The Fat And The Thin Of It Page 19

it too hard as it lost contact with the wheel, and it shuddered and jumped about all over the place and almost unseated me.

  “Ohfuckfuckfuckfuck!” I shrieked as I shuddered and jumped with the clay until I managed to scoop it up. I sat down again and chucked the clay back at the wheel. It missed.

  “Celia! I cannot do this!” I whined.

  “Learn to love Mother’s child, Jill!” Celia advised in her sonic boom tone. “Unless you love Her child, the child will not behave!”

  “Shit.” I muttered.

  I thought of the three months up front that I’d paid for these bloody stupid classes and grabbed another lump with a huff.

  In April, I decided, I’d try needlepoint.

  I got home absolutely exhausted!

  All that clay chucking and scooping had given me a better work-out than my machine in the attic. I needed a cup of tea and at least two fags before I could think about anything else.

  I was fuming at Jackie as well. Why hadn’t she turned up for her class? Even though Bob was at home, she always found time for her pottery class; or at least that’s what she told me. I know I should have called her to tell her I was going, but I’d wanted it to be a surprise. Instead, I’d spent the morning fighting with Mother’s little mother-fucker and I’d lost each bloody round.

  Ouch! My back… tea, girl; come on, drag your arse to the kitchen.

  I dropped my handbag onto the kitchen table and left my coat hanging on the back of a chair and was almost at the kettle when the land-line rang. I hurriedly filled the kettle and answered it with a brisk and bright ‘hello’, in case it was Pam. I wanted to sound as perky and unworried as possible.

  “Jill? Hi, love! It’s me”

  “Hello, me.” I sighed. I’d honestly hoped it was Pam, and I was miffed at Jackie for leaving me in the lurch.

  Jackie giggled. “Whatcha doin’?”

  “Making tea,” I grumped. “You?”

  “Talking to a grumpy old bag on the phone. What’s got your goat?”

  “Why didn’t you go to your bloody pottery class this morning?” I griped.

  “How do you know I didn’t?” she quizzed.

  “Because I did bloody go!”

  I heard her drag in a breath of disbelief. “Go on!” she said.

  “I did, too.”

  “Why?” she asked, a dumb stupid question if ever there was one.

  “Because I needed a frigging oven to put a frigging pizza in and I thought a frigging kiln would do the trick!” Somehow, I could not use strong language in front of Jackie. She hadn’t sworn for years, even though she could swear a rugby league team under the table when she was younger.

  Now, a silent huff hung between us for a couple of seconds, so I answered correctly, even though I couldn’t avoid a huffy tone.

  “I went because I thought we could do something together and have a laugh, that’s why.”

  “Oh, sweetie! I’m sorry. I promise we’ll go together next week, okay?” she sounded patronising, but I let it go. “Actually, I called to see if you could come round to my place today.”

  “Ooh... dunno... let me check my agenda.”

  “Jill, I said I was sorry. Now, can you come round now? It’s important,”

  “What’s so important?” I asked. Her agenda was as crammed full of important stuff as mine was.

  “I’ll tell you when you get here. How about one? We could go for lunch to our little caff if you want. My treat.”

  “Ooh, you’re becoming the last of the big spenders, aren’t you?”

  Jackie sighed. “Are you coming or not, twat-arse?”

  The kettle had long boiled and I needed that fag. “Okay. No lunch, though. I’ve already got something prepared.” I lied and hung up. I didn’t need to have the full-blown lunch that Jackie liked as I was going to make a decent dinner.

  As I was waiting for the kettle to boil up again, the doorbell rang. Dammit! ‘It’s all go in housewife land’ I thought to myself as I went answer it.

  There was a young guy at the door who looked about thirteen, but he had to be older as he was wearing a uniform and there was a delivery van parked on my drive which he had to have driven. “Miss Gillian Carpenter?”

  Ooh, I liked being called ‘miss’; it made me feel young again. “That’s me.” I smiled.

  “Got a letter for you.” He put it out in front of him and then laid an e-pad on top. “Sign here, please.”

  I signed before reading who it was from, and when I saw Catwalk’s logo on the top of the envelope, my stomach knotted.

  I fiddled with the letter while the delivery boy drove away with mixed feelings of excitement and dread. I felt it, and it was quite flat, so not a letter bomb. Maybe a single page in there, maybe two, so not a huge list of things they wanted to sue me for.

