Summer With My Sister (32 page)

Oh my
God
, thought Polly, incredulous. She’d only gone and bloody got it.

Clare’s eyes were like stars and her mouth kept dropping into an O of amazement. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, scribbling some figures down in a daze. ‘And when would you need them by?’

Whoa. Polly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. No way! Her little sister – one of the suppliers for the new Langley’s hotel? Her little sister going into business with a national hotel chain, while Polly was stranded on the scrapheap? She felt sick with jealousy, right to the middle of her stomach. Oh . . .
bollocks
. This was so unfair.

‘Okay, fine,’ Clare stammered. ‘Of course. I’ll be in touch. Look forward to it, Kate. Thanks again, bye.’

She put the phone down, then screamed. ‘She loves the products, she thinks they’re a great fit with the Langley’s brand. It’s a YES!’

Despite her all-consuming, stabbing jealousy, Polly dredged up every last scrap of self-control and managed to throw her arms around her sister. With stupendous will power, she even managed some magnanimity. ‘That is AMAZING, Clare!’ she cried. ‘God, well done. You did it!’

Clare was laughing and then she was crying. ‘Fuck, this is mad,’ she said. ‘Seriously mad. I didn’t just imagine that, did I? She really did call? Shit!’ She clutched at her head. ‘And now I’ve got to produce three months’ supply of everything, plus she wants to meet me next week to talk about further options.’ She looked stricken. ‘What the hell have I just agreed to? I won’t be able to do it!’

‘Wow, three months’ supply – so we’re talking hundreds of soaps and bubble baths?’ Polly said, taken aback. It was a massive order, way beyond what they’d hoped for in their plans. ‘And you said you could deliver that? Whoa.’

‘I know.’ Clare’s face crumpled. ‘I’m never going to manage it, am I?’

No, probably not, Polly thought. But her leadership instincts came to the fore. ‘You
are
’ she told her sister. ‘And I will help you. Now sit down and tell me every single thing she said. Then we’ll start drawing up a plan of action.’

The following morning Polly woke feeling bleary-eyed and thoughtful. Clare had invited their parents and her friends over the night before, and she’d asked them all to muck in with her new venture. The magnitude of what she’d signed up to was obviously beginning to sink in, especially when Polly pointed out that suppliers would need paying in advance and there might be a cashflow situation. It was all very well snipping bits of lavender out of the garden when she was making a few tubes of hand cream for her mates, but when she was being asked to make
nine hundred
mini bottles of shampoo and bubble bath and nine hundred bars of soap . . . Well, it didn’t take a genius to realize that it was all going to add up to one long mutha of a shopping list. An expensive mutha of a shopping list at that.

Talking about costs up front had sobered Clare right up. In fact she had changed the subject pretty quickly, Polly had noticed, skimming over the details as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to confront them head-on. The problem was, there
was
no money to spend on supplies. Clare was skint, she was always going on about how much Steve owed her, in between stressing out about not being able to afford new school shoes for the children or the gas bill.

Despite her somewhat ungracious feelings towards Clare’s career, Polly did genuinely wish she could help out financially. When she thought of the piles of money she’d squandered over the last few years – stupid money on stupid things that meant absolutely zilch to her now – she could have kicked herself for not squirrelling more of it away, for not allowing herself a buffer of savings. All those times she’d lavished money on so-called friends (so-called friends she hadn’t heard a peep from since she left London, incidentally) –
Oh, this one’s on me. My round – no, I insist!
– and as a result it meant she couldn’t do the same for her skint, scrabbling-for-coins sister now, when she really needed help. Even if Vince rang back that day and said that someone had offered the full asking price on her flat, the money would take weeks to come through, of course, with the surveys and whole legal shoobydoo of the property purchase process.

It had made her feel pretty lame. Pretty shallow. And boy, hadn’t she felt the weight of everyone’s expectations last night when the subject of money came up. Her parents had both looked straight at her, obviously waiting for her to pipe up that she’d cover Clare’s costs, no problem. But she hadn’t been able to say any such thing, which had made her feel such a miserly cow. Her ears had burned after they’d gone, and she was sure it was because her parents and Clare’s friends were bitching about what a tightwad they thought she was, all the way down the road.

Her own sister, and she can’t even put her hand in her pocket!

I thought she was meant to be loaded as well
.

Always the rich ones who are the stingiest, isn’t it? Typical
.

It was no good. She was going to have to pull her finger out and make some kind of contribution to this Langley’s endeavour. She
had
to, otherwise she’d be hounded out of the village by Clare’s angry mates, brandishing flaming torches as they ran.

And so, with a heavy heart and a dragging reluctance in her step, Polly headed out that morning, well aware that what she was about to do marked an all-time low in her career. She’d called Vince in the hope that he’d had a better offer on the flat, but he hadn’t heard anything yet. She’d double-checked her last remaining shares and bonds before she came out, just in case they were miraculously on the up and she could cash some in, but no; they were little more than worthless right now. Another gigantic waste of money. Another humongous cock-up in Polly Johnson’s laughable personal financial management. For a so-called risk expert, the risks she’d taken with her own money hadn’t exactly paid off.

