The Yorkshire Pudding Club Read online

  Five-foot-tall Milly Johnson is a giant in the professional world of greetings card copy. When not writing, she concentrates on leading a glamorous lifestyle and domestic martial arts where she is currently a Black Belt in unsuccessful dieting and a 5th Dan in ironing school clothes. She lives with her two sons and menagerie a trois near her mam and dad in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. The Yorkshire Pudding Club is her first novel.

  First published in Great Britain by Pocket Books, 2007

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Milly Johnson, 2007

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  Pocket Books & Design is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  The right of Milly Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  Africa House

  64–78 Kingsway

  London WC2B 6AH

  www.simonsays.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia

  Sydney

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN-10: 1-84739-483-3

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84739-483-5

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is dedicated to three generations of my family:

  To my beloved sons–Terence and George. My darlings, may all your friends be as wonderful as mine.

  To my late Nana Hubbard, who made my birthday cakes and loved to read, and my Granddad Hubbard, a poet, who made the best Yorkshire Puddings this side of Mars and a man who appreciated a well-built woman.

  And to my mam and dad–Jenny and Terry Hubbard–who haven’t a clue what a strange creature they raised, but who love me all the same.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to the friends who made this story possible, each in their own special way.

  To Lucie Whitehouse, who opened the door and let me in from the cold and Suzanne Baboneau, my Fairy Godmother, need I say more? To Nigel Smith, who ripped up my story and made me put it back together again properly. To Tara Wigley, who is a delight to work with and has done so much to get me here. To Joan Deitch, for making me look like I know what I’m doing. To ‘my novelist friend’ Sue Welfare, for our invaluable no-holds-barred natters. To Chris Douglas-Morris, Tony Spooner and David Greaves who all took a chance on me and changed my life. To Mrs Gunsen, who forced me to sit next to Cath Marklew in Latin and gave me a friend and a sister. To Rachel Hobson, for the turkey sandwiches in her mam’s kitchen ‘sobre la mesa’. To Maggie ‘Penelope’ Irwin, for always being there. To Caroline Durham, for keeping me on the right side of sanity. To Paul Sear, Alec Sillifant, Ged and Kaely Backland, for keeping me on the right side of insanity. To Sara Atkinson, for her bottomless heart. To Karen Towers, for her warmth. To my S.U.N. sisters–Helen Clapham, Pam Oliver and Karen Baker–for all our dramas. To Sue Mahomet, for her straight talking and our secret-sharing. To Debra Mitchell, who knows me so well and is still my friend!

  Prologue

  The previous September

  They took a day off and went with her because in the three million years they’d all been friends, it was the first time Helen had ever asked them a favour. That was how Elizabeth came to end up carrying a picnic basket in a grassy middle of nowhere, watching one of her two best friends wriggling out of her drawers and about to sit on the giant appendage of a club-bearing man carved into an alien county hillside.

  ‘Hels, are you actually right in your head?’ she asked.

  Janey said nothing but her equal disbelief showed in the dropped-open jaw as Helen stuffed the discarded pants in her handbag and then sat down squarely and triumphantly on Mr Big’s phallic enhancement.

  ‘Now if I had told you what I wanted to do, would you have come?’ she said. ‘I don’t think so! You would have tried to talk me out of it, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Too bloody right I would,’ said Elizabeth, whilst thinking, She’s lost it.

  ‘And this is the something you needed to do that is really, really, really important then?’ Janey asked, her eyebrows raised as far as they could stretch. ‘Dragging us halfway across the bloody country to see a chalk drawing?’

  ‘Aw, come on, we’re here now. Just sit down and have a sandwich,’ said Helen, straight-backed and sitting there as if she was waiting for something extraordinary to happen.

  ‘Where are we, like?’ Janey looked at the surrounding countryside, dominated by the thick white outline of the naked man with the enviable asset. ‘And more to the point–why?’

  ‘Oh, I’m having a sarnie, I’m flaming famished!’ Elizabeth decided. She was almost brain dead with tiredness, even though she had spent most of the long, long journey snoring on the back seat. She threw herself onto the grass next to her knickerless friend and dragged the picnic basket purposefully over. Janey huffed in a ‘can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ sort of way and grudgingly followed suit, muttering something about them all being bonkers.

  ‘He’s an ancient fertility symbol,’ Helen explained.

  ‘I’d never have guessed!’ said Elizabeth, ripping so hungrily into a giant sausage roll that the chalk man almost winced.

  Helen went on, ‘Well, I was watching this programme a couple of weeks ago about how all these women who hadn’t been able to conceive came here as a last resort and sat on his…well, here, for a while, and seventy-eight per cent of them–that’s seventy-eight per cent of them–became pregnant.’

  A dramatic silence ensued in which Helen waited for the others to be impressed.

