Best Laid Plans (15 page)

T
he way Frank had talked the business up at commercial events you would be forgiven for thinking that they had a staff of more than a thousand when the reality was that, although they were well up the ladder from the ‘man-with-van’ set-up, they were not yet in the class of the big-timers in the removal business. The problem was that they had to be damned sure they had a full book before they started on any expansion plans and so they operated on a tight turn-around schedule, content with the number of vans, large and small, that were parked in their yard.

Their full-time staff had mostly been with them for years but just when they needed to consolidate and take stock now that Frank was gone they were about to lose one of the full-time employees. Christine was annoyed because you would think that Shirley would have the sensitivity not to leave them in the lurch at such a difficult time. She was one of those people who had over the years developed her own way of dealing with things, which for her worked very well but the system left the rest of them completely bewildered. Christine had intended to have a serious talk to her about all this so, following Shirley’s letter of resignation, she was at least saved that bother.

‘I was going to hand in my notice straight after Christmas, Mrs Fletcher,’ Shirley said, visibly pale after giving the news. ‘And because of what happened I’ve hung on a bit but
I can’t wait any longer, I’m afraid. Jerry needs me to help out at the caravan site; I’m moving into the house there and it’s just not on to be commuting every day.’

It was not that far and easily commutable but Christine took the point that she was trying her best to make excuses and if that was the case then there was nothing more to be said.

‘You will be missed,’ she said, seeing the sadness in the other woman’s eyes. She realized that she had really cared for Frank, although she was going to draw a line under that and would not dream of asking her any personal questions. Jerry was her long-suffering partner and she was making the best of things.

‘You’ll manage, Mrs Fletcher. You’ve worked here and you know the ropes. It’s not rocket science. It’s all fairly straightforward – answering the phone, booking appointments and keeping a check on the diary and chasing up accounts, of course. Then there’s the storage facility. That has to be checked regularly and the vans have to—’

‘Yes I do know how everything works,’ Christine interrupted with a small smile. ‘I’ll sit down with you tomorrow and we can go through your system,’ she added pointedly. ‘Mike has some new ideas he wants to try out but as you know he’ll be leaving us soon so I suppose I’ll take over until we can get a new manager appointed.’

‘It will give you something to think about,’ Shirley said. ‘They say that when you lose somebody suddenly like you lost Mr Fletcher, it helps to keep busy. What you don’t want to be doing is sitting around twiddling your thumbs. He thought the world of you, did Mr Fletcher and he often told me that.’

‘Did he?’ She was surprised and suspicious at the same time. She looked round the office and suddenly realized that it was looking the worse for wear. They did most of the bookings over the phone but people did sometimes pop in to check their nearby storage area, which meant they came
into this office and the first impression mattered. Shirley had papers scattered all over the place, a lot of stuff was sitting on the floor and there was a battered tray full of mugs beside a kettle that had seen better days. All in all it looked grubby and that was enough to put people off. How had she not noticed how awful it looked?

Mike thought they ought to send flyers out to student accommodation offering an additional cheap ‘man-with-van’ type service because students only had bits of furniture and stuff. They had always steered away from minor moves like that in the past but if it kept a couple of the smaller vans in business then why not? Mike also thought they should be targeting commercial moves more because that, too, was something they had always shied away from. He wanted to appoint a project manager to deal specifically with this area, for relocating a commercial business was quite different from a domestic move. They needed somebody to organize the dismantling and reassembling of office furniture and to do it at the weekend to minimize disruption and to offer guarantees in the transfer of sensitive office equipment. Stealth and efficiency was the name of the game there, which was why Frank had considered it to be more trouble than it was worth.

Mike thought they ought to update the tired website, make it more attractive and accessible and Mike thought….

Mike
thought.

Mike should have been putting these ideas of his forward to his father when he was still alive, for that’s what he had been willing him to do and it saddened her that their son was so cowed by his father that he could not voice these thoughts of his, some of which had serious commercial viability.

