Bouncing Back

by Zoe Barnes

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Everybody's entitled to a bad day. But Cally Storm's bad day is worse than most. She loses her job, her home, her marriage and her self-respect, all in one fell swoop. At 30, she's back in her mum's spare room, contemplating a dismal future ... until fate takes a hand and forces her to take a job at the local wildlife park. It's a real shock to the system for someone who used to work for an insurance company, and at first Cally's driven to despair by the likes of Colin the skunk, S(a)tan the donkey, and Bob, the laziest zoo-keeper in the world. But there are compensations - notably in the form of Will, her unconventional colleague. If there's such a thing as animal magnetism, Will's sure as heck got it; but he's playing hard to get. And besides, Cally's a married woman ... The only thing is, she hasn't got round to telling Will yet.

Release date: October 25, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

Just when it was all going so well …


A fat, black, disreputable-looking cloud sneaked over the crest of the hill, homed in on a Northampton office block, and casually
emptied its bladder on the roof. It was that kind of day: murky, March and monotonous. Even the pigeons looked depressed.


Inside a featureless office on the third floor, Cally Storm was getting precisely nowhere.

‘Nope,’ she said, trying to keep her irritation in check. ‘Didn’t get a word of that. Look, I’m sorry but you’re just not
making yourself clear.’


On the other side of the glass-topped desk, the small Italian with the sharp suit and the soft brown eyes blinked frustratedly.
He looked about fourteen, had skinny ankles and ought by rights to have been smoking behind the bike sheds, not running the
Human Resources division of Banco Torino (UK) plc. More important, he was definitely not old enough to be Cally’s new boss.
And if there’d been any justice in the world, she’d have been sitting in that chair, not him.


‘You still no unnerstan’?’ he repeated, rather pointlessly thought Cally, since the only words of English the new Italian management team seemed confident with were ‘Hello’, and ‘Manchester United’.


‘Maybe if you spoke more slowly,’ she ventured, her jaw muscles aching with the effort of not slapping him about the head.
‘Slooow-ly?’


She added hand movements for extra emphasis. A GCSE in Italian might have helped, but then she’d have missed out on double
basketball at school, and you had to get your priorities right. Cally was confident that she had sorted hers out ages ago.
One: aim for the top and don’t stop till you get there. Two: there is no two. Number two sucks.


‘Is my accent, yes?’

‘Er … well …’

There was no polite answer to that. This was a man who did not so much command the English language as lie down and invite
it to trample all over him. Cally fiddled restlessly with the handle of her new leather portfolio, one eye on the clock. Get
to the point, get to the point, she seethed inwardly. It was all right for him, of course. He was on a nice two-week jolly
from Milan; all expenses paid and nothing to do but get in people’s way and tell them they were spending too much on paperclips.


Things had gone from bad to worse since the takeover. Meetings, meetings, meetings. No decisions seemed to get made any more,
the canteen smelled permanently of pesto and she was already half an hour late for a meeting with the Lower Slaughter Fatstock
Cooperative. Didn’t these Mediterranean types realise how many other companies would be more than happy to insure Farmer Giles’s
Friesians against foot rot?


Still, she supposed things would settle down eventually. It wasn’t the first time LBS Agri-Finance had been taken over, and
it probably wouldn’t be the last.


Signor Toscelli chewed his lower lip. ‘Ah. Momento.’

From the depths of an Armani trouser pocket, he produced a dog-eared phrase book and flipped feverishly through it till he
found what he was looking for.


‘Si, si, here is what I say.’ His index finger jabbed at the page. ‘You. Are.’ His lips struggled to frame the unfamiliar diphthong.
‘Fay-aired.’


Cally’s nose wrinkled. ‘What?’

‘Fay-aired.’ In exasperation, he spun the book round so that it was facing Cally, and jabbed a triumphant finger. ‘Fay-airrred.
This is correct, no? You are …?’


Fired?

Somewhere in the pit of Cally’s stomach, a lift fell fifteen storeys.

