Chapter Three

Chapter Three

         The ten-mile drive from the office to the out-of-town industrial estate which housed PlastCom’s warehouse as well as the executive offices and boardroom took Lucy just over forty minutes. She was pleased she had calculated the trip to take an hour, due to rush hour traffic at that time on the Monday morning.
         Her briefcase and presentation boards were placed on the passenger seat and Lucy glanced at it, wondering how the Board would take to her and her proposals. She felt nervous and tried to calm her nerves by listening to Classic FM. As she pulled into the long, sweeping driveway to the PlastCom car park, her mobile phone alarmed the arrival of a text message.

‘Hi, hope your presentation goes well today; thinking of you as ever.. Love, Adam’

         Part of her was delighted at having heard from Adam; it had taken all the strength she could muster since they had agreed to end their relationship two weeks earlier, not to contact him by phone, email or text message. Sometimes it was difficult to be strong; in the evenings, when she was lonely, she often found herself playing with her mobile phone, starting then deleting a message, tempted to phone and leave a message on his voice mail. But what could she say, what could she write that Adam didn’t already know, and in any case there was nothing either of them could do about it now.
          ‘Sometimes, duty comes before love’ Adam had said that evening, and they had hugged each other tightly, both tearful and each hoping things could be so very different. Nothing Lucy said could make Adam change his mind, and nothing Adam said could console her; her whole world had collapsed around her and she still could not see how she could make the pieces fit together. Adam had completed her, her life, her very being as she had completed him.
         Another part of her was also unnerved at having heard from Adam, today of all days. She knew he meant well, that he was thinking of her and it was typical of Adam that he not only paid attention to but remembered things she told him; she doubted Dennis knew that today was such an important day in her life. Perhaps he also didn’t care which was the sad truth she had come to face time upon time in the last months. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that her concentration had been broken now and she wondered how she could keep her cool with her pulse racing like a formula one car coming up the home straight. Sighing heavily, she checked the time. Ten to nine. She stayed in the car, thinking of long, solitary walks along a beach to try and clear her mind.

         The PlastCom head office was impressive; even the reception gave the impression that this was a company with both its feet firmly planted in the twenty-first century. What a marked contrast this was to the Tower Block, a 1960s architectural eyesore in the heart of the city. It was more like a five-start hotel than the head office of a plastic gadget company; a place fit, perhaps, for people far more important than her. It would be easy to imagine celebrities, politicians or perhaps even royalties treading these very heavy piled carpets.
         The receptionist gave her a welcoming smile and asked Lucy to sign the visitor’s book while she handed her the visitor’s badge. The staircase leading to the first floor where the boardroom was situated was sweeping and imposing. She felt unsteady on her feet, nervous yet anxious that this, her first of hopefully many presentations, should ensue without a hitch. Her heart pounded as she headed towards the boardroom, following the receptionist’s directions to the end of the corridor.
         Male muffled voices carried towards her as she approached the door; when she entered the room they all turned to look at her.