It was crushing how dire things had become. She never would have believed it six months ago, but yes, she was actually walking towards the King’s Arms at eleven o’clock in the morning. And yes, in all seriousness she was fully intending to swallow her pride and ask about that cleaning job. Although when she did venture inside, blinking in the gloomy half-light, she very nearly lost her bottle and asked for a large glass of Chardonnay to swallow instead.

Dutch courage. She’d never been more in need of it.

The landlord looked surprised to see her walking in, bang on the stroke of eleven. They’d only just opened and he was poring over the sports pages of the
Mail
, which he’d propped against the beer pumps, with a steaming cup of coffee by his side. She felt as if she was interrupting something.

‘Hi,’ she said, clearing her throat awkwardly. ‘Are you the landlord here?’

‘I certainly am,’ he replied, eyeing her. He was burly and short-necked, looked as if he’d once been a rugby player with his broken nose and solid arms. He turned the page of his newspaper, still gazing at her. ‘Who wants to know?’

She swallowed. Could she really go through with this? Had she truly sunk to this new low?

Then she remembered the disapproving looks exchanged between Clare’s friends last night, the surprised disappointment in her parents’ eyes when she hadn’t volunteered a cash injection for the fledgling business. ‘Um . . . I’m Polly. Clare Berry’s sister. Karen and Graham’s daughter.’

‘Ah.’ His interest piqued, he stood up a little straighter, newspaper forgotten. ‘The high-flier returns.’

She hesitated.
The high-flier crash-lands and wrecks the plane, more
like
. ‘Um . . . something like that,’ she said. ‘Only . . . well . . .’ Oh God, this was excruciating. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

He leaned forward and tapped his nose. ‘A pub landlord has many secrets,’ he assured her.

She made a split-second decision. He looked trustworthy enough, she supposed. A decent bloke. It was a risk she’d have to take. Another one.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to promise not to tell my mum and dad, right? Or anyone else. Seriously. But I’ve kind of fallen on . . . hard times.’ She swallowed again. It was like a confessional. ‘And I was wondering if the cleaning job here was still free?’

Chapter Eighteen

Over the next few weeks Clare attempted to take control of her new business and get things rolling. Karen and Graham lent her five hundred pounds so that she could put in an initial order of ingredients and, with clammy hands and a gnawing terror inside, she applied for a bank loan of another two thousand pounds. Polly had done the sums and assured her that she would be able to pay it all straight back, plus the interest, once she’d delivered her first order to Langley’s. (If they approved it, of course. Clare was not even
going
there with thoughts of failing their quality-control tests.) She’d met Kate again at the hotel and had shakily co-signed a purchase-order agreement, binding her to deliver three months’ supply by the last week in August – eight weeks away. If the hotel and their customers were satisfied with the products, Kate said they would then extend the contract, after which time either side could renegotiate terms.

‘We’re so proud of you,’ Karen had said tearfully, when Clare had showed her the contract the Sunday after her meeting. She, Polly and the children had gone over for a barbecue, and Karen had splashed out on Prosecco for all the grown-ups, and lemonade for the children.

Her dad was at the barbecue, merrily charring the sausages, and raised his tongs at her in a salute. ‘Two businesswomen in one family,’ he’d cried. ‘Thank goodness you both inherited your old dad’s brains, eh?’

Even Polly had been nice about Clare’s bit of success. Complimentary, no less. ‘This is going to be amazing, Clare,’ she’d said, with what sounded suspiciously like genuine warmth in her voice. ‘Well done. And if it all goes to plan, you’ll be quids in. You can take the kids on an awesome holiday when the dust has settled.’

If
it all went to plan. For such a small word, the ‘if’ carried an almighty weight. Clare still wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to manage to pull this off, and was already having sleepless nights with worry. But the thought of an awesome holiday was a sweetener, at least. She, Leila and Alex had endured a week’s camping in Dorset last year, where the rain had sheeted down relentlessly. They’d spent more money on drying clothes and sleeping bags in the campsite launderette than they had on suncream or ice lollies. The word ‘awesome’ hadn’t really been appropriate.

Whereas the idea of jetting away somewhere hot, lounging on a beach, feeling sunshine on her skin again . . . Well, that definitely worked as a carrot on a stick.

A routine developed. She worked her hours at the surgery as usual, cooked dinner and looked after the children, then once they were in bed at eight, began work all over again in the kitchen, with Polly as her assistant. The bottles and soap moulds she’d ordered had arrived, and if the two of them really went flat out, they could make up two batches of bubble-bath mixture – fifty small bottles’ worth – and a batch of twenty soaps, which had to be left to harden overnight. Lydia, Debbie’s eldest, who had just finished her A-levels, came along to help when she could and proved to be a bit of a star in the production process. ‘I won’t be able to pay you until I’m paid myself for the order,’ Clare had said, wringing her hands. Luckily Lydia had been sanguine about the situation. ‘No worries,’ she’d replied. ‘It’s my uni fund. Stops me spending it before I’ve left home, I suppose.’