The Hopes and Dreams of Lucy Baker Read online

  Lucy huffed at Brenda’s casual dismissal of George’s lack of manners.

  ‘You can take that look off your face, young lady, because I have a feeling you’ll be the one to teach him.’

  The following day was one of those glorious May days that heralded the departure of spring and the arrival of summer. Collared doves cooed from the trees and late cherry blossom fell like confetti at the slightest breeze. Drawing back her curtains, Lucy decided it was the sort of morning you should walk to work – be outside and inhale the aroma of cut grass and scented flowers and feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. It would take forty minutes to get across town by foot, rather than twenty minutes in the stop-start traffic by car, but worth the extra journey time. She’d already rung Brenda to check she was okay, but even with the planned walk, she had time to pop over and share breakfast together, something Lucy decided she needed to do more often.

  An hour and a half later, Adam welcomed her in his own inimitable style as she stepped through the sales office door.

  ‘Two men down and we don’t seem to have been able to steer the boat through the unusually busy traffic jam of problems we’ve encountered in the last two days. I won’t lie to you, Lucy-Lou, it’s been particularly stressful, what with half-term and everything. You need to apologise to old Starchy Knickers over there.’

  He gestured to Sam, surveying the office over the top of her elegant red-framed spectacles. She had a phone to her ear and was thoughtfully tapping a silver Parker pen on the edge of her desk. Adam swung his chair to face Lucy and crossed one leg over the other, exposing a particularly splendid pair of Spider-Man socks and far too much groin.

  ‘And then perhaps you’d deal with this latest crisis? Four hundred Fizz, Boom, Bang chemistry sets shipped out in the last three months and it’s taken until now for someone to spot that despite the inclusion of a detailed instruction manual, including a section in bloody Estonian, none of the translations are in English.’

  Lucy sighed. She was straight back in to solving other people’s muddles.

  ‘I’ll make it my priority, but surely it’s just a matter of contacting the manufacturer and asking for a translation. We can add them to the units we have in the warehouse and those still out with our retailers. Hopefully, consumers will contact the manufacturer direct when they realise.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m sure it’s straightforward if you have the time to focus on it properly, but I have other, more pressing matters to deal with. She’s got me running around like a squirrel on speed. So much for not interfering.’

  Lucy walked over to the general manager’s desk and waited for her to end the call, before apologising for her unauthorised time off work.

  ‘You should have contacted us as soon as you became aware of the problem. My biggest issue is we didn’t hear from you until nearly ten o’clock.’ Sam was multitasking, even as she answered Lucy she scribbled notes in her jotter. ‘Although I’m still not convinced helping out a neighbour justifies a two-day absence.’

  ‘Sorry. She wasn’t well and went for a wander in her nightie, taking a packed lunch of cream crackers and toothpaste to her dead husband—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear your excuse, although I must say it’s more creative than some I’ve heard.’ Sam didn’t look up. ‘I want you to be at your desk by nine or ring in to notify us promptly that you will be delayed.’

  ‘I tried to ring several—’

  ‘The personal apology is appreciated, and Adam has backed you one hundred per cent, so let’s move on. Has Adam filled you in on the science sets crisis?’ Lucy nodded. ‘Could you get straight on it please? He’s been fiddling about all morning and I haven’t seen much progress.’

  Lucy slumped into her chair and switched on her computer. Poor Adam was obviously stressed. It must be hard running the sales office, especially when his staff let him down. She’d stay late to make up for it.

  ‘Thanks for your support,’ she said to Adam later as their paths crossed on the stairs. She was heading downstairs to the photocopier; he was returning with a box of ballpoint pens.

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s a one-off, so keep it up your jumper. I don’t want people thinking I’ve gone soft.’

  ‘And you’re sure that’s what the words said when she first gave it to you?’ asked Jess, a few days later.

  Lucy had finally confided in her about the locket as they both stood in the staff kitchen doing the tea round for their various departments. Lucy had no choice. Adam decided it was a job for the new girl and a year on Lucy hadn’t questioned it. Jess volunteered in accounts because she knew Lucy was lumbered with the task on a daily basis.