          ‘Ah, Lucy, I am Jonathan Clarke, welcome to PlastCom’ a grey-haired, sophisticated man in an expensive looking suit held out his hand and shook hers firmly. He proceeded to introduce her to the rest of the Board, and then they all took their seats. She sat down next to Malcolm Crozier, the Finance Executive and soon wished she had worn a longer skirt; he stared at her legs a little too long, and then gave her a wide smile.
          ‘You’ll be fine’ he whispered, ‘just fine’.
         Mr Clarke rose from his seat on the dot of nine, welcoming ‘members of the Board, the executives and guest speakers’ and then gave an outline of the agenda for the meeting. Lucy was grateful that her presentation was not for further two hours as it gave her some time to regain her full composure and concentration after Adam’s message. She felt tempted to respond, wondered already what she should write and more importantly, how much to read into the ‘thinking of you as ever’ part of his message. Mr Crozier poured a glass of water for her but she declined one of the expensive looking, individually wrapped chocolate biscuits. She felt sick with nerves.
         While listening only with half an ear to the presentation by the Research and Development Director, she looked around the large boardroom. The walls were adorned with close-up pictures of PlastCom products; even close up Lucy had no idea what most of them were. However, she had to admit that the pictures were well taken and managed the almost unimaginable: to make a blob of plastic look appealing. She hoped the photographer had been handsomely rewarded for his superb work and also decided to try and find out who he was. She might be able to use him for some of her catalogues and mail shots.
         She turned to look at the R&D Director to try and soak up as much information from this meeting as possible. She was determined to make a good impression and having a vacant expression on your face probably didn’t serve to do so. The R&D Director, Mr Alderman if she remembered correctly, was giving a summary of a visit to a factory based in the far North-West of Hungary, which might be a suitable production site to purchase. Even with the investments required to update the machinery and training the staff, he predicted that PlastCom would have broken-even from this investment within eighteen months and the site would be making a profit within two years. It did, however, mean possible (or guaranteed, Lucy thought) redundancies at the factories in Durham and the Ruhr Gebiet. Lucy wondered how Mr Alderman could talk in such a detached manner about possible redundancies; these decisions affected the core of people’s lives, their livelihoods. How many hundreds of PlastCom staff would be out on the street by the end of the year, all on the dole and fighting over the scraps of work available in an already depressed area? She sighed, then looked up at Mr Crozier as she realised he was staring at her. He smiled, and gave her a regretful shrug.
         It was strange indeed, how other people could affect your life so profoundly. For the poor men and women in Durham who didn’t yet know of their impending fate, the affecter were these very people around the table who, of course, would be driving off in their expensive cars to their large mansions without a moment’s consideration for those whose lives they were setting out to ruin.
         Her own affecter had been much closer to home, not just a faceless, remote person. Adam too had touched her life profoundly, and then ruined it. Well, perhaps that was a tad melodramatic but at times it felt as if her life wouldn’t ever be the same. She recalled having read a quote by Judy Garland in a magazine once:

