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A building site in Bakewell
The downside of upcycling
‘Hey, you! Get out of my skip.’
Izzy froze, rammed her shoulder against the rusty metal container side, and crouched lower, cringing as the male voice resonated above her head and echoed across the building site.
Damn it. She kicked herself for coming back for one last look, when she should have got away. In some ways this afternoon’s bombshell news that the cinema building was up for sale made it more important than ever for her to get her hands on stock. They weren’t going to give up, they were going to fight to survive, and tonight’s skip raid was a symbol of that determination. Ever since she, Dida and Luce had launched Vintage at the Cinema, they’d dreamed of a time when business would be booming, and it was ironic that now it was actually happening, it looked as if it might be snatched away.
Something about tonight’s desperation spun Izzy back to the time when she’d first discovered the joys of skip scavenging, when her mum walked out on her dad. With four kids and an empty flat, skips had provided Izzy with most of her bedroom furniture. Those fledgling finds had kick started Izzy’s love of rescuing what other people threw away. It turned out she had a flair for making old, unwanted things beautiful. At least one good thing had come out of her parents’ break up, and the talents she’d discovered back then had exploded with the opportunity of Vintage at the Cinema.
A stripped out cinema building was a big place to fill, especially when the furniture you put in there was flying out as fast as it went in. But ending up on a building site, in a skip, with some guy yelling at you, wasn’t the best of places to spend a Wednesday evening.
‘Oi! I said move it!’ He was still there then.
Izzy shuddered. Luce, always teased her about her compulsion for searching through skips, but it was true that Izzy found it very hard, if not impossible to pass a skip without diving into it. In her experience, there was often treasure to be found, but right now, with an angry man bearing down on her, she was wishing she hadn’t let that last glance into the second, almost empty skip, entice her. She closed her hand around the small carved plaster cherub she’d found lurking at the bottom. Dusk was no time to get caught in the act, even if she had okayed it with the builders earlier.
‘Think you can come round breaking my windows do you, just because the house is empty?’ Enter one apoplectic guy, who’d totally got the wrong end of the stick. He didn’t sound too close, but he only had to walk across, and peer over the skip edge, and she’d be done for. ‘Did you hear me? I know you’re there.’
Fierce and well spoken – they were the worst sort. Izzy grimaced, braced herself for trouble, and began to unfold her legs. Time to face whatever was coming her way. It was a daily hazard of skulking round skips – sometimes it was inevitable, you pissed people off. And Izzy couldn’t bear to see old pieces with the potential to be pretty being tossed away. It broke her heart to think of lovely old things being smashed up by ignorant people who didn’t know any better. As she saw it, she was on a rescue mission here, and no one in their right mind would object to that, once they saw reason. Although from the way Mr Shouty was limbering up, she wasn’t sure reason was going to have much to do with this.
Slowly, she unfolded, to get a peep at what she was dealing with here, and as her nose drew level with the skip edge, she got a full frontal view of the man she was annoying. Talk about chiselled cheekbones. Add in eyes the colour of darkness, a body that would have made most women she knew ache to peel off his well-cut clothes, and for a fraction of a nano second she fell resoundingly, heart-stoppingly, scorchingly in love. She’d always wondered what her friends meant when they talked about thunderbolts, and now she knew. Before she could say “oh my sweet Jesus”, her lips had parted, and she was letting out a long, wavering sigh.
Smitten or what?
‘You little vandal.’ The guy’s scowl darkened as he whipped his growl into overdrive. ‘I won’t tolerate trespassing scumbags, get off my site, and I mean now.’
Phew. That went some way to blasting away the cupid dust.
Izzy straightened, poked her head and then her shoulders above the edge of the skip, and watched with satisfaction as the guy’s jaw dropped. That would be surprise. And then his gaze honed in on her cleavage. That would be…
Oh shit. Nothing like eye-glue stuck on your boobs to give a girl yet another reality check. And her reality was the one where love and men were top of her Things-To-Avoid list. Yay! to Awful Alistair, who had messed with her heart for three years before stomping on it with the “it’s not you it’s me” thing, throwing in the added rider of “but you are coming over quite possessive” when what it turned out he really meant was he’d been shagging someone else for months. Enough said about that one.
Meanwhile, there was no point wasting her time explaining to this perfect specimen in his impeccably cut suit that she had okayed all this with the builders here earlier in the day. She shuddered to think what his reaction would be, if he knew her van was round the corner, full of things she’d dragged out of his other skip, only minutes before. Driving a van plastered with signs saying “Vintage at the Cinema, Everything Retro” might be great for publicity on a day to day basis, but it was hardly going to help her make an anonymous getaway.
