Ellie's Return (16 page)

He looked up at Claudia and told her that
Ellie had gone. Charlotte was still on the phone, he had almost forgotten. She
asked again if she could drop them off. Tom said thank you and gave her
Claudia’s address. Before she went he asked when she had left the shop. She
said it was just that morning, as she had another job.

“By the way, she said, I know you deal
with the property management, and there was a man in this morning, very
official, saying she would need to clear the premises?” Lola had gone ballistic,
so she was not going back there anyway but perhaps that was something he needed
to know?

Tom smiled.

“Oh yes”, he said, “that’s fine. I know
about that. I sent him.”

Twenty-Eight

Ellie had gone for a walk after leaving
Lola’s shop. She had been so struck by the fact that she was not coming back to
this place that she had suddenly started to feel quite sentimental about it,
and had ended walking the length of the high street, stopping to look around
the little gift shops as they opened, wanting to find something to give to Mara
on her return. She had been so desperate to come here and find Tom and see if
they could move on. Tom had not called her since the hotel, and she knew he was
not coming now. She didn’t want to ever see or hear from Lola again, and she
would sooner not hear from Claudia; she had not done anything wrong but she reminded
Ellie of a time she no longer wanted to remember, and a place where so much had
happened in her life and which she now wanted to say a quick and quiet goodbye
to. She felt an overwhelming sadness and she knew she would feel better once
she was back in what was for now the nearest thing to home, with her good
friend Mara who would listen and give her good advice, or help her to find her
way forward.

By the time she became conscious of the
hour she was running very late. Because she had come out so early she thought
that it was early still, and had made no effort to get back when she needed
to.
 
She would struggle to make it
to the airport even if she took a taxi from Claudia’s. She was near the train station
now, however, and the only way she could get to the airport on time was to
leave the car and take a train, then she would just make it on time to check
in. She knew it was wrong to abandon the car but she would not make it
otherwise and to be honest, she could do without the goodbyes with Claudia who
would probably be emotional or make things harder than they needed to be in
some way.
 
She would post the keys
back and if there was car park fine she would pay it, or perhaps Claudia could
get someone to break into the car for her and she could pay for any damage.

She would call Claudia from the airport
when it was too late to do anything else, so that would have to be that. It was
only when she went to check her phone and found all the missed calls from
Lola’s shop number that she realised that she could not find the keys, and
realised she must have lost them. Her long overdue boarding was finally
announced whilst she was still puzzling out where she had left the keys. She
thought she saw an image of Tom flash by again, and turning around to follow it,
remembered that he did not know what airport she was leaving from. She was
filled with sadness now. For three years she had hoped for reconciliation and
for three years she had failed to act while she hoped. Now she had acted but
too late, and Tom was no longer interested. Even as she knew that, she had sat
at the airport hoping he would turn up, when it was her fault that he did not
even know where she was. As she was turning her phone off, a call came from her
mother, but when she went to answer it the line was dead again.

Twenty-Nine

Lola was already frustrated with Tom when
she slammed the car door on him. She was not attempting to control her anger at
all, she was feeding it; asking herself why he could not just focus on things
that were important in the moment, rather than on less important things that
could be dealt with later. She told herself that as much of a miracle as it was
that he had ever managed to build up a multi million pound portfolio of
properties, a woman of her capabilities could have done so much more in the
time. Now that she had managed to wrest control of the company from him, things
were going to be moving at a much faster pace. She kept hearing about the bad
economy but she had managed to survive in it very well, simply by being a but
savvy, a bit pushy, and making a few personal sacrifices along the way to make
men think they were as important as they thought they were, at least for as
long as it mattered.

She had started to despise Tom for his
weakness in letting her push his buttons, and he might think that there was a
way out of his situation but there really was not, so he ought to just suck it
all up and realise that he was not equal to her. As for that bimbo, Ellie, she
hoped she never had to see her again but as she entered the little office of
her own shop, here she was. She remembered being taken aback by seeing Ellie
there, but also she recalled also that whatever Ellie had said she had given as
good back and she had meant what she said and she was glad she had done it.
 
If that was not bad enough, Charlotte had
then started jabbering at her about really needing to talk, just when the man
with the clipboard had walked in. Lola was already at the end of her tether
with being made to hurry her routine this morning, with the car not working,
with Tom’s incompetence in asking her irrelevant questions when he was driving
her here, and on top of that she had to deal with Ellie again and Charlotte was
jabbering at her when this man clearly needed to speak to her too.

Charlotte agreed to wait until the man had
spoken as she did want Lola’s full attention, and then she was glad she had
waited. The man was from the letting company, and he was surprised to see that
she was still thinking of opening the shop this morning because they were due
to start work here today measuring up the premises to make them ready for new
tenants.
 
At first Lola fobbed him
off as having made some sort of mistake, but he was not best pleased at being
fobbed off and his attitude moved from being an enquiring one through to being
quite impatient, and finally and inexorably to being completely intolerant of
her failure to acknowledge his importance, what with his clipboard and all.

Lola had mistaken his gentleness for
weakness, as was her way, and in doing so had lost the opportunity to appeal to
the man’s better nature. He in turn greatly reduced any charm he may have
exuded so far and became as officious as he could be. Lola had tried to assert
herself but even she was no match for a man with a clipboard whose authority
had been called into question. She then tried a spot of charm but he had not
picked up on that either, and eventually he was just looking at a space over
her head and talking at it, and it was impossible to cajole him in any way. Clearly
what he needed to say just needed to have been said, and how she chose to
respond to it, in fact whether she even took it in, was of lesser importance.
He told her that he had been informed by her former representative that she was
due to vacate the premises at the end of her initial term, having made no attempt
to renew or extend the leases, and that as such she would have to stop trading
immediately.

