‘I’m having second thoughts.’
‘Look Angie, we’re nearly there now,’ Josie snapped as she used the cuff of her designer cardigan to wipe away the mist from the driver’s side of the windscreen.
I did the same on my side with the sleeve of my homespun ever-faithful jumper.
On the outside, rain lashed down, the poor wipers struggling to cope; inside, the fan coping less well.
Ahead, the road was deserted.
It was supposed to be the start of the official holiday season, and with it of course, came Britain’s traditional summer downpour.
A faint light above a road sign came into view; under it, a solitary car was parked, its bonnet up. Josie slowed down and indicated she was pulling in behind it.
‘What’re you doing?’ I yelled above the noise of the rain bouncing on the car’s roof, and in the light of the road sign, a silhouetted figure emerged and began to walk towards us. ‘It’s a man.’
‘Glad to hear you’ve not lost all your senses,’ Josie laughed, ‘he might need help.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘Oh come on Angie, no harm in finding out what’s wrong.’
And that was how we met Jake and why we arrived late for an evening with a stage hypnotist, the co-called Mood Mender of the Moors.
Jake came to my side of the car, reluctantly I rolled down the window and the storm blew in, drenching my knees. ‘Need a hand?’ Josie trilled, leaning across me to address him.
He squatted on his haunches, stuck his chin above the opening and grinned yes. As he nodded, more rain shook from off his hair and onto my lap, filling my nostrils with his masculine scent, a smell I’d not experienced for some time. Embarrassed, I pulled my legs tight against the seat making myself as small as possible, feeling I was somehow in their way.
‘What’s the problem?’ Josie asked and he began to explain.
We couldn’t understand the problem let alone fix it, so we gave Jake a lift to the nearest garage, which turned out to be next to where we were headed: the Golden Dunes Caravan Park on the outskirts of Scarborough. He thanked us and promised to meet up in the week to buy us a meal.
An hour later we were showered and dressed in our best and ready to enter the packed theatre. The show had begun and as a grumpy usherette led us to our row, a Tina Turner look-alike stomped across the stage. We whispered our apologies and slid silently into our seats. And, as Josie got straight into the holiday atmosphere, my mind tried to pick up the pieces as to why we were holidaying in rainy Yorkshire when we were supposed to be flying off to Phuket.
Betrayal was the reason and yes those responsible had been tried and sent to prison but that still left six blameless people without a job and owed more than three months wages and much, much more. The solicitor told us the company had nothing to pay us. Those swindling so-called directors had even squandered our pension fund. My sigh must’ve been loud because Josie took her eyes off the stage, patted my hand and mimed relax, enjoy the music. She was right of course, I did needed to relax and put my troubles behind me, after all – it was only money.
My mind concentrated on the stage, the act was good, could’ve been Tina Turner for real, but then I drifted away again.
Theft leaves the victim hollow. We, all six of us, had worked so hard for the owner of the company – in the beginning, we worked weekends for nothing. The thrill of being part of a new adventure, one that would sweep the world gave us such joy. I don’t like to think we were stupid, we believed in the company, wanted it to succeed: little did we guess that ten years later all the sales were being filtered into various bank accounts, then switched to others until the money disappeared altogether.
Even the auditors were bamboozled.
Suddenly I was plunged into the present.
My name was being called from the stage.
Josie was urging me to get out of my seat: everyone was clapping, smiling faces caught in the spotlight. ‘Why me?’ I asked Josie, she hunched her shoulders. ‘Don’t know, it’s random I think.’
On the stage was a middle-aged man. Suave, with stylish streaks of grey to his temples, physique like he’d spent years in a gym. He was beckoning me to join him where other bewildered members of the audience were already gathered. We took our seats, which were placed in a semi-circle and, like children in nursery-class; we did everything he asked us to do. Most of the act was boring, especially when he put us into a trance, honestly, who believes in mumbo-jumbo like that: nowadays?
When we all returned to our seats, Josie was so excited, ‘You were fabulous,’ she cried, ‘truly fabulous.’
I know Josie like I know myself. She was trying to cheer me. She’s my best friend and only wanted to see me smiling again. So I smiled just for her. The clapping stopped when the Mood Mender of the Moors reappeared to do one last act. I don’t remember it because my mind wondered back to the office accounts where it rested on the broadsheets and to the figures across the screen. Something was wrong, no, not wrong but hidden – yet somehow there – just out of reach.
People standing and clapping brought me back to the show, Josie was shouting bravo, embarrassed, I stood up and joined in the encore. The Mood Mender caught sight of me and as the curtains pulled across the stage, he nodded, as though we two had had an understanding. Strange as it may seem I felt the connection but didn’t know why, not then anyhow.