‘Fired!’ squeaked Cally, as everything crystallised into horrible clarity, and her lovely new executive portfolio tumbled
off her lap. ‘Is this some kind of sick joke?’


Unfortunately, Signor Toscelli wasn’t laughing.

Well, well, fucking well, thought Cally, staring bitterly out of the snot smeared bus windows. So this is where the number
forty-two goes. And just think, if I hadn’t got the golden elbow off Banco Torino (UK), I’d probably never have set out on
this glorious voyage of discovery. Not.


She rubbed a small patch of window clear and peered through the glass. Snow. Effing snow, every effing where. Now didn’t that
just make everything perfect? One minute a harmless little bit of rain, the next there’s a sodding blizzard and you can’t
get a taxi for love or money. One minute you’ve got a great job with brilliant prospects, the next you’re out on your ear
and some bastard Italian has swiped the keys to your company car.


So kind of them to lend her a Banco Torino carrier bag to put her things in. Horribly overstuffed, it bounced about on her
lap, threatening to spew its contents in ten different directions as the bus crested a speed bump at thirty miles an hour,
swerved to avoid the world’s biggest pothole, skidded on wet slush and gaily rattled across the corner of the pavement, all
without changing gear.


Cally retrieved a sheep-shaped money-box as it toppled sideways, and stuffed it back into the bag. A plastic sheep, two desk
tidies, twelve issues of Farmer’s Weekly and a red sock she wasn’t even sure was hers: was this dross all she had to show for ten years spent selling more lambing
insurance than anybody else in the history of LBS? And all of a sudden she – little miss whizz-kid – was redundant, and she
hadn’t even seen it coming. Well ha bloody ha, Cally Storm, she told herself. Looks like the joke’s on you.


Of course, if she forced herself to be rational about it she could just about see that there was no reason why she shouldn’t
be made redundant. It happened to loads of people all the time, it wasn’t anything personal. Fact was, a big fat multinational
like Banco Torino just couldn’t figure out what to do with someone who’d once insured a pet angora goat against alopecia.


Sod that, it felt personal. Ten years she’d endured, ten long years of threatened mergers and takeovers and flotations and
rationalisations, and OK, the LBS might have moved her round the country like an unclaimed parcel, but they’d never once hinted
that she might actually be dispensable. Quite the reverse: there had even been whispers about promoting her to Something Big
in grain silos.


Which didn’t alter the fact that she was dispensable, or that she hated it. Almost as much as she’d hated having to ask the way to the bus stop. Typical: you wait years to get
your own numbered parking space, and the day after you do, they kick you out on your arse.


‘Look Mam!’ chirruped a child across the gangway. ‘It’s snowing again! Just like in that video about the Eskimos.’

Cally turned to look out of the window. It wasn’t just snowing, it was coming down so hard you could barely see through it;
like God had just punctured his duvet and emptied the whole lot over Northampton. Her head sank forward on to the back of
the seat in front. Terrific. All this town needed now was a rain of venomous toads and a fleshing-eating zombie or two, and
the day would be just perfect.


Still, nothing else could possibly go wrong. Could it?

Look on the bright side, Cally ordered herself as she squelched up Laburnum Walk towards the house she’d never liked, in the
area that gave her the creeps. At least you’ve got somewhere warm and dry to live, the fridge is full of cheesecake, and the
neighbours don’t fill their front gardens with burned-out Ford Capris.


True, she grudgingly conceded. But it won’t be warm and dry for much longer if that hole in the roof isn’t fixed, will it?
And you know damn well cheesecake gives you zits. And who’s going to fork out for the Velux windows, now you’ve joined the
end of the dole queue? Oh – and don’t forget the collapsing garden shed, and the damp in the conservatory, and the woodworm
in the window seat …


Pull yourself together, she urged herself sternly. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It’s not as bad as all that, at least
you’ve still got Rob. Yes, hissed the demon on her shoulder; and Rob’s still got his lovely shiny company BMW.


