by Jo Smedley
If Irene had her way, we'd find out soon enough. She wanted to “relocate” him. Get his side of the story and keep him out of police hands a little longer. What if she was wrong? I had asked her that very same question as I walked behind the dog, my nose screwed up against the smell.
She had just shrugged. “Then it was a crime of passion and we're perfectly safe.”
I didn't share her optimism and it occurred to me perhaps I should phone the police myself, give them the heads up and save Irene from herself. But then... the police would want to know why and how, and who I was to be interested in such things; and all those questions could lead them right back to me, and from me to Lucus, and he would wonder how I'd got involved and then the house break would come out. I wasn’t ready for that either. But more than that. Like Irene, part of me really didn’t want to let go of our involvement just yet either. I was enjoying myself. Relishing the thrill.
“Ready?” I called out.
“Yes, we’re ready for him, aren’t we Lillian?”
“Bah!”
“OK then.”
I threw open the bathroom door. Moss skittered across the laminate and I heard Irene slamming the backdoor behind him as I began to swill down the shower.
“Tea?” Irene called from the kitchen.
“Oooh, yes please,” I opened the door to receive the mug and came out myself.
I looked around. Lillian was busy unpacking her cupboard, the only one we left un-childlocked in the kitchen. It contained Tupperware pots and various plastic whisks and things which Lillian had taken a fancy to. It was a step up from her heuristic play box, a wicker affair filled with small household objects and pine cones. She used to sit quite happily unpacking that box when she’d learned to sit up, but these days, she needed to feel the sense of independent discovery, and pulling apart the kitchen cupboards was her new thing. She pulled out a plastic balloon whisk and started swinging it around above her head. She was still largely uncoordinated and whacked herself more than once in her excitement.
She could come to no harm where she was and seemed content enough with her antics so I left her to it and settled into the window seats with Irene and the mugs of tea.
From the vantage of the window I could look down our garden. Moss was lying in the weak sun on the patio licking the excess water from his coat. He looked up, sensing he had an observer, and gave me a pointed look. Washes were not his thing. He’d gone to all that trouble to get that special cologne and I had ruined his future courting plans, again. How very dare I!
I turned back to my tea. I would let him in later when he’d finished his own grooming.
“Well?” Irene looked at me, her finger running around the rim of the mug as if she was trying to make the china sing. It was a nervous habit. “Are you in?”
I mulled it over. Breaking into another house wasn’t really in my diary for that week. Irene had taken me out of my comfort zone breaking into one. Did I really want to get that involved in someone else’s life, or rather someone else’s death?
“You’re sure it’s safe?”
“I’d bet my life on it.”
I looked at her. “You’re that sure?”
“Yes.”
She seemed in earnest. I looked through to the kitchen. We’d knocked through the dividing wall between the kitchen and the dining room some time ago. It made it possible to keep a vague eye on Lillian while enjoying the comfort of the window seats. She was busy pushing Tupperware around the kitchen. There didn’t appear to be any pattern to where she was sliding things to and I wondered if it was the noise of the plastic on the laminate that she was achieving. Children thought about things so differently to adults. What would she make of her mother’s involvement in a murder enquiry? Would she find it fun?
I looked at my tea. Lucus and I had very different personalities. I was the optimist, the risk taker; he the pessimist planner. Since Lillian’s arrival I’d taken very much the back seat in daily decisions. I was now the “wife who does”. I fitted finally into the stereotypical mould he had for me in his brain. For once I was where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing. I hadn’t done anything for myself since Lillian had arrived. I’d taken no risks. Created no problems. Maybe that was why I nodded at Irene. I needed something to challenge me. Last night might have left me sleepless, but it had given my adrenal gland a squeeze and that burst of “fight or flight” hormone was just the thing my body was craving. It had switched me back from “Mother” to “Challenger”. I was someone again. Someone who could tackle the uncertain, could battle the odds, could stand up against injustices, could achieve goals and create positive outcomes. I could “do” again. And I so much needed to be a “doer” rather than a “done to”.
Lillian peered around the end unit and giggled at us. “Peek-a-boo!” I called at her, waggling my fingers. At least she was too young to understand any of the plotting and was unable to report anything back to Lucus.
I looked beyond Irene to the garden again, the Laburnum branches overhanging the back were still devoid of any spring buds. Of all the trees which surrounded us, that one took the longest to recognise spring.
“Four thirty then.”
“Four thirty?” I said. “Lucus won’t be home.”
