39 Weeks (35 page)

For the next forty minutes or so we took the tools and the car manual for a walk, and I didn’t feel stupid at all . . yeah right.
But it did give me a chance to give it a test drive, which was surprisingly harder than you’d have thought. For one thing it had these swivel wheels for easy cornering, but the problem was the cornering was a bit too easy, so much so that it kept cornering all on its own without any prompting from me, and after I’d tipped the car manual out on what would have been its head Rob said I definitely needed more practise, and good job I hadn’t left it until there was a real baby sitting in it. So I made him have a go
and he was almost as bad at it as I was, which made me laugh at him for
a
change, and after that he wasn’t quite such a know-it-all.

I had a mental flash forward of how it might be after the baby arrives, just me, Rob, and Ella, I’d almost definitely decided on the name of Ella, going for walks in the park. I sighed at the mental image I was conjuring up, and Rob asked me what was up but of course I couldn’t tell him, then five minutes later he sighed and I wondered if he was having similar mental images, but in his case it was more likely to be
some bloke related thing, I mean guy’s don’t actually go gooey over walks in the park do they.

On Sunday, yesterday, we went back to our place The Willow Tree, but in the evening this time. Alright I know I couldn’t justifiably call it our place I mean we’d only been there once, and Rob had been there loads of times without me so the reality was it was hardly our place exactly, but hey if I was going to have it I wanted it all, and that included having somewhere I could call our place.

I was still all loved up and daydreaming this morning when I got to work, and started telling Shirley all about my brilliant weekend, when she hit me with her bombshell.

‘Them Steadman’s have give me my notice.’ She said verging on tears.

‘They’ve what!’ I said my voice rising a decibel or two in shock.

‘It wasn’t Norman it was that David that told me, he said as I was too old to do a proper job and they wanted to get the cleaning contracted or some such, I didn’t g
et that bit, but anyway it means
I
’m
going to have to leave. Christmas he said. I could carry on till Christmas then I had to go.
Come in early special this morning he did, so he could tell me.
’

‘I can’t believe it. What did you say?’

‘Well nothing I could say was there
.’

‘No I suppose. What will you do?’

‘Have to leave won’t I? Though God knows I’m not looking forward
to having to be
stuck indoors with him at home. My Malcolm’s b
een a proper sour puss he has this last year since he gave up work his-self, not that he wasn’t a bit that way anyway even before he retired, and since well
. .
there’s been no living with him, and the last thing I want is to have to spend any more time with him than I am at the moment.
But got no choice have I.’

‘But surely if they contract out to a cleaning company it’s going to cost them a lot more than it does to keep you on?’ I said more to myself really, just thinking out loud, I mean Shirley probably wouldn’t have a clue about something like that.

‘I dunno what it’s going to cost, but I spose you’re right. I reckon it was them two days I had off with my knee that did it, and you all had to fend for yourselves emptying your bins and that.’

‘But that was only for two days, and you couldn’t help being
poorly.’

‘Yeah but I spose a chap in them Steadman brothers position don’t want to be dusting his own desk and emptying his own bin of a night. Bit beneath him I dare say.’

‘I doubt if David Steadman had to empty his own bin or dust his own desk, I’m sure Clare would have done it for him. Anyway you’ve been here for years and you hardly ever have time off. It just doesn’t seem right. I’m going to ask Ted if they can actually do that, he’s the personnel manager he should know if anyone does.’

‘Now don’t you go worrying about me, you got your own stuff to be thinking about with a baby on the way. It’s nice of you Judy and I appreciate it, but well I spose I had to go sometime didn’t I? I just didn’t think it’d be like this, and this soon, and
specially
now they’ve
got the
place all done up
, it’s been a real treat cleaning
since they finished all that building
work
and everything.’

Poor old Shirley, she was almost
in tears, and I was pretty cho
ked up myself, I couldn’t even begin to imagine Fishers without Shirley here every morning. It was true of course that she wasn’t up to the job, everyone knew that, but some things are more important than whether you could do your job or not, or at least they should be. What they should have done was get someone
in
to help her.

As soon as Ted arrived I cornered him in his office and asked him what was going on. Turned out Ted was as devastated as I was, well almost. Apparently he’d had no say in it and David Steadman was determined to get a contract cleaning company in to do the job, but as yet he hadn’t decided which one
and was getting tenders.

I mulled
over Shirley’s bad news on and off all morning,
in-between
checking if we were going to meet this month’s cash targets, and badgering Phil
in marketing for
the capex
form
he was supposed to be
filling in for the new colour
printer he wanted. Then at lu
nch time while
I was
berating managers in general
and David Steadman in particular, with Doreen
, I had a bit of an epiphany. On the one hand the Steadman’s hadn’t decided on who the cleaning contractors were going to be, and on the other hand there was Shirley with years of experience and now jobless, and at least two of her daughters that I knew for a fact because Shirley had told me, were looking for work. So why didn’t Shirley and co put in a tender for the cleaning, I bet they could undercut anyone else, already having the inside track on what the job entailed.

