The Bluebell Bunting Society

by The Bluebell Bunting Society (retail) (epub)

  I turn and poke her with a soapy yellow finger. ‘You haven’t. I have. I should have come to see you ages ago. The minute you weed on that stick. I just got caught up with stuff at home.’

  Claire took the risky move of perching on a tall stool and just jogging herself with one foot against the floor. Freddie’s head whips from one side to the other and he gurgles in his sleep, but doesn’t actually wake. She looks like she’s just cut the right wire on a huge ticking bomb. I let out my held breath.

  ‘Yes, so tell me about that. I saw you tagged in something about your Hall closing. That can’t be happening, can it?’

  My shoulders shrug as I focus on oil-like coffee dregs in about eight different mugs. ‘It isn’t right, but it’s happening. It’s happened, in fact. I had to give up the keys. The roof caved in. Pretty final, all in all. But I’m not here to talk about that, I’m here to talk about you. Maybe we could look up Tallie and Hungry Dave. Are they still about? I could cook us all lunch tomorrow, if you don’t mind. I’d love to know what everyone’s getting up to. And we could play pass the Ork, give you a break. What do you think?’

  I turn round to gauge whether this would all be a bit much for Claire, and she’s asleep, mouth dropped open, head leaning back against the tiled kitchen wall. I take her hand and gently pull her up and towards the living room.

  With Claire safely zonked out in her rocking chair, Freddie still papoosed on her front, I set about doing exactly what I had intended to get away from: being her caretaker. I finished the washing up, then I blitzed the kitchen surfaces and floor. I changed her bed, put a load of washing on, sorted out a blockade of clean baby clothes that had amassed just by the nursery door. I didn’t risk putting the radio on and as I found one little job after another to absorb me, the silence trailed behind my steps, stirring up the crappy little inner voice again.

  So, you might make a decent nanny, then. That’s something.

  And as I collect up all the water glasses and mugs and half-eaten bits of Nutella on toast from the living room, all the while terrified one clinking tumbler might ruin this temporary peace, I don’t know how to argue with that voice. I am good at taking care of things, of people, maybe I should get wise and at least charge properly for it.

  There’s an empty tub of Ben & Jerry’s on the mantelpiece, with a sticky pool of its remains running all the way down the wall below. With some Dettol wipes it’s history, and I start dusting down all Claire’s photos and nick nacks while I’m there. Here she is with her sister, both gap-toothed, childish grins turned towards a busy pier. Oh my god, here I am, with my awful centre parting and bum-length hair that I had as a Fresher still. I remember Claire’s mum taking this picture, on the day we both moved into halls. I think it was a way to just get her to stand close to the other stragglers who’d found the bar, and make us introduce ourselves with stammers and sweaty cheeks. It worked. Her wedding picture also stirs up great memories of a pick-and-mix sweet buffet, cracking house music in the early hours and bacon butties at dawn. But clearly, from Anton’s kilowatt smile as he gazes down at his beautiful bride, I didn’t enjoy it half as much as they did.

  There’s one of those frames with different squares for different photos and each one has a blissful holiday snap. I can make out New York, maybe Thailand, and Prague, I think. All the different city skylines and beaches and sunsets are united by Claire and Anton holding hands in each one.

  Right at the end of the mantelpiece, a small trophy holds up a black and white image. It’s a tiny Triathlon prize from 2015. I never knew these guys were so sporty. And the image behind is one of those fuzzy baby scans – Freddie’s first appearance in his family’s photo gallery.

  I thought I would come away to Manchester and catch up with my old life, get away from the Hall and everything at home. But even if I was a triathlete I wouldn’t be able to catch up with missing so much. Even if I could run like a cheetah. While I’ve been jogging on the spot back in Hazlehurst, Claire and the others have been sprinting ahead, doing so much, so many different things. Our old glory days on Wainwright Road are just a small chunk of their exciting lives, and it’s long gone.

  What would my photo gallery look like? There’d be me and Mum, me and Stevie, then me holding Abel as a little red-faced bundle in a crocheted blanket. There’d be me with Gran’s old ramshackle tool kit, trying to fix a light switch with my tongue held between my teeth. And one of Flip, Susannah, Lucy and me at the fete, too busy talking up our cause to smile for a photo. But what’s next? Where will I be smiling from in a year’s time?

