Deserted Island with her Brooding Boss

Luciana had no idea that there would be a marching band, people dressed up as animals and children wielding tambourines and shakers. She had only decided to join the climate march because she felt that it was her duty, because she had no excuse to be busy elsewhere now that she was unemployed, and because Jack and Georgia were old enough to understand and learn from a good example.

But she hadn’t expected to enjoy it too.

“Where’s Planet B, Mummy?” Jack asked her. One of the placards read ‘There’s no planet B’.

“It means that we have no backup place to go.” She knew the feeling very well. More than a week had passed since her interview at Matt Fernsby’s company, and nobody had contacted her yet. It had to be a no. She had better start another round of job searches tonight or they’d soon find themselves in the street—not marching. She squeezed Jack and Georgia’s hands a little tighter.

“What does that one say?” Georgia pointed her chubby little finger to a placard in the shape of a heart. It read, ‘Make love, not CO2’.

Er … no thanks. She was done with love, sex and men. “It says … be kind to others.”

“Mummy, I want to make music too,” Jack said.

“Me too!” Georgia echoed.

“Let’s see what we can find in my bag to make music.” She let go of their hands and rummaged in her oversized handbag. Which mother turned up to a climate march without any shakers, placards or animal costumes? An unsatisfactory one. She found an empty packet of baby wipes, an old sandwich, some expired train tickets and … a box of Tic Tac sweets. Perfect shakers. But if she didn’t have two, it would be worse than nothing. She dug deeper. A tube of Smarties. Excellent. “Make sure you keep your thumb over the end or the sweets will fly out. Here you are,” she said, pulling the Tic Tac box and the Smarties tube out of her bag. Resourceful mother.

But Jack and Georgia weren’t there. Luciana whipped around, looked left and right, forwards and back. Her heart sank. “Jack? Georgia?” Another child, safely tethered to his responsible mother’s hand, looked at her with sympathy.

Oh, God. She had lost her children. Dangerous mother. Had she left them behind or had they run ahead? She stopped walking and the river of people parted around her. Where was the customer service desk or the lost-child collection point in a Bristol street thronged with protesters? The only police car she had seen was miles back. “Jack! Georgia!” Her voice was drowned by the drums of the marching band. A primeval fear gripped her stomach in a vice and twisted. What if something happened to them? If they got kidnapped? Oh, God.

There was only one thing she could do. Get to the person with the megaphone.

***

“What animal is that on your head?” a little girl asked Matt, pointing to his papier mâché hat.

“It’s a goat’s head,” he answered without stopping the rhythm he was playing on the bongos.

“Did you make it?” asked a little boy who had popped out of the crowd together with the girl. He had an inquisitive face and sparky eyes.

“Yes, I did.”

“How do you hold your drums without your hands?” the boy asked.

“It’s tied to a belt I’m wearing.” He could see the next question coming and no, he wasn’t going to lift his T-shirt to show his belt to unknown children in the street. Where were these kids’ parents? Around him were only the members of his band, and he knew that these kids didn’t belong to them. Now it was his turn to ask the kids questions. “Are you here on your own?”

“No, we are with Mummy,” the little girl said.

“Where is she?”

The children looked around and their eyes widened. “She’s lost!”

Matt stopped suddenly and Keith’s bass drum almost knocked him over.

“Hey, mate, are you alright?” Keith said.

Not at all. He probably had only ten seconds before tears and tantrums broke out, and he had no bloody idea how to deal with that. He’d rather face a room full of hard-nosed investors and board members than two kids who had lost their mum. He didn’t even like kids. “These kids are lost.”

“We are not lost. Mummy is lost,” the little girl corrected him.

“Okay. But we still have to find her,” Matt conceded. He had to think of something fast. “Let’s sing the Mummy-we’re-here song.”

“Good idea!” the children chorused.

Keith nodded and Matt started a three-beats rhythm on the bongos, then chanted “Mummy we’re here. Mummy come and get us.” One glance was enough for the rest of the band to understand and join in. The chant rippled through the crowd like a Mexican wave and reached the girl with the megaphone. Every second that passed felt like a minute. Where was the kids’ mother? If she didn’t turn up soon, he would have to tell the police, and they’d waste their time looking for the woman when they were already stretched. Just like with the climate, one person’s irresponsible behaviour affected everyone else. Why have children if you didn’t want to look after them? Wasn’t it better not to have them in the first place?

“Jack, Georgia!” A woman dived out of the crowd and swept the children into her arms. Someone clapped and other people joined in.

Matt watched the kids wrap themselves onto their mother, pulling at her neck, sticking to her like suckers. They were cute. Other people smiled and parted around them as they continued marching, while he stood there, letting the tension drain out of his body to be replaced by relief.

“You must never leave me and go around on your own!” the woman said sternly to the kids even while she was hugging and kissing them.

“We weren’t on our own. We were with him.” The boy turned round and pointed to Matt.

