The Honey Queen (41 page)

‘Do you know what it’s about?’ said Frankie, marking the meeting in her diary. ‘Should I bring anything?’

There was a slight hesitation on the phone. ‘No,’ said Maire firmly, ‘goodbye,’ and she hung up.

Frankie sighed. She hated meetings with no agenda. She was a busy woman and had things to do.

After lunch she marched upstairs to the boardroom, having checked first that there were no ladders in her tights, no lipstick on her teeth and she’d reapplied a fresh coat. She looked perfect: elegant and in charge. She was slightly taken aback to see a stranger sitting at the table with the Deputy CEO, but put on her game face, held out her hand and introduced herself. ‘Hello,’ she said coolly. ‘Francesca Green, HR Director.’

‘Mike Walters from Unite Insurance,’ he said.

All of a sudden, Frankie got it. Oh boy, she got it. Managing not to shake or to show either of the men how jolted she was, she pulled out a chair and sat down, grateful to get her shaking legs under the table where they couldn’t see them.

‘So,’ she said, facing Giles, the Deputy CEO, ‘what are we here to talk about?’

Giles did what he always did: passed the buck.

‘You’re here, Mrs Green,’ said Mike formally, ‘to discuss the forthcoming merger.’

His demeanour and the choice of wording removed all doubt. Frankie knew absolutely that she was in trouble.

‘Right,’ she said, her voice even. ‘It’s going ahead then, is it?’

‘Yes,’ squeaked the Deputy CEO, without looking at Frankie.

‘Human Resources is going to be one of the most important departments during the takeover,’ went on the smooth man from Unite. Under other circumstances, Frankie might have thought him handsome, because he was. A full head of dark hair, all his own – unlike the Deputy CEO, who was balding and desperately trying to hide the fact.

Frankie knew there were two ways this conversation could go, she’d been in business long enough to understand that. Either she was part of the solution – or she was part of the problem. She thought of Marguerite and how hard she’d worked for the company for years, only to be let go when moods had changed. Marguerite had given her life to Dutton Insurance but when she was surplus to requirements she had been cut off. Just like that. Fleetingly, Frankie thought of how Seth must have felt the day he was told he was being made redundant. Despite twenty years in HR, she hadn’t understood. It was different in a small firm like his, he’d argued. Different because he’d been there in the beginning, he was part of its success, he was friends with the men who’d set up the company. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a partner.

Frankie had spent many hours raging against Seth’s blind acceptance of his fate. Why hadn’t he done something? Why hadn’t he got up and shouted, convinced them to keep him?

Now, staring across a boardroom table at two men, one of whom was doing everything on the planet not to look at her while the other calmly returned her gaze, Frankie knew that this was one of those times when there was nothing you could do.

‘Have you decided whether I am part of the solution or the problem?’ she asked Mike. There was no point talking to Giles.

‘You’re not part of any problem, Mrs Green,’ said Mike coolly. ‘But we are bringing in our own HR executives. If you were to stay, you would have to work under them, which would essentially be a demotion. I don’t believe this would work.’

‘No,’ agreed Frankie, thinking quickly, ‘it wouldn’t work. So what are you offering me to leave? Let me talk to my lawyer, OK? I’ve been here a long time and I’ve got a great deal.’

There was a certain satisfaction in seeing the flicker of anxiety on Mike’s face. Plainly he hadn’t checked her employment file that thoroughly.

Half an hour later, walking back through the HR department, Frankie was struck by how much she’d miss it all. It wasn’t a big area. Low-ceilinged with grey partitions on which people stuck family pictures and up against which they shoved plant pots, hoping to keep something alive under the glow of the fluorescent lighting overhead. On Tracy’s desk, a spider plant had flourished, spawning several spider plant babies which other people took and then tried to make grow on their own desks, but none of them did. Only Tracy’s. Frankie smiled at the thought.

‘None of you have my green thumbs,’ Tracy would say in false pride. ‘I am the queen of the spider plant.’ Frankie passed Jon, one of the juniors, who was on the phone again to the IT department where a newly hired employee wasn’t working out and where office supplies like pens and A4 pads were disappearing at an alarming rate.