The knot in her stomach tightened. She liked to think of herself as cool in the face of provocation, not that Luce would agree with that, but his unwarranted verbal attack had sent her almost as apoplectic as him.
Behind him, parked next to the house, she glimpsed the over-blown tank of a car he’d just arrived in. Nothing like a gas guzzler to add fuel to her fire. So, not only was he rude and aggressive, he was also that arrogant type who thought he could rule the road, as well as the world, by swanning round in one of those “the rest of humanity can fuck off” vehicles. Izzy always saved her most savage contempt for that kind of guy.
She might be in his skip, behind his hedge, on his building site, but he had it coming to him.
‘If you weren’t such a wasteful and ignorant prat, people like me wouldn’t have to go round rescuing the perfectly good stuff you’d discarded, would we?’ Catching another glimpse of the half renovated house in the background, with piles of discarded floorboards in front of it, gave her a second wind. ‘People like you, who rip the guts out of everything, with complete insensitivity, deserve a lot worse than thieving vandals.’
As she paused for breath, teeth clenched, she noticed he was scrutinising her, and that the thunder on his face had moved on like a passing storm. Wonders never ceased, but she suspected it was her chest popping into view that was responsible. Sad to say, she found her D cups often smoothed the way, although she always preferred to make her progress on a gender neutral footing, on the basis of her own merits. It was a depressing fact of life that some men were remarkably a) shallow and b) susceptible, and Mr Shouty was obviously one of them.
‘So, it’s a female dumpster-diver – and dressed for a party too.’ His tone had morphed from angry to mocking, as he strode across and peered in at her.
Izzy glanced down at her frock. Okay, maybe her flowery fifties tea dress was a bit close fitting, and it might be incongruous, but was there really the need for the attitude? She was only picking up a few bits and bobs – well a van full actually, but that was beside the point. It should have been a piece of cake, in a skirt and heels, without this unwelcome spectator.
‘So what? Are you telling me there’s a dress code now?’ She swished her skirt, and an unintentionally vigorous jerk of her head dislodged her hair comb, and next thing her unruly curls were cascading across her face. Damn. Now she was essentially fighting with one eye.
‘Marilyn Munroe curves, and a red head? Who’d have thought?’ He was almost laughing now.
One raised eyebrow? Curves? She needed to close this down.
‘Whoa, can we cut the sexual harassment?’
Her protest seemed to work, because he baulked momentarily, blinked, and when he looked up again the lust had reverted to bad temper.
‘You’re on my land, you’re invalidating my insurance cover.’ His glare sent her insides onto fast-spin. ‘Just get out before I throw you out.’
Izzy took that as a dismissal. Great, time to go.
She put her hands on the skip edge and pushed, but nothing happened. She tried again, scrabbled with her feet, and winced as the lemon leather of her pointy shoes scraped down the skip side. Authentic fifties footwear hadn’t been the best choice.
She’d got into the skip by climbing on a pile of pallets, then dropping over the side, with no thought to getting out. Now the sides of the skip had her trapped, like a hedgehog in a cattle grid. Clenching her teeth, and forcing her shoulders down, she let out an exasperated sigh.
The guy’s hands were on his hips now, resting on his high end leather belt.
‘Get on with it then.’
Could he not see she was trying to? His attitude was definitely not attractive, she noted. Except he was. He was horribly attractive in fact. Everything about him, from his stubble shadowed jawline to his muscular thighs tensing against the grey wool of those über expensive suit trousers, screamed SEXY, with the caps lock on. She gave herself a mental kick. What the hell was she thinking? After Awful Alastair, she was steering clear of men. Especially men with choppy brown hair, and definitely arrogant gits like this one. Her resolve was strengthened now she was well on her way to the financial independence she’d always craved. She bit her lip, and blew again.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’
His gravelly voiced query sent goosebumps scurrying up her arms, hotly pursued by a large dose of self-disgust. She was in the shit here on every level, and it was time to admit defeat.
‘Actually, I can’t get out.’
She lowered her eyes, tried to swallow the shame-faced words, desperate not to acknowledge the gleeful sneer chasing across that disgustingly beautiful face of his.
‘Not so stroppy now, then.’ He gave a low grunt that might have been a laugh. ‘What do you suggest? Shall I come to help you, or will I get accused of sexual harassment?’ His tone was lazy, and he didn’t move, but the flash of humour in his eyes had Izzy’s heart skipping a beat.
‘Just sling me a pallet, stop gloating, and shut up. Please.’ She watched him stroll forward, grasp a pallet, and swing it high into the air with brutal ease. A hollow clang rang out as the wood thumped down on the skip base, and sent reverberations through the soles of her feet.