  I hardly feel like smiling now, so I can’t really see how that would go.

  And as if he can totally read my mind, Freddie lets out a loud squawk from Claire’s chest, and she bolts instantly upright. ‘Wha… What?!’

  ‘It’s fine, it’s just your sweet Ork. You’ve been asleep for nearly two hours, you know. I should have taken a pic for your mantelpiece. Now, what can I get you?’

  Claire sinks back into her chair cushions, now her mum radar can switch off with no fires or wild cats or dropped babies in the vicinity. ‘I’m going to have to feed him, so a big glass of water would be amazing. And if there are any of those digestives left… Oh you tidied! You angel! You’re like my own Mary Poppins!’

  Well, if I was looking for a sign of what to do next, maybe I’ve found it.

  * * *

  We both turned in early, soon after a takeaway pizza and a few beers (me) and a whole pint of orange juice (Claire). Freddie stuck to his special reserve.

  After the third set of apologies that Freddie was up screaming again, at 3.15 a.m. I told Claire it really really was no bother and to let me walk the house with him. He likes stairs, it seems, especially going up them. My thighs don’t like it, but he does and my thighs’ screams are much easier to ignore. It felt good to see Claire’s eyes wrinkle up in relieved happiness that she could flop down on her pillows and grab some essential sleep. Plus, I couldn’t get a wink anyway. My mind was on full whir, trying to remember any good risotto recipes and working out how to slip Alfred chocolate buttons until he warmed to me. I’d had a response from his yummy mummy, asking for more details and asking plainly at the end of the message: Are you the same Connie Duncan from Bluebell Hall, as was? So how exactly I answered that without coming across desperate or a real loser or downright pissed off was going to be its own challenge. But it was a job, a way forward at least. And anything had to be better for me than more standing still. So I gritted my teeth and I wrote an email devoid of emotion, listing all my experience and my skills. And selling myself as something I wasn’t really sure I wanted to be.

  Claire had been really buoyed when I repeated my idea of trying to get some of the old crew together for an ad hoc lunch at hers. She put down the ground rules that all the food had to be on her and instantly munchable, so we didn’t make any unnecessary washing up. That sounded good to me, so I set out for a Sainsbury’s to collect five different kinds of hummus and all the pittas they had. And as I’m pushing the trolley, I have a missed call from Flip.

  Maybe the mum’s gossip network had sprung into life this morning and she already knew about my nanny application? Judging by the fact that everyone knew Stephanie Pritchard’s mum had broken her arm at judo (in a fight over the last pack of Wheat Crunchies in the vending machine) before the plaster had even set on her cast, this was completely possible.

  While I’m loading the bags into the car, I get a text from Susannah.

  Please call me. Thank you.

  Weird, I didn’t know that she could text. But I don’t have the energy for talking to her about what a disappointment I am again. Freddie’s cries are still ricocheting about my brain and I want to get back and lose myself in nostalgia with old mates. Even if I have to bounce about a mini Ork as I do it. Blimey, that kid can cry.

  I can feel my phone vibrating as I park painfully slowly at Claire’s again. Someone is ringing and ringing and ringing and it’s putting me off my crunchy m
anoeuvre. I’m just grunting at the screen, about to turn it off now the handbrake is safely on, when I see it’s Dom. I still feel guilty about how we spoke the other day in the chip shop, so it would be really rubbish to ignore him now.

  Before I can even get out my ‘Hey Dom,’ he cuts across me.

  ‘Have you seen Polly?! She’s missing.’

  Chapter 19

  I set the orange bags down on the kitchen table with my phone pressed into my ear as I fire questions at Dom. ‘When did you last see her? Or hear from her? And she won’t answer her phone? And nothing from her friends?’

  Dom answers with an even but reedy voice: he’s clearly been asked this stuff so much today that’s it’s like he’s reading a script. ‘I don’t even know who her friends are these days, she never tells me. She’s disappeared before but never overnight. I don’t even know how much money she’s got on her. She left for school as normal yesterday but they say she never got there. I had to call… I had to call the police, you know.’

