Wednesday's Child Read Free

“Twenty should do it. It’s a three page document called Head Sec dot doc. It should be in the same folder. Are you sure?”
    “Don’t argue or I might change my mind. Where are you?”
    “Headley Cross. Where else would I be?” She glanced up as the café manager appeared with a pile of tea towels and cloths. “Thank you.”
    The manager knelt and dealt with the floor.
    “You know what I mean,” her friend chided. “Headley Cross may be small, but it’s a town of over two thousand people. Where in Headley Cross?” Eve’s voice was no longer tinged with concern. It was full on mother-hen mode. Just what she didn’t need.
    People moved and chatted around her. Cutlery chinked and conversations rose and fell. Grateful she was no longer the center of attention, Jacqui grabbed another tea towel. “Right now I’m clearing up the mess he made. He offered to help, but I didn’t want him to. By the time you get here, I’ll be sitting outside Coronation Hall. It’s on the main road behind the precinct. You can also park for free for twenty minutes there.”
    “Cool—my kind of car park. All right, it’s printing and collating, now. Give me thirty minutes at the most and I’ll be there.”
    “Thanks, Eve. You’re a life saver.” Jacqui hung up and put away her phone. She looked at the manager. “I am so sorry about this.”
    “Its fine, not your fault as we saw what happened. Do you want another meal to replace that one?”
    She paused to look at her plate. Her cheese and tomato sandwich was swimming in a sea of water. A broken yellow carnation sat on top like some kind of crown. “No, thank you.”
    “Let me at least get you a refund. I insist.”
    Not wanting a refund, but wanting a fuss even less, Jacqui agreed. “OK, thank you.”
    As he vanished behind the counter, she cleared up the rest of the mess. Scrunching up the napkins, she tossed them onto her plate. Folding the sodden papers, she left them on the plate as well. She shut the defunct laptop and not wanting to ruin its case as well, tucked it under her arm. She headed outside into the sunshine, without waiting for the manager to return with her refund.
    A landscape architect working for the Jekyll Foundation, Jacqui couldn’t afford to lose this tender. She wouldn’t go as far as to say her whole career hinged on it, but it was the first time the Foundation had trusted her to prepare and present a proposal on her own.
    Crossing the courtyard, she found a huge, twisted oak tree that provided shelter from the sun. Her favorite of all trees, it set her imagination ablaze with thoughts of all the ancient gnarled oak had seen in its long life. Battles, lover’s trysts, maybe even royalty passing. When this magnificent tree was a sapling, Henry VIII was king.
    She pulled a band from her pocket and twisted her hair up in a ponytail. She hadn’t expected the day to turn out so hot. Most unusual for England, they were having a spring heat wave, bringing the ducklings and flowers out early.
    A raised circular bed of yellow daffodils interspersed with red and orange tulips waved in the breeze. Bluebells filled the grass as far as her eyes could see and by her feet, yellow primroses and white snowdrops peeked through the earth around the base of the tree. No matter how good she or the others were at mixing flowers and colors, God always did it so much better.
    A family of swans and cygnets glided along the tranquil water under the bridge. Her fingers smoothed over the gold cross around her neck, the last gift from her parents. She never took it off, clinging to the final link with them. Her gaze followed the swans. Family was something she didn’t have. Although she dreamed about meeting the perfect man, she didn’t expect to find him any time soon.
    Her mind went back to the guy who knocked over the flowers. Hopefully the laptop was going to be all right. She didn’t want to have any more contact with this Mr. Page than was absolutely necessary, no