  Disconcerted by the possibility the words in the locket had changed, Lucy was searching for a rational explanation. Jess, who had to ask Lucy to pop the catch because her long nails made it impossible to press the fiddly button, had the locket in her hands and was inspecting it closely, much like Lucy had when she’d discovered the candle spell.

  ‘It’s difficult to be sure, as the letters are so small, but I assumed Brenda was telling me what they said, to save me squinting. But thinking back, I’m almost certain the first word started with a flouncy old-fashioned “D”.’

  ‘You’ve told me often enough that your old lady friend is a bit odd, how her whole house seems alive and she heals people with funny old lotions and potions. I thought we’d decided she’s some sort of white witch.’

  Perhaps Jess, who devoured TV shows like Merlin, Angel and Once Upon a Time, wasn’t the best person to turn to for logical explanations.

  ‘No, it’s ridiculous,’ Lucy said, as much to convince herself as Jess, and refusing to be drawn on what exactly Brenda was or wasn’t. ‘Unless I had a midnight visit from a particularly generous cat burglar who happened to have an almost identical locket in his pocket, I must have imagined it.’ Lucy didn’t know why she’d involved Jess – whose eyes were baby-seal-wide and was now holding the locket reverently in both hands, like she was delivering myrrh to the baby Jesus. She placed it carefully back on the central table.

  ‘Let’s do the spell thingy anyway? It will be fun – like that time we made a love potion for the new boy at school.’

  ‘That wasn’t fun; he was sick all over my school bag and we got a detention. Plus, I’m not sure we made or administered the potion. I was an innocent bystander – one who had to buy a new school bag.’

  ‘Oh come on, writing a name on a candle and letting it burn out is simple enough,’ Jess persevered. ‘Lots of old charms and spells use candles. They light the way and dispel the forces of darkness. The ancient Egyptians used them, and just about anyone involved in any hocus-pocus has jumped on the bandwagon. Churches buy them by the barrow-load. Very symbolic.’

  Lucy remembered Jess’s passing white witch phase well. Jess did lots of activities in phases. There was the gym phase (she had a massive crush on one of the personal trainers), the knitting phase (in solidarity with her friend – but she was all fingers, thumbs and bad language) and currently the beauty therapy phase (self-taught via YouTube and a bit random). No explanation for that had been forthcoming but Lucy suspected it was a combination of trying to win over Dashing Daniel from work and her plans to earn some extra money on the side giving facials, manicures and a bit of intimate waxing.

  ‘And even though I haven’t met this George of yours—’

  ‘He’s not my George.’

  ‘—this George your dotty neighbour’s got earmarked for you, I think I should give him the once-over. If he’s got potential, we’re definitely doing this candle malarkey, because even if he was your type, you’d live next to him for twenty years and never have the guts to ask for so much as a cup of sugar.’

  ‘That’s not fair. I’ve already been in his house. And practically seen him topless. I even got a flash of nipple.’

  Jess spat out her mouthful of Diet Coke and wiped her dribbly chin with her free hand. She didn’t drink tea or coffee, which made her volunteering to do the tea
round seem even more magnanimous.

  ‘You’re one secretive bunny, Miss Baker. This bloke has been in your neighbourhood for a whole fortnight and you’ve only told me about him today as an aside to your locket conundrum. You do know best friends are supposed to text each other this stuff on an hourly basis, right?’

  ‘You know I’m not that sort of person, and anyway, seeing him topless was a by-product of Brenda getting caught in the rain. Nothing happened.’

  ‘Nothing? You’ve seen his nipples! I think you may have missed out great chunks of this tale – the juicy chunks. Come on girlfriend. Spill.’

  So Lucy went back to the beginning and told Jess about the allergy-inducing cat. And the wandering neighbour. And the nipples.

  ‘Right, I’m coming home with you tonight, so I can suss out this George for myself.’

  ‘You can’t just invite yourself over. I might have plans.’

  ‘Yeah, right. The only plans you’ll have are to watch non-stop Craft and Create on TV with your gang of knitted friends, as you run up a quick Aran sweater with your size twelves.’