Lola told him that was ridiculous and told
Charlotte to find the paperwork, but Charlotte did nothing, and told Lola that
this was why she needed to speak to her, to tell her that she no longer worked
for her.
 
Lola started to go through
the filing cabinets but found only empty folders there, and could find nothing
on the computer. She assumed it was because she didn’t know where things were
filed, rather than because most of the hard drive was in e-heaven. She said she
would find out from her representative where the confusion was but he would
have to leave for now, as she had a lot on but she was sure this could all be
worked out. The official, still talking over her, told her she would need to
remove all stock, fixtures, fittings and furnishings. The tiled floor would
need to be made good, the chandelier taken down and category-five lighting
restored, the office partition removed, and everything handed back the way it
was initially signed for. Lola, in response, told him he was out of his mind. Who
did he think was going to pay for all this?

She now learnt that it was her obligation
to return the property in its original state.

“But it was ugly, and now look at it, its
beautiful! Do you really want me to tear this apart?”

Yes, he did.

“But it has cost tens of thousands. And it
would cost tens of thousands more to undo everything. Did you really want me to
do that?”

Yes, he did.

“And when do you want this to be done by?
It can’t be done for a couple of months, we need new premises, it will take
time, months probably. When do you want this to be done by?”

It should have been done by now. There will
be daily late charges for any delays, and she couldn’t trade any more so she
may as well get on with it.

Lola told him she was sure there was
something they could work out. She sent Charlotte out to get some coffees for
them and closed the office door. As Charlotte was leaving she reminded Lola
that she did not work for her anymore. Lola said they would talk about that
later, just to go and get the coffees and use a bit of common sense in a
crisis. As Charlotte left the office she lifted her key to head height and
dropped it onto the table, so that Lola could see her do it. As she dropped the
key, she saw the car key that Ellie had left and picked it up, Ellie had only
just left and would not want to come back in. She would try to call her from
the desk phone in the shop.
 

Lola called behind her to make sure the
shop door was closed so nobody could walk in. Lola closed the office door. She
sidled up to clipboard man, ran her hand up his chest and pushed herself up
against him. He was momentarily taken aback, as though he thought there was
some chance of having at least one good story to share with his mates for a
lifetime of clip boarding. She pushed him back him into a chair, saying to him
that there was always a way to work things out. As she did so, she started to
unbutton herself, and moved in closer to him. He seemed genuinely interested in
where this might be going, and as bewildered as he looked, he had at least stopped
talking for a moment.

“Now, I’m sure you understand,” she said,
“looking at the kind of staff that one has to put up with nowadays, how hard
it’s going to be for me to all of a sudden empty everything from my one big shop
into my two smaller shops, just like that.”

Running her hand up his thigh, she said,
“So can’t we work something out?”

His reaction was more dramatic than
expected, and he reached out again for the clipboard that he had momentarily
dropped on the desk beside him. He was banging the table as he reached out for
the security of his office. “You mean, you mean, you mean…”

“Yes?” she was moving closer, she smelt
beautiful - her skin so soft, her soft cleavage pushed up hard against him. He
wanted this. He so wanted this.

“You mean…?”

‘Yes?”

He wanted her right now and she
was
so willing, he did not need to do anything but go along
with it; this beautiful woman was throwing herself at him. This would never
happen again.

“You mean…?”

“Yes?”

“You mean you haven’t closed the other two
shops either?”

Thirty

Once Ellie had made her way through the
airport at her destination she was finally able to turn on her phone and see
that there were several new messages for her. There were missed calls from
Lola; Ellie listened to the first few moments of one of these but it was clear
that she was still being angry and spiteful about something so Ellie deleted
that and her other messages and decided to block her number. There was the
usual glut of messages from her phone company welcoming her home; very
touching, she thought.
 

There was still no message from her
mother, Pauline, and she had started to worry on the plane about what was so
urgent that she needed to keep calling, so she was relieved when finally her
mother called again whilst she was reviewing her other messages. She had
finally got into a taxi, and even then her long wait had only been cut
marginally shorter by the travelling outfit when she had remembered to take the
baggy fleece off that she had bought at the weekend. Maybe if she had got back
to Claudia’s and put her high heels on instead of these trainers she could have
got further up the queue a lot sooner.

She had just seen a text from Mara saying
that ‘strange man’ had called and she was not sure if she should let him wait;
was Ellie on her way back, then? ‘Strange man’, that was what Mara called
Alfonse sometimes, and Ellie thought how thick skinned he was to have come
back. She may have to tell him to go away a few more times before he really got
the message, but she could do without that along with her other disappointments
today.
 
Should she let him wait?
Ellie did not get a chance to reply because she was concerned about what her
mother had to say. She sounded quite cheerful and was asking where Ellie was.
She thought that they must have crossed over on their journey because her
cruise came to an end in Venice and she had just flown back from there this
morning. Ellie told her she had only just arrived and her mother said perhaps
they had not crossed; she was already back home now. So, did Ellie see Tom?
Ellie said she saw him at home but she did not think she would see him again.