Chapter 9

Christmas comes but once

TIM HAD been up half the night preparing dips and salads for the Monroe’s carol singing party. Michelle had also helped for a while before giving up, utterly exhausted. For Michelle, she felt that she was still in information overload after the last hectic week. As well as being a cook of near-professional chef standard, it appeared that Tim was a genius businessman, with interests in small businesses all over the town. Hundreds of people relied on Tim for their regular reliable income and all of them appeared to be focussing their attention on her, the woman who had overnight become an integral part of this well-respected man’s life. She had spent almost every hour since last Friday night constantly in his company. Tonight was their seventh night together and they had still not consummated their increasingly close relationship. Michelle felt they both wanted to but they were under so much pressure, even though everyone they met clearly assumed that they were already committed lovers. Well, in every respect bar one they were lovers. They just needed time together to relax and take the final step in the process that Michelle was certain had been leading to them to the goal of spending the rest of their lives together as the perfectly matched couple.

Michelle’s last really relaxing evening with the man, who she was completely sure was the one true love of her life, was Monday. And she really felt she needed to relax by then. Meeting Lily earlier that day had been a revelation. Tim’s ex-lover still clearly loved him dearly, that much was plain, but at the same time she was so happy that Tim now had Michelle and was eager to help her to become the main part of his life. While Tim got Brian started on sorting out her little Micra’s starting problems, Lily ran through the program that calculated the capital, running and closing costs along with the margins resulting from the leasing contracts, until Lily was sure that Michelle was comfortable with them. Michelle had looked on while Lily and Tim worked so smoothly together through the figures that her father sent through about his existing car leasing arrangements and forecast future requirements. In a remarkably short space of time they had some figures ready to show Roger Jones and his partners before lunch. Michelle had accompanied Tim when they presented the figures to Roger and his team early that afternoon. Tim let Michelle put up the figures and resultant graphs using the keyboard, projected onto a large flat screen, while Tim did the accompanying talk. Roger had already showed them the costs of their vehicles over the last five years and Tim was able to show the immediate monthly savings and the further projected savings over the coming five years. Questions about the levels of personal service, servicing and additional valeting during and out-of-hours services were shown, much of the benefits of which they had never experienced before. Michelle was confidently able to modify the figures and charts, as she had been shown how to by Lily, as questions or alternatives the insurance company team raised. Roger was very impressed both by the presentation and the ease with which Michelle had been able to manipulate modifications after an extremely short initiation. Tim was delighted too by how she had been able to work the program, although Michelle had to say that she had learned enough about programming from her Mum that she was aware that, the way the program had been created, could have applications way beyond what Tim was using it for. After his team had left the meeting room, Roger asked for another demonstration of the core program and said that this could be used for selling his investments and insurance products too, and asked if he could get his IT people, including Michelle’s Mum Jenny, involved to see if the program could be adjusted to fit their specific requirements. Tim arranged to bring a copy of the shell in just after Christmas.

Tim had written the program many years before as a project during a night class in computer planning, and regularly kept his hand in by tweaking and adjusting it to various applications across a number of businesses.

Michelle stayed in bed dozing for a while on Tuesday morning after Tim left for work and was thinking about getting up and taking her revitalized car into the town centre to start her Christmas shopping, when she thought she heard Tim banging about in the kitchen immediately below their bedroom. She threw back the covers and skipped down the stairs, eager to see him.

“Hi honey!” she sang as she sailed through the open kitchen door, to be confronted by a strange woman standing at the sink with a coffee mug in one hand and a half-eaten cookie in the other.

“What?—” yelled Michelle.

“Who?—” yelled the stranger at the same time, spilling her coffee all over her chin and front of her blouse, “Oh shit! Fuck! That was hot! ... Who the hell are you?”

“You must be the cleaner ... Manda? ... Wait, you’re Mrs Smith, Andrew’s mother?”

“Y-yes, hold on a minute, Miss Jones? Miss Jones from the Comp?”

“Yes, Michelle Jones,” said Michelle, relaxing a little but conscious that she was wearing one of Tim’s tee-shirts and nothing else, long enough to finish halfway down her thighs.

Manda Smith started laughing, “Look at me, I thought I was alone in the house, you really frightened the wits outta me!”

“And I thought you were Tim,” laughed Michelle, “I was hoping he had come back home.”

“So, you and Tim, eh?” smiled Manda, as she ineffectually tried to wipe her front with a tea towel, “I’ll put this in the wash with whatever’s in the basket.”

“Think I better go get dressed,” Michelle said, sheepishly, “I feel a little self-conscious like this.”

“Well I think you look very fetching, Miss Jones.”

“Michelle, please.”

“Call me Manda. Well this is a turn-up for the books. Andy’ll be surprised, he says you’re still his favourite teacher.”

“Oh gosh! What are you going to tell him?”

“Only that I’ve seen you, he’s only 13.”

“He’s with Mrs Sparrow now for English, isn’t he? How’s he getting on?”

“Not so well, seems to have lost interest. Lazy sod takes after his father. Sorry, shouldn’t have said ‘sod’!”

“He’s a bright boy, got a great imagination, some of his essays showed real promise. Maybe he just needs to get his enthusiasm back.”

