Ladies Who Launch (5 page)

Della wished that Ivanka had been there to put the kettle on for her because she could murder a rest and a cup of tea. She thought back to how pale the poor girl had been that morning. Della had
grown quite fond of Ivanka in the time they’d worked together and hoped she’d be all right, as she lived alone.

Admittedly Della hadn’t been best pleased six months ago when Jimmy had suggested they employ an office junior. She wasn’t comfortable with having another female around, even if she
really did need some help with her workload. Jimmy had insisted, though.

‘Get one of those East European girls,’ he had told her. ‘They work for peanuts.’

Typical Jimmy. Not one to splash the cash and when he did, it was more than likely because he was up to something, as Della knew too well. So Ivanka joined them. Nineteen years old, tall, curvy
and leggy, with tumbles of bottle-blonde hair which by rights should have sealed Della’s disapproval, because Jimmy Diamond had a sweet tooth for eye candy and there was no way that Della
would have employed a rival for her idol’s affections. But whilst Della had noticed Jimmy’s eyes sweep over the legs of the brunette and over the bum of the redhead who came to be
interviewed for the post, they barely acknowledged the existence of Miss Ivanka Szczepanska. In fact the only two comments he made after seeing her were, one:
She’s got a lot of spots,
hasn’t she?
And two:
Her name must sweep up the points on a scrabble board
.

Ivanka fitted in surprisingly well. She was quiet, with a terrible phone manner, but she seemed to want to learn everything that running an office entailed, albeit at a very relaxed pace. Still,
it was a relief for Della to be able to hand over a chunk of her workload, even if Ivanka didn’t seem very keen on doing the more mundane office junior jobs such as filing and making the tea.
Ivanka would take an age to boil a kettle and strung out her trips to the post office, but Della found that she liked having another presence in the office and Ivanka’s surly ways amused her
more than they annoyed her. Della got the impression, from the snippets that Ivanka supplied, that her home life in Poland hadn’t been up to much. She didn’t seem very close to her
parents, which Della could relate to, and Della had to admire such a young girl moving over to a strange country in the hope of making something of herself. Though her parents remained in Krakow,
Ivanka did have a few relatives who had moved to the area and she saw them quite often, which Della thought must be nice for her. In short, Della was grateful for Ivanka’s company and extra
pair of hands, especially as those hands seemed to be as invisible to Jimmy as the rest of her was.

Della went into the small office kitchen and made herself a cup of strong tea. She even allowed herself a consoling Oreo from the tin today, even though she didn’t usually partake of
biscuits or chocolate, unlike Jimmy’s wife who most certainly did. Connie Diamond, according to how Della pictured her, must be a chocolate-filled, pampered whale with a blood group of gat-O
positive by now. Even Jimmy had said before that Cadbury’s would be out of business if it wasn’t for his wife. Della had never been one for snacking, except on the odd banana, which is
why she still tipped the scales at no more than eight stone – the same weight she had been thirty years ago when she was twenty-one.

‘Hello, only me,’ said a voice from the front office, just as Della had finished off the last of her biscuit. ‘Anyone in?’

Della stepped back into the office to find the enormous square bulk of Pookie Barnes. He always looked as if he had shoplifted a forty-two inch TV and was smuggling it inside his clothes.

‘Thought I’d walked onto the
Marie Celeste
for a moment there.’ Pookie’s lips wore their usual broad smile, but it was one that should never be trusted – a
crocodile-fake arc of teeth. Della always imagined that he would have the same expression whether he won the lottery or was waterboarding a business rival.

‘Thought I’d drag him out for an hour. You can spare him, can’t you? Where is he?’ wheezed Pookie, still breathless from climbing the stairs.

‘He’s on a golf course in Hampshire with you,’ said Della, her calm collected exterior masking the grip of the horrible confusion which had suddenly seized her whole body.

‘Oh shit.’ Pookie’s ever-present grin momentarily dropped from his face as he realised his faux pas, but he was as slippery as a greased eel and would wriggle hard to get
himself out of any situation. He raised his finger to indicate a recall of memory. ‘Ah, I forgot he was going on ahead. I had a bit of unexpected business to do. Cropped up last
minute.’ That plastic smile was back sitting comfortably once again on his lips. ‘I might as well set off down to Evertrees in Hampshire sooner rather than later then if he’s
waiting for me.’

He’s emphasising the destination so that I know where he was supposed to be going, thought Della. He must think I’m daft.