She’d already gone home of course, so
while Martin was in a meeting with Grahame in the next office
I phoned her with my idea. Not surprisingly she said
she couldn’t do anything like that, wouldn’t know where to begin, and I said it would be easy. She um’d and
aah’d for a while, but I said ‘w
hat have you got to lose? Your daughters can do the actual cleaning, and there’d be cover if one was off sick or on holiday, it’d be perfect’. I offered to help with the paperwork side of things and that changed her mind. Seems it was the paperwork that was scaring her
the
most
. I told her to think about it this afternoon, and how much she thought it would cost to pay two cleaners, her daughters, for two or three hours a day plus all the cleaning materials, and that I’d come and see her straight after work.

I didn’t get home until half nine but with Shirley’
s input
I’d got a hand written rough copy of a tender,
that just needed
typing up and handing in to David Steadman in the morning.
Well actually I planned to brown envelope it and leave it in his pigeon hole, I figured if he was getting tenders anyway I didn’t need to hand it over personally, and anyway I thought it best if they didn’t know of my involvement at this stage, in fact they didn’t even need to know Shirley was involved, most people didn’t know her surname and I guessed David Steadman probably didn’t either so the name Mrs Ferrier would mean nothing
to him
.
I couldn’t see how it could fail.
 

2
nd
December – Week 26 + 5 Days

This morning as I was getting ready for work I felt
unquestionable
movement from Ella.
There was no possibility of dismissing it as my imagination this time, and she must have been having a right old wriggle because it went on for about twenty minutes or so, it wasn’t continuous movement more of a stop and start kind of thing, and whether I stood still or carried on getting dressed I could still feel a small foot or hand pressing on me, course I didn’t know for sure exactly which bit of her it was I mean for all I knew or could tell it was her elbow or a knee. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before, and I was spell bound.
Then just as I was getting used to the idea it stopped completely and she wouldn’t be coaxed into starting up again. I tried talking to her and rubbing my tummy, and even poking it gently, but she was having none of it.

I also had another symptom of my pregnant state this morning. My boobs were leaking. Only a small amount but there was definite
leakage going on. I went straight into panic mode thinking my time had come and the baby was arriving despite the fact that she wasn’t due for at least another three months. I mean all that movement, and now my breasts were produci
ng milk, what else could it be
?

I consulted the baby bibles
, and
regardless of
the ever ticking clock telling me I should be leaving for work
instead
I sat down at the table, bibles spread out before me, and scanned frantically for clues. Turned out I wasn’t going into the throes of labour just yet, and it wasn’t milk I
was producing it was colostru
m and was perfectly normal,
actually
a bit late if anything, but normal.
I breathed an internal sigh of relief, and then cursed a bit because I really didn’t want to be leaking colostrum all over the place, especially in public, and that meant I’d have to stuff my bra to avoid that happening. Like my boobs weren’t getting big enough, or uncomfortable enough, now I’d be padding them out making them look even bigger.
 

Panic over, I patted my stomach and cooed a bit to Ella as I folded some toilet roll to
line the inside of each bra cup. I
changed my top and
checked myself out in the mirror. It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought
it was going to be
I mean at least it was winter so I could cover up with a cardi or a jumper
,
if it had been mid-summer I’d be stuck in a tee shirt
and it’d be too hot to cover up
. Mm time to get a couple of bigger bra’s. I’d been putting it off for a few weeks
, reluctant to move into a bigger bra
size
even though my current one’s were strangling me and straining their little hearts out
,
because
as
everyone knows the bigger the bra the
more old lady and gormless it
look
s
, but I wasn’t going to be able to put it off any longer.

I was late for work anyway
by this time, but
everyone was getting used to me being off or late for one pregnant reason or another, so I stopped off in town on my way
,
and went straight to Marks. I wasn’t sure if I just needed bigger cups or bigger all over so I picked up a cou
ple of each option, and one called optimistically a minimiser bra, and one I just liked the look of it was so pretty crossing my fingers it’d be big enough,
and joined the queue for the changing rooms.

It’s the unwritten law in Marks & Sparks that no matter when you go there’s always a queue for the changing room, or maybe it is written down somewhere you know
as
part of their company policy or something,
‘
there shall always be at least two people waiting at any time or on any day to try something on, and those people already in a changing room shall take as long as they possibly can
’
. Anyway today all company policy’s where being fulfilled to the letter, so I waited.

When I finally got to the front of the queue and it was my turn I was only
allowed to take four of the bra’s in with me, and would have to shout for the other two when I was ready and swap them for two I’d already tried on. I really hate when you have to do that, but needs must. I opted for the minimiser, the pretty one, and one each of the bigger cup
size
and the bigger all over.

The minimiser made me look absolutely massive, we’re talking Jordan proportions here, and the manufacturers should probably be sued for trade descriptions or something
, so that was out. The pretty one only looked pretty on the hanger, on my body it was a complete travesty and I mourned the good old days when I could have worn pretty underwear like that, so that one was out too. The bigger cup size was no good either, even on the last hook it was tight and I got that awful bulge thing going on, you know when your bra’s so tight it cuts into you and your back bulges underneath and over the top
of it
. So now I was down to the sensible looking bigger all over one. That one I’m extremely sorry to say fitted just fine, but at least they had it in
two or three different
colours so I suppose it could have been worse.