Best Laid Plans (11 page)

Amy laughed. ‘So? I think that’s rather sweet.’

‘Yes, of course it is. Tell me I’m being daft.’

‘You are not being daft. You are just upset, that’s all. As
for her having a baby, I don’t think she’s keen on that idea, Mum. If she was then she’d have had one by now.’

‘Do you think so?’ Christine asked wistfully, knowing she was right.

They were past the worst bit of the climb now as the path levelled out and they paused to take in the view of the village in the distance. Smoke from chimneys below billowed to join the fluff of the clouds and it looked very much as if there might be more snow.

‘I think your dad’s still smoking on the sly but what can I do about it?’ Christine said. ‘It really is up to him. Would you have a word? He might take some notice of you.’

‘I’ll try but in the end he’ll do what he wants.’

They were interrupted by a shout from above them. Momentarily, Frank and Mike were out of view but suddenly Mike appeared running and skidding down the slope.

‘It’s Dad,’ he cried as he neared them. ‘We have to get help. He’s collapsed.’

Amy whipped her mobile out. ‘Do we need an ambulance?’

‘Of course we need a bloody ambulance.’

‘Fuck. There’s no signal … can you get one on yours?’

‘Shit, no.’

Ignoring her children’s appalling language, Christine was already rushing along the path to where Frank was now sitting on the frozen ground. Her first thought was a ridiculous one; he was wearing the brand new overcoat she had bought him which would be ruined.

He was breathing and trying to smile. Together, somehow, they got him to his feet and managed to get him to a conveniently placed bench, a bench with a little plaque on it in memory of a local man who apparently often sat at this spot to study the view. There was a faint dusting of snow on the bench and Christine brushed at it with her glove before sitting down beside him.

‘What is it, Mum?’ Amy asked anxiously.

‘Don’t panic,’ she said, seeing the fear in her daughter’s eyes. ‘He’ll be fine.’

But, as she caught his gasp, the ashen face, the look in his eyes, she knew in her heart that this time he would not.

‘Hang on, Dad,’ Amy was saying soothingly. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

Helplessly, Christine looked round at the silent scene before them. She could see Mike who had hared along and was very nearly back at the stile. The phone call for help would be made in minutes. Amy was squeezed on the bench now on the other side of her father, holding his hand and offering consoling words. Sitting there looking up at the sky as the first flurry of a fresh snowfall drifted down, Christine’s anxiety was replaced by a sudden ridiculous and totally unfounded exasperation.

‘Oh for God’s sake, it’s so typical of him,’ she wailed, stamping her cold feet in the boots and slapping her gloved hands together in a vain attempt to find some warmth. ‘Would you believe it, today of all days?’

T
oday, for the first time this year there was some warmth in the air. Birdsong accompanied the traffic noise this morning, a perky happy sound that surely heralded the onset of spring.

Amy chose to walk through the little park to the bus stop just for the joy of it. As parks go it wasn’t great but the spring flowers, bless them, were not allowing the slightly grim surroundings to disturb them. They were out in abundance, a riot of blues and yellows, and her pace quickened as she headed along the path. She was wearing her work heels and making a clicking sound as she walked thinking that now that spring was approaching she needed to get some new clothes; a couple of lighter-weight suits and some paler tights, for she considered it unprofessional to go bare-legged to the office, but nor did she feel entirely comfortable wearing trousers for work. Spring brought out the best and the worst of the English and she had just caught a glimpse of the worst; a middle-aged man wearing a vest, shorts, black socks and sandals, his legs painfully pale. She could not avoid a passing horrified glance at him.

‘Good morning.’ A woman smiled at her in passing but then morning sunshine and the promise of a lovely day did that to people. It made them aware of others suddenly in a way that was not always apparent in the depths of winter. What a buttoned-up race we are, she thought, with 
our heads constantly bowed in the rain and wind. It had turned out to be a warmer than average winter but that had meant rain and dull miserable grey days, clear crisp cold ones in short supply.

Amy had felt guilty that she was not able to spend more time with her mother and with that in mind she had applied for an admin job in a Preston department store and had what she thought was a good second interview. She had not mentioned it yet to her mother because she did not want to get her hopes up.

Christmas Day and the following morning keeping vigil by her father’s bedside had been desperately difficult for everybody but somehow they all pulled together and got through it. It killed the romance with Brian, though; just when she had started to have hopes of him, just when she had started to envisage a lifetime together, just when she had started to dare to make plans and more importantly just when she needed him the most, he let her down. It often took a crisis for people to reveal their true selves, although her own take on it had been to lose all semblance of the business-like exterior she normally presented to the world and in its place she became a blubbering wreck. Monique, on the contrary, lost her default helpless look and became a surprising tower of strength. In fact, just briefly, as Monique offered her a comforting little cuddle she felt a surprising affection towards her that she had never before experienced.

