‘Oh,’ I replied. She might as well have slapped me across the face.
I’d thrown myself into making clothes for Fabien’s and had even given up ironing for others so I’d have the time to plough through well over a hundred outfits in a year and a half. It was also a therapeutic way of keeping my mind off poor Paula. Baishali and I missed her so much. It was almost too much to bear, and we took comfort in each other and tried our best to help Paula’s parents cope with their loss.
Now, with Margaret’s news, all I saw was my future behind checkout number seven at the supermarket again.
‘Do you have a buyer?’ I enquired, hoping my new boss would be just as keen on my work.
‘That depends on you, darling,’ she replied, screwing a cigarette into a plastic holder. ‘I’m giving you the first option to buy me out.’
I laughed out loud. Clearly the prospect of spending the rest of her life under the Spanish sun, drunk on sangrias served by hunky waiters, had sent her a little doolally.
‘You know I don’t have that kind of money!’ I answered. ‘Look around you. Everything in this house is second-or third-hand, or broken and held together with Blu-Tack. How on earth could I afford to buy your shop?’
‘Oh, you should never let money get in the way of a good idea,’ she tutted. ‘As far as I can see, you have three options – either get yourself a bank loan, remortgage your house, or you and I can come to a financial agreement until the balance is paid off.’
‘But I know nothing about business!’
‘You’re full of excuses, aren’t you? I didn’t have a bloody clue about it either when I started, but did that stop me? Did it hell. So what’s stopping you?’
‘Margaret, I’m not like you,’ I sighed, reminding her of the obvious. ‘You have the confidence to do anything you put your mind to – and the money. I’ve got the kids and keeping a roof over our heads to worry about. It’s impossible.’
She took a long drag from her cigarette and poured herself a third cup of tea from the pot.
‘Do you remember when you told me about your mother, and what a bitch she was to you?’
‘I didn’t call her a bitch,’ I interrupted, a little surprised.
‘Well, she was, so learn to live with it. You took everything negative she ever threw at you and turned it into something positive. What did you do after Billy? You picked yourself up and got on with life. And what about when Simon disappeared? I bet you felt sorry for yourself, licked your wounds then put your children first, didn’t you?’
I nodded.
‘See? You’re a survivor, darling. You always find a way, that’s what you do. You’re a much stronger person than I am. An opportunity like this doesn’t come knocking at your door every day, so I implore you to grab it with both hands.’
I kept quiet for a moment and mulled over her suggestion. On the surface, pole-vaulting across the Grand Canyon looked easier.
‘Be honest, do you really think I can do it?’
‘When have I ever been anything but honest with you, Catherine? If I didn’t think you were capable, I’d have never put the offer on the table. Now, what do you say?’
26 November
The months went by like a whirlwind.
Since Margaret had made her offer, it’d been all I could think about. The old me would have dismissed it as a pretty ridiculous suggestion. But times had changed, and so had I. Now I owed it to myself to at least think about it.
I’d calculated I had enough savings to pay the mortgage for five months, and I could show my bank manager my accounts to prove I was now loan-worthy. But that wouldn’t cover all of Margaret’s asking price. And it wasn’t my only problem.
‘The college has a night school,’ she’d explained back in the summer, pre-empting another excuse. ‘Two evenings a week in business, bookkeeping and accounts.’
‘But what about my clothes? I won’t have time to make them and run a shop.’
‘That’s what staff are for, dear. Ask some of the girls at the local fashion college to help – they’ll bite your hand off for the experience. And while Selena’s reluctant to accept my offer of employment, I’m sure she’d be more than willing to step up for you.’
For every argument I had to oppose her, Margaret found reasons why I could do it. And it lit a fire in my belly that I’d never felt before. I was like Dorothy caught up in a cyclone; only no matter how many times I clicked my ruby-red slippers, I was still in Oz. I had to give it a shot.
But in doing so, I needed to lead two separate lives. At home I’d have to continue being Mum to my brood, while at the boutique I’d be a budding businesswoman learning the ropes.
Over the following months, I followed Margaret to meetings in London with designers and manufacturers, and she even paid for my flights to Paris, Milan and Madrid for catwalk shows. It was a different world, one that scared and fascinated me. It was like jumping into the pages of the fashion magazines I read. And, if I’m honest, at times I didn’t think I deserved to be in places like the third row of the runway as Thierry Mugler launched his spring collection.
My mother’s voice told me I was a fraud and Margaret’s charity case. So to spite her, I stuck with it to see how far I could go.
I doubted whether I’d have had the courage or confidence to do it if Simon had still been alive. I’d got all the fulfilment I’d needed in being his wife and the mother to his children. But I’d been a different woman two years ago. With each new challenge, I discovered I had passions, ambitions and a desire to be my own person.
And I was about to find something else I’d never expected to see again.
Northampton, today
3.30 p.m.
She’d listened intently to every word he’d said, hanging on to a glimmer of hope that he might show some regret over killing Paula. But when he blamed Paula for her own death, it merely revealed the true character of the man. In fact, he was no man, she thought.
He was a shade: a lifeless, colourless shade.
Try as she might, she couldn’t understand why he’d come back after all this time to confess to something he knew would disgust her. He could have taken his secret to the grave and she’d have been none the wiser. So why did he want to hurt her? And surely only someone who realises he has nothing to lose would so readily admit to such evil deeds? What had he already lost that had made him so unafraid?
His mind was elsewhere. To hear how far she’d come bolstered his belief that leaving had been the best thing for her. But for the children? He was still undecided and his head hurt the more he thought about it.
‘Is that what you do when something stops being useful to you or gets in your way?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’