She stood outside the gate to number thirty-one, melting snow pouring down the back of her neck, so cold and wet she didn’t
give a damn any more, and gazed up through falling snowflakes at the characterless, pebbledashed façade. OK so there were
nicer houses, but then again there were much nastier ones too, and it wasn’t everyone who got to live in a four-bedroomed
semi in a sought-after area of Northampton, now was it? And anyhow, like Rob was always reminding her, it wasn’t just a house,
it was an investment. Sometimes she suspected that was all it was.


Pushing open the gate, she stomped wearily up to the front door in her ruined mules, and slid her key in the lock. Rob would
make it all better, she had already decided. He would towel her down like a wet sheepdog, bundle her up in a duvet and make
her some of his special cocoa. He’d probably buy her a new pair of shoes too. That’s what husbands were for.


As she stood in the hall, shedding snow on to the brand-new natural wood flooring, Cally heard Rob’s voice floating out of
the front room. He must be on the phone, selling another consignment of fifteen-foot palm trees to some shopping mall. She
kicked off her wet shoes and padded on numb feet towards the kitchen, trying not to disturb him. Funny though. She cocked
an ear as she passed the half-open door. It didn’t sound like a business call. In fact, she could have sworn she just heard
the word … ‘knickers’.


Knickers?

She pushed the door soundlessly open. Mind you, even if she had made her entrance accompanied by the pipes and drums of the
Royal Highland Fusiliers, Rob probably wouldn’t have noticed. He was leaning casually against the chimney breast, telephone flex wound round a flirtatious
index finger, receiver snuggled comfortably under his chin.


‘… black ones again? Why aren’t you wearing those lovely little red ones I got you? What’s that? You …’ He chuckled dirtily.
‘Come here and say that, you naughty girl, and I’ll give you a good spanki—’


Rob turned and froze as his eyes fixed on Cally, business suit plastered to her soaked and shivering body, mid-brown hair
steaming limply like the winnets on a sheep’s backside. He swallowed, smiled weakly and jammed the receiver back on the hook.


‘Cally love, you’re …’

‘Home early? Yes I am, aren’t I?’

Rob gave a nervous giggle, his face passing through at least a dozen tortured expressions as he leafed through his mental
file of excuses. ‘I was just … er …’


‘Surprised? I bet you bloody were.’

He took a step towards her, arms stretched out. ‘Cally love, I mean, it isn’t …’

It was strange really. Cally didn’t feel hurt or upset or betrayed. Suddenly and inexplicably, she felt overwhelmingly bored.
Bored with life, bored with this house, and most especially bored with the utterly boring man she had had the misfortune to
marry.


He reached out to put an arm round her, but she ducked aside. ‘Oh give it a rest, Rob. I’m not interested in your feeble excuses.’

‘They’re not …’

‘Got huge tits has she? Bigger than mine?’ She thrust her 34Cs in his face. ‘God you’re pathetic, you know that?’

Panic entered Rob’s eyes.

‘No, no, you’ve got it all wrong, I was only …’


‘Spare me the gory details, Rob, it’s the oldest story in the book. Just get out of my sight.’

‘Cally, don’t be an idiot.’

‘There’s only one idiot around here, and it isn’t me. I want you out of this house. Now.’

‘But you can’t just throw me out of my own house!’

‘Oh can’t I?’

Seizing him by the shoulders, and surprising both of them with her own strength, she propelled him towards the front door.
Halfway along the hall, he spun round, parrying her with raised hands.


‘Look, Cally, darling, I admit I’ve been stupid, but it was just a bit of harmless fun, OK?’

‘Correction. Not OK.’ She wrenched open the front door and pointed out into the arctic waste that was Northampton. ‘Get out,
Rob.’


‘But I …’ She shoved him in the belly and he tripped over the doormat, landing out on the step with the empty milk bottles
and the hedgehog book-scraper. ‘Ow!’


Slamming the door on him, she turned away. Two seconds later he was whimpering plaintively through the letter box. ‘Cally,
you can’t do this to me! It’s snowing, for Chrissakes!’


‘Is it?’ Opening the door, she threw an umbrella at his head. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting this then. Now piss off out of
my life and don’t come back.’