It was the following morning when Jake called by our Caravan Park bringing a mate called Rory with him. The rain had stopped and in the night, a strong wind had taken most of the moisture out of the grassed areas. Jake was eager to take us into town, show us the sights of downtown Scarborough. We had no other plans so we grabbed our handbags and piled onto the back seat of Rory’s retro car. It was pink with black upholstery, like something more suitable for Route 66. I loved it, we went onto Whitby, ate ice cream and fish and chips, and during all that time, I never once thought about my other loss. Josie said it was the Mood Mender, she said she’d read an article about him which states that under hypnosis, he can sense what troubles the person, then gives their subconscious mind a couple of tweaks, ‘Just like a motor mechanic fine-tunes an engine,’ she enthused, like she knows cars.
Later, when Jake and Rory brought us back to the Caravan Park, there was a note addressed to me stuck to our van door. Even before I opened it, I knew it was connected with the trading accounts of my old job.
It was from the theatre’s entertainment secretary saying Alex Poe, the Mood Mender of the Moors wished to speak to me on an urgent matter.
My brain reeled, had he really put me into a trance? Did my mind open a window for the hypnotist to peer through?
Rory and Jake left saying they’d return later in the evening and if we wanted, could take a spin around the sites of North Yorkshire. We agreed and watched them drive off. For some reason I felt young, like a teenager on her first date but my immediate thought was to find out why Alex Poe’s message was so urgent.
Josie came with me to the theatre’s office. She had, after all, looked after me during that awful fraud business. The whole workforce, the other five and myself had undergone questioning – interrogation to be honest, as to where the company money could have gone. I took the most examination because I ran the accounts, made payments to our suppliers and paid our wages, that is to say, until three months before we shut down, when the cheques were returned unpaid and our suppliers turned nasty.
‘When you were on the stage?’ Josie queried, as we walked into the theatre, ‘the Mood Mender asked you to stretch your arms out like a tree.’
‘I don’t remember,’ I didn’t. ‘What else happened?’
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a classically-trained dancer, honestly Angie you choreographed a magical tale, like you were a wood nymph in a forest.’
‘Me, a wood nymph – in a forest?’
‘They say hypnotists can cross barriers, make people do the impossible.’
‘Why do I get the feeling this is about my job?’
‘Don’t know, but I think Angie me girl, we’re about to find out.’
And we did. Alex the Mood Mender had no time to lose, he was due to appear on stage in York so he came straight to the point. ‘When I brought you out of your trance, you whispered something about telling the fraud office about the ivy. I asked what ivy, you said the one hiding the account called Orchard. Then you woke up.’
‘Did the audience hear me?’
‘No, I don’t use the microphone when waking people up. Sometimes…’ his laugh was genuine, like he cared, ‘…they say crazy things.’
‘The ivy hid the Orchard account?’
‘You seemed pretty certain the fraud office needed to be told.’
‘They do – an awful lot of people were hurt.’
‘I felt your pain.’
I wanted to cry, not for myself but for those little businesses that went to the wall. ‘Would you put me under again? I have the feeling we’ve missed something that’s been staring us in the face.’
And so it was agreed I would meet up with Alex the Mood Mender at his home in Pickering. I contacted the investigation officer, the one that had given me a rough time, but fathomed he was doing his job, so forgave him. He agreed to bring his team along, the case, he told me, was about to be re-opened.
I felt tingly, like being alive and knowing it. Josie and I styled each other’s hair, like we used to when we were teenagers. For the first time in over a year, when I looked into the mirror, I liked what I saw. ‘It’s important you learn to love yourself,’ Josie had told me over again, but somehow, the whole fraudulent business had left me feeling tainted – dirty – not worth loving.
The arrival of the pink Cadillac brought a whoop of joy making Josie curl up with laughter and warning me not to get giddy. ‘Me? Giddy? Honestly.’ But I was and when Jake put his arm around my waist and escorted me to the back seat, sliding in beside me, well, I felt light-headed, like I’d drank champagne.
The following morning Josie and I drove to the Mood Mender’s house where we met up with the fraud investigation team. They recorded and filmed the whole procedure from my going into a trance and coming out.
In his closing statement, the judge had said that if any money was found it belonged to those who were owed. We found it, all of it, not in hundreds of thousands, but millions. Those thieving scheming directors had stashed it away; ready to pick up for when their prison sentence was done.
Or so they thought.
And do you know something? I think Josie can tweak an odd mood or two and as for Jake, well, that’s another story.
–
(C) 2024 Pat Barnett.
