Mornington-By-Mere – (22) Destiny

Twenty-three-year-old Lisa Kincaid-Smith lived at number 4, Windmill Cottages in Mornington-By-Mere with her parents and two older siblings.

She was five foot eight with luscious thick ginger curls tumbling down onto her shoulders and mesmerizing green eyes, a curvaceous and perfectly proportioned figure.

Lisa also had a heart as big as a house and felt blessed to have 4 particularly good and longstanding friends.

         

Apart from the fact they all lived in Mornington and were all 23 years old, the five girls also went to Abbottsford University together.

And it was while they were at University that Lisa Kincaid-Smith, Megan Murray, Carina Crockford and twin sisters Cordelia and Corliss St George performed as the Jackson 5 for the first time.

It was during rag week on their first week when they donned gold lame flares and black wigs and sang “I want you back” and from that moment it became their party piece and one that had been repeated on many occasions since.

So when they signed up for the Sharpington Day Parade on Bank Holiday Monday, a Charity event which raised tens of thousands of pounds every year, much of which was collected by volunteers rattling tins along the route whilst in fancy dress, it was a forgone conclusion who they would dress up as.

Sharpington-by-Sea was a traditional seaside resort complete with a Victorian Pier, seafront hotels, crazy golf, ballroom, well maintained gardens, promenade, theatre and illuminations, all the usual things to have a great time by the seaside, as well as amusement arcades and of course the Sharpington Fun Park.

Which was the first purpose built amusement park to open in Britain, which had an assortment of rides, like the Rotor and the tame compared to a 21^st century roller coaster but still fun.

But on the August Bank Holiday Monday it wasn’t the Fun Park people were interested in.

It was the parade that attracted people from all over Downshire and beyond and Carina had an idea to make their Jackson 5 homage even better by having all the girls professionally made up to match Megan Murray’s skin colour which was dark caramel due to her mixed race heritage.

However much to her consternation her suggestion wasn’t greeted with universal approval.

That was mainly due to the fact that the St George girls were very white with pale skin and blue eyes and Lisa was a proper ginger who actually ended up paler when she went out in the sun.

Although their concerns centred more on not wishing to look ridiculous rather than the fear of any offence they might cause.

 

However their fears were soon put at ease when Carina explained what she had in mind. 

Since leaving University Carina Crockford had worked in the makeup department at the Purplemere Studio’s and it was there where she had charge of a group of trainee make-up artists and among them were Karen Cooper and Ivana Holubova, and it was they who Carina had persuaded to make the girls up.

Also she had co-opted the help of Sue Moss and Lisa Mendez from the costume department.

As a result the girls reluctantly agreed to go along with it but reserved judgement on whether they would allow themselves to be seen in public made up and costumed.

 

As it turned out the makeup and costumes were so good that on the day of the parade no one realised that only one of the Jackson 5 was actually black.

It was only at the very end of the day as they were getting into the car when Lisa’s wig fell off to reveal her ginger hair that a member of the public realised something was amiss.

There was however no public outcry though they got a mention in the Sharpington Courier and there was talk of a Police investigation but nothing came of it and the tale of the Jackson 5 passed into modern folklore.

 

After Lisa Kincaid-Smith left University with her degree she took a job as Trainee Accountant at the Mornington Brewery.

She could have done better financially had she gone to a bigger company in Purplemere or Finchbottom but she had no desire to leave the village that she had lived in all of her life and saw no reason to do so merely for a larger pay check.

 

The job at the brewery however came at a price, because she was straight out of University she needed to gain some actual experience in a much busier office than the Mornington Brewery could offer.

So a 3 year placement was arranged with Curtis and Scott in Purplemere, which was only a relatively short drive from Mornington.

She would also sit additional exams over that time and at the end of the three years she would work full time at the Brewery.    

  

Paul Douglass had spent years looking for “the one” but consistently failed to locate her.

Even years of running the gauntlet of well-meaning friends, throwing what they considered to be suitable candidates in his path, had not paid dividends.

The problem was that he was too fussy, apart from her needing to be a tall redhead, “the one” also needed to meet his usual criteria, attractive, kind, loving and have a true heart.

But in addition he was searching for someone with a moral compass, a practicing Christian preferably, a church goer at least, though not someone permanently on their knees, a devout girl but not a pious one.

