Chapter 4: Coping With the News

To say I was totally stunned by what Monty had told Kay-Lynn and myself would be an understatement.

I heard little of what else Monty said after his revelation and diagnosis of my condition, but in any case he clearly directed everything he said to Kay-Lynn while I basically shut my mind down in shock and let Kay-Lynn take it all in on my behalf. I felt like I was a little boy again, seeing the doctor with my mother in attendance to look after me and make the necessary decisions that would cure whatever my ailment was, be it a cough or runny nose or grazed knee.

I sort of half woke up when Kay-Lynn wiped the jelly off my belly and Monty stood up and told me to pull my shirt down as if I was just a good little boy and then ushered both of us out of his office. Outside in Reception Monty ensured that Kay-Lynn had a completed appointment card to bring me back to Monty’s surgery after the weekend to get the first results of the blood tests, with further appointments spread over the next three weeks as culture test results became available from the samples taken.

We came out of the surgery and headed back towards the District Line tube that we’d used to get here from my apartment.

“Wait,” I said, “I know that we’ve got a lot to think about as most of what Monty said went through one ear and out of the other, but serious consideration of this bombshell will have to wait until tonight. Right now we need to pick up the bus and first of all we need a cab to get there.”

“What bus?,” Kay-Lynn asked.

“There are six of us, with you, me and the girls, and we will need plenty of additional space in the transport for bags of clothes and whatever else you girls need for staying at the flat over the weekend. And neither of my cars are big enough to even seat six people let alone the rest of the stuff,” I explained as I put my arm up to hail a cab from the side of the road.

One black cab stopped, we got in; I gave the cabbie an address in Wandsworth and we were off.

“So where are we getting this bus from?” Kay-Lynn asked.

“From a firm of building maintenance contractors than I have a partnership interest in, they have a number of vans they have to use on a daily basis but they also have a mini-bus that is nominally a 16-seater but usually the rear four seats are taken out to hold stuff like a chemical toilet and tea and coffee making facilities. We call it a ‘comfort van’ and we only use it for renovation jobs, like taking over a property and gutting it; it saves the crippling cost of hiring a portaloo and is a great means of keeping everyone supplied with hot drinks because it means the workers don’t waste time leaving the site and gives them somewhere clean and sheltered for them to sit and have their lunch or shelter if waiting for materials or building inspectors. I sent them a text this morning while you were in the bathroom and asked if I could borrow the bus for the weekend and they said yes I could.”

We arrived at Singleton & Partners’ Buildings Maintenance yard across the river in Wandsworth about ten minutes later.

“Is this another one of those companies where your expression ‘We’ means you only have a tenuous link to them?,” Kay-Lynn asked, pointedly pointing to the company name of Singleton in big letters.

“Yes,” I’m a partner and a very minor one,” I grinned back, “and yes, I really mean ‘we’ in this instance. It was once my company, one that I inherited but I gave everyone an equal share of the business, so it is legally a partnership, which make a very stable company in a business where staff usually come and go. As partners, sharing in the profits, staff are motivated need less supervision and they tend to stay loyal and we get maximum efficiency.”

I paid off the cabbie and we went into the prefab office within the yard, which was largely empty except for a couple of pick-up trucks, another mini-bus with this year’s number plate and a gleaming mini-bus parked by the office door that according to the number plate was about ten years old but looked well-cared for. I was a great mobile advertisement for a maintenance and cleaning firm. Inside the office was a cheerful looking man in his 60s sitting at one desk strewn with papers, and a large dark-skinned woman in her late 40s sat at another much tidier desk in front of a keyboard and screen.

“Hi Boss,” the man greeted us, while the woman looked up, smiled and waved at us both. “We washed and cleaned the old comfort bus, so it is all ready for you. We’re not expecting to need it back until Thursday next week when we’ve got an all-nighter in Pimlico.”

“Hi, Al, Lisa, I really only need it for 2/3 hours today and again on Sunday afternoon, it’s not easy to park the bus at my place, so I’ll drop it back here tonight and pick it up again Sunday; is the keypad on the gate the same number as last time?”

“No, we change it every couple of weeks, Lisa’ll send it to you,” Alan replied and almost immediately my mobile beeped with a text message.

“I’ve just sent the current code to you, Drew,” Lisa said, “now, young man, are you gonna introduce us to your lovely young lady?” Lisa got up and walked towards us with her arms held out to Kay-Lynn.

“Ah, yes, excuse my lack of manners; this lovely young lady is Kay-Lynn, Kay-Lynn Cooper,” I said by way of introduction, “you may be seeing her around for the next couple of months or so, maybe even longer.”

“Hi, Al, hi Lisa,” Kay-Lynn said as she pushed past me to embrace the smiling Lisa, “hopefully what Drew meant to say is that you’ll definitely see me around for at least nine months to a year, I’m sure it’ll be that long at least.”

“Sometimes men are so dense, dear,” Lisa grinned at me, “but stick around, I’m sure he’ll realise what’s good for him in time. So what do you do, Kaylin, when you’re not caring for the Boss?”

“I’m a nurse at St Thomas’,” Kay-Lynn said, “I’m not Drew’s carer, of course, I just care for him, a little at least.”

“Oh, we all care for him, sweetheart,’ Lisa chuckled as she released Kay-Lynn from her hug and approached me for another hug.

“This is becoming a habit,” I said, “being in the same room with people talking about me as if I wasn’t actually here.”

“That’s because we all care about you,” Lisa laughed, “even when you’re a miserable git, now, give me a hug too, we don’t see you here often enough.”

I did hug her. Lisa had been with the company since she left school, with brief times off for her three children, so she had almost 30 years with the company and two of her kids were also now partners in the firm. It had been called ‘Evans Buildings Maintenance & Co’ when my Uncle Andrew Evans-Tutt owned it, he needed this company to maintain the large portfolio of mainly residential buildings that he had owned in London and the surrounding area. When I took over his businesses after his death, I sold off some of the properties that were not really profitable, which meant the amount of maintenance required was likely to be cut in half. I had a meeting with the then staff of the maintenance crew of about ten staff and offered them a partnership where they share profits but they would have to go out and attract more work, not just maintain our own buildings. They quickly agreed and insisted on the change of business name. We used to have terrible staff turnover before then, especially from skilled staff like chippies, plumbers and electricians, but since changing the business to a partnership and me using the money from the property sales to replace most of the vans with smart new ones, the staff increased in the last two years to 28 well-paid, skilled and motivated workers and only one staff member had left, a cleaner who retired last year; she left with a healthy payout for her share of the firm as well as offered to be available for holiday cover. The other newer mini-bus was a standard 16-seater and was used to pick up the cleaning staff and ferry them around the offices and residences, and operates daily from about 4am for offices through to about noon for residential. This was one of my many business success stories.

It is this firm that also does all the cleaning of my apartment’s building and I remembered to tell Lisa about Kay-Lynn’s friends using my building’s caretaker flat for the weekend and how pleased I was that they had cleaned and maintained it in such a way that I was proud to show my new friends around and knowing that they would be comfortable in such a clean environment.