Calvin clambered in next to her, put his leather briefcase on the seat between them, then did something on the iPad and his phone that Odette didn’t understand. He explained as being some kind of… what was the word? Hot dot. No, hot spot. Thatwas it. He then started furiously clicking away on the iPad, while firing off questions to her.
What was the person’s name? Nancy Jenkins. Age? A couple of years younger than Odette, so maybe sixty-seven or sixty-eight now. Last known location? Weirbridge. A village on the outskirts of Glasgow, over to the west.
‘And are you going to tell me why you want to find her?’ he asked, obviously curious.
‘Absolutely not.’
Calvin emitted a roaring chuckle. ‘You know, I wouldn’t need bloody Botox if you were easier to deal with, Odette Devine. Wrinkles. That’s what you give me. But you’re never dull, so you’re forgiven.’
‘Thank you,’ she replied, genuinely, thinking again how much she’d miss him.
‘Right, leave it with me and I’ll get searching. Oh, I feel like Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell onLong Lost Family.’ With that, the tapping got quicker, as he gave the small screen one hundred per cent of his attention.
Odette turned to stare out into the rush-hour traffic trudging home in the early-evening darkness. No wonder the population of this country was statistically low on Vitamin D. Not to minimise what she knew were genuine concerns, but a bit of global warming wouldn’t go amiss around here. She’d had her electric blanket on every night since last September and her electricity bills were wiping her out.
Odette closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer that Calvin would find Nancy. To the almost hypnotic sound of his perfectly buffed nails typing on the screen, she let her mind drift back to the time that had been floating in and out of her head all day.
The winter of 1982 had been a brutal one, and Olive Docherty, as she was known then, had already gone through two pairs of tukka boots and it was only bloody November. Theslush on the ground played havoc with the suede ones, and the pleather ones had sprung a leak the first time she’d worn them in the rain. It was the trek from the bus stop to school that did it – every bloody morning and every bloody night. And, of course, in Scotland the mornings didn’t get light until eight o’clock, and it was dark again by 3.30p.m., so she hadn’t seen a big orange ball in the sky for months. Even blasting Irene Cara’s ‘Fame’ on her Walkman for the last three minutes of the walk hadn’t cheered her up.
‘Has someone died or is it just yer face that’s in mourning?’ her pal, Nancy, greeted her as she walked in the door. The chat with the rest of the dinner ladies was the only thing that kept her going in here. Olive, Nancy Jenkins and Fiona Jones were the three young ones on the team, and then there were eight older women who could knock out enough caramel cake and scoop enough mashed potatoes to feed an invading army.
The irony of Nancy’s comment was that Olive had only got the job because it had been her Aunt Vi’s before her, right up until one bottle of gin too many had shut down her liver for good. She’d died the year before, and Olive would never have admitted it to a soul, but there had been a tiny shred of relief. Vi’s fondness for the booze had reached chronic levels in her last couple of years and Olive’s whole life had been dedicated to looking after her, finding them money to eat, cleaning up vomit, forcing Vi into showers, and sobering her up just enough that she managed to hold down the one stable thing in her life – her job as a dinner lady at the Weirbridge Primary School canteen. The other women in the school kitchen, especially the supervisor, Maggie, and sisters, Cora and Gracie, had been Vi’s friends. They had no money, no room in their homes, and no time to spare from their own families, so they’d taken care of Vi’s niece, Olive, in the only way they knew how – they’d given Olive the job that her aunt had held down until the day she’d dropped.
And Olive hated every second of it.
She’d somehow managed to go from a grim, shit, lonely childhood, to being a teenage nursemaid to an aunt who valued booze over anything else, to inheriting a job she couldn’t stand. She hated the trudge there every morning. She hated the crappy wages. And she hated the overwhelming stench of cabbage that permeated every corner and crevice.
The only thing she loved was the relationships with the other women. The banter. The support. The sarcasm and the relentless nosiness into every area of her business. That said, Olive knew she didn’t have the tolerance to spend much longer stirring custard and serving up mince pies and jam sponges to snotty primary school kids.
‘Only thing that’s dead around here is your split ends and ma love life,’ Olive shot back, making Nancy howl with laughter. One-liners and amusing insults were like rites of passage around here and they were traded back and forth all day long, cutting but with an edge of endearment. If merciless teasing and disparaging remarks were coming your way, it was because they knew you could handle it. And Olive could dish them out like the rest of them.