‘Thank you.’ She pulled herself up to her full five foot four inches. Then grasping the pallet, she heaved it into position against the skip side, and checked out its stability with one foot.
‘Careful. If you’ve invalidated my public liability cover, I don’t want any accidents.’
God, this guy was a stuffed-shirt. She let out another impatient snort. ‘If you don’t stop going on about insurance, I might have to squash you on my way down.’ And it was bad news that he made her even more insolent than usual, but at least she hadn’t sworn at him yet. She already owed Luce, and her Customer Service Initiative swear box a bomb as it was.
Izzy clambered up the pallet, nudged her way onto the skip edge, and it was just too bad that her skirt was riding up somewhere around her bottom as the guy looked up. She really hadn’t planned to give him an eyeful of underwear.
He staggered backwards, clearing his throat and looking away quickly. ‘Alright up there?’
She dreaded to think what kind of acreage of her knickers she was showing, but frankly she no longer cared. Two kicks sent her pumps flying through the air, then as she splayed her legs, ready to jump, she heard a rip. Crap. The last thing she needed here was to leave her skirt behind her.
‘Hang on…’ The guy sprung towards her with a strangled squawk.
‘Okay, keep your hair on.’ Izzy gasped. Two strides later his hands closed around her waist. The breath left her body as he spun her through a glorious crazy arc, before setting her lightly and neatly on the ground beside him. For a moment she wobbled against the soft fabric of his jacket, getting a blast of aftershave that was way too delicious for someone so bad tempered. And then he stepped away, and she was the one left with wide eyes, and a sagging jaw.
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Wednesday Evening, 4th June
DIDA
In the kitchen at Alport Towers
One husband, thinly spread
NEW MESSAGE TO: THE CREW @ VINTAGE AT THE CINEMA…LUCE, IZZY, OLLIE, LYDIA, DAMON, HENNI, DECLAN, SUZIE, ARTHUR, LEIGHTON, MAGDA, THOM, ALLIE
Dida checked the names on the email, crossed her legs, and gave a heartfelt sigh. Even if Aidie had slammed the cinema building on the market, it was doubly important to carry on as normal. However determined Aidie was to put a hatchet through her proverbial baby, not to mention her success, she was ten times as determined not to let him succeed. Though she hadn’t yet managed to track Aidie down to actually speak to him in person, or at the end of a phone, she was certain that her husband’s motivation for selling the building was as much about trying to limit her new found success, as it was about making a profit now the property market was improving. Although Vintage at the Cinema had started out as a tentative experiment, so much creative energy and talent had gone into making it what it was now, there was no way was she giving it up without a fight. Even thinking about it made her feel like her head was about to implode with rage at Aidie for doing what he’d done, and rage at herself for being so powerless to stop him. Whereas she should have been floating around on a champers-induced cloud, basking after a fabulously successful celebration, she was instead grinding her teeth in frustration, and biting on the bitter taste of humiliation.
Tonight she’d already bustled her youngest child, Lolly, off to bed in a blur, and now she was ready to sweat the bigger stuff. The disembodied roar of a football crowd meant that Eric was fully engaged with FIFA14 in the breakfast room.
Dida scowled round her apple green kitchen. The vile green paint was another reminder of Aidie’s tyranny. That Aidie flatly refused to let her get the fifty seven kitchen units repainted in a more appropriate colour sent her round the bend on a daily basis and it was so typical of him to make this into a battleground. Now, her perpetual fuming about the argument she referred to as Granny Smith-gate only aided her incandescent rage about what had happened today at the cinema.
It was alright for Aidie, he was hardly here long enough to get tired of anything, even something as extreme as vommy green paint. He flew in, then he flew out again. Right now he was in Lithuania, working on “something big” to do with pipes, and as usual she had zero idea what. In fact some weekends he was home so little, they had barely enough time for an argument. Unfortunately for Dida there was always enough time for sex, and that would be sex not once, but twice a day. She gave a rueful eye roll at the thought of his whale-like bulk grunting on top of her, and thanked her lucky stars it was only Wednesday and so she didn’t have that to look forward to. Although given what he’d pulled today, she’d be withdrawing that privilege until further notice. As far as the kitchen repaint went, if there was any excuse to wield his power over her, Aidie grabbed it with both his chubby hands. It was time she gave him a taste of his own medicine in the bedroom.