Her heart was pounding and her head was thumping. By the time she reached the living room she was hyperventilating so fast
that she felt quite faint. What now? Breathe into a brown paper bag and wait for the sky to fall in on her? No job, no bloke
– what next? They said bad things always happened in threes.


There was a bottle of vintage champagne in the bottom of the kitchen dresser. She pulled it out and banged it down on the
table. OK, so she and Rob had been saving it for a special occasion, but they didn’t come much more special than this, did
they? It wasn’t every day your entire life came crashing down around your ears.


After what seemed like years, it had finally stopped raining.


Cally peered into a plastic water-butt. ‘Dad,’ she called back over her shoulder, ‘is this parsnip or lentil?’

A tall, thin man emerged from the tepee and into the light, pushing his round, wire-rimmed glasses back up his bony nose.
Marc Storm looked for all the world like a prep-school headmaster at a Seventies’ theme party.


‘Neither, it’s Anglo-Saxon honey beer – a friend of mine researched the recipe for me.’

He ruffled her hair affectionately, which made her feel all of six years old. ‘Dad!’ She ducked away. ‘Grow up.’

‘Perish the thought.’ Marc lowered his voice. ‘So – fancy giving me your expert opinion?’

Cally pulled a face. ‘No way am I tasting any more of that horrible home-brew. You know what it did to Mrs Davis’s cat.’

Her father swept aside her objections. ‘Ah, but this stuff is seriously good.’

‘If it’s vile I’m saying so.’

‘Deal. But you won’t.’

He dipped in an old tin mug and handed it to her. ‘Well?’

‘Not as bad as it looks,’ she conceded, not sure whether she was disappointed or relieved. ‘Probably turn out to be deadly
poisonous, mind.’


‘Cally.’

She looked up sharply, recognising her father’s tone of voice. ‘Whatever it is, the answer’s no.’

‘All I want is for you to tell me what’s wrong.’

Too promptly, she snapped back: ‘Nothing.’

Marc sighed. ‘How’s Rob?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ She kicked a rotting turnip out of the way. ‘And frankly I couldn’t care less.’

‘You’ve not seen him then?’

‘No. Why should I?’

Hands in pockets, Marc wriggled the toe of his shoe into the boggy earth. ‘Cally love, he’s your husband.’

‘So?’ The word came out like a challenge.

‘So, husbands and wives generally live in the same house.’

‘You and Mum don’t,’ pointed out Cally, childishly pleased to have scored a point.

Marc sighed. ‘Look. It’s not that we don’t like having you around – it’s not often your mother has somebody to share the house
with – but let’s face it, you don’t usually stay for more than a day or two, do you?’


Cally avoided her father’s gaze. ‘Why shouldn’t I stay a bit longer if I want?’

‘No reason at all. But it’s been a fortnight, Cally. You’ve not spent that long at home since your mum grounded you when you
were sixteen.’


She chose to ignore her father’s probing, hating the way his questions targeted the very parts of her that hurt the most.
‘Do you want me to hoe round these blue things, or dig them out?’


‘Never mind the blue things.’ Marc’s voice took on an unaccustomed note of firmness. ‘Just tell me what’s wrong with you and Rob. Have you had a row?’


Something curled up and howled at the back of Cally’s wounded heart. ‘I just don’t want to talk about it. All right?’

‘This fifty-foot fibreglass woman in a leopardskin bikini, with this, like, helter-skelter slide thing running all the way
down her thigh. Now that’s entertainment.’ The short man with the gold earring swung round for Rob’s reaction. ‘Am I right,
or am I right?’


Rob was doing his best to be enthusiastic about B-Movie Heaven, his client’s kitsch new theme park – the contract could be
worth thousands in commission over the next couple of years – but all Rob could think about was the last phone conversation
he had had with Cally. It had consisted of precisely two words, and one of those was ‘off’. Not a promising stage in his campaign
to win her back.


‘Oh God,’ he groaned, ‘what am I going to do?’