Fiona Jones joined them in the staff changing room, just as Nancy pulled a newspaper out of her bag. Olive barely paid attention at first, too busy trying to prise her sodden boots off her soaking socks.
‘Right, ladies, I just want you to know that I’ll be leaving you soon,’ Nancy chirped.
Olive’s head snapped up and she felt a thud of dread in her chest. No. Nancy was the one that kept her sane in here. Her closest pal. The one whose laughter made the endless days bearable.
‘…Because I’m going to be a star.’ She threw the paper down on the table and they all huddled around it as Nancy pointed toa quarter-page advert and then read it aloud. ‘Actresses wanted. Aged twenty to thirty. New Scottish drama series. No experience required. We are looking for that needle in a haystack, a fresh face that will bring authenticity to the screen in the new weekly drama,The Clydeside. Come along to the open casting on Saturday…’ Beaming, Nancy threw her hands up in the air, in typically dramatic style. ‘I think we should all go. Come on, it’ll be a giggle. We get paid on Friday, so let’s go into town, have a wander around the shops, maybe even splash out on a bit of lunch and then go along and see what this is all about.’
Fiona picked up the paper, read it again. ‘I’m definitely coming. I was Calamity Jane in the school play and my teacher said I had talent.’
‘Is that the teacher you bumped into last year in Benidorm, the one who asked you out and turned out to be a complete lech?’ Nancy asked, teasing her.
‘Aye,’ Fiona responded tartly, ‘but that doesn’t mean he can’t recognise talent when he sees it. Said my stuff with the whip on Calamity Jane was the best stunt work he’d ever seen.’
Nancy and Olive were shrieking with laughter now. Fiona was never slow to tell anyone that she was only working as a dinner lady until her big break came along. She’d also been to every modelling agency in the city, and there was a rumour she’d applied to be a page three girl inThe Sun. If she got her baps out in a newspaper, the gossips in the village would combust.
Olive took the paper off her. Saturday. What else did she have on? Nothing. That was all that was in front of her. A whole lifetime of nothing. ‘I’ll come too, Nancy,’ she declared, trying to act casual. ‘I had a date lined up, but I’ll cancel.’ She didn’t. ‘It’s with a bloke from that nightclub I go to that’s been asking me out for months, so he’ll ask again anyway.’ There was no bloke. And she didn’t have the friends to go dancing with, or the money to get in. Her aunt had left debts in at least three local shops, whereshe’d been getting her booze on tick, and every time Olive went in, they added a fiver to her shopping bill to go towards it.
She had nothing to lose. And, if nothing else, it gave her a day out and some company. She didn’t have to actually do the audition. Although, hadn’t she been acting all her life? Pretending to be okay when her mum died, when really her heart was broken but she didn’t want anyone to think that she was looking for attention – the worst crime in her mother’s book. ‘Don’t you dare make a show of yourself,’ her mum used to hiss, whenever there was anyone else around. Then, later, she’d put on a fine performance as the dutiful niece, when she picked a wasted Vi up off the floor for the umpteenth time and dragged her to her bed, cleared up her mess and then, next morning, acted like nothing had happened.
Yep, she’d been acting for years. Could doing it in public really be any different?
Turns out, it was. After a morning wandering along Glasgow’s Buchanan Street, perusing the shop windows, and a burger in the Wimpy near Central Station, Olive, Fiona and Nancy had headed to the auditions. The advert had given the address – a nightclub just a couple of streets away. When they arrived, there was a line around the block of young women, some of them looking normal, just like them, and some of them so done up they looked like they’d just come off a stage with Bananarama.
‘There’s no way we’re going to get to the front of this line,’ Nancy had announced. ‘Why don’t we forget this, and just go down to that trendy bar on West Nile Street for a Taboo and Coke? My Peter says that’s where all the football players go. You never know – you two might get lucky.’
Nancy had been married to ‘her Peter’ for years, and Olive was sick of hearing how perfect he was. Although, the thought of meeting a football player was one she liked. Just imagine. Allthat money. They would take care of her and she wouldn’t have to boil another rotten pot of cabbage for the rest of her life. Nice clothes. Nice car. Unlimited credit cards and as much cash as she could spend.