What? Hell no. Now he looked like the piper of Hamelin who stole the town’s kids. No.

The woman lifted a less-than-friendly gaze to Matt. And he recognised her. He had interviewed her last week and still hadn’t contacted her to let her know whether she had got the job or not. “Hi. You didn’t say that you had children,” were the first words that came to his mouth.

“I didn’t think it was any of your business.” She stood up and straightened, clasping her kids’ hands tightly as if someone—him—was about to snatch them from her. “But I guess that you’ve found some other reason not to give me the job.”

She was right: he did have a reason to not want to give her the job. But she was also wrong, because it wasn’t a strong enough reason to deprive his company of the best candidate for the job. It was only enough to make him reluctant to work with her, so he hadn’t made up his mind what to do yet.

She hadn’t seemed to recognise him at the interview, so she must have forgotten, but they had met twenty years before, when he was only an undergraduate and she was a PhD student in the Microbiology lab where he had wanted to do his thesis.

The professor in charge of the lab had hoped to put him under her supervision, but she had turned him down with such bad grace that he had sworn never to have anything to do with her again. In the end, he had done his thesis in the Biochemistry lab instead. This woman, Luciana Bright, was the reason why he was now a biochemist instead of a microbiologist.

And now he was sitting on the infamous fence and finding that it was wrapped in barbed wire. Luciana Bright was top of her game and his company needed her skills, but could he work with her? Could he entrust her with his precious baby—the research he had been working on for years? Whoever got that job would need to help him achieve his ultimate goal—creating the next generation of carbon neutral fuels. It would be his own personal contribution to humanity, and he needed the best microbiologist in the field. Her. He took a deep breath.

“Actually, you’ve got the job.”

“Pardon?” She clasped her children’s hands tighter.

“You’ve got the job. I was going to ring you after the march,” he repeated with a gravity that clashed comically with the papier mâché goat on his head.

I’ve got the job. The job she had most wanted in her entire life. Working for Sunlight Biofuels wasn’t a job she would do just to keep food on the table. Well, that too—she urgently needed food on the table—but working for Matt Fernsby’s company was more than a job. It was a privilege and an honour. A calling. If she didn’t need the money, she would work for Sunlight Biofuels for free. So why wasn’t she leaping with joy, shaking the Smarties and Tic Tac maracas, singing at the top of her voice?

Because anger has its own momentum and her prospective new boss had rubbed her the wrong way by saying, ‘you didn’t say that you had children’, as if her kids were a murky secret that she had kept hidden from him. On top of that, he was pissing her right off looking at her as if she should have never been left in charge of children. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands.

“So? Are you accepting it or not?” he asked brusquely.

The vibes coming from the man were not of the warm and fuzzy kind but refusing his offer would be like cutting her nose to spite her face. “Yes, I’ll take the job.”

“You don’t sound too excited.” Was he even baiting her?

“I’ve only just recovered my kids after losing them.”

“Quite.”

The reproach in his tone was unequivocable. Jack tugged at her hand. “Mum, everyone is overtaking us.”

“And you,”—Georgia pointed her finger at her mother’s new boss—“have left your friends alone.”

To Luciana’s satisfaction, his jaw ticked with unease. “You’re right, I’d better go before they choose another drummer.”

“Can I be it?” Jack shouted, hand shooting up, and Matt Fernsby smiled—smiled! It was a lovely smile, with crinkles in all the right places. Luciana caught herself staring.

“Yes, but not today. After the scare you gave your mother, I’m sure that she’d rather have you close by.” He turned to her, and the smile instantly withered away. “When can you start work?”

“As soon as you like.”

“Monday?”

“Sure.”

“See you on Monday.” He gave her a curt nod in the way of a goodbye, then turned to the kids. “Look after your mum.”

“We will!” they chorused.

He walked away with the easy gait of the man who has the world at his feet. The brilliant, broad-shouldered and long-limbed founder of the most exciting start-up in the field could be the poster man for the achievements of mankind. Meeting him should be distilled pleasure. Being offered a job by him, a delight.

Instead, she felt as if she had plunged one hand in a bucket of hot water, the other in a bucket of ice, and pulled them out both stinging. The way he had given her that job was as if someone had twisted his arm and he was obliging under duress, but he would do it with as little grace and enthusiasm as possible.

He had said goodbye to the kids, but not to her. Come to think of it, he hadn’t even congratulated her for the appointment. He had probably wanted to employ someone without children, who could work long hours and travel at the drop of a hat. She, on the contrary, had too many hats to drop, and right now she had lost Georgia’s.

“Where’s your hat, sweetie?”

Georgia wrapped her fingers around the hem of her dress. “The goat on the man’s head has eaten it,” she mumbled.

Matt Fernsby’s papier-mâché goat headdress. On anyone else, it would have looked ridiculous, but the man could somehow pull it off without losing a microgram of dignity. He was one of those people who had been inoculated with gravitas at birth.