‘Sorry, I can’t cope with all this,’ Brian had said as they walked down the hospital corridor late on Christmas Day. Her father, his condition having worsened, had been moved to a small high-intensity ward hooked up to machines whilst the doctors did their bit. Her mother was being looked after by Mike and Monique and Amy had felt the desperate need to escape for a while. Christmas or no Christmas, life and sometimes death went along just the same in this place.
There was a brightly decorated Christmas tree by the café and a surprising number of people milling around but as had just been proved, illness makes no allowance for special dates.

Her father had been brought in by ambulance and they had followed by car, hanging round for ages whilst he was processed and eventually being allowed up to the ward on the seventh floor.

‘Oh look, he’s got a lovely view,’ her mother said and they all nodded in agreement. The shock seemed to have deprived them of sensible conversation and on the journey in through treacherous roads covered in slushy snow they had talked a load of utter nonsense, none of which she could remember. Her father was now lying there quietly. On the way to hospital something had left him and Amy could not put her finger on what – it might have been hope. She was glad to escape the vigil for a while and in any case there were too many of them to sit round the bed; a nurse had kindly but firmly indicated as much.

‘I’m not good with hospitals,’ Brian went on, looking pale himself although she could only hazard a guess as to how she herself looked.

‘Neither am I,’ she said, the question answered as she caught a glimpse of herself in the hospital shop window. She looked a fright. Mike had rallied around and taken charge, dealing with everything, liaising with the medical staff and passing on the news gently to them in a way that surprised her. The doctor, a very nice woman, had instinctively looked to him, which at any other time would have irritated the pants off her.

Mike was her brother and as she had explained to Brian they hadn’t always got on but just now, as with Monique, she felt an overwhelming fondness for him, a sisterly love that comforted her. She tried to tell him that but was too embarrassed to say it. It was not enough, though, for she needed the support of Brian, too. She was scared, afraid
that her father was not going to make it and she needed this man beside her but she knew from his expression that he was going to desert her. It was just a question of when and she could not believe that he would be so crass as to do it now.

‘Cup of coffee or tea?’ he suggested nudging her towards the café. ‘You should eat something.’

She felt guilty at leaving her mother even if it was only for fifteen minutes but she needed the break and she sat down on an orange plastic chair as he went to get the coffee.

He came back with that and two mince pies. The coffee was scalding hot and the mince pies were cold, dusted with icing sugar.

‘Didn’t they offer to warm them up?’ she asked, a ridiculous question, for what the hell did it matter. They were inedible in any case but just now she would have been hard pressed to eat one of her mother’s delicious home-made ones. Her Christmas dinner was still sitting heavily in her stomach so, ignoring the mince pie, she took a tentative sip of the coffee.

‘I have things to do,’ Brian said, sipping his own and not even looking properly at her. He was wearing the sweater she had bought him, his leather jacket discarded over the back of the chair and she had a sudden desperate need to cuddle up to him, to be held firmly in his arms, to be told, true or not, that everything was going to be just fine. ‘If you don’t mind I’ll get myself back home. I feel a bit in the way here as if I’m intruding.’

He had no car but she did not bother to ask how he was going to get back.

‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘But if you walk out now you can forget about us.’

‘Oh come on, darling. It was just a bit of fun between us, you said that yourself,’ he said, his casual tone and his lack of respect for the situation infuriating her. ‘It’s not as if we are engaged or anything. In any case I’m in no position to
get married.’

‘Who said anything about getting married? I thought I made that quite clear when we started out.’

‘The ladies have been known to change their minds,’ he said. ‘And you can’t deny that your mother’s been looking at me and sizing me up as a potential husband for you.’

‘She has not,’ she retorted and it was true because her mother had behaved remarkably well as far as that was concerned although she had no doubt been pinning her hopes on a tête-à-tête with Brian at some stage. ‘Why are you in no position to get married? Are you married already?’ she asked, finding herself not entirely surprised when he gave a small nod.

‘The divorce is going through.’

‘Children?’ she inquired briskly.

‘Two. Boy and girl.’

‘You bastard.’

A woman at another table glanced their way quickly, looking away again as she caught Amy’s eye.

She felt the tears she had been doing her best to hold back welling up; after all, she had cared about this man, in a way, although thinking back she had always been half-hearted about the relationship, so maybe it served her right. She had been trying to persuade herself, she realized, that this was it, that he would be as good a bet as anybody else and my God, wasn’t she being given a much needed escape route?

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he went on. ‘This is bloody awful. I was going to tell you after Christmas just in case you’d got it into your head that it was serious between us and then all this stuff happened.’

‘All this stuff?’ she echoed, voice rising. ‘For heaven’s sake, Brian, my father is dying.’

‘No he’s not. He’ll recover, you’ll see. They can do wonders with drugs and therapy and the like. Heart problems are not what they used to be.’

‘And since when have you been an expert?’ She shook her head, watching a group of people flooding through the entrance door looking very worried. She heard one of them ask for A&E and thought to herself that there was another family whose Christmas had been cocked up, not just now but forever.