  It wasn’t until I almost froze to death that I shut the front door and headed back to the kitchen. I put the kettle back onto boil and continued to fiddle with the letter – the letter – until I’d made my tea and took it and the letter into the conservatory, grabbing my handbag on the way.

  Once I’d found my cigarettes and had taken a good, long drag on a fag and a couple of sips of my tea, I mustered up the courage to open the letter.

  I put my reading glasses on, prised it open and unfolded a single sheet of paper. It was typed, short and concise, and Pam had signed the bottom, and I read it with such concentration that my vision blurred.

  Oh, good, glorious God.

  I sank back into the wicker chair and let go a huge, long sigh. A lump came to my throat and I couldn’t stop the tears coming to my eyes, so I let the crying rip. I cried for about two minutes, but then I felt I’d wept enough over that bunch of wankers.

  No charges, no suing: Pam had somehow persuaded that bitch to leave me alone, but I’d lost my severance pay.

  With everything I’d contributed to Catwalk they owed me much more than severance pay, but what the fuck; I’d never have to see anyone tied to Catwalk for the rest of my existence, and that thought made me feel as if my worst enemy had emigrated to Mars.

  I then remembered something.

  I went to the office and picked up the so-called ‘summons’ that Pam had shoved at me. I wanted to see if it really was a summons, or something they’d cooked up between them to make me suffer. I hadn’t had the guts to actually read it, and now looking at it, I could see that the envelope was blank; no Catwalk logo, so maybe…?

  Oh, what the fuck: who cares?

  I threw it into the waste paper bin beside the desk and left the office, leaving Catwalk and everything it represented to me along with it. I also decided that I’d get myself a new phone and dump the other after retrieving the numbers that were important to me; about a half dozen, I calculated.

  And, I tried on a trouser suit and it fitted! The day was going to end better than it had begun.

  Jackie

  I put the kettle on at five to one and set out two mugs and some tea biscuits I’d gone down to the local baker’s for after my bath. I loved the way tea biscuits dissolved in your mouth, leaving a crumbly, buttery aftertaste, and they washed down with tea a lot nicer than a rice cake. Even if Jill didn’t want lunch, I was sure she wouldn’t be able to resist a tea biscuit.

  As punctual as always, the doorbell rang dead on one.

  When I looked at Jill standing on the doorstep, I wished I’d put on a looser skirt and baggier jumper. As always, she was dressed impeccably and you would have thought she was on her way to a meeting with D&G rather than a cuppa with her mate, and I wondered if she’d gone to Celia’s class like that as well. The biggest slap in the esteem was her slimness: that hit me in the eye the hardest, as it always did when I’d been on a food-bender. It depressed me even more and I felt like forbidding her to enter until she’d gained a stone.

  She still looked hacked off about me not turning up to the class that morning, but I probed her anyway for an opinion on Celia and the class.

  She rolled her eyes. “Wha
t is it with that woman and Mother bloody Earth and the clay being Her child? What’s she on?”

  I smiled. “It’s her way to get you in line with working on the potter’s wheel. It’s a treacherous devil if you don’t give it respect.”

  She glared at me. “What are you on; the same as Celia?”

  I waved a dismissive hand and set her mug in front of her. “Tea biscuit?” I offered, although I knew she’d say ‘no’. She did, so I led the way to the conservatory and cracked a window to allow her smoke to filter out.

  “Oh, we usually sit in the kitchen and you make me suffer without a fag.” She remarked. “Thanks.” She plopped down on the wicker lounger and fished in her incredible-looking bag for her cigarettes.

  “Actually, I have an ulterior motive.” I began. “I need a favour from you, and it could take some time.”

  She lit up and inhaled, then said,” Okay,” through a cloud of smoke. “What’s up?”

  I grabbed the laptop and took it over to her. “I can’t seem to log on to our bank and I want to check what the monthly expenditures are, like gas, light, telephone and rates.” She was looking at me questioningly. “I want to work out how much it costs to run this house.” I told her.

  “Why? Can’t you ask Bob?” she asked. “Isn’t he here?”

  “Um, no. He had to leave a few days before the usual.” I answered quickly.

  She still wasn’t satisfied. “So, wait until he comes back. It isn’t urgent, is it?”

  “No.” I smiled, but I was fidgeting. I couldn’t think of what to say to get her to help me without actually telling her why.

  She looked at me sideways. “Jackie, what aren’t you telling