolerant, which doesn't seem to stop her eating McDonald's cheese-burgers – just my macaroni cheese or cottage pie with cheese on top. Seems to me she's more home-cooking and vegetable intolerant.'

Jo laughed. ‘And there was me thinking the fussy eating ended when they stopped being toddlers.'

‘I think for teenagers it's a new way to assert their independence, or to prove how interesting and quirky they are.'

‘Yawn,' said Holly drily.

‘Yawn indeed.' agreed Mel. ‘Another drink, you two?'

Jo glanced at her watch. ‘I'd love to, but Lee's coming to pick me up right now.' She got up and kissed the other two warmly. ‘Have a fab Christmas, you two, or as fab as it can be. And here's a little something to make things sweeter.' She handed them each an envelope. ‘It's just a little bonus, not as much as I would have liked, but something to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for making the shop a success.'

And with another hug for each of them she dashed out into the chilly night air to meet Lee, and Christmas had begun.

Christmas was just as hideous as Holly had expected. Just after Holly arrived at David and his wife Desiree's house on Christmas Eve, there was a cocktail party. Judith pleaded exhaustion from the journey and went up to her room, avoiding the party altogether. It was a bit rich, as it had only been an hour and a half's drive up the A40 and miraculously they'd seen very little traffic, but Judith got away with it nevertheless. Sadly, Holly had no such excuse. She decided to go all out, so she dressed in a festive, bright red Doradolla dress, tidied her hair, which in the busy rush of the festive season she hadn't had time to have cut, and put on make-up. A pair of killer, sky-high patent leather heels completed the look. If she had to suffer a tedious gathering of David's stuffy academic friends, she might as well look fabulous.

It turned out to be a gross miscalculation. There were no single men at the party, as it turned out, but there were a great many married ones, who were all there with their rather frumpy, M&S-wearing wives. It seemed that in academic circles, dressing-up was considered a little vulgar, and as a result, Holly stood out like a tall and rather exotic flower.
The husbands flocked around, and one by one tried ponderous flirtatious lines on her. One or two found a reason to graze a hand across her bottom, ostensibly by accident, or stand too close and leer down her cleavage. She would have been hot with embarrassment, if she hadn't been frozen by the icy glares of the wives. At exactly 10 p.m., she pleaded a headache and escaped upstairs. She was tempted to wedge a chair under the doorknob of her bedroom, in case any of the most persistent letches followed her upstairs, but she thought that might be a bit melodramatic.

When she woke up in the morning, she thought that perhaps she had overestimated the reaction she'd caused the night before. Maybe she was just flattering herself, she thought, pulling on some clothes to go downstairs. But Desiree's frosty reception told her that she was not. Desiree was a professor of mathematics, a steely-eyed woman with a cap of short grey hair and a very serious manner. Many of the women at the party would have been her contemporaries and her friends. Holly didn't know how to apologise, or even how to bring it into the conversation. ‘Sorry I dressed like a dancer from the Moulin Rouge last night,' seemed rather a poor opening gambit. How about: ‘I wouldn't touch any of your friends' grotty husbands with a bargepole, so they're quite safe'? No, that wouldn't work either. In the end, Holly made no mention of the night before. She wished Desiree a merry Christmas and asked if she could help herself to some coffee from the cafetière.