  ‘Well, I have to say it and I hope you’ll excuse the pun,’ Elizabeth spat through a flurry of pastry flakes, ‘but that is positively the biggest load of bollocks you have ever come out with.’

  Janey laughed derisiv
ely at the same time. ‘Oh Hels, come on!’

  ‘I know what it sounds like, that’s why I didn’t tell you where we were coming,’ Helen said, her voice fighting off a wobble, ‘but if I don’t get pregnant soon, I’ll die. I want a baby so, so much. Believe me, you two have it a lot easier not wanting children, but I don’t care who laughs at me any more, I just Want. A. Baby.’ Then she turned her head suddenly skyward, blinking hard, a little ashamed at her outburst but more than that, hurt that they of all people were mocking her.

  Janey and Elizabeth exchanged the slightest of glances but each knew what the other was thinking. She’d always been so light about the fact that she hadn’t caught on. How many times had she led their joking about it? Neither of them had had the slightest idea that her pain ran so deeply.

  Elizabeth plunged her hand into the picnic basket again, in a brave effort to break the heavy silence that had descended upon them like a thick, depressing cloud.

  ‘So, let’s have a good look at this lot. What have you made us then, Hels? What feast have you concocted this time?’

  ‘There’s egg and cress, beef and horseradish, goats’ cheese and tomato…’ Helen began to reel off, dabbing at her eye, trying to make it look as if she had something in it ‘…sausage rolls, spicy scotch eggs, chicken filo parcels, lemon Swiss roll, banoffee tarts, Victoria sponge, crisps, Twiglets, there’s a red hummus and onion dip, strawberries dipped in dark chocolate and there’s some Diet Coke and wine.’

  ‘That all?’ said Elizabeth and Helen blurted out a laugh and the mood was lifted once again.

  Aw bless, thought Elizabeth, as she spotted all the little flags on the sandwiches; everything was home-made. Who the chuff could be bothered making real puff pastry these days but Hels? If she did have kids, their sandwich boxes would be the envy of the school. That little thought bubble gave her another taste of her friend’s desperation and how very severe it must be to trick them into travelling so many miles to do something as ridiculous as this. How had she missed this before?

  ‘Pass me an egg and cress, would you, please,’ Helen said, all tears abated.

  ‘When are the fish and Disciples arriving?’ Elizabeth asked, rummaging deep before handing over the cling-filmed triangle bearing an egg and cress sticker.

  ‘I know you’re a pig…I didn’t want you moaning that I’d dragged you all this way and I hadn’t fed you,’ Helen said, managing a little smile.

  ‘I’ll have a beef, please, and pass the plonk seeing as I’m not driving,’ Janey said with a deep sigh. ‘Tell me you haven’t forgotten an opener.’

  ‘It screws,’ Helen said.

  ‘That’s appropriate!’ Elizabeth snorted and got her usual disapproving look from Janey.

  The latter then gasped suddenly and said, ‘Oy, I hope we’ll be all right, sat here on this bloke’s genitals. I can’t afford to get pregnant.’ She looked worriedly down at the segment of chalk line disappearing up her skirt. ‘My Head of Department is about to peg it–I’m in line for his job.’

  ‘Oh nice!’ Elizabeth said, batting back some disapproval for a change.

  ‘Cough, cough, cough–I’m sick of listening to him,’ Janey went on. ‘That’s a lifetime of fags for you,’ and she nodded a warning in Elizabeth’s direction. ‘I think they’ll get rid of him in an early-retirement swoop–he’s been with them for about four hundred years so he’ll get a good pay-off. Mind you, he’ll probably spend it all on Bensons, knowing him. It’s only a matter of time before the vacancy comes up; he’s always flaming off ill and I’m running the place as it is so I don’t want any surprise sprogs knackering up my career hopes, thanks very much.’

  Helen tilted her head. ‘Well, all I can say is that not all of those women on the TV programme took their pants off when they sat on him.’

  ‘Oh great!’ said Janey, shifting her bottom off the white line. Not that she believed in stuff like that, but it didn’t hurt to make sure.

  Elizabeth poured herself a glass of the wine and reclined to let the gorgeous September sun shine down onto her face. She was too comfortable to move from her position on the ancient willy. Mumbo jumbo crap, she thought inwardly, but she was here now and might as well enjoy it, as it really was a cracking day for a picnic.

  Chapter 1

  The following February

  Her arms and legs spasmed outwards, she let loose a very loud scream and then Elizabeth awoke to find herself not on a nose-diving plane but on the seven thirty-six to Leeds and the focus of half a crammed carriageful of ‘glad that wasn’t me’ faces. However, not even their cold-water stares, the probability that she had been snoring and two mega-strength coffees slopping around her digestive system could keep Elizabeth’s eyes from shuttering down again–she was exhausted. She was last off the train and, in fact, had the fat, sweaty bloke sitting next to her not caught her with the hard edge of his briefcase as he heaved his carcass out of the seat, she might well have slept through to Barnsley again on the return trip. She had better buck up for later; she was hardly going to be the life and soul of Helen’s birthday party face down and asleep in her minestrone.