"For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul"

         That was how Adam had affected her, and still did. The mere thought of him just wouldn’t leave her mind. The more she tried to forget about him, the more painful the memories became; she didn’t want to forget. She wanted to hope.
         Mr Alderman’s presentation was followed by that of Mr Crozier, who ran through a number of complicated graphs, projections and statistics; Lucy listened attentively and took notes for some of the detail she felt were worth remembering. A twelve percent drop in Sales to the US and Canada was only just commented upon by the FD, while a marginal increase in sales to Austral-Asia was covered in some detail. She decided not to ask why this was so, as she wasn’t quite ready to make enemies on the Board, however, she would perhaps send Mr Crozier an email later in the week for more details in US sales decrease. Overall, though, Lucy was impressed by the company’s financial strength with excellent cash flow management and it also appeared that the level borrowing was well under control. This would change, of course, if the purchase of the Hungarian factory went ahead.
         For all her efforts, she soon found her thoughts returning to Adam. She decided she would call him that evening, just to ask how he was doing. It would be so good to hear his voice again. Her presentation would provide them with sufficient things to talk about without the conversation having to become awkward. She wondered whether he would be pleased to hear from her, or whether his return to his wife was now so well under-way that she would only be ripping open wounds they were both trying to heal. The best thing she could therefore do, she decided, would be to just thank him for the message, tell him about her presentation and then ask how he was. If he asked how she was, she would leave her reply as vague as possible. There was no point in trying to pretend she was getting over him just as there was no point in spilling her heart out and telling him how much she still missed him.
         She was jolted from her mental meandering by a gentle nudge from Mr Beading, the Sales and Marketing Director who was sat on her right; the floor was hers. Her initial nerves soon calmed, and the opening section laid out in some detail the Munich Exhibition. Her choice of stand (close to but not next to, the cafeteria and bar area), the display boards and her ideas for the give-aways and competition were all well received. Several of the Directors nodded or gave approving smiles and raised eyebrows at various points through her forty-minute presentation. They discussed her list of proposed major customers to invite along to the event in great detail; in the end, one customer was removed from the list and three new ones added. Mr Beading, the Sales and Marketing Director commended her for having gained such an accurate grasp of the customer profiles in such a relative short space of time. Several of the other grey-heads around the table nodded in agreement. Lucy gave a silent sigh of relief.
         As expected, however, her proposal for a new company logo didn’t go down quite as well. Most of the directors became defensive and questioned the validity and sensibility of such a change; the logo, after all, was synonymous with PlastCom, it was how they were recognised by their customers.
          ‘With respect’ Lucy responded, ‘a detailed market study has proven that most people don’t recognise our logo, not even in Durham where the majority of our workforce is based’ she paused and looked around the table, ‘we just don’t have that instant brand recognition that say, Coca-Cola or Cadbury’s have.’
          ‘With respect’ a gruff voice from the bottom of the table replied, ‘you can hardly compare us with Cadbury’.
         Lucy gave her strongest opponent on the whole question concerning a possible new logo a firm look; it was obvious from the outset that he thought he could frighten her off with his bully-like tactics and austere demeanour.
          ‘Not on the surface, no’ she said, holding her head high ‘as we operate in a completely different market. Most end-users have no idea that it is us who manufacture the small figures they move around the board game, or the various knobs and handles around their homes. However, to our direct customers there’s absolutely no reason why we should not be able to have the same brand recognition as Cadbury’s, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t attempt to raise our profile to the ‘man in the street’. We are stakeholders, after all, we have an interest in the local communities from which our workforce derives, we raise a heck of a lot of money for local charity projects, youth programs et cetera. Brand isn’t just about what we make, it should also be about who we are as a company, the difference we can make to people, the perceived value to the community as a whole.’ Her passion on the subject was convincing and infectious; it was almost like giving a pep talk to a football team at the interval, telling them to ‘up an’ at ‘em’. She revelled in the moment, soaking up the recognition from her peers yet she had some reservations as to whether that meant they would approve the change in logo.
          ‘There have been recent successful changes in logo design which I think is quite promising for us’ Mr Beading added, looking around the table. ‘Remember how Halford’s changed their blue and red logo to the orange background with black writing. The Mars Company for their Mars bar undertook a more subtle change.’ He turned to look at Lucy ‘Why don’t you show us what you have in mind?’