“He got on all right last year in English, but that was because he got on so well with you, Michelle. This year he seems to be improving in some areas. His biology report was very good but Mrs Sparrow marked him down to D-minus.”

“Perhaps if I have a word with him?”

“Could you? I know his dad doesn’t care about his schooling, but I’d like to see Andy do well, his brother and sister both look up to him and it might help bring them on too.”

“Of course, I’d be happy to, And-y needs encouraging, it would be a waste if he lost interest after doing so well last year.”

Michelle was delayed getting out of the house, so she just did some essential grocery shopping from the nearby supermarket. By the time she got back to the house, Manda had finishing what housekeeping duties she was expected to do and had departed. Michelle made a packed lunch for them both and took it in to Tim at work. They ate the little meal in his office and laughed together as Michelle recounted how Manda and she had frightened each other. Later, she went shopping with her Mum, Jenny Jones. Tim said he would prepare and cook the evening meal. Michelle had bought some fish and left it in the fridge, so they could eat something light to counter some of the heavy meals they had coming up in the next few days.

On Tuesday evening, Amos Shillingstone, Tim’s banker, turned up with an overnight bag and stayed that night in one of the two spare bedrooms. Michelle instantly took a liking to Ammo, as Tim continually called him, she liked him very much. He was a quiet, polite man, rather shy but innocently charming in his way. Relaxing in their sitting room, with his jacket, tie and shoes off, with one of Tim’s exquisite meals and a couple of malt whiskies inside him, he started coming out of his shell and, with Tim prompting, spoke about his concerns about losing what investments he had built up over the years. He expanded on how little his wife had contributed to his life and happiness, holding him back through her selfishness. He had no sooner come to terms with her recent betrayal that her manipulation of him over the years became so transparently obvious, which meant there could be no turning the clock back or mending the fences that had been destroyed by her transgressions. It was his wasteful son that Ammo so despaired of. The lad Scott had failed his first year at Sheffield University and was re-sitting his foundation year for a second time so, even if he successfully completed the first year again, he would still have to do another two years to complete his bachelor degree over four long and expensive years.

Tim undertook to take on Ammo’s investments and hide them as his own for as long as he needed and that would be done the very next day; Ammo only had to change the details held at the bank. Michelle chimed in with an offer that he could stay at her furnished flat from the next night onward, which both Tim and Ammo were more than happy with. Michelle drove round to her flat on Wednesday morning and packed up as much personal stuff as she could fit in the Micra and clean the flat up ready for Ammo to move in later in the day after the bank closed. She was just about to make her third trip “home” to Tim’s when Ammo turned up, this time with an attractive red-headed woman, Pamela, and her sweet daughter, Jan, who stressed to Michelle that, for propriety sakes, they were only there helping him move in. When Ammo took Michelle to one side and raised the subject of rent, Michelle had laughed and given him a hug and asked Amos if they were friends. Ammo said she definitely was a friend for life, therefore Michelle told him that she considered him a very good friend of both her and Tim, so there was to be absolutely no mention of rent. If there was anyone in the town who had even an inkling of Tim’s financial worth, it was Ammo. She didn’t think they needed the rent, but at that stage she didn’t have a full idea of Tim’s influence.

With an afterthought she said with a grin, “Unless paying a substantial rent on paper helps you with any calculations affecting the outcome of your assessment for alimony, of course.”

Ammo actually hugged her back and went as far as to kiss her on the cheek, which was a big step for the shy, retiring banker. His lady friend, Pam, who came along to help, was someone Michelle had also taken an instant liking to, had smiled warmly at the pair of them, before giving Michelle a hug herself when the flat owner left to return to spend another night with Tim.

Michelle decided then that, as everyone called her man “Tim” and Ammo called him “Timbo”, that she would call the man in her life “Bo” in private, in much the way he called her the pet name “Chelle”. Tim glowed with love and squeezed her when she explained his new exclusive pet name.

Thursday, she spent the morning at Monroe’s with Lily once more, finding out in more detail about how the leasing contracts worked. The pricing she had done earlier in the week was only one element involved in the process. Only now, was it becoming clear to Michelle the extent of Tim’s ownership, both of Monroe’s and the wholly owned car leasing business MS Leasing. Up to now she had thought he was merely a comfortably off car dealer sales manager, not the successful entrepreneur that he clearly had been all along. It was during Thursday morning that her father Roger rang through to confirm with some delight that Tim had secured the contract to supply all of the leased vehicles to his company, commencing on the first day of February, to allow a period of notice to the old company. Lily showed her the steps she was going to take to negotiate the changeover from one contract to another and calculations for the nominal values of the vehicles involved. It was an exercise Lily was used to carrying out. Lily ran her through the rest of the car-leasing files and Michelle was amazed at the number of local businesses that leased their private and commercial vehicles through this little office, from large companies down to countless self-employed local tradesmen and businesses. That afternoon she drove alone into the High Street to finish off buying Christmas presents for her family and those of Tim’s family, at least the ones she was already familiar with. What do you buy the guy who has everything? Knowing his love of cooking, Michelle bought some new cookery books, that she had already checked were not on his bookcase, and she purchased a full set of hand-crafted and carved wooden spatulas and salad serving spoons which she hoped he would like for his kitchen.