Summer Daydreams

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ I manage to stammer.

  I can hear the satisfied smile even down the line. ‘We’d like to send a photographer to your offices today.’

  Not so good.

  ‘Offices,’ I blurt. ‘I work from home.’

  ‘Even better,’ she says. But I think maybe she is imagining some minimalist, penthouse loft apartment in the Docklands, not a tatty, terraced house in Hitchin.

  Surveying the mess with dismay, I venture, ‘Could you possibly make that tomorrow?’

  ‘We’re squeezing you into the next issue.’ More crisply. ‘I’d prefer today. I have a photographer free.’

  ‘Today would be wonderful,’ I say.

  ‘He’ll be with you at eleven,’ she says. ‘Can you email me your address details?’

  Before I agree, she’s already hung up. I look round the room again and my heart starts to pound with panic. ‘Petal,’ I say. ‘Would you like to play a game with Mummy?’

  ‘No,’ my daughter says. I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.

  ‘We’re going to play Tidy the Lounge,’ I tell her. ‘First we’re, you’re, going to put all your toys away.’

  ‘I’m poorly,’ Petal reminds me. ‘You do it.’

  ‘This will make you feel better,’ I lie. ‘We’ll do it together.’

  ‘I’m busy watching television and having a cold,’ my daughter insists.

  ‘A very important person is coming to visit us and we want the house to look all sparkly.’

  She takes in the seemingly impossible task. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Let’s just phone Auntie Constance and see if she’d like to help too.’ When I call her, my dear, reliable and indispensable friend agrees to come round straight away. I quickly email my details to the magazine. That done, I reckon I have ten minutes before Constance arrives to get myself showered and dressed in clothes that make me look more like an up-and-coming handbag designer about to break onto the scene rather than a porridge-wearing slattern.

  ‘Petal, start collecting your toys now,’ I say. I try to sound as threatening as possible. ‘Or they all go straight in the bin.’

  My daughter rolls her eyes but, miracle upon miracle, she starts to round up her toys. It’s all done, of course, at the slowest pace possible and she has a chat with each of them as she does. Leaving her to it, I make my escape and run into the shower.

  I’m just downstairs again when Constance arrives. I hug her, give her the low-down and, without further ado, we set to. Petal also bucks up considerably now that Constance is here.

  An hour later and my house still looks like a handbag factory, but it looks like a tidy-ish one. Trimmings are scooped into plastic cartons. Boxes are stacked. Bags are lined up for display. Sketches are piled neatly. Everything that can be hidden is hidden. We finish as the doorbell rings again.

  Constance sighs with relief. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  I kiss her. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Do you love me too, Mummy?’ Petal demands.

  ‘Yes. You’ve been wonderful.’ She gets a kiss too.

  The photographer and her assistant sweep in. They are both unfeasibly slender and trendy. Black is the mode du jour and I feel clownish in my yellow, red and blue T-shirt dress and orange ballet pumps.

  ‘Perfect,’ the photographer coos. ‘Workshop chic.’

  Is that a compliment? Not for the first time, I’m embarrassed by my own house when previously I loved it so much. Its battered comfort suited us well as a family. Now I have the world’s press trudging through it, I’m not so sure.

  They both completely take over the living room with lights and equipment. I feel like a spare part. But, eventually, after rearranging all the furniture, they have me posing with the handbags. They also take some pictures of Petal as she’s ‘adorable’, despite me having to continually wipe a slime trail of snot from her nose, and down as much tea as Constance can provide.

  Three exhausting hours later and they sweep out again.

  We all collapse onto the sofa. ‘That was fun.’ Like having your toenails pulled out or peeling off your own face with a spoon.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it, girl,’ Constance says. ‘I’m worn out just watching you.’ She pats my knee. ‘We miss you at the chippy.’

  ‘I miss you all too,’ I say honestly. ‘I’ll try to pop in more often.’

  We all cuddle up together until Constance says, ‘I’d better go now or I’ll be late and Phil will give me what for.’

