Humbugs and Heartstrings: A gorgeous festive read full of the joys of Christmas!. Catherine Ferguson
I resemble a middle-aged nun. Actually, no, make that a middle-aged nun’s mother. (And let’s be honest here, I might just as well take Holy Orders. At least then Mum might stop fretting about me not having a ‘chap’ in my life.)
As far as fashion goes, I have always been drawn to black, ever since my fat teenage days. Black is so generous and forgiving, skimming over lumps and bumps and giving the satisfying illusion of a sleek outline. Of course, I don’t just wear black. I also like white and all colours in between – namely, many shades of grey. Icy grey, pastel grey, blue-grey, charcoal grey. My colour palette of choice means I can dive into my wardrobe in the morning, pull out any combination of garments and know, without doubt, that I will co-ordinate nicely.
I had a brief flirtation with eye-catching, peacock colours in my mid-twenties when I was at my slimmest, working in London and partying practically every night. I had the world at my feet; a dazzling future ahead of me. I was going to take the art world by storm with my quirky glass sculptures.
It was an optimism that lasted for about five minutes. The evidence of my youthful naïvety is now folded up and packed away in a trunk in Mum’s garage.
I don’t bother with make-up now, except for a touch of mascara and blusher, which I only wear because otherwise, with my pale complexion and dark hair, I look like I might have died during the night. I no longer waste money on hairdressers so my locks just keep getting longer and I twist them in a ‘messy up-do’ as it’s now called. Actually, I had this ‘style’ before it became fashionable. It takes me about twenty seconds to wind my hair up and skewer it with a big wooden pin, although admittedly by three o’clock it is usually falling down enough to genuinely warrant the term ‘messy’.
I glance at Ella, who’s been tasked with reorganising the office, a job Shona never has time to tackle. Sorting out paper clips and tidying filing cabinets is not exactly glamorous work. Ella is seventeen and earns pennies but she behaves and talks as if Alan Sugar is in the room and might, at any moment, spot her potential, point that knobbly finger of his and say, ‘Ella. You’re hired.’
Actually, I have a sneaky respect for her. In any other organisation, her youthful enthusiasm and fluent use of corporate jargon might combine to take her places.
But her prospects here are, regrettably, zilch.
A good boss educates and encourages her employees, finds each person’s unique talent and makes sure her staff feel valued and respected.
The Boss subscribes to none of the above.
Making money is all she cares about these days – and the thing is, she’s very, very good at it. As she keeps on telling us. Of course, she has her exhaustingly successful family to thank for setting her up in business in the first place.
The McGinleys are all high-achievers. Mr McGinley’s electronics company floated on the Stock Exchange last year and his wife is an extremely successful barrister. Brother Max has followed in his mother’s footsteps and Carol’s sister, a dentist, lives in Los Angeles and crafts perfect smiles for B-list celebrities. Carol, the youngest of the three, is following in their workaholic footsteps with her cleaning gold mine.
She started up the company three years ago and we are now the premier domestic cleaning company in the area. Everyone I talk to has heard of Spit and Polish. And to be fair, The Boss has worked her butt off to make it happen, grafting late into the night and most weekends, and making shameless use of her parents’ business contacts to bring in work.
She employs an odious little man called Gerry Flack to do her accounting. He’s overly moist, believes he’s everyone’s intellectual superior and is a master at slithering his way through tax loopholes while staying just this side of prosecution. The Boss regards Gerry as second only to God and she guards the financial records jealously, locking them away in a desk drawer. Even Shona has never clapped eyes on the lucrative results of our hard work. We joke that The Boss thinks she’d have a staff rebellion on her hands if we found out the true scale of her wealth.
My dad died when I was sixteen, leaving Mum with me and my unborn baby brother. Cash was always tight – most of our clothes came from charity shops – and I was aware from a very young age that life wasn’t always fair and that it was the people with money who wielded the power.
We have living proof of that here every day, sitting in the adjoining office.
Poor Ella has no idea what she’s let herself in for.
The Boss has grown even narkier of late. She has developed a way of ‘putting wood in t’hole’ (as they used to say in this part of the North) that borders on legendary. Her door slams shake the building, reverberate through your abdomen and encourage flakes of peeling paint to hurl themselves off the walls in surrender. Most days, Shona and I tiptoe around on eggshells with our shoulders up to our ears.
My friend, Fez, says I should just tell her to stuff her job. He keeps banging on about how pointless it is being creative if I’m not planning to actually create. But glass-blowing or painting watercolours isn’t exactly going to pay the rent, now, is it? It would take years to get established and how would I exist until then?
No, far better to concentrate on keeping The Boss sweet so that I can hang onto my job, however mundane it might be, and eventually get Tim his operation. And as I keep saying to Fez, The Boss isn’t all bad. She’s consistent, which is a good thing. There are never any nasty surprises because she’s consistently horrible. So you know exactly where you stand with her (and also where you’d prefer to stand, which is in the solicitor’s office next door because at least it’s warm in there).
‘I owe you, Bobbie.’ Shona whisks the tie from her brown bushy ponytail, gathers the rebellious bits that have gone AWOL and, with a snap of elastic, gets the troops under control. ‘Your midnight dash probably saved my life.’
I grin. ‘Honestly, it’s fine. And anyway, she seems to have other things on her mind this morning.’
Shona spins round. ‘What other things?’
‘I’ve no idea. But I notice she’s wearing the Chanel blouse, and yesterday she told me to hunt out the coffee machine.’
‘Oh, Lord. I knew something was up.’
I laugh. ‘She’s probably just drumming up new business.’
‘Yes, but the coffee machine?’
‘Hmm, you’ve got a point.’ I bite my lip thoughtfully. Important client or not, the only coffee on offer here is the instant brown powder that comes in an industrial-size tin from the Cash and Carry. (The first sip makes you shudder but it’s any port in a storm when you need your morning caffeine fix.)
‘Plus,’ says Shona darkly, ‘she’s been really secretive lately.’
‘How?’
She shrugs. ‘Phoning people directly instead of shouting through to me to do it. Surviving on fags. And snippy. Really snippy.’
‘So what’s new?’
A roar from next door makes us both jump.
‘Shona-a-a-a-a? Is this crap meant to be coffee? If I’d wanted dishwater, I’d have asked for fucking dishwater!’
As bosses go, Carol McGinley is a complete and utter nightmare.
It’s hard to believe that, until a few years ago, she and I were as close as best friends could possibly be.
‘Bobbie? In here!’
The Boss bellows like a drill sergeant in a corny movie and I rise to attention.
I know better than to hang around when I’m summoned.
I go into her office and sit down, studying her curiously as she checks something in an ancient ring binder file. Her green eyes are