Christine still could not get hold of Monique and hoped she was all right. She stopped by the house on River Terrace on her way home from the office, letting herself in with a
key and dumping the shopping in the kitchen. Mike was not brilliant at cooking and she had offered to prepare his meals for him whilst Monique was away.

She would do anything to avoid going back to Snape House and the empty rooms. It was strange because she had been alone there most of the time even when Frank was alive but now for the first time the sheer size of the place was overwhelming to her. She really was rattling around like a pea in a drum and before long when Mike was gone to France it would be even worse.

It was early days, everybody kept reminding her of that, and the ladies of the village and the church ladies had been particularly kind in turning up with food offerings as if by losing Frank she had lost the ability to cook. Flowers, too, which she much appreciated and, glad of their company, she would drag them in off the doorstep and make coffee and sit them down for a chat hoping they would not set her off with their tear-filled eyes.

She was, she was told, bearing up well.

In the kitchen at River Terrace, she got to work preparing a chicken casserole and an apple pie for herself and her son. Working in another woman’s kitchen was not easy, not only because you had no idea where anything was but also because she was not used to a gas oven and was a bit uncertain of cooking times.

Monique had some lovely rustic pots, she thought, bending down and searching through the cupboards and as she straightened she looked at the big framed poster on the wall. Monique had had that poster for a long time so it was pure coincidence but Christine imagined that the kitchen at Monique’s French cottage would look just like the one in the poster with the back door open and the sunlight pouring through. A solid table sat in the middle of the poster kitchen; on it was a selection of French produce, shiny green apples and cheese and a baguette. It looked as if the owner had suddenly popped out, for there was a
tantalizing glimpse through the open door of a flower-filled garden. It was all a little different in reality as she swivelled round from looking at the poster to gaze out of the kitchen window. There were few flowers in Mike and Monique’s tiny rear garden as they had paved it with grey and pink slabs, putting a table and chairs out there although you could count the days last summer when the weather had been good enough to eat outside on one hand.

Putting the last of the ingredients in the casserole, Christine washed her hands and dried them, wondering where Monique was and what she was doing. Perhaps Mike had had some luck reaching her but a worry caught at her that maybe something was wrong. Monique was an attractive young woman, travelling alone and there were some very strange people about. She should have gone with her but the offer was never made and she hadn’t liked to push it forward.

Mike was going to try ringing the French aunt this evening if he still could not get hold of his wife; he did not seem unduly concerned but then when it came to worrying, Christine knew she was in a class of her own. She had worried herself sick after Frank’s first illness and by God, she had been right to do so.

The phone in the hall rang as she was peeling apples for the pie – English Bramley apples, of course – and she hastily wiped her hands on her apron and hurried to answer it.

‘Hello, darling …’ a man said before she could say a word and then after the briefest pause. ‘Hello …?’

‘Who is this?’ she asked, tempted to hang up but giving him the benefit of the doubt, for he might have made a genuine mistake. ‘Do you have the right number?’

‘Obviously not.’ There was the smallest of laughs. ‘I do apologize.’

‘That’s all right,’ she said, warming a little because he did have a lovely voice.

However, the call unsettled her. For instance, he had
not seemed particularly surprised and had not asked what the number was, nor had he said what number he meant to ring as she usually did if she inadvertently misdialled. Curious, she tapped in 1471 and a number came through, a local number, an easy to remember number. How could she find out who that was and why on earth would she want to anyway? It was simply a wrong number and she must not read any more into it.

Thank God Mike had a message when he got back. It was a brief message via Aunt Sylvie to say that Monique had managed to contact her and was all right and was staying a while at a hotel in the village adjacent to the cottage. There was, as he had suspected, a problem with her mobile reception.

‘I’ve got the number of the hotel,’ he said, coming into the kitchen and sniffing appreciatively. ‘But I haven’t rung yet because I have to work out what I’m going to say in case they don’t speak English.’