He wanted a girl who was sexy but not tarty, attractive but not vain, feminine and possessed of modesty.

A girl with good dress sense, free of tattoos and body piercings, well mannered, and lady like, definitely not someone who drank from a bottle.

However with every passing day Paul had become convinced he was looking for someone who didn’t really exist.

 

Lisa Kincaid-Smith met most, if not all, of Paul’s criteria, she was blessed with great kindness, a quality in his opinion unfailingly underappreciated in the modern world, a shining girl, intelligent and academically bright, and inclined towards an unquenchable work ethic.

Attractive but not showily so, Lisa was certainly feminine, red haired and tall.

But there was something else in her nature, just simple goodness perhaps, which was a quality that Paul had not bargained for nor included in his wish list.

Lisa believed in goodness and everlasting life and of course good and evil.

Lisa too was searching, she was searching for a man who shared her faith and who put others before himself, a good man, a dependable man and she had sought him all of her life.

 

So you would have thought that, considering they were in reality searching for each other, and that they were actually perfect for each other, they might have realised by that point that the other actually existed.

The fact that they didn’t was all the more surprising when you consider that they worked in the same building for the same company even if it was only for only two days a week.

 

Paul had worked for Curtis and Scott, in Abbottsford, since he left school aged sixteen.

He started in the yard, fetching and carrying, loading and unloading, but that was almost 10 years ago.

Now he was assistant manager and ordered others to fetch and carry, leading him ultimately to spend more and more time behind a desk and glued to the phone.   

He was more accustomed to working on the shop floor and in the yard amongst hard working, hard living, and hard talking men and was all too familiar with their baser natures.

But somehow he had always managed to raise himself above the mire and walked the Christian path.

Yet he had always had to walk that righteous path alone.  

 

Lisa worked for Curtis and Scott two days a week as part of her Accountancy training, she spent the first year of her placement in the smaller Purplemere office.

But when the recession hit, the company had to rationalise and the Purplemere office closed.

There were redundancies as well, in both towns but Lisa was lucky enough to be able to transfer her placement to the head office.  

 

The recession also hit Paul pretty badly, he had to watch a lot of good people made redundant, and his workload had to increase to make up the short fall in manpower.  

This also meant that what little free time he had previously was as a result greatly reduced. 

 

Lisa was not wholly happy with her situation either, when it first happened she was sad because she had made some good friends in the Purplemere office, and then she’d had to travel much further to get to work in Abbottsford in an office where she knew nobody.    

But it was only two days a week and she decided to stay at a motel for one night to minimise the travel but that wasn’t the worst of it.

She was placed in a busy office on the Finance and Admin floor, among a gaggle of chattering young girls, she thought they were girls even though they were older than she was.

She thought they were girls compared to her as they were younger in outlook and very immature.

Lisa was instantly unpopular with them, firstly because she was replacing someone they liked, someone nearer their own age, someone equally vacuous and with equally loose morals who let them skive and secondly because she was a grownup in comparison who was good at her job.

Lisa was instantly at odds with the silly tarty girls in their short skirts and low cut tops, loudly sharing the intimate details of their latest indiscretions with anyone in earshot.

“Look at me, look at me” they seemed to scream “everybody look at me”

She thought they were the type of girls who ended up drunk in the gutter showing the world their manicured intimate parts.

She despised them for their baseness and they despised her for her quiet efficiency and mocked her for her diligence, in fact they openly mocked her to her face.

They also called her names behind her back, steel draws, the nun, little miss cherry and Mary, as in the Virgin Mary.

However all of this was water off a ducks back to her, she just ignored them and got on with her job, and her diligence didn’t go unnoticed.

 

She was always the go to girl when there was something important to be done because of her work ethic.

Lisa didn’t mind being the odd one out or being the butt of her colleague’s jokes, she was happy with her life choices and knew that brash tarty girls come and go and in the 18 months she was in Abbottsford, she was a constant and she now had the experience and the qualifications were not far away.

She looked forward to a time when she would share her work place with people of like mind and her life choices would be the norm, which she knew she had waiting for her at the Brewery.

As for the men in the building they all seemed perfectly happy with empty headed tarts, in fact the tartier the better seemed to make them most content.  