Frankie walked straight into her office without even acknowledging Ursula sitting outside. Strange, thought Ursula. One of the reasons Frankie was such a pleasure to work for was because she always acknowledged you and never asked you to do anything she wouldn’t do herself. Plus, Ursula thought darkly, she was nothing like her last boss, a letch by the name of Paul who’d taken every opportunity to stand close to Ursula and peer down her top. Frankie must be very busy, that was all. Or distracted. Ursula went back to work again, tapping away on her computer keyboard for a few minutes, then paused. In retrospect, Frankie had looked tired. Maybe a coffee would be just the thing.

Frankie stood looking around her office as if she’d never seen it before. She had one of the few big corner offices in Dutton Insurance and over the years, she’d made it totally hers, with family photos on her desk and pictures she liked on the walls.

But everything in the office looked different now, at a slight angle almost, because Frankie herself felt at an angle. The world wasn’t in its right place. Was she imagining this? It must be shock, she thought in some vague faraway corner of her brain. Shock made things seem different and she’d had a big shock. She was being
let go
. Let go. How could that happen to her, to Frankie Green, when she’d been the mainstay of Dutton Insurance for so long? She thought of all those years when she’d juggled – gosh, she hated that word – the job, the children, Seth, the house, meals, groceries, laundry … she’d juggled like some crazed magician to keep it all in the air, never letting her work suffer because she was being pulled in so many other directions.

Marguerite used to say that women were the most ethical employees because they wanted to give their employers what they were supposed to give them. Most working mothers tried so very hard to do their best. The only people they short-changed were themselves. And now
this.
There was a knock on the door and Ursula peeped around.

‘Frankie,’ she said in her cheery, light voice. ‘Everything OK? I thought perhaps a cup of coffee might help?’

Frankie felt the sting of tears in her eyes but she kept looking out the window. She tried to keep her voice as neutral as possible, tried to look as if she was staring out the window thinking up some deep bit of business she needed to do.

‘No, Ursula, thank you. I’m fine.’

‘OK,’ said Ursula, and the door closed gently behind her.

Frankie continued to stare out the window but nothing became plainer, nothing.

I
n May, Peggy decided that at three months she finally had an actual baby bump. It was tiny but it was there. What was also still there was the morning sickness.

She came out of the bathroom in the shop looking a bit green about the gills. Fifi handed her some kitchen roll so she could wipe her face properly. ‘Will I run out and get some ginger tea?’ she asked kindly.

‘Ginger tea?’ said Peggy, feeling bewildered
and
nauseated.

Fifi stuck her head to one side. Ever the eccentric where fashion was concerned, today she’d outdone herself with wild pigtails holding up her curly black hair and a full-skirted fifties-style dress in yellow-and-pink striped linen. ‘A lot of pregnant women swear by ginger tea. It’s supposed to be great for morning sickness. Didn’t work for me, but it might help you.’

‘Morning sickness?’ said Peggy, shocked. She’d thought she was hiding it so well and now here was Fifi coming out and saying she knew.

‘Yeah, morning sickness,’ said Fifi, sounding irritated now. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t tell me, Peggy,’ she said. ‘It’s not a state secret, is it?’

‘Well, no …’ muttered Peggy. ‘But I didn’t want to tell anyone.’

‘That’s the problem with having babies,’ Fifi said. ‘People tend to notice when you’re pregnant. There are a whole host of things that give you away, and morning sickness is certainly on the list.’

‘I …’ began Peggy. She sighed. ‘You’ve got me bang to rights,’ she admitted. ‘Stupid of me to think nobody had noticed. I’ve wanted to talk to you about it for so long because, well, the father’s not going to be involved and I thought you could talk to me about that.’

Fifi looked at her sadly. ‘I’m really sorry, Peggy,’ she said. ‘That’s a tough one for sure. Coco’s father didn’t want to know, and part of me,’ Fifi grinned ironically, ‘a part of me didn’t want anything to do with someone who didn’t love Coco as much as I do.’

‘I understand,’ said Peggy. ‘It’s a bit different because I haven’t told the father. And I’m not going to tell him,’ she added hastily. ‘It wasn’t that sort of relationship and it’s not fair to land this on him.’

She’d expected Fifi to nod and agree with her. Fifi knew what it was like to bring a child up on her own. If anyone would understand, it had to be her. But instead of understanding, something else was spreading across Fifi’s little face, something like anger.