Greg Prince halted by the site of the Killer Tomato white-knuckle ride. ‘Do? You’re going to quote me for two hundred live
tropical creepers for Tarzan’s Jungle Dome, that’s what.’


‘I didn’t mean about the plants, I meant about Cally. What am I going to do about her? She’s walked out on me and the hamster,
and now she won’t even speak to me.’


‘God help us, give it a rest can’t you?’ Greg was rapidly tiring of Rob’s one-note conversation. ‘Do you want this contract
or what?’


‘Of course I do.’ Rob struggled to visualise money pouring itself into his bank account, but all he could see was Cally’s
face, mouthing obscenities at him as she threw the minidisc player at his head. ‘It’s just … I’m a bit distracted, that’s all.’


‘’Course you are, mate.’ Greg clapped him on the back in a matey sort of way. ‘Women – who needs ’em, eh?’

I do, Rob moaned silently. That’s what got me into this mess in the first place. He cleared his throat. ‘Jungle creepers.
Right.’


‘Big ones, mind. No good getting little tiddly things, can’t wait for ’em to grow, see? We’ve got to be up and running by
August Bank Holiday. Big and impressive, that’s what the punters want.’ He jabbed his mobile phone at Rob’s notebook. ‘Am
I right or am I right?’


Rob smiled weakly. ‘Right.’

‘Oh – and don’t forget the date palms. Nothing under ten foot, and I want real bananas on them banana plants.’

Rob trailed Greg through the embryonic theme park, clambering over headless Martians, a giant ant and one of Cerberus’s spare
heads from the much-hyped Monsters of Hades ride. ‘The thing is,’ he panted, disentangling an ant’s leg from his trousers,
‘she won’t believe I’ve changed.’


Greg groaned. ‘Are you on about your ex-wife again?’

‘Wife,’ Rob corrected him. ‘And she’s staying that way if I’ve got anything to do with it. Only problem is, I just don’t know
what to do,’ he finished lamely.


Defeated by Rob’s relentlessness, Greg sat down on a Martian. ‘Why are you telling me all this, mate?’

Rob looked sheepish. ‘’Cause I’ve got nobody else to tell it to, I s’pose.’

‘You’re a bit of a sad git really, aren’t you?’ commented Greg, not unkindly. ‘So – what happened to your bit on the side?
Dumped you, did she?’


‘Leanne?’ Rob’s shoulders sagged. ‘She left me for some muscle-bound ape from the Pexercise Health Spa. Said I never stopped
going on about Cally.’


‘Seems a fair enough comment,’ observed Greg drily. ‘So – you want your wife back. Am I right or am I right?’

‘You’re right.’

‘Better get off your arse and do something about it then. Have you tried going round and seeing her?’

‘She slammed the door in my face.’ Rob indicated the swollen tip of his bruised nose. ‘I’ve told her it’s all over with Leanne,
and it was just a stupid mistake, but she won’t listen. I’ve even tried going down on my knees and begging her to come back
to me, but she just says why should she.’


‘Hmm.’ Greg rubbed the dark stubble on his chin. ‘I can see her point.’

Rob looked peeved, but had to concede that Greg was right. ‘So what do I do?’

Greg shrugged. ‘You’re asking the wrong bloke, mate. I’ve been married three times and none of them understood me. But if
she’s got no reason to come back, why don’t you give her one?’


‘Give her one? She won’t even let me through the front door.’

‘Not that, you moron. Give her a reason. A reason to come back.’

‘A reason? Oh.’ Rob wrinkled his nose and stared into the middle distance, where a forest of mini-skyscrapers was being erected,
girder by girder. Then he clicked his fingers. ‘A reason! Of course, why didn’t I think of it before? The house!’


‘What about it?’

‘I’ll tell her if she’s not coming back, I’m putting it on the market. You know what women are like, they’re all nest-builders. She’s only staying away to make me feel bad. Once
she thinks I’m selling the nest from under her, she’ll be back like a shot.’


‘Hang on a minute,’ cautioned Greg. ‘This is none of my business, right, but don’t you think that’s a bit over the top?’