‘I’m no expert and I’m only trying to cheer you up,’ he said and she gave an apologetic nod. ‘I’m sorry, Amy, but I can’t take on any more problems. I have enough of my own. My wife’s being difficult. She’s trying to take me for all she can get.’

‘Well, forgive me for not caring. You might have told me about the children.’

‘I was going to.’ His expression was fleetingly shamefaced and just for the merest second she felt a little sorry for him but that quickly slipped by. She had been a fool and warning bells should have sounded when he was so cagey about his private life. She had, she saw, just been a convenient lay for him. He had probably seen her as a single woman desperate for sex and that thought depressed her, for hadn’t she used him, too? For the last five years she had been the one on her own at Christmas; Mum and Dad, Mike and Monique and her; five settings at table when six would be a much more comfortable arrangement.

She had brought Brian along simply to show them that she was capable of having a boyfriend, partner, whatever, that she was not all business.

‘No hard feelings?’ He was anxious to leave and she remembered now that, during their frantic dash to the hospital she had thought it strange that he had turned up with his bag packed. He picked up that bag now and shrugged himself into the jacket. ‘Look, I hope it works out. I hope he’s okay.’

‘Just go,’ she told him wearily.

And he did just that.

He did not even look back.

And it was the following day, at lunchtime, that her father lost his fight for life.

Daniel understood when she phoned to tell him the news, telling her to take as much time off as she needed to. The Christmas panic was over and he and Janet would cope with whatever the New Year sales had to throw at them. It was almost too late anyway; they could do nothing more, for the Christmas figures were already written in stone.

In the event she got herself back to work as soon as possible following the funeral. Her mother had insisted and although it was a bit of a trek she did the journey back home every weekend in the early days until she felt her mother was recovering from what had been a terrible shock. On her first day back, Janet hugged her, tears in her eyes, asking if she was quite sure she was ready to come back. Daniel, more reserved, had simply nodded his sympathy and said it was good to see her.

Now, three months on, things were moving and Daniel was leaving that afternoon. He had requested a low-key goodbye but he wasn’t getting away with that; there was to be a buffet in the boardroom for senior members of staff, most of whom would be glad to see the back of him. He had done exactly what had been asked of him and given the store a fighting chance. The Christmas figures had been analyzed and the downward trend had levelled out, which, considering the economic reality, was very satisfactory indeed.

Daniel was not taking up any of the job offers that had come his way. He was taking a risk, perhaps, in setting up his own retail consultancy business but he liked the idea of the freedom that would come with it. He could set up base wherever he liked. Amy was pleased for him, wished him well, of course, but it did leave her in a predicament if the Preston job failed to materialize. She was assured by Mr Armitage that there was a job for her in the Leeds
store but it would be a sideways move not a promotion as such and, worse, other people would see it as a demotion and she would be in danger of losing any respect she might have gained. Also, there was still a dribble of resentment at who she was and what she had done because in the initial stages of Daniel’s assessment and restructuring a few jobs had, of necessity, been lost.

Coming on top of all her domestic worries, with her future in doubt it had been a depressing few months, although she could give up the rental on her flat with just a month’s notice so she was in a good position to move if she needed to.

She boarded the bus, managing to find a spare seat beside a large lady who was using the seat beside her as a receptacle for a heavily laden Sainsbury’s carrier bag. Forced to move it, she gave a tut of exasperation.

‘Sorry.’ Amy said with a smile that was not acknowledged. Ah well, you couldn’t expect the lovely spring morning to have the same effect on everybody. Amy made a gallant attempt to start up a conversation about the weather but it was met with silence during the short trip into the city centre. The lady wanted to get off at the stop before Amy’s, which entailed a great deal of fussing about, the lady giving her an annoyed look as she slipped past as if it was her fault.

This had the effect of chipping into her good mood and it was with a slightly heavier heart that she finally made it to the store. There was a buzz about the place now, a renewed sense of achievement and promise, largely due to Daniel, of course, and the optimism he had brought about. The January sales had been a qualified success and the windows were full of their spring designs.

‘Good morning.’ Janet beamed a welcome. ‘Isn’t it a lovely day?’

‘Lovely,’ she echoed, going quickly through to her office because she didn’t want to get caught up in yet another
post-relationship conversation about Brian. Janet was behaving like a dog with a bone where Brian was concerned. She had given Janet the barest facts and she was up in arms about it. She seemed to be under the impression that Brian had meant more to her than he actually had, managing, astonishingly, to blame him for her father’s sudden death and she was treating Amy with such maternal concern that it was becoming suffocating. However you looked at it the brief fling had been a humiliating experience and she was in no mood for repeating it. She had behaved badly; never again would she take such a cavalier attitude to casual sex. Nor could she believe that she had actually come close to convincing herself that he was Mr Right when he had been at best Mr Maybe.