‘They all speak English,’ she said confidently.

‘They do in the big hotels in Paris,’ he said, ‘but this is a one-horse town by the sound of it and they might not. In any case it’s a bit of a cheek to make that assumption, surely? How’s your French, Mum? Do you feel up to ringing and asking to speak to her? We can do it between us.’

‘All right, we can give it a try,’ Christine said, turning to smile at him. ‘How did you get on this afternoon? Do they want us to do the move?’

‘Yes and they were delighted with the figure I quoted although it was a rock-bottom price. I think we’ll get Ian to take charge of it. They have a reasonable amount of stuff and they want us to pack everything for them. The problem is access at the other end so if we use one of the big vans we’ll have to trundle things up a narrow track, which is going to take time, but I’ve allowed for that. They seem reasonably happy with the deal.’

She nodded; talking shop was oh so familiar and oddly comforting. Very few of their removals were completely hassle free – there was always some problem or other to deal with, often an unforeseen snag – but it was part and parcel of the business and very little fazed them. She reckoned their drivers were the best in the business. Some of their cockier drivers seemed to delight in achieving a scratch-free delivery up the narrowest of lanes and round the tightest of corners.

‘Any more interest in
your
house?’ she asked, conscious of the For Sale board that was nailed to the front wall. Ridiculously she hoped there was not. Her hope, deeply hidden, for it was entirely selfish, was that there would be no interest whatsoever, that the idea of moving to France would suddenly lose its momentum and, if they had a chance to take stock, they might realize that life here was not so bad after all.

‘Oh yes, I forgot to tell you. The agents did a viewing yesterday and apparently this couple are dead keen. They have nothing to sell so there’s no chain and it could go ahead pretty quickly.’

‘Great,’ she said, trying to drum up enthusiasm to match his, switching back to shop-talk because that topic was too painful. ‘We’ll need to get the interviews arranged for the new manager before Shirley goes because I’d like her to sit in on them – and you, of course.’

‘Three of us?’ He smiled wryly. ‘That’s a bit intense, isn’t it? I thought we’d agreed that Howard’s the man to step in. I have every confidence in him, Mum, and Dad liked him.’ His face puckered a little, not so anyone but a mother would notice.

‘You’re probably right but I think we must go through the motions,’ she said, checking on the casserole. She would go home later to the empty house and probably have a little private weep because, even though lately Frank had irritated the hell out of her, it was just awful without him.

After their meal they tried without success to get hold of Monique. Maybe Mike had been given the wrong number as the hotel phone was dead and there was no answer either from Aunt Sylvie’s number. Christine could tell that her own anxiety was beginning to transmit to Mike.

‘Should we call the police?’ she asked.

‘Good heavens, Mum, there’s no need for that. That’s called panicking. She said she was all right in her message to Sylvie.’

‘I think you should go over,’ she told him. ‘You can set off tomorrow and be there in no time.’

‘And there speaks someone who thinks we’re moving to the ends of the earth,’ he said, teasing her gently whilst considering the suggestion. ‘I might do that if I can get it organized. I’ve got the name of the hotel at least so I can find her. These bloody phones,’ he said, staring glumly at his mobile. ‘We’ve got so dependent on them that we’ve forgotten how hard it used to be to keep in touch with somebody when they were out of the country. I’m sure she’s fine, Mum,’ he added. ‘She can take care of herself. She’s stronger than she looks.’

Christine was unconvinced. Monique was naive, a rare quality these days, and she worried for her.

She left soon afterwards and drove back to Snape House. Daylight was just beginning to fade and the first thing she did was to switch on the radio and turn on as many lights as possible. She had moved into another bedroom, feeling that she could not sleep in the bed she and Frank had shared for so many years and so had made up the bed in the room Amy used, finding the blue colour scheme soothing. Amy had taken to ringing every night at precisely eight o’clock but tonight it was a little earlier.