Her husband hadn’t always been bloated. The twenty something guy she first hooked up with at the office Christmas party back in ’94 had been relatively slender, albeit in a chunky kind of way. She’d first noticed him because he was the only one in the office with his own house, and she had an idea his sense of humour had been better in those days too. But years of expense account dining had pushed his BMI through the red zone, and straight on out the other side. His success had turned into one big power trip and now he pretty much claimed to be in charge of the world as far as the pipelines industry was concerned. He got his rocks off all week, ordering people around at work, and at weekends he brought his testosterone excess back home, and slammed them all into submission here too. And today he’d even managed to exert his power remotely, in the most awful of ways.
Aidie and his control issues. Dida gave a grimace. She was well used to them. It was an ironic twist that if Vintage at the Cinema hadn’t dropped into her lap to take her mind off the most difficult thing in life, i.e. her husband, she wasn’t sure she’d even still be here, despite the gorgeous home she’d thrown herself into creating. Ice cream was a crutch she leaned on in her struggle to stay cheerful. Usually, at ten o’ clock, in a mere seventy six minutes from now, she’d be having a two scoop helping, and tonight she should be dipping into dark chocolate and raspberry, and pralines and cream. But this evening she was so wound up, she had no appetite at all, not even for ice cream.
‘Mum, I just went up a league on FIFA, have you got any cake?’ Eric, play station controller in hand, wandered into the kitchen, his floppy fringe only partially masking his glazed expression, and walked towards a large pile of plastic containers stacked on the work surface.
‘Nope, hands off those, they’re Vintage at the Cinema ones, and I’m delivering them first thing.’ How much of a bad mother did it make her that she had cake for work and not for home? ‘How about ice cream. Toffee chip okay?’ She slid off her stool, grabbed a dish, trundled to the fridge and dolloped out some soft scoop, pushing it towards Eric, who gave a grunt.
‘It would be nice if you could say thank you properly.’ She knew she had to insist on the manners thing, although she’d be lucky to get anything as complex as two syllables out of Eric in his current PlayStation induced trance.
‘Thanks.’ He mumbled and waggled his spoon at her.
‘Bed by ten, alright?’ She was talking to Eric’s back as he sidled away, sighing as she saw how he even shuffled across the marble floor in the same way as his dad.
One of the many problems with Aidie was, as her Granny used to say, the all fur coat and no knickers thing. He boasted long and hard about his six figure salary, but when it came to housekeeping she simply couldn’t get him to part with his money. Vintage at the Cinema kept her sane, by giving her something other than the warfare with Aidie to focus on, but, more importantly, it gave her access to cash. For the first time since she gave up work and had the kids, so long as she fudged the figures she showed to Aidie, she had some kind of financial autonomy.
The morning after Aidie came home from Corks Bar saying he’d got his hands on the old cinema building, she’d got straight on the phone to Luce and Izzy, and, as she’d said in her speech, before she’d been so rudely interrupted, the rest was history. And as Vintage at the Cinema emerged, so had the new independent, happier, Dida. There was no way now she could go back to being who she was before. Vintage at the Cinema had made her into a new person.
Dida looked at the names on the email again. Everyone already involved with the cinema was there on this week’s email, although should she really still be including Ollie? Ollie, who’d waltzed off to the other side of the world five months ago at a moment’s notice, leaving his sister Izzy to fill his shop space as well as hers, and do a double share of the shifts? Dida was very fond of Ollie. He’d been hauled on board at the start to help with painting, and proved so useful he never left. He also made the most fabulous one off metalwork pieces, and had brilliant contacts on the industrial side. Dida tapped a thumbnail on her teeth as she deliberated. No doubt Izzy would have emailed Ollie to tell him the awful news from today. Not that she was in denial, but somehow Dida couldn’t actually bear to type the awful physical words in the weekly rota email, because that made the whole nightmare seem too real. Losing the business just wasn’t an option she could contemplate.
Even though she was pretty much in charge of the business admin, and it gave her a fab excuse to organise to the nth degree, she liked to think of this as a cooperative venture. Everyone pitched in, they played to their strengths and helped each other. True, they paid her rent, but mostly this was all about everyone benefiting, and having lots of fun along the way. And Ollie was fun, and he was dependable, when he was around, and she had an idea that it wasn’t just his sister who was feeling his absence. Luce was missing him a lot more than she was letting on. So she’d leave him on the list for now, in the hope that if he read the email, in some far flung internet cafe, he’d remember to miss them, and remember to come back soon.
She flipped the screen to take one last look at the rota, then hammered out the email.
The rota for week beginning June 9th is attached. FYI we have a guy with very deep pockets who’ll buy ANYTHING by Susie Cooper.
Come back soon Ollie, we’re missing your industrial pieces.