“Let’s go and ask him if his goat will give it back,” Georgia suggested hopefully. Had even her four-year-old been bewitched by her new boss’s aura?

“We’ll buy you another one. Now that Mummy has a new job, we can afford a new hat.”

“But I liked that one best!” Georgia protested.

“Let’s keep our eyes on the ground and we might find it. If not, we’ll buy another. There’s plenty more fish in the sea.” Was that an appropriate metaphor or a Freudian slip?

“I need the toilet,” Georgia announced solemnly.

Cavolo, cabbage! She shouldn’t have mentioned an endless expanse of water. Children needed the toilet only when they thought about it. Luckily, they could just as easily forget it if they were distracted, but it would still be wise to make their way to the nearest toilet. “Alright, we’re going home.”

“I need it too. I need it more than her!” Jack said.

Oh, no. Sibling one-upmanship was the last thing she needed when a child needed the toilet. “Let’s play I spy!” Luciana suggested in her jolliest voice.

“I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘F’,” Jack said.

“A fat woman!” Georgia said, pointing to a curvaceous lady on the other side of the road.

“Shhh, quiet, please!” Luciana begged. She needed just one moment of peace to text her sister and warn her that they were on their way home. She had run out of child-friendly explanations for what Auntie Nessa might be doing dressed up as a lion tamer and holding a naked man on a leash.

“‘A fat woman’ doesn’t start with ‘F’, silly billy. I meant the fountain.” Jack pointed to the water feature in front of the Victoria Rooms.

The enormous fountain spurted water from bronze shells and sea creatures as if it was the day of Noah’s flood. Usually, an anemometer controlled the water pressure and stopped it spraying onto the pavement on windy days. Today it was malfunctioning.

Jack and Georgia immediately let go of her hands and ran towards the cast bronze shells with clear intent. She imagined the two of them plunging headfirst into the water. “Stop!” she bellowed.

The children stopped just short of the wet patch on the pavement.

“We mustn’t get too close or we’ll upset the Triton and the Mermaid.” The two bronze figures did look rather grumpy. “See? They’ve marked their territory on the pavement.”

“Why has the Triton got more territory?” Georgia asked with feminist indignation. The bronze statue was downwind so its fountain had sprayed further onto the pavement.

“Because … he’s more aggressive,” Luciana said.

Georgia and Jack took a step back.

“Now let’s go home before Auntie Nessa eats all the food in the house and drinks all the water in the tap,” Luciana said, referring to one of the children’s favourite picture books.

The mention of a tap must have triggered it, because immediately Jack gave her a tortured look. “I need the toilet!”

When they finally got to Nessa’s flat, just in case her sister hadn’t read her text, Luciana gave the children two turns at ringing the doorbell, which they took with enthusiasm.

Luckily, this time Nessa was fully dressed and on her own. Her sister was taller than her and looked more like their mother, while Luciana had taken after their father. She had always wondered why, when they’d split up, their parents had chosen to keep with them the child that looked most like their ex-spouse. Luciana gave her a kiss on each cheek in the Italian way, then rushed the kids to the toilet.

“Me first because I said it first!” Georgia dropped her knickers and perched herself on the seat before her brother had a chance.

"We can share,” Jack chirped, dropping his trousers and underpants.

“Yuk, no!” She imagined Jack dousing his sister like the triton of the fountain.

“Sitting down, of course.” Georgia shuffled on the seat to make space for her brother, who perched himself next to her with a grin.

“See, Mummy? There’s enough space.”

She rolled her eyes. Was it okay for children to share a toilet seat? Her own childhood had been so chaotic and unorthodox that she had no idea what was normal and what wasn’t.

As soon as the tinkling sound started, the children burst into giggles and she felt like smiling too, but thought she should look disapproving instead. “Wash your hands really well when you’ve finished.”

In the sitting room, her sister was working at her laptop on the dining table. Nessa slammed her laptop shut, pulled out a chair for Luciana and turned her big kohl-rimmed eyes to her interrogatively. “I can see in your face that you’ve got something to tell me.”

“I got the job at Sunlight Biofuels.”

Nessa leapt off the sofa and hugged her. “Well done! I so knew you would!” She pulled back. “You don’t look too pleased.”

“I am.”

Her sister quirked an eyebrow. “You’re going to tell me everything after lunch. Now I’d better get cooking.”

“I’ll make lunch,” Luciana offered. Her sister was kind, loving and generous—just the fact that she was hosting them in her flat was proof enough—and she was a very good cook, but she had the food hygiene standards of a teenager. The pot of Philadelphia cream cheese in the fridge had turned into a block of Blue Stilton and the butter dish she kept on the table out on the balcony was like a petri dish inoculated with deadly bacteria.

“Why? Don’t you like my cooking?”

“I’m the one who grew up in Italy, so it’s my duty to cook,” Luciana said diplomatically.

“But I’m the better cook.”

It was one hundred per cent true. “Touché.”