  He suddenly stops talking and it sounds like he’s put the phone down.

  ‘Dom? Dom, look, I’m not in the village but I can get back, in three or four hours. Just wait for me and we’ll…’

  He’s back again. ‘No, you stay put. I just hoped maybe she’d said something to you. She always seemed brighter after you two talk. You have that way with the girls. But if she does ring—’

  ‘I will be straight onto you, in a heartbeat. Are you sure you don’t want me around? We could go out, look around the parks, knock on a few doors?’

  He sighs. ‘We’ve done it. Flip, and her fella, and Susannah. Steve and Alex, even. We’ve done this village and the ones she could have got to easily on the school bus. But if she got a train into London…’

  I didn’t leave him any time to linger on such a huge and scary possibility. ‘She won’t have. I bet it’s a sleepover with a new mate and in the excitement about watching blogger beauty tips all night she just forgot to tell you. She’ll be back under your roof with over-plucked eyebrows in no time.’

  I really don’t feel as jolly about this as I’m trying to sound.

  ‘I have a tracking device all ready for her ankle when she does show up.’ Dom’s hollow chuckle comes quietly down the line.

  I can hear wailing from Claire’s bedroom. The hummus is getting sweaty in the bags.

  ‘Let me know, just as soon as you know. And remember what I said about coming back. I’d be really happy to.’

  ‘Yup. OK. Thanks, then.’

  Dom rings off and I can imagine him instantly springing up, keys in hand, to make another tour of the village, eyes peeled for a burgundy ponytail swishing around the next corner.

  Just teenage hijinks, I think sternly. She’s got some new cool mate and she’s too wrapped up in it to be anything other than stupid and selfish and shortsighted. Classic teen nonsense. When I was 15 I queued all night for Foo Fighters tickets without telling Mum first (mostly because I knew she’d say no) and imagine poor Mum’s experience. I didn’t have a mobile then either, and no sneaky Facebook app to track a teen. A shiver of remembered guilt works its way down my back. I hope Mum’s having a blast on the beach, I think, because she deserves a lifetime of holidays for her maternal services.

  Hijinks, hijinks, hijinks, I keep thinking, to block out the scariest thoughts. I repeat it like a mantra you’d get from a yoga teacher in a Carry On movie. It fills my head as I push Freddie in his pram round the local park, so Claire can have a slow bath. I think it so I don’t think about car accidents or muggings or head traumas. It pops up in between the sound of crisps crunching as our old mates assemble and we dive into dips and reminiscence. I think it every time I check my phone for news from Dom, or from any of the others back at home. Hi-bloody-jinks. The pittas are munched, the drinks drunk, the baby cooed over and cuddled with. And I’m thinking: just some hijinks. Absolutely.

  And although I drink in my Manchester friends like the sorely needed tonic they are, I feel like this is already a memory I’m replaying from a distance. Because it doesn’t feel like my real life. My real life is back in Hazlehurst. It’s with my Hazlehurst friends who are sick with worry, while I’m watching Hungry Dave mime that time he ate an entire wheel of cheese. This will be a memory I turn to when I’m sad or bored or a bit lonely, like you think of an amazing birthday cake. But you don’t need it every day. You need the bread and butter of your real life, the rough with the smooth, not just frosting and chocolate sponge.

  I feel so warm and satisfied now I’ve taken in a big slice of these guys – all doing do well with jobs or families or obsessive hobbies they’re mad keen on, and Claire has a light in her eyes when she holds Freddie that I’ve never seen in her before – but this isn’t my life any more. It’s a big part of what’s made me me, but I can’t get it back. We’ll never eat Domino’s every day for a week again, because we know that way heart attacks lie. We won’t be obsessing over why someone’s new crush hasn’t called them, because half of us are married. There’s no midnight ping-pong because there are 8 a.m. meetings.

  Whatever answers I’m looking for about my future, I can’t find by cosying up in nostalgia about my past. I might be heartbroken when I’m in Hazlehurst but it’s my here and now. And right now my friends there need me. I ran away from Manchester all those years ago because things went horribly wrong and my dreams were crushed. And now I realise that all I ran away from back then was the good friends who had been there, supporting me. And I’m not about to make that mistake again: so my plans for the Hall crumbled? Doesn’t mean my amazing friendships in Hazlehurst will. Not if I have anything to say about it.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Claire, guys,’ I say, wiping pitta crumbs on my jeans. ‘I think I have to get back. A mate at home has got some stuff going on.’