The week’s cake of the week is cocoa and banana :)
Dida xx
PS. Vintage at the Cinema is ready for the fight - we WILL survive!
That would do. She hoped the last line was enough of an acknowledgement of today’s disastrous events. She liked to send the email out at nine exactly, not that she was obsessive, but if you were consistent, everyone knew where they were. The sky might be falling in on her own personal world, but she could still stick to a timetable.
Ten minutes to spare before nine then.
Just enough time to make the daily updates to her Aidie Special spreadsheet. She opened his email account, and tapped in his password, grimacing at the double bluff. Aidie’s email account was the nerve centre of his life. He knew she knew his password, and he also knew she scrutinised his emails, which was his way of proving to her that he had nothing to hide. Quite how the negotiations for the sale of the cinema had slipped by her, she had no idea, but from now on she’d be doubly vigilant.
Dida never failed to be amazed at Aidie’s meticulous management of his email account, given that dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s wasn’t Aidie’s natural way. His approach to life was usually way more sloppy, which was probably why he’d failed to spot the fatal flaw in his plan. It was a constant source of amusement to Dida that Aidie deleted all the emails he didn’t want her to see, but just the same as at home, he never bothered to empty the trash.
Now for today’s deleted mail. She clicked on the dustbin icon and leaned closer to the screen as she flipped through the list, and read intently. Wow. This was going some even for Aidie. A breakfast meeting with someone called Bambi, an eleven o clock with Viktorya, then dinner with Dominika, Elvira and Albina.
Two minutes, and Dida had copied and pasted the names into her spreadsheet of Aidie’s misdemeanours, and added times and locations.
Had this been anyone else’s husband, she might have been impressed by the stamina of the guy. Some weeks he appeared to be keeping the sex industry of Lithuania in business single-handedly. When he managed to get any work done, she had no idea. Given today’s developments, she may well be using the ammunition she’d been collecting sooner than she thought. The way she felt about Aidie now, after he tried to crush her dreams, she couldn’t imagine being able to look at the man, let alone live with him.
Now nothing mattered, except what Aidie was trying to wrestle from her and her friends. It was too late to do anything more this evening. First thing tomorrow she was seeing Luce and Izzy. They’d have their emergency meeting. And together, they’d get their proverbial boxing gloves on.
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Wednesday Evening, 4th June
LUCE
At her flat
Lace, sweat and tears
‘Thanks for being so patient, I’m almost done.’ Luce paused as she fingered the satin hem of the dress she was pinning, smiled up at Steffie, the soon-to-be bride, and took a minute to sit up, wriggling the ache out of her shoulders. ‘These full skirts take an age to get around, but they’re worth it.’
Steffie shifted slightly. ‘No Ruby this evening?’
‘It’s my lucky night. I think the cupcake sugar rush from this afternoon’s party knocked her out.’
Steffie laughed. ‘It isn’t the same without Ruby entertaining us whilst you pin.’
If Ruby hadn’t fallen asleep by the time Luce’s evening fitting appointments arrived, her bedroom was so close to the living room she invariably heard the chatting, and crept through in her pyjamas. The flat was such a good deal, and so close to work and school, the compromise on layout was one Luce was happy to live with, for the time being anyway. All her other vintage clothes and textiles were at the cinema, but she kept the wedding dresses at home because the fabrics were fragile, and so easily marked. Right now her bedroom was so full of lace and tulle, some nights it was hard to find the bed.
Luce did a mental double take and she gulped so hard she almost swallowed a pin, as she remembered in a sudden rush, that work might not be at the old cinema for much longer. She tried not to think how scared that made her. Vintage at the Cinema had brought a lot of things to her and Ruby’s life. She was so lucky to have found a way of working that gave her satisfaction, an income, and which let her be here for Ruby too. The thought that it might be whipped away from her made her spine go rigid. And even though she knew that Izzy and Dida would go to hell and back for her and Ruby, for some reason the sheer, unadulterated fear of losing the livelihood she’d worked so hard to establish, made her feel very alone.
Luce tried to push that thought away with a smile, but the most she managed was a grimace. ‘No, once Ruby comes through, it’s impossible to get her back to bed again. At least I won’t have a sleep deprived grump to deal with tomorrow.’
‘She’s such a cutie though.’ Steffie looked wistful. ‘Hard to stand up to I guess.’
Too true. There were times when Luce wished that the random guy who’d accidentally donated his genes to her child, via a broken condom the last night of her second year at uni, had been slightly less good looking, and way less good at sweet talking. Soulful brown eyes and a penchant for fast come backs proved hard to handle in an offspring, and neither of those things came from Luce.