  ‘Number fives,’ muttered Lucy.

  Chapter 11

  ‘I’m so jealous of all this,’ Jess said, abandoning a hastily collected overnight bag in the middle of the hall and curling up on the sofa next to Thor. ‘There’s no one watching you, clocking when you go out or come back in. I couldn’t bring a bloke back to our flat. Mum would either embarrass me or start flirting with him. But it’s what I need, Luce. Someone to whisk me away from it all. Preferably a bit of a looker, not short of a bob or two and with his own place.’

  ‘I don’t know why you love it so much. My flat is a mess,’ said Lucy, defensive about the state of her home and painfully aware of her shortfalls from the comments her mother made every time she visited.

  ‘But everything is so woolly and welcoming. It’s full of colour and knick-knacks and it doesn’t smell of takeaways or stale smoke. Because, seriously, if the gin doesn’t get my mum, the fags will.’

  Lucy started the meal, leaving the chilli to simmer, and returning to her friend in the living room. She picked up her knitting and chatted away without once looking down to see what her fingers were doing. Jess was impressed with the half-knitted Poldark and pushed Lucy to consider setting up a website, as she’d done many times before.

  ‘I’ve told you people would pay good money for them. I bet I’m not the only one who would buy a knitted sex god. Got to be better than an inferior flesh one. They don’t answer you back or make you sleep in the wet patch, but you still get a cuddle. Think about a Facebook page, at least.’

  ‘I don’t think they’re good enough, but thanks for the vote of support.’ Lucy added Poldark’s second nipple, double-checking it was level with the first.

  ‘So when does the monosyllabic giant return home from work?’ Jess said, leaping up to peep around the living-room curtains. She’d clearly been expecting George to be conveniently striding around his front garden, possibly topless, when they arrived so that she could suss him out.

  ‘It varies.’

  ‘What does he even do?’

  ‘I think he makes boxes. Brenda said he’d mentioned E.G.A. Packaging to her. It’s that huge factory on the industrial estate near the old airfield.’

  ‘Oh, well…’ Jess almost sounded disappointed. ‘He’ll do nicely for you. You can sit and knit bed socks while he tells you all about the benefits of cardboard over bubble wrap.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ Jess, with her limited attention span, came away from the window. ‘Let’s eat. It must be nearly ready because I can smell delicious aromas drifting down the hall and garlic always makes me salivate. We can crack open the cheeky little bottle of red that accidentally fell in my overnight bag on the way here.’

  The girls ate a spicy beef chilli together; Jess appreciatively hoovered up every last morsel while Lucy pushed forkfuls around her plate like a croupier moving the chips on a roulette table. Jess being there made her nervous. She generally admired her friend’s enthusiasm and energy except when it was being directed at some aspect of her own life. She hadn’t forgotten the enforced make-over last month. Horrible, horrible experience. A blob of mascara and a smattering of face powder usually sufficed.

  ‘So are you going to do the spell?’ Jess asked

  ‘To be honest, I’m not sure I want Mr Aberdour launching himself at me.’ Lucy curled her top lip. Although, and she would never admit this to Jess who would happily add two and two and make sixty-seven, she was intrigued by this solitary man. There’d been no visitors since he moved in, and he came across as brutally abrupt – but she was certain he’d picked up on her distress when Brenda had gone for her wander. His fleeting touch of concern had given her goose bumps.

  ‘At the moment, honey, I don’t think you are even the tiniest green dot on the edge of his radar, so doing one simple spell won’t do any harm. And if you think it’s all mumbo jumbo, what does it matter? Let’s pop in on the old dear next door and get the low-down. It’s about time I was properly introduced to your other bestie.’

  There was much more colour in Brenda’s cheeks, thought Lucy, looking across at her friend. The antibiotics were doing their job and Dr Hopgood was happy with her progress. The community admissions avoidance team meant well but were simply not needed. It was almost as if the wandering incident had never taken place.