  Claire gives me a lopsided smile. I can tell she’d love me to stick around for more catching up (and cleaning up) but I’ve also caught her watching me check my phone for the 700th time today, so she must know something’s up.

  ‘Fair enough. Mary Poppins always knows when her work is done. I hope that umbrella of yours gets you home quick. Thanks for everything, Con.’

  * * *

  At a service station outside Milton Keynes, I’m checking my tires and filling the tank. I want to blast the rest of the way home, with no interruptions. I’m just dumping my Red Bull, Wotsits and M&Ms on the passenger seat as my essential road fuel, when my phone buzzes against the dashboard.

  Dom’s voice rattles off a breathless sentence.

  ‘Hey, hey. Slow down. Start again. She’s where?’

  ‘Coventry. With my mother-in-law. Her gran. I’m leaving now. Just wanted to tell you, in case you were worried.’

  ‘I was but… Coventry, I’m really close to Coventry. I can get there faster, and bring her straight to you. Shall I do that? I’d really like to.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Connie. Yes, please.’

  * * *

  ‘Do I need to put the child lock on or are we cool? You’re not going to ditch me at the lights, are you?’

  Polly rolls her eyes but it doesn’t detract from how red and puffy they are. They match those of her poor old gran, Margaret, who gave me five cups of tea when I arrived at the address Dom supplied.

  ‘She told me her dad put her on the train. She told me she had a half term coming up and of course I always love to see her. It’s hard for me to get down to where they live now, my hip isn’t what it used to be. But I never thought… I mean, poor Dominic. The worry! I know… What that worry is like as a parent… You see…’ She sobbed into a Jaffa cake and Polly hung her head that little bit lower.

  ‘It’ll all come out in the wash!’ I chirruped with false confidence as I rubbed the gran’s arm and made soothing shushing noises. I was just grateful she didn’t need carrying up and down the stairs like Freddie to distract her from crying – my thighs were well and truly burned out.

  After more apologies from Margaret – who’d only
twigged that Polly was on the run when she happened to check her ginormous old answer machine – and corned beef sandwiches for our tea, I loaded one duffel bag and one anxious teen into Mum’s car. I didn’t want to leave the old dear in a state but I knew Dom would be climbing the walls till Polly was safely at home and under her purple bedspread once more.

  When we hit the motorway, I couldn’t take the silence anymore.

  ‘So why don’t you tell me the story of your life?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘It’s a line from When Harry Met Sally. It was made way before your time, slightly before mine, actually, but it’s a classic. I can lend it to you, if you like. These two people have a long car ride ahead of them so to pass the time, they tell each other a potted life story. So why don’t you tell me how you ended up with your gran under false pretences? You’re going to have to explain it to your dad, and possibly a police officer,’ Polly shrinks down further in her seat, ‘so you might as well practise on me.’

  Her eyes remain trained on the window as the motorway lights whiz by in the dark.

  ‘Fine. I can go first. I was in Manchester today, before I came to get you.’

  Polly frowns and turns towards me. She picks at her lime green nails.

  ‘It’s where I went to uni, and I worked there for a few years after. Till I made a fool of myself and got my heart stomped on. Some of my best friends live there still. And I think,’ I keep my eyes trained on the lights of the car in front as I think of the right words, ‘I think I was running away by going there. I didn’t like what was going on back in the village so I ran away. To something more fun, somewhere I felt safe. Where I felt like me again.’

  ‘Watch Oprah much?’ Polly’s deadpan delivery is A+ teenager material. ‘I wasn’t running away, God.’ She draws this last word out into at least four syllables, in a way that can only be done by someone aged 12 to 17. ‘I wanted to see Gran because it’s the only place I can talk about Mum without feeling bad. I know Dad would rather just sweep it all under the carpet and never say her name again. But Gran tells me stories about mum, from when she was my age. She shows me old pictures, she even has some of Mum’s crazy eighties clothes. When I talk to Gran, it’s the next best thing. To her.’