‘No, no, you don’t understand. I won’t really be selling it, I’ll just pretend to.’ His face shone with enthusiasm. ‘Great
idea, huh? It’s bound to make her realise what she’s giving up.’


‘Yeah, yeah, terrific,’ replied Greg, without enthusiasm. ‘Now, about those jungle creepers.’

It was a couple of evenings later when the phone rang in Evie Storm’s front hall and a head of glossy brown curls popped round
the door of the living room.


‘It’s for you, darling.’ Evie winked encouragingly and mouthed the word ‘Rob’.

Cally shrank back into the sofa, suddenly petrified and angry and pleased, all at once. ‘Tell him I’m not in.’

Evie smiled sweetly down the phone. ‘She’s just coming now, Rob, take care. Here you are, darling.’

The cordless phone found its way into Cally’s hand, and Evie’s neat little figure skipped off jauntily back to the kitchen,
closing the door behind her. Damn you, thought Cally, tempted to drop the phone into the fish tank but reluctant to inflict
Rob on her father’s neon tetras. Damn everyone and everything and the whole damn world.


‘What do you want?’ she demanded. She’d thought she was ready for him, but her stomach turned a somersault as Rob’s voice
came crackling down the line from Northampton.


‘Just to talk.’


Big uncomfortable pause.

‘What about?’

‘Oh you know.’

‘Not if you don’t tell me,’ she snapped back. Go on, hissed the demon on her shoulder. Make him suffer. It’s not as if he
doesn’t deserve it. ‘Get to the point, Rob, I haven’t got all night.’


‘Are you all right?’

Anger sizzled and popped inside her. ‘Is that all you rang to say? I’m fine, Rob. F-I-N-E.’ Her voice rose several decibels.
‘I’m out of a job, my husband’s screwing a bouncy castle, why wouldn’t I be fine?’


She heard Rob cough uneasily on the other end of the line. ‘This is all my fault, isn’t it?’

‘Give that man a prize.’

‘So you’re not coming back home yet then?’

Cally’s hand tightened around the receiver. ‘Yet? What do you mean, “yet”? I’m not coming home, Rob. Full stop. When are you
going to get that into your thick skull?’


‘But—’

She didn’t pause to let him get a word in. ‘Anyway, that place isn’t home any more, not since you … you … soiled it with that
cheap tart.’


‘Right. I see.’ Rob paused for effect. ‘In that case, I guess I’d better go ahead and ring round the estate agents.’

Cally caught her breath, suddenly dizzy. ‘What estate agents?’

‘We’ll need a proper valuation before we put the house on the market, won’t we?’

‘What!’ Cally’s head whirled. ‘Sell the house? Rob, what the hell are you on about?’

‘Look Cal,’ said Rob, his voice firmer and more confident now. ‘I know you love this house – we both do – but, well, it’s
always been our house, hasn’t it? Our home. It’s no use to me without you, and anyway, it’s far too big for one. Plus …’


It took Cally several seconds to stop gaping and start shouting. ‘Rob, you total bastard! I’m gone five minutes and already
you’re putting my house on the market.’


‘Your house?’

‘Yes Rob, my house! It was my sodding cut-price mortgage that got us it in the first place, you can’t just go selling it from
under me without so much as a by-your-leave. I’ll get a solicitor and make him stop you!’


‘For God’s sake, Cally,’ protested Rob, ‘be reasonable! What use have I got for a four-bedroomed house? And what’s the point
of you paying your share of the mortgage if you’re not coming back?’


Not coming back. The rotten, heartless, cheating git made it sound so final. And maybe it was final. Cally didn’t know whether
to cry, scream or ask the RAF to drop a bomb on Laburnum Walk.


‘Oh, I get it. You don’t actually want me back. You and Leanne have decided to sell up and invest in a little love-nest. Well
thanks a million, Rob. Nice of you to tell me.’


‘No, it’s not like that! Of course I want you back. It’s just I thought … with the house being so big …’

‘Over my dead body, do you hear?’ she yelled d. . .