What She Wants

Her mother gasped with rage and pulled her neat little Prada handbag from Ruby’s red-lipsticked grasp. The bag was smeared with base and lipstick and had obviously been sitting in a pool of brown sauce left by Opal’s earlier game.

‘It’s ruined,’ Betsey shrieked. ‘Three hundred pounds worth of handbag ruined!’

Hope patted her arm. ‘Oh well,’ she said benignly, ‘you’ve got to go with the flow when you’ve got kids, haven’t you, Betsey?’

Matt sang along to the children’s tape they played on the drive home. Millie and Toby sang along too, making Hope feel like old prune-face in the passenger seat because she wasn’t deliriously happy too.

‘Dan told me he’s dead jealous about what we’re doing,’ Matt confided as they pulled up outside their house.

‘Why doesn’t he give up his job for a year, then?’ Hope demanded. ‘Betsey wouldn’t stand for it, that’s why. She’d have heart failure if Dan suggested upping sticks for a year in the country.’

‘Betsey was very enthusiastic,’ Matt pointed out helpfully. ‘What was it she said: she loved rustic things.’

‘Betsey doesn’t know the first thing about living in the country and would hate it,’ Hope hissed. ‘Her idea of rustic is jam pots with gingham covers on them. She thinks the country will be like Bath with livestock and handsome farmers in Range Rovers thrown in.’

Matt annoyed Hope by laughing heartily. ‘Oh darling, you’re so funny sometimes,’ he said. ‘You’re the one who should be in advertising and not me.’

Proving that she wasn’t quite as thick-skinned as a rhinoceros, Betsey phoned Hope at work the next day and apologized for upsetting her.

‘I’d hate you to think I didn’t value your career. I didn’t mean to imply that my career was worth more than yours,’ Betsey said, while Mr Campbell, Hope’s boss, looked on disapprovingly. Personal phone calls were a no-no unless the person at the other end was about to drop dead and was phoning with details of where they’d hidden their last will and testament. Despite having his own office, Mr Campbell never received any personal phone calls. Yvonne and Denise, the other woman who worked on the counter, had decided that he was secretly gay and too scared to come out publicly, so he ruthlessly instructed his lovers not to phone.

Hope thought it was because Mr Campbell was very keen on rules and regulations and wouldn’t dream of asking his staff to follow a dictum he wouldn’t follow himself.

‘I think we should meet for lunch,’ Betsey was saying, blithely oblivious to the fact that Hope couldn’t really talk. ‘I’m working from home today and I’ve got my eye on these fabulous kitten heels in that new shoe shop near Pulteney Bridge and I feel today’s the day to splash out. Do you fancy a trip up there?’

‘Betsey, I can’t talk at work,’ whispered Hope anxiously.

Betsey commuted to London a couple of times a week to work in an office where making personal phone calls was part and parcel of the day. She didn’t understand Hope’s office environment.

‘Outside Accessorise at one, then?’ said Betsey.

‘Yes,’ Hope answered. Anything to get her off the phone before Mr Campbell self-combusted with disapproval.

The morning flew past, giving her little time to think. So it was only when Hope was belting out of the office door buttoning her coat, that she realized she wasn’t in the mood to go shopping for extravagant shoes. And that she wasn’t really in the mood for Betsey either.

She liked Betsey, had considered her her best friend, really, but there were days when she wondered was their friendship one of those which existed purely because their husbands were best friends and therefore, the four of them spent a lot of time together. After that infamous holiday in France which Dan and Matt had arranged one day at work without asking, she and Betsey had been great pals. Mind you, Hope thought, it hadn’t bothered Betsey to go on holiday with someone she barely knew. Quite happy to relax from noon on with a bottle of Burgundy and a paperback while the children splashed about in the toddlers’ pool, Betsey was very laid back about holiday companions. Hope always felt that nothing much upset her, except when somebody else got a better assignment in the women’s magazine she wrote for. She was great fun and an amusing friend. But, Hope wondered, with Dan and Matt out of the picture, would she and Betsey ever meet up to have lunch or to trail around the shops together? Was Betsey really her best friend, either?

No, she decided an hour later as she sprinted back to the office, trying to eat a Mars bar simultaneously because they hadn’t had time for lunch.

‘Did you buy anything?’ asked Yvonne as Hope slid into her seat behind the counter at one minute past two.

Hope shook her head. ‘Betsey was on a shoe shop trawl. We trekked round four shops and ended up buying the ones she’d tried on in the first shop. Pale blue leather and very dainty. Plus, we didn’t have time for a sandwich so I’ve just eaten a Mars bar,’ she added guiltily.

‘She’s a selfish cow, that Betsey,’ Yvonne remarked. ‘When she meets you for lunch, she knows she can swan off home and have lunch whenever she wants to but you daren’t have so much as a bag of crisps here.’

‘She just didn’t think,’ protested Hope, used to standing up for Betsey because Yvonne didn’t like her. They’d met once and it had been handbags at dawn. With her black curtain of hair and dancing green eyes, Yvonne was far too vampish for Betsey’s tastes. Plus, she was younger than Betsey. Yvonne hadn’t taken to Betsey much either, because she had a better job than Yvonne and kept boasting about it. Proof positive that trying to link up friends from different parts of your life didn’t work.