  As usual, the train station was full of suits zipping in straight lines to their destinations clutching a laptop case in one hand and a grabbed breakfast bag in the other. As usual, there were a few early shoppers making a leisurely way up to the main city stores and managing to get in the way of the rushing executives, who did not take too kindly to having lumpy human obstacles on their own personal work paths. And as usual, there was a large contingent of big-bellied workmen staring at women’s breasts from the scaffolding as their more industrious colleagues worked on extending the station, yet again. The train used to dump Elizabeth right in front of the ticket barriers, but these days it deposited them all so far away on one of the new platforms that she almost needed to catch another train from there to the exit. That morning, it felt a particularly long way.

  At least the ten-minute walk in the crisp February air served to startle her brainwaves into some activity, and by the time she had reached the great, smutty-bricked offices with the giant blue Handi-Save sign above the entrance she felt considerably more human and less like a dormouse again. It was an old, weary-looking building in the middle of a sea of younger, more dynamic structures, with its exterior reflecting the majority of the people on the inside–dull, tired and uninspiring. She pushed open the giant stiff revolving door that had given everyone who had worked there for any length of time a deformed bicep. It was easy to spot a long-timer at Handi-Save for they all had one arm bigger than the other, like a male Fiddler crab. Yep, she felt decidedly better for the walk.

  ‘Flaming Norah, you look rough,’ said Derek the security man. He, being ambidextrous, had two massive arms. ‘Good night, was it?’

  ‘I was in bed for nine,’ Elizabeth held up her best shushing finger as his mouth sprang open, ‘and before you say it, yes, I was alone. I don’t know what’s up with me at the moment. I think I’ve been bitten by a tsetse-tsetse fly.’

  ‘Tsetse-tsetse? Going round in pairs now, are they?’ grinned Derek. ‘Maybe you’re coming down with something. Mind you, in a place like this someone’s only got to say “cold” and everyone gets it through the air conditioning.’

  ‘I feel all right in myself, just tired,’ she said, hunting in her bag for one of her menthols. She proffered the packet to him. ‘Want one?’

  ‘Do I chuff!’ he said, warding them away like a vampire who had just been offered a garlic bulb. ‘If I want mints I’ll suck a Polo, if I want a fag I’ll have an Embassy, thanks for asking.’

  ‘Please yourself then! Right, now, I better do something with my face then if I look that bad.’

  ‘I’ve a carrier bag behind Reception. I could poke two eyeholes in it for you.’

  ‘Thanks a lot, Ras.’

  He nudged her playfully. ‘Ah, you still look bonny!’

  She turned away, mock-insulted. ‘Nope, sorry, the damage has been done, you can get stuffed,’
and though she could hear him laughing behind her, the smile slid off her face as if it had been greased with three pounds of melted butter. Not that she had taken offence, for it took a lot to wind Elizabeth up–at least it had done until recently, when this infernal tiredness threatened to turn even her cool disposition to something as brittle as the toffee she used to get as a kid that snapped off into artery-severing shards.

  Derek, or Rasputin as everyone called him, would have been mortified even to suspect that he had upset her because they went back such a long way. He had only been at Handi-Save a week himself when she had turned up at the Reception desk aged sixteen, all wide grey eyes, smashing blouse buttoned up to the neck and her dark gypsy curls tamed into a ponytail. She had been half-fearful, half-excited by her important-sounding destination–‘the typing pool’–to where Ras volunteered to escort her. She’d had a picture in her mind of lots of typists working around a pool full of warm, blue water and was critically disappointed when it turned out to be just an airless office full of women with perms and frumpy frocks banging away on word processors. Ras was string-thin back then, with a number one haircut and a moustache like Ron from the pop group ‘Sparks’. He ended up getting them both hopelessly lost which caused a standing joke that was still running.

  Twenty-two years later, they were both still there, crossing paths in Reception each morning, though Elizabeth had long since left the pool and was now the Managing Director’s secretary. Ras, on the other hand, had concentrated his energies over the years into evolving physically into a heavyweight wrestler who would fail a Roy Wood’s Wizzard audition for being too hairy. He’d had four kids, three wives, two motorcycle crashes and a steel plate in his head. The only things that seemed to have stayed constant about him were those friendly facial features and the warmth in his morning greetings. He alone these days put a smile on Elizabeth’s lips at work, or as she preferred to call it, ‘the Hammer House of Handi-Save’.