  As if Phil ever gets cross with anyone.

  ‘We’ll walk you into town. Petal, get your shoes and coat on, some fresh air will do you good.’ Because Constance is here, she pretends she’s the model child and doesn’t protest at all.

  The day is crisp and bright. As we walk, my head whirrs as I think of all the things I need to do. We drop into the chip shop and get hugged to death by Jenny and Phil. Petal picks at some chips.

  We leave the welcoming warmth of the shop and swing back out into the cold. I take Petal’s hand in mine and she even manages to skip along beside me, clearly nowhere near as exhausted as I am by our photo shoot experience.

  We make our way back home and as we do, we walk down through the Market Place to Church Yard. The shops in this row are all tiny, olde-worlde and are half-timbered, black and white. The shops here are always busy. Good footfall, I think the proper term is. My eye is drawn to the For Let sign above one of the doors. It’s rare that one of these places becomes vacant. I stop abruptly and my daydreamy daughter walks straight into me.

  That’s what we need, I think. A shop. We have to move the business out of our home and into a shop where we can sell the bags and use it as our workshop too. Why didn’t I think of it before? Because we didn’t have the money before, of course. But surely there’s enough cash-flow coming in now that we could consider it? I wonder how much this place would cost. Could we do it? One thing’s for sure, this very afternoon, I’ll be ringing up to find out. I make a note of the estate agent’s name and number.

  Standing back, I admire the shopfront. My name would look very nice hanging above the door in bold, bright letters. Very nice, indeed.

  Chapter 37

  ‘This terrifies me,’ Olly says. He lugs another box out of the hired van and starts to climb the stairs.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ I assure him. ‘It has to be.’

  As it turns out, we have borrowed a stonking amount of money from the bank to fund this shop. It’s a figure that has more noughts on the end than I’m happy with. But what can I do? I want the business to expand and this is the only way.

  The rate we’re paying back every month is pretty frightening, too. On the plus side, we’ve secured this gorgeous, period shop in a prime location that is, surely, going to give the business an immense boost. As a happy bonus, the shop comes with a flat above it, so we’ve given up our rented house and are moving in here.

  Olly is crashing about, unhappily. I think the fact that we’re moving in the pouring rain doesn’t help. Everything looks better when the sun is shining, doesn’t it? This is an old, old building, Tudor, I think, and I just hope he doesn’t notice quite how wonky the floors are.

  ‘Every floor in here is wonky,’ he mutters.

  My husband bangs down another box. A little cloud of dust floats up.

  Frankly, it’s not just the floors. Everything else is wonky too.

  ‘But then everything is wonky,’ Olly complains.

  I decide to keep quiet.

  The flat has been used for nothing but storage for years and it’s in desperate need of a good clean. It’s also filling up quickly. There’s my handbag collection to accommodate and Olly’s records. I’ve no idea, yet, where they’ll all go. The downside of moving out of our house and into the flat is that it’s much more cramped here. In my defence, it did look slightly bigger when it was empty. Things do, don’t they? Now it’s got all our detritus piled high in it, I do wonder how on earth we’re going to fit.


  ‘This is a dump,’ Olly says, clearly picking up on my thoughts again. ‘A small dump.’

  ‘It’ll be fine.’ I have been saying this since eight o’clock this morning when we first opened our eyes and even I’m getting sick of hearing it. ‘At least we can separate work and home a bit now.’

  ‘How?’ Olly asks. ‘We live above the shop. Literally.’

  ‘But we have a separate living space and all the handbag related stuff will be downstairs out of the way. You won’t get a needle in your bottom every time you sit on the sofa.’

  Olly looks sceptical.

  ‘I promise.’ Then, ‘You have a nice little space to keep your scooter in the yard.’ His precious bloody scooter. Olly has already commandeered one of the small outhouses for that.

  ‘Its one saving grace,’ he concedes reluctantly.