‘She just doesn’t care,’ Yvonne retorted. ‘She’s out for one person and that person is her. I bet you a tenner she’ll be the first one who’ll put her name down for a free holiday in Ireland with you. You wait and see, Madam Betsey will turn up with hubbie and kids, stay for a week and not lift a finger except to ask for more drink and another blanket for her bed.’

The thought had crossed Hope’s mind.

‘Well, if she’s so keen on the country, maybe we can do a swap and she can stay in the cottage while I live in her place back here,’ Hope remarked.

Yvonne shot her an inquisitive look.

‘You don’t want to go, do you?’

‘That obvious, huh?’ Hope stopped trying to look merry and let her face reveal how she felt: utterly depressed.

Yvonne’s bosom welled up with indignation like an enraged bullfrog. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? You can’t go, Hope,’ she said, ‘not if you don’t want to. You’d be mad.’

A cluster of tourists, just disgorged from a tour bus, swarmed into the building society before Hope could answer.

Hope, Yvonne and Denise expertly changed travellers’ cheques for the hordes and engaged in a bit of friendly chatter. When they’d all cleared out, one of Hope’s favourite customers, a sweet little old lady who wore a fox collar wrapped around her neck come rain, hail or shine, arrived to discuss how much money she should take out of her account to go on holiday.

‘Where are you going?’ Hope asked Mrs Payton.

The old lady’s dark eyes sparkled under her felt hat. ‘The Greek Islands,’ she said. ‘I’m going with a friend. I haven’t been there since the Fifties. We’re going to do the Oracle at Delphi first. Can’t wait.’

My god, I’m turning into a boring old cow, Hope told herself as she processed Mrs Payton’s savings book. This woman is eighty if she’s a day and she’s all fired up about a trip to Greece, while I’m only thirty-seven and I’m whinging about going the short trip to Ireland.

When she was gone, Yvonne was busy with some teenage boys, and then a stream of people kept coming into the office, all with complicated business. It was nearly closing time before they had a chance to talk. Denise was making tea in the cubby hole kitchen behind the photocopier because they’d been too busy to have their afternoon tea break.

‘Don’t go,’ said Yvonne.

‘It’s not that easy.’ Hope was fed up with the whole subject.

‘It is,’ asserted Yvonne. ‘Can you imagine what you’ll feel like when you’re there if you’re this depressed now? You’ll be down the doctor looking for tablets for your nerves like a shot.’

Hope laughed. ‘I think I need tablets for my nerves as it is,’ she joked.

Yvonne didn’t laugh. ‘Yeah and you’ll be on double strength ones when you’re dying of depression next month. Think about it, you’ll be away from your friends, your sister, everyone. It’s not fair to expect you to go along with this.’ Yvonne scowled. ‘Men can be right bastards, you know.’

‘It is only for a year,’ Hope said.

‘Hope, you’re the sort of person who wouldn’t expect someone to sit through a two-hour film you’d like in case they didn’t enjoy it. You never ask anyone for anything. Matt’s asked you to do this huge thing and you don’t want to go but you don’t want to say no either. There’s a fine line between keeping the peace and getting walked on, as my mother would say. And what are you going to do? You love working, even here, you’ll go out of your head with no job. Matt’s asking too much.’

Hope took her tea from Denise and thought of what Yvonne would say if she knew that Matt hadn’t really asked her anything: he’d told her, wheedled a bit, and had assumed she’d go along with it. She was so happy that he wasn’t having an affair, she’d said yes quicker than a hooker touting for business on a rainy night.

Yvonne would levitate with temper if she knew the truth. ‘My Freddie wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that,’ she’d say, and it was true. Freddie had to work hard to keep Yvonne. She was not the sort of person who got walked on. As far as Yvonne was concerned, if anyone was going to do any trampling over anyone else, she’d do it, thank you very much.

‘It’s what everyone dreams of, Yvonne,’ protested Hope. ‘Giving up the rat race to live in the country, spend quality time with the children and not work.’

‘Yeah right,’ said Yvonne grimly. ‘You and your winning the lottery dream. Except if you won the lottery and bought some palatial mansion down the road, you might not be working but you’d have the cash to do whatever you wanted and you’d be able to afford to have someone look after the kids if you wanted to get the chauffeur to drive you into town. You haven’t won the lottery, but I reckon Matt has.’

For the rest of the afternoon, Hope thought about leaving Witherspoon’s. She did love her job, Yvonne was right. She didn’t want to be some high flying executive like Sam but she enjoyed working, enjoyed having her own money and her independence, and liked meeting new people. Of course she adored the children, but surely she wasn’t a bad mother to want to combine loving them with a job?

Right on cue, the heavens opened as Hope ran, raincoatless, to her car after work. It was only a five-minute walk but by the time she wrenched the door of the Metro open and flung her handbag onto the passenger seat, she was soaked.