  The girls sat together on Brenda’s pale green, squishy sofa, Jess having tried Lucy’s favourite chair but quickly hopping out and moving next to Lucy after being jabbed by an arm. They were sipping overly sweet blackberry and apple gin from Seventies sherry glasses; each decorated with a different-coloured geometric design. Brenda insisted it was late enough in the evening to have a little stiffener and the girls were happy to indulge her, especially Jess who was disappointed the bottle of wine she’d brought over was nearly gone and Lucy didn’t keep any in. Didn’t she know sleepovers were supposed to involve excessive amounts of alcohol and a cathartic session of truth or dare?

  ‘So how long have you known Lucy?’ Brenda asked. ‘I forget.’

  ‘Yonks, since we sat next to each other in year seven French,’ said Jess.

  ‘The clincher was you thumping that girl for tripping me up in the maths corridor.’ Lucy smiled, remembering how Jess stood up to the girls who teased Lucy because she was quiet, how she was kind to the nerdy kids, and how she spoke to boys as though they were ordinary human beings and not scary aliens from another planet.

  ‘Surely you girls would rather be catching up on gossip and giggling about dishy movie stars? Much more fun than sitting with a daft old lady,’ said Brenda, leaning over to top Jess up.

  ‘Nonsense, Mrs P,’ said Jess. ‘We see each other at work every day, and besides, I need your help. I want Lucy to take the locket seriously.’

  ‘You didn’t say it was a secret,’ Lucy gushed, glad she had at least brought the locket with her, having left it abandoned in a wooden bowl on the mantelpiece pretty much since Brenda had given it to her.

  ‘It’s not, my dear. But not everyone believes.’

  ‘Lucy doesn’t,’ said Jess flatly.

  ‘I didn’t say that exactly. I’m not sure I need a locket to make someone like me, that’s all.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ said Brenda. ‘But in Lucy’s case, I felt the locket calling to me.’

  ‘Wow. So you really are a spiritual person? Can you contact the dead and all that? I was a white witch once, you know.’

  Brenda smiled at Jess who had shuffled so far forward to the edge of the sofa, her bottom was barely gripping the edge.

  ‘Interestingly, I was told later in life that my mother was a white witch, but I never really knew her. She was killed in a bombing raid in 1940. I was tucked safely in Aldwych tube station with my aunt and she was supposed to join us.’ There was a pause. ‘She never did.’

  ‘Bloody hell. What happened?’ Jess asked. Lucy knew
the story – she had heard it a few times over the last two years, but she was conscious it was a painful subject for Brenda.

  ‘She was helping an elderly neighbour. The house collapsed on them both.’

  No one said anything for a moment. By now even Jess was aware how difficult this was for Brenda, who had gathering tears.

  Brenda rummaged up her sleeve and fished out a folded cotton handkerchief to gently blot her eyes. ‘I was only a child, but I remember her smile, and her kindness.’

  ‘So did she, like, pass on the locket and tell you its history and all its mystical properties?’ Jess asked, trying to move away from the memories she had unwittingly unleashed.

  ‘The locket was nothing to do with her. It was given to me by someone I met when I was a lovesick young groupie, trailing around after The Yellow Crows. It’s how I got my Jim. And he was the love of my life.’

  ‘Yellow Crows – like the Sixties band?’ she squealed.

  ‘The very same. Jim was the drummer.’

  Jess’s eyes expanded faster than inflating balloons. ‘You married a pop star?’

  ‘They were more rock than pop, but yes, and I have so many fond memories of our years together.’ Brenda’s eyes were brighter now that the subject had changed to a happier topic – her life with Jim.

  In fact, Brenda had crammed most of her escapades into one decade. Falling in love with the drummer of The Yellow Crows, and finally accepting that they would not be blessed with children; Jim and Brenda had spent several years on the road with the band and partied their way through the Sixties in glorious technicolour and a drug-induced haze. It was during this period of her life, helped by the chemically enhanced freedom of mind, that she discovered her unusual gifts and established a connection with Mother Earth.

  ‘Brenda has all his drum kits and sound equipment up on the third floor,’ said Lucy. ‘The whole floor is a bit like a studio, with posters and album covers on the wall.’

  ‘That’s awesome. You’re so cool for…’