Pookie’s fleshy neck was growing more purple-crimson around his collar. He might have been able to hang on to his composure, but he didn’t have much control over his blood pressure,
or the vein in his forehead that looked as if it might pop at any minute.

‘No need to mention I dropped by,’ he said, tapping the side of his bulbous nose. ‘Don’t want old Jim thinking I was dragging my feet going down there. I said I’d
meet him in the nineteeth hole at four. I better ring him and tell him that I’m stuck in traffic.’

‘Have a good time,’ Della said with as much sweetness as she could muster. ‘And, don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.’ She tapped her considerably slimmer nose
twice and smiled.

Pookie turned on his heel and was out of the door as fast as his stubby little legs could carry him. Della locked the door behind him and sank onto the nearest chair before she fell, because she
felt as if someone had taken all the bones out of her legs and replaced them with jelly. She wasn’t fooled by Pookie’s attempted patching of the situation. He was no more meeting with
Jimmy that afternoon than she could audition to be a Playboy bunny.

Jimmy had lied to her.

Why, why would he start to lie to her after all these years of trusting her with all his dodgiest secrets?

In the fifteen years she had worked for Jimmy Diamond, she had never known him to keep things from her before – and Della thought she could smell a fib from three hundred paces. But he had
today – and why, because he had no reason to. She knew about his tax fiddles and his double-dealings and his many short-lived dalliances. She’d even lied for him to his wife when Jimmy
was cosying up to some fancy piece and Connie rang up asking to speak to him. She even booked the hotels for Jimmy to do his cosying up in. She didn’t feel a jot of guilt about doing it
either; in fact – were she to admit it – she felt a hit of glee that he disrespected his wife so much. It convinced her that there was no connection between them, that their marriage
was hanging on by a thread and one day that thread would finally break and he would come to her, his soul-mate, the woman who knew everything about him and accepted him and adored him.

She never felt threatened by Jimmy’s flings. He didn’t go into detail about them, but from the little hints he dropped, Della knew that they were ‘a scratch to an itch’
because he wasn’t ‘getting it’ at home, which Della was glad about because she was wildly jealous of Connie Diamond’s position as the woman who had his name.

So why hadn’t Jimmy told Della where he was really going? All she knew was that whatever the reason, it had to be a something significant.

Della flew to her desk and ripped off the key which was stuck to the back of the drawer with brown sticky tape. Jimmy didn’t know she had access to the locked bottom drawer in his own
desk. She couldn’t remember when she had last snooped but it was certainly over a year and a half ago and she’d never found anything in it that she didn’t know about already.

This time was different.

This time she found a large brown envelope and it was stuffed full of receipts. A receipt for a silver heart-shaped locket from Tiffany. Receipts for overnight stays and dinner for two in
five-star hotels in the centre of London and theatre tickets. Receipts for flowers, a teddy bear, a bracelet, earrings, clothes. A CAR – Della gasped, an Audi TT and brand new at that. Thank
goodness Jimmy was so tight he had hung on to them all. He might not have been able to put these through the office books, but he was holding them in case he could find some other way of getting
some tax relief.

Ivanka wore a heart-shaped silver locket. And she drove an Audi TT.
She had saved up years for it, she’d told Della four months ago when she proudly first drove it into their car
park. Her cousin, a garage mechanic, had got her a terrific deal on it.

And, if the next receipt which Della picked up was anything to go by, Jimmy Diamond wasn’t waiting for Pookie Barnes in a golf club bar in Hampshire, he was on a last minute-booked, long
weekend break in a very swanky hotel in the Costa Blanca with a certain Miss Ivanka Szczepanska.

Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café
is out on 18 June 2015. Pre-order your copy now.

Her marriage is all washed up. It’s time for a clean start…

Connie Diamond has always been her husband Jimmy’s ‘best girl’ – or so she thought. But then she discovers that he’s been playing away for the past twenty-four
years, and that the chocolates she believed he bought her as a sign of his love were just a cover-up, and she is determined to get revenge.

Along with Della Frostick, Jimmy’s right-hand woman at his cleaning firm, Diamond Shine, Connie decides to destroy Jimmy’s life from the inside. Together they will set up a rival
business called Lady Muck, and along with the cleaning ladies who meet at the Sunflower Café, they’ll make him wish he had never so much as
looked
at another woman.

Then Connie meets the charming Brandon Locke, a master chocolatier, whose kind chocolate-brown eyes start to melt her soul. Can the ladies of the Sunflower Café help Connie scrub away the
hurt? And can Brandon cure her affliction and make her smile again…?