‘You’re not telling him? You’ve got to tell him. Whatever he does or however he reacts after that is up to him, but you have to tell him you’re pregnant with his child. It is his child too.’ Fifi enunciated each word separately. She did it again, just to make sure Peggy had got the point. ‘It is his baby too.’

‘It’s not!’ said Peggy furiously.

‘What,’ demanded Fifi, ‘have you got against men?’

‘Too much to have a baby with one,’ raged back Peggy.

Fifi was silent, and Peggy began to cry.

‘Blinking hormones,’ she said, reaching for her ever-present tissues. She was used to the jags of crying now, when all the emotions she’d suppressed so successfully for so many years flooded out of her: rage, pain, fear and sheer grief.

‘I used to cry when I was pregnant with Coco,’ said Fifi, going over to the shop door, locking it and turning the sign to closed. ‘But it was nothing like that. I’m sorry I said what I did. I was out of line. I thought you were arrogant, not letting the father in on it when it was his right to know.’

She gave a wry laugh. ‘I know, it’s hard to get your head around me saying that sort of thing when Coco’s father has been no use at all, but in theory, I’d love him to be present in her life. Kids need both parents if they can, split up or not, because it’s harder on your own and two people who care about a child are better than one. I’ve had to be both parents to Coco, but I worry still.’

Fifi touched Peggy’s shaking shoulder and began to lead her into the back room where the small kitchen was.

‘You’ve no idea of the worries I have in the middle of the night: what if she can’t have normal relationships with men because she’s never seen me go out with anyone? I don’t, you see. I’m afraid if I get close to anyone and introduce them to Coco, and then it all goes wrong, I’ll have given her a father figure and then taken him away. People say that motherhood makes you think you’re doing everything wrong, but for single motherhood, you can quadruple that feeling.’

Peggy listened silently. If only she could tell Fifi everything. She wanted to unload all the feelings and have someone comfort her.

As if she was reading Peggy’s mind, Fifi said: ‘Why don’t you tell me the whole story.’

So Peggy did.

Frankie wasn’t sure quite how she drove to Gabrielle’s. She wasn’t even sure how she’d got out of the building. She could recall grabbing her handbag and leaving everything else behind, telling Ursula that she wasn’t feeling well and that she’d be back in the next day. She knew she should have said something to Ursula about what had happened, but Mike, the hatchet man, had laboured the point that it was all top secret and in her shocked state in the boardroom, she’d agreed not to tell a soul.

Under other circumstances, Frankie might have told him exactly where he could shove his ‘top secret’, but instead she’d stared at him blankly and nodded. That had seemed the most sensible thing she could do. No – the
only
thing she could do.

She’d rung ahead to check that Gaby was at home and been told, ‘Yes, of course, drop over.’ And then she’d asked the question Frankie had been dreading. ‘What’s wrong, Frankie?’

‘I’ll tell you when I get there,’ Frankie had said, unable to say another word. It was hardly surprising, then, that Gaby was standing with the front door open, watching for her arrival.

She was at the car door as soon as Frankie had pulled up.

‘What happened, what’s wrong?’ Gaby said, and for once her beautiful calm face looked anxious.

With Georgia the dog happily snuffling at her and Gaby standing there looking at her, Frankie allowed herself to burst into tears.

‘Frankie! What is it?’

‘I’ve been let go,’ Frankie said.

For the first time since hearing those words nearly an hour ago they began to sink in. Let go. She had another month at Dutton Insurance and then she’d be redundant, let go, on the scrap heap. She must have said ‘on the scrap heap’ out loud, because Gaby repeated the words back to her.

‘On the scrap heap?’ Gaby said. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, you’ll never be on the scrap heap. What’s happened? How …?’

‘Dutton has merged with another company and I’m now surplus to requirements,’ Frankie said.

Georgia had decided that she’d had enough of this snuffling around at the edges of the car and that if any serious progress was to be made on finding food she was going to have to clamber over Frankie to get into the car. She began to attempt this, putting her two paws up on Frankie’s lap and giving her a lick as a way of saying ‘I’m hungry, can I get in?’ Somehow, this stemmed the tide of tears.