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Winona Yates got married later in life. She’d been a career woman well into her forties before she met the man of her dreams. They spent a couple of years travelling and generally having a lot of fun, as a couple with a high income and no responsibilities can. When they finally decided to add children to their list of acquisitions it was, of course, way too late. Low sperm for him – believe me, I know all about Ian Yates’s sperm count in every last detail – and no eggs for her.
They went through two years of hell and high expense with a million different IVF procedures until they finally produced twin girls. She even invited me to the baby shower. Three months after the babies were born, they split up. Ian Yates found he had a penchant for lap dancing clubs and met a twenty-two-year-old Thai girl there – complete with two children of her own – and left Winona high and dry.
She hasn’t seen him since, or any of his money. So now she’s left alone trying to hold down a full-time job and juggle demanding twins. The glossy groomed woman I used to know is long gone. She used to come in every week for me to wash and straighten her hair. Now I’m lucky if I see her once every six months for a trim. When I do, she wears the permanently harassed look of a woman who longs for her old life back.
It’s lunchtime before I go anywhere near the staffroom. If I’ve had a spare minute I’ve just hung around the reception desk and talked to Kelly. The truth of the matter is that I’m finding it increasingly hard to fit in here. All the silly banter that I used to enjoy leaves me cold now. What do I care about Britain’s Got Talent or The Apprentice or Coronation Street? The soaps now seem to be full of self-indulgent shouty people and it makes me think of Dominic and his family, how hard their life has been, how every day it’s a struggle just to find enough food to eat. Here, all we’re concerned about is nonsense. I’m even starting to find the amount that people spend just on grooming their hair quite offensive when previously, I would have said there was nothing more important than having good-looking hair.
Being with Dominic is making me think more deeply about my life. No longer do I sit and watch mindless television all night, but now we talk together for hours on end and I lie on the sofa with my head on his lap as he reads to me. Dominic says he wants to improve his English, even though it sounds pretty flawless to me. He borrows Shakespeare’s plays and the novels of Jane Austen from the ladies of The Nashley Church Flower Committee. I’m learning something too as my reading taste has been stuck on Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper for far too long.
Whenever I do venture into the staffroom, everyone looks a bit sheepish.
‘Thanks for a nice evening,’ Tyrone says. ‘Clint and I really enjoyed it.’
I could make a sarcastic comment at this juncture, but what’s the point? I have to keep working with these people so it’s better that I try to keep the atmosphere genial. Nina is quiet. Her carrier bag of fruit sits next to her, as yet untouched.
‘OK?’ I ask.
She shrugs non-committally. I can tell by the look of her that she didn’t get much sleep last night and I wonder what has gone on in the Dalton household since Saturday.
‘Hey,’ Cristal interrupts. ‘We’ve all decided to go snowboarding on Friday night. Up for it?’
‘Nah, I don’t think so.’
‘You love it,’ Cristal whines.
It’s true. I do enjoy it. As a group, we all had snowboarding lessons last year at the big indoor Sno!Zone in Milton Keynes. It’s a brilliant place and we normally have such a good time. I love the exhilaration of whizzing down the slopes and for someone not normally enamoured by exercise, that’s really saying something.
‘Come on.’ She cajoles me some more. ‘Bring whatshisname too.’
‘Dominic.’
‘Bet he’s never been snowboarding before.’
No, I don’t suppose he has. He probably hasn’t even seen snow and I think he’d be delighted by it. But is that a good enough reason to subject him to my colleagues again?
‘You should come,’ Nina ventures.
Is this an olive branch?
‘Is Gerry coming?’ It’s out before I can think better of it.
My friend shakes her head. ‘No. Away on business.’
I’ll bet.
‘That doesn’t mean you can’t bring Dominic.’
No, but it does mean that I can actually consider going now that I know that twat won’t be there.
Kelly pops her head around the door. ‘Your client’s here, Ty. Cristal, can you sweep the floor please?’
They all disappear, leaving Nina and I alone.
‘Sorry about Saturday,’ she says. ‘Gerry and I had been arguing before we arrived.’