  I sigh. ‘I know that it’s daunting—’

  ‘Daunting?’ He laughs. ‘That doesn’t come close to describing how I’m feeling about this.’ Olly looks round him. ‘We might be a handbag-free zone in this poky flat, but the overheads have rocketed, Nell. The bills that are coming in are monster.’

  ‘Don’t you want me to succeed?’

  ‘This is success?’ He runs his hand through his hair. ‘This just feels like debt and worry and stress. From where I stand, it feels as if we’re in a worse position that we were before.’

  I want to say that Tod is very supportive of this move, but every time I start a sentence with ‘Tod’, Olly just rolls his eyes and stops listening. A bit like Petal does when I tell her it’s bedtime. Mr Urban’s input into our lives has become something of an issue between us since the wedding/handbag/photo incident. I see Tod as someone who drives and encourages me. Olly sees him as meddling and interfering. But, to be honest, I don’t know how I would have done any of this without him. Tod came to the bank with me to help me get the loan. He did the same at the solicitors when I signed the contracts. Olly just hates doing this kind of thing. And I don’t think I could have managed it all alone.

  ‘I’ve gone from working in a chippy to having my own shop, designing my own handbags, in a short space of time.’

  ‘You’ve gone from having a decent paying job with no worries to being swamped with debt and up to your eyeballs in shit. You don’t own the shop, Nell. The bank does. Everything we earn goes to paying them off. And it will do for the fore-seeable future. Is that really what you want?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say softly. ‘It won’t always be like this. It’s a means to an end.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I just can’t see the fun in owning your own business.’

  ‘But you’re happy working in a pizza factory?’

  ‘You were once happy working in a chip shop. Can’t we get back to that?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ve seen what else is out there and I want more for us.’

  ‘Do you really want it for us, Nell?’ His face is bleak and I’ve never, ever, in all our time together seen him look so worried. ‘Or do you want it for you?’

  Chapter 38

  Olly swung out of their new place. He didn’t quite know what to call it: shop, flat, business premises? A combination of all three, he guessed. Whatever it was, it would be a long time before it felt like home. They’d been there for two weeks now and he still felt unsettled.

  Hands in pockets, he walked towards the bus stop. Catching the last one got him to the pizza factory in the nickiest-nick of time. Tonight, Hitchin was quiet. Not that it was particularly jumping any night of the week, he had to concede. Very few people were on the streets and the pubs were yet to turn out. It was a fine evening for some fresh air now that the nights were slightly warmer. Maybe things would get better soon. God, he hoped so. At the moment, all he could think of was that the numbers were racking up at an alarming rate and they all seemed to be going into the red column rather than the black one. If this was what business involved, then you could keep it.

  As he turned into Market Place he nearly bumped into a woman coming out of one of the shopping arcades in the centre.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ Olly said as he steered round her.

  ‘Watch where you’re going, plum,’ the woman snapped. When he looked up to apologise again, he saw that it was Jenny and that she was laughing at him.

  ‘All right, Olly?’ she said. ‘You were in a world of your own, mate.’

  ‘I was,’ he admitted. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No harm done. Off to work then?’

  ‘Yeah. You?’

  ‘Just finished,’ Jen said. She flicked her head back towards the chippy. ‘How are you getting on in your new place? It’s just round the corner, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’ll have to come by.’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to,’ Jen said. ‘But you know how it is.’

  ‘I’d better go,’ Olly said. ‘Got my bus to catch.’

  ‘I’ll walk down with you. If that’s OK?’

  Olly shrugged. Walking along with Jen might help take his mind off his troubles for ten minutes.

  She linked her arm through his. ‘How’s married life suiting you?’

  He could hardly tell his wife’s friend that they’d never argued so much since they’d tied the knot. Nell was turning into a person he didn’t know. Gone was the laid-back woman he’d spent the last decade with. She’d been replaced by someone who talked constantly about work, budgets, forecasts and flaming handbags. She didn’t even seem to have as much time for Petal these days, let alone him. ‘Oh, you know.’

  Jen whacked his arm. ‘Course I don’t. Doh! I’ve never been hitched.’