         Margie Golding rubbed her eyes, stretching her weary body. She was tired, worn down and out, and wondered how she could find the strength to get through the day. The baby was crying in the room next door. She sat on the edge of her bed, looked at the floor with clothes, newspapers and tissues strewn, cluttering the surface. She pulled on a grubby looking pair of jogging trousers (though she never actually did any exercise but at least they were comfortable) and the t-shirt she had worn the day before. She bent down to pick up the tissues, threw them in the basket next to the chest of drawers and went to Olivia’s room.
         Her six-month-old baby girl was grizzly, teething and hungry. She had also soaked the nappy through to the sheets. Margie gave Olivia a weary and tired smile, scooped her up and laid her on the changing table. After the nappy change, she carried Olivia downstairs to warm a bottle. The thought of breastfeeding had repulsed her and she had resisted the midwife’s vain attempts at convincing her of the benefits to her newborn, and it was a battle she had won with ease. She had put on her weary, tired look, sighed heavily and said she could not face it. It worked every time she wanted to get her own way.
         Olivia continued to scream through most of the feed and then burped up most of it. Margie was close to tears. She wondered at the injustice of it all; had she not been punished enough this past year? Why did the baby have to be so much more difficult than Mark?
         Mark, born ten years earlier, had been such an easy baby, slept through the night from the age of three months. He was a placid boy and easily pleased; but then again, Margie had not been very involved in Mark’s early months or years. Back then, Margie had on being the new mum one hundred percent and had taken any help that was offered to her, and then some. She had felt it was within her right to do so.
         Teething gel only soothed Olivia for a short while and she was soon screaming again. Shaking with anger and frustration, Margie picked her up and placed her in the playpen; then she sat on the kitchen chair and cried with self-pity.
         Seeing her mother upset quietened Olivia; she put her little fist in her mouth and chewed it, looking up at her mummy with big, confused eyes. Margie looked at her, wiping her eyes with the hem of her t-shirt, then got up to put the kettle on. A nice cup of tea, she thought, and then I will try another bottle. Perhaps she will go to sleep if I take her for a walk in her pram. Hopefully I can have some sleep this afternoon, too.
         The remainder of the morning she spent slouching on the settee, drinking cups of tea while trying her best to settle Olivia. She looked around the living room; two empty wine glasses and the weekend newspaper were still on the small coffee table, Olivia’s toys, Mark’s maths books and PE kit scattered all over the floor. She sighed but had no energy to clear up the mess. At lunchtime she filled the dishwasher and made a small attempt to tidy the kitchen. Olivia’s cries for attention, a bottle of milk or a clean nappy continually interrupted her to the point where she felt it was pointless to attempt any real clearing up. The dishwasher had to re-do the entire cycle as most of the dishes were not clean; she hadn’t bothered to rinse the plates and pans the night before and the dried food hadn’t washed off.
         The walk to the shop and back did indeed send Olivia off to sleep. Upon returning to the house, Margie parked the pram at the foot of the stairs and left Olivia there to sleep. She headed straight for the sofa in the lounge next door and within minutes had fallen asleep, too.
         She woke with a jolt almost an hour later. The cat had jumped onto her feet and was lying, curled up, purring in the sunshine. Margie yawned and went to check on Olivia who, thankfully, was still fast asleep. She checked her watch and realised the baby’s bottle was overdue and headed for the kitchen.
         Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of the ironing basket, piled high; it was amazing how much washing and ironing they amassed between the four of them. She had never been a huge fan of ironing in the first place and now only did the bare minimum; Mark’s school uniform, a few of Olivia’s pretty dresses and Adam’s work shirts. She would have to do a shirt for Adam and a sweatshirt for Mark at some point today.
         She fed Olivia, whose mood seemed to have improved with her nap. To be sure, she rubbed teething gel on the gums, which were causing her so much discomfort, and then cuddled her tightly. She kissed the top of Olivia’s head and placed her on the baby gym on the floor and sat watching her little bundle kicking her chubby legs and gurgling with delight. For a while she just sat there, looking at the baby and absentmindedly stroking the cat, lost in her own thoughts. She switched on the television and watched a DIY program, followed by a quiz show.
         She looked down at Olivia who was trying to roll onto her side; it wouldn’t be long, she thought, before she’d be crawling, then walking and before you knew it, off and out of the nest. For now though, she was content to think that Olivia at least relied upon her, that she was needed. She knelt down beside Olivia and tried to encourage her with her attempts at rolling, she passed Olivia various rattles and soft cubes; she was pleased that Olivia was contented.
         The tranquillity didn’t last long. Soon, Olivia pushed her fist into her mouth and started gnawing at the knuckles, eventually screaming in pain once more. She picked her up and paced the room, trying to settle her. The cat looked up briefly, then sighed and sleepily returned to its carefree snooze. Teething gel did not soothe Olivia at all, and Margie made a mental note to ask Adam to try and find a different brand that might work better.
          ‘Shhhh… there, there…’ she said, patting Olivia’s back as she continued to pace the floor. ‘Don’t cry darling, please don’t cry. What do you say, shall we drive down to the school and collect Mark in a minute, hmm?’ Olivia wailed in response.
         It was a relief to have Mark in the house. He made her cups of tea and was happy to get on with his homework. Sometimes he would help out by feeding the baby or even volunteering to change the nappy. He gave her so much joy because he caused her so little extra work; he seemed to sense her helplessness and dependency which in turn made him eager to please her. He was her little man.
         She checked the watch and realised that Adam would be home anytime soon. She headed upstairs, picking up the phone book from the bottom of the stairs as she went up, and put it down on the landing. Her time had never been spent checking her reflection in the mirror. She brushed her teeth and ran a brush through her hair. After all, she had promised Adam to make more of an effort.

