Chapter 6
Just before Bonnie pulled into the estate, she rang Valerie’s home on her mobile. Valerie was the only person she socialised with these days. One by one, over the years, all the girls who had been her friends had fallen away from her life for various reasons, but Valerie remained firm. It wasn’t the deep sort of friendship where each was laid open to the other. Valerie had always played her cards close to her chest and Bonnie had never told her how unhappy she was in her marriage, though she suspected that Valerie had picked up on that. Theirs was a friendship based on cups of tea and a slice of cake or a scone and nice banter, a respite from whatever problems were demanding their attentions in the background. It was the pleasant froth that rode above the cold, dark waters below. Valerie was the same age that her mother would have been had she not been felled by a ninety-year-old driver who should never have been on the road.
‘Bonnie, how good to hear from you,’ said Valerie in her lovely, rich, plummy voice. ‘How are you, dear?’
‘I’m fine. But I rang to tell you that I’m not working for Ken Grimshaw any more.’
There was a telling sniff on the other end of the line. ‘I’ve seen that coming for some time. Did you walk out or did he find some way to sack you?’
‘He sacked me,’ said Bonnie, adding quickly, ‘but I walked straight into another job. Do you know there’s a new shop up Spring Hill? The Pot of Gold?’
Valerie was disappointingly nonchalant in her response. ‘I’d heard, yes. It’s on the square that the Irish guy built, isn’t it? Jack went up to do a recce a few weeks ago but he said that the shop was dead and wouldn’t last the year out.’
‘Stickalampinit and Starstruck are in there. Oh, Valerie it’s the most beautiful place and yes, it is a lot emptier than it should be, but it won’t be if a few more dealers move in and take a chance. There’s nowhere as good for miles.’
‘Are you asking me to go up and have a look for myself ?’ asked Valerie, with amusement dancing in her voice.
‘You wouldn’t want to see me out of a job, would you?’ replied Bonnie, smiling.
‘Okay, I’ll go and get a feel for the place,’ Valerie said.
‘There’s a lovely little tearoom next door as well – we could pop in for a cake,’ said Bonnie.
‘I’ll have a look tomorrow. When do you start working there?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Perfect. Well, I’ll see you then,’ said Valerie.
Bonnie clicked off the phone and wished she could fast-forward to the morning. In fact she had wished for years that she could fast-forward at the end of every working day to the beginning of the next.
*
Stephen was in the front room reading a broadsheet when Bonnie walked into the house with a bag of shopping. His eyes instinctively dropped to what she was carrying, as she knew they would.
‘Did we need any comestibles?’ he asked, though it was a rhetorical question. He had an inbuilt detector for knowing exactly when they’d run out of milk or sugar or flour.
‘No, we didn’t. I just felt like getting a few extra bits,’ she said and steeled herself for his reaction to her next words. ‘To celebrate my new job.’
Stephen’s eyebrows lifted so high that they almost got entangled in his still-thick, steel-grey hairline.
‘New job? What new job? What are you talking about, Bonita?’
It wasn’t necessary to give him all the details, so she left out what he didn’t need to hear, and added a few small fibs.
‘I’ve not been happy at Grimshaw’s since Harry died, you know that.’
‘Yes, you have commented upon it on more than one occasion . . .’
‘So when I heard that a new antiques centre had opened up, I wrote to them and asked if there were any positions available. There weren’t but they kept my letter on file and rang me today. They wanted someone to start immediately.’
‘Don’t you have a notice period to work?’
‘As soon as I said I was leaving, Ken told me to go.’
She waited for the money question to raise its ugly head, which of course it did.
‘I presume he paid you severance pay then.’
‘Ken Grimshaw? I think I might have to write that off.’
Stephen rattled his paper, as a display of his outrage. ‘Then I expect you’re going to see the small claims court about that.’
‘No, Stephen,’ she replied. ‘I would really rather just forget the whole thing. It would be more trouble than it was worth because he will lie and I’ll end up with nothing.’
Stephen humphed. ‘Money does not grow on trees, Bonita.’
‘I’m well aware it doesn’t grow on trees, Stephen.’ Bonnie tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice but traces of it seeped out in hissing sibilance. ‘I don’t think Ken will be in business for much longer anyway, so I think all things considered, I’ve made a wise move.’
He sighed impatiently. ‘Well, we’ll have to economise for a month or so, I suppose,’ he said, returning to the business page. ‘I just hope you appreciate the tolerance with which I am viewing your rashness, Bonita.’
Bonnie didn’t know if she wanted to scream more than she wanted to laugh. They had no mortgage on the house, Stephen had a good salary from his job in the council, with the prospect of a huge pension to come. They didn’t go out for meals – or anywhere else for that matter, they didn’t drive around in his and hers Ferraris or blow a fortune on drugs, drink and gambling. Plus his mother had left them a considerable sum, she supposed. Bonnie had no idea how much they had in their savings account because Stephen said she didn’t need to know. Expenditure such as new white goods or furnishings, or car repairs, came from the fund, after a lot of deliberation and price-haggling on Stephen’s part, but Bonnie had no direct access to it. Stephen held the purse-strings, and he held them with an iron fist with a five-lever mortice lock on them.
What she did know was that there must have been enough funds in there to keep them both comfortable for the rest of their lives even if neither of them worked again. The real problem was that Stephen did not adjust to any sort of change very well. And he was getting worse with every passing year. God forbid that she brought in Heinz beans instead of the shop-brand ones or the velvety loo rolls of Labrador puppies instead of the cheaper variety. Such subversion could cause Stephen to have an aneurysm.
‘I’ll get on with tea,’ said Bonnie. They had pasta on Thursdays. Pasta Bolognese. They always had bloody, sodding pasta on Thursdays.