  He wanted to tell her that it was overrated, but that wasn’t strictly true. It wasn’t marriage itself that had him and Nell at each other’s throats. It was much more complicated than that.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he settled on. ‘Fine.’

  ‘You could sound a bit more bloody enthusiastic.’

  ‘Give me a break, Jen,’ he said. ‘We’ve been together for ten years. We’re not exactly in the first rush of love.’

  They were at the bus stop now and the bus was due in a few minutes.

  Jen turned and faced him. ‘She’s a lucky girl, that Nell. You tell her I said so. If she doesn’t appreciate you, then there are plenty of others who will.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m not such a catch, Jen.’

  ‘Go on with you.’ She nudged him. ‘I wouldn’t kick you out of bed for farting.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  The bus came into view.

  ‘At least I’ve put a smile on your face,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’ Everything seemed to revolve round work and he wondered whether that’s what they faced for the rest of their lives. He couldn’t even remember the last time he and Nell had enjoyed a night out together, just the two of them. Their wedding night had been a disaster as they’d turned their backs on each other due to that stupid photograph debacle. Perhaps that was still in the back of both of their minds. ‘I’m in need of a laugh.’

  Jen was suddenly serious. ‘Any time, Olly,’ she said. ‘I mean it. You only have to call me.’

  Now he was embarrassed. ‘Yeah. I’ll remember that.’

  ‘You do.’

  Thankfully, the bus pulled up next to them. ‘Bus,’ Olly said, pointing at it.

  ‘You’re hysterical,’ Jen chuckled. ‘Catch you soon, Olly.’

  ‘Yeah. Soon.’ He jumped on the bus.

  Jen stood on the pavement and waved at him as it pulled away.

  She looked lonely, he thought. Vulnerable even. And, something else he hadn’t noticed before, quite cute.

  Chapter 39

  It’s late. Olly’s just gone off to work. Petal has been fast asleep in bed, our bed, for hours. All attempts at keeping her in her own bed in the new flat have failed miserably. Other than that, she seems to have settled in quite well. More than I can say for Olly. He clearly hates it here and has done nothing but stomp round, muttering darkly since we moved in.

  I?
??m in the shop now, despite the hour. I’ve switched on Petal’s old baby monitor, although I’m sure I could hear her, anyway, if there was a problem. I’m not that far away and my child isn’t generally known for the quietness of her voice.

  We’re due to be up and running for business next week, but everything is still utter chaos at the moment. The front is to be open to the general public but, to be honest, this is just as important for me to have as a showroom that will enable me to display my handbags properly for any agents or journalists who want to come and see us. The room at the back will serve as an office and workroom. All in all, we’ll look more like a professional company than a seat-of-the-pants cottage industry. They can’t see how little is in my coffers. Right? What it does mean though is that I’ve given up the market stall on Saturdays and no longer have to subject my only child to hyperthermia every weekend. I suppose I could have paid someone else to stand there and freeze as it had turned into quite a lucrative pitch, but now that we’ve got a swanky shop, does having a market stall give out the right message for a woman who’s going places? I need to try to tidy everything up so that, hopefully, Olly will start to see why this is a good move, in spite of the expense, and stop being grumpy.

  I’ve freshened the whole place up with a coat of brilliant white emulsion and I’ve cut out some inspiring pop art pictures from glossy magazines and have hung them in cheap frames. I think it’s starting to look more like it belongs to me. Earlier in the week, I revamped some shelves that I bought on eBay painting them in what’s rapidly becoming my trademark pink. Now that they’re dry, I can arrange a display of handbags on them and I’m taking the few hours I have on my own before I fall into bed to do that. I fiddle and fuss and then stand back, admiring my efforts. Deep in thought, I jump out of my skin when there’s a knock on the window. Turning, I expect to give the finger to some drunks looking for a bit of amusement as they’re wandering home. Instead, I’m surprised to see Tod’s face pressed up against the glass, grinning. Smiling back, I go to open the door.