         Mr Clarke urged Lucy to stay for the entire meeting and during their lunch break he approached her, and asked her if she was settling down well with PlastCom.
          ‘Yes, thank you. The product is obviously different from what I am used to dealing with, but I am looking forward to the product training’.
          ‘Ah yes, I guess you will be going to Durham for that?’ he asked.
          ‘I think so, I am not sure. There is talk of perhaps holding it locally as there are a number of new starters here; I guess it makes more sense for one person to travel down from Durham than for seven of us to travel up there?’
          ‘Well, I am not sure about that. It depends on who the other new starters are. I would certainly prefer for you to undergo the product training as well as understanding the production processes. Do the training locally by all means, but I’d like you to do a factory visit either to Durham or Germany, spend a couple of days there. Perhaps you should also accompany us to the next visit to Hungary?’
         Lucy considered the childcare implications this would have. She would need to make sure Dennis was free so he could look after the boys for a couple of days. She prayed it wouldn’t cause them too much disruption.
          ‘Of course, that would be a fantastic opportunity for me, and one that I would very much welcome’ she replied.
          ‘Excellent, I will ask Paul’ he nodded in Mr Beading’s direction, who was engrossed in a conversation with Mr Crozier and three others whose names Lucy couldn’t remember ‘ to get in contact with you, I think the dates will be agreed within the next week to ten days.’
         Mr Clarke was a likeable man; he commanded great respect and his enthusiasm for PlastCom was contagious. He was softly spoken and friendly, the sort of man for whom a committed member of staff would lay down their lives. Though not in the true sense of the word, of course. His grey hair was well cut and he was clean-shaven. Lucy didn’t like facial hair, and she was also relieved to notice that Mr Clarke had no stray hairs protruding from his nostrils or ears. His eyebrows were handsomely un-bushy. Lucy smiled at herself; it was so typical of her to scrutinize people in this manner. She didn’t consider herself as being judgmental; it was just far easier to have a serious discussion with someone without having to avoid looking at inch-long hairs sticking out from their noses.
         Lucy left the Head Office shortly after four o’clock feeling rather pleased with herself and very relieved that all had gone to plan, well, in fact better than planned. The Board had narrowed down her four suggestions for a logo revamp to two and were going to spend the next week deciding which one they liked the best. She had had to give them a deadline of a week, as the new logo would have to be used on all the items she was ordering from the Connecticut agency. They could not proceed with production until they had the go-ahead from her as to which logo was to be utilised. She hoped they would pick one of her logos and not simply decide that ‘better the devil you know’ or that it was too risky or costly. With their brand recognition being so weak the risk was limited as far as Lucy was concerned, in fact the publicity they could create could assist in raising PlastCom’s profile.
         As she headed down the dual carriageway towards the Ring Road, Lucy felt a sudden surge of nausea. She pulled into a lay-by, rushed out and threw violently up on the grass verge next to the car. She steadied herself against the bonnet of her car and took a few deep gulps of air. She got into the car on the passenger side and retrieved a bottle of water from her handbag. As she sipped the water, she had a frightening thought. Shaking with worry, she took her filofax from her handbag and started counting the days since her last period; she was six days late.
         Due to the stress over the previous months, which had caused her period to be up and down like a bloody yo-yo, she hadn’t given her period too much thought, the fact that it was often late had become part of a bizarre routine, something she had learnt to live with. But this time she feared the worst. She drove on and stopped by the chemist a little further down the road to buy a pregnancy test kit. First, she would have to collect the boys from their childminder; she wanted to do the test in the privacy of her own home, not in some smelly public toilet with urine sapping into her brand new shoes.
         The twins were pleased to see her as ever, she hugged them both and drove home trying to concentrate on their excited chatter. In the back of her mind, however, she said to herself ‘God, please don’t let it be positive, please!’ It was like a mantra, the same plea running through her brain over and over again like a broken record. She unlocked the front door and the boys ran straight to the living room to switch on the television. She unloaded the car, then asked the boys if they wanted a drink.
          ‘Yes please, Mummy!’ came the reply in stereo.
          ‘And a packet of crisp for me, please!’ Georgie shouted.
          ‘And me!’
         Knowing that she now had about ten minutes of peace before the twins would start asking her what they would be having for tea tonight, she headed straight for the upstairs bathroom with the small paper bag with the green pharmacy logo printed on the front. Her hands were shaking as she tore open the packet; there was no point in her reading the instructions as she had, of course, done these tests before but never with such trepidation and sense of foreboding. She clipped the plastic lid back onto the white stick and laid it on the edge of the bath. She got up to wash her hands, and started rearranging the shelf underneath the mirror, a desperate attempt to pass the time. It seemed to be the longest minute of her entire life.