 

Paul worked on the fifth floor in the logistics department but he occasionally had to go down to Finance and Admin on the third floor, to discuss invoices or purchase orders but he only ever noticed the tarty girls he never saw Lisa working diligently at her desk with her head down. 

He treated all the women on the third floor with equal contempt and he tarred them all with the same brush.

 

For 18 months Paul Douglass and Lisa Kincaid-Smith worked in the same building, if only for two days a week, and they never met until one Friday evening in October.

Paul had been working late again and got in the lift on the fifth floor at 7.55pm.

He was not in the best of moods as he had not intended to work that late, he had somewhere to be, and he didn’t want to be late.

Lisa had worked later than planned as well, as it was Friday the lazy little princesses had all finished early in order to go out and get drunk to point of unconsciousness, or shit faced to use the modern parlance, before having a knee trembler in a bus shelter, or behind the bins.

But whatever state they would end up in they had left her to do all the reports.

She stayed as late as possible but then she had to go, so she packed up and grabbed some folders and headed towards the lift.

Lisa would ordinarily take the stairs but with her arms full of homework for the weekend she decided to take the lift.

She pressed the button and a moment later the doors opened and she stepped in.

The lift wasn’t empty, a man that she vaguely recognised was in there already and he had a bundle of files under his arm too, she gave him a cursory glance, he definitely wasn’t one of the dogs that sniffed around her office but she must have seen him somewhere.

 

When the doors opened and Lisa stepped in, his heart sank but then on closer inspection he thought that she wasn’t dressed like one of the third floor sluts and she didn’t smell like a tarts handbag either so he thought he could cope.

It was a shame really because physically she ticked all his boxes, it was just a shame she was from the 3^rd floor.

“At least there’s only one of them” he thought to himself “and its only three floors”

The doors closed and the lift started to descend, but after a few seconds the car came to a juddering halt.

 

The doors closed and the lift started to descend, but after a few seconds the car came to a juddering halt.

“Oh no” Lisa said “Why today?”

She said it without anger or fear and that impressed Paul it was said more out of exasperation.

“Somewhere to be?” Paul asked and pressed the alarm

“Yes” she replied and put her things on the floor but didn’t elaborate.

He supposed she was going clubbing or something equally frivolous.

“How many of you are there?” A voice asked

“Two” Paul replied

“Ok, we’ll have you out as soon as possible”

It was Paul’s turn to put his things on the floor and then he sat down beside them. 

“I hope it won’t be too long” he said

“Why? Do you have somewhere to be?” she asked and also sat down

“Yes I do” he replied “and I particularly wanted to be there on time”

“Oh yes? What is it a new restaurant?” she asked

“Of a sort” he replied

“What about you?” Paul asked “are you off clubbing?”

“Certainly not” she said with disgust “I have more important things to do with my time”

Paul was just digesting her answer and considering his next question when the lift came to life again and continued its descent.

“Excellent” He said and stood up, then he offered his hand to Lisa

“Quite so” she agreed and took his hand “Thank you”

“My pleasure” he said

And by the time they had gathered their things together the lift had reached the ground floor and the door opened.

Paul stood aside and let her exit first which he thought she would probably consider an act of sexism.

“Thank you” she said appreciating the gentlemanly gesture and added  

“I hope you make it on time”

“You too” he replied  

 

They quickly got to their respective cars and headed in opposite directions.

Lisa lived the closest or at least the motel was the closest and she was fed, showered, changed and on her way out the door before Paul had even reached his front door.

Ordinarily she only stayed at the motel on Thursday night but because she had something on that night which she knew would finish late, she stayed an extra night.    

 

When Paul got home, he closed the door behind him and went straight to the kitchen and made himself a sandwich.

He ate it far too quickly to be healthy and was still chewing as he stepped into the shower and he knew he would have heartburn for the rest of the night.

He dried himself and dressed in warm clothes and was then on his way.

Paul parked the car in Church Street and checked his watch as he hurriedly walked toward his destination, and he was twenty minutes late.  

He looked through the window and saw it was quite busy and a queue had formed.

Paul walked around to the side door and walked in and undid his coat as he did so

“I’m terribly sorry I’m so late” he said “I got stuck in a lift”

“Well they all say that” she said as she turned around and Paul saw that it was the girl from the lift.

They stood smiling at each other for a moment as they realised that their mutual life long search for “the one” had come to an end at the South Abbottsford soup kitchen.