“Helen will look after her,” Irene offered. Helen was a woman I knew from toddlers. Like me, Helen had no local family and since her husband had left her a few months ago we had established a sort of reciprocal arrangement for those unexpected moments when you simply couldn’t take a baby along. Both of us tried not to tax the arrangement as we didn’t know each other all that well, just well enough. Helen was very anxious about appearing too needy, but she’d had a few solicitors’ appointments recently that were easier to do without her son Thomas in tow, and she probably felt she owed me a few favours. I had been keeping those back for a rainy day, and this was hardly a “Rainy day” moment. I wondered what she would have thought of me if she knew I was dropping off my daughter in order to affect another house break.
“I thought you’d have wanted to do it at night, when no one could see,” I said.
“Once was risky enough. I don’t want to put us in that position again,” Irene said. “This time we can pose as estate agent and viewer. No one will know the difference and no one will think to check. We’ll be hidden in plain sight.”
I thought of Helen’s face, how she would look if I told her what I was really up to, and what lie I would use for this request. It went without saying I wasn’t going to tell her the truth. Smear test at the surgery perhaps? Dentist appointment?
“How long?”
“We’ll be home long before Lucus gets back. Half an hour tops.” Dentist appointment then. They got arranged at short notice occasionally… I could have had a cancellation or something. Could I affect a toothache? Probably. It was something you couldn’t see after all.
“Do you have a suit?”
“A suit? No.” I’d spent much of my working life in uniform. A suit wasn’t a requirement. “Why do I need a suit?”
“Then I’ll play estate agent,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the house at four.” And so saying, she swilled down the last of her tea and rose to leave before I could raise any further objections.
“You’re going?” I asked.
“Lots to do,” she said, gathering her coat. “Can’t sit around here all day chatting. And you’ve got mums and tots haven’t you?”
I glanced at the clock. She was right. Barely ten minutes to go. Not that it was the be all and end all that I attended each week, the health visitors probably wouldn’t even remark on my absence, but it was routine and it broke up an otherwise long day with Lillian. Even if the singing got me down a little.
Chapter Five
Hello Hope, how are you ?
Hello Hope, how are you ?
Hello Hope how are you ?
How are you today ?
The clapping stopped and we all turned expectantly to Lauren,
Hope’s mother; who smiled nervously around the circle.
“She’s got a new tooth,” Lauren declared to the room at large. The circle of faces grinned encouragingly.
“How lovely,” Pat the health visitor exclaimed, putting suitable words to our collective encouraging grins. She was in her fifties I judged, no middle aged spread, but not athletic, just comfortably thin. She had short white hair, a round face and wore understated make up. Health visitors had no uniform, but she had clearly selected the smart casual look from the supermarket clerical ranges and in the middle of us mothers, it was obvious she was the one who was employed to be here.
Added to her immaculate appearance, she had obviously won first place in the inane happy expressions competition. She smiled at us all beatifically, adopting teacher mode for us, her class. She had a slightly too high pitched soft carers-voice which was patronising in the extreme. I used to reprimand my staff if they put on voices like that with patients. Just as adults weren’t children because they couldn’t stand up or feed themselves, we weren’t idiots just because we’d had children ourselves. We may all have suffered from baby brain from time to time due to lack of sleep, but we had all reached adulthood and deserved to be spoken to as adults. I wondered if the voice was reserved especially for our group or whether she spoke like that to all her friends. Her tone of voice never varied week to week.
I tried to imagine her at her desk. Did she finish up this mums and tots class and return to bang the desk with her head repeatedly - or did she really enjoy all this as much as she appeared to?
“Isn’t that lovely!” Pat repeated herself for emphasis. We all nodded, yes it was, how delightful!
“A new tooth!” she exclaimed again, just in case we didn’t get it the first time. “How many is that now?”
“Her third,” Lauren beamed in the spotlight, succumbing to the attention.
“How lovely.”
It was. It really was… I looked around the circle of mums, all of them were still smiling. I maintained a grin in order to fit in and repositioned Lillian on my knees so that I could clap properly, my forearms circling her, ensuring she didn’t slip off my legs.
“Ready?”
And with that Pat began the clapping and singing and we started again on the next baby along, April, who was jiggled up and down on her mother’s knees in time to the music, her chubby little fingers gripping her mother’s hands, her bright Mama Joe Bebe clothing marking her out as one of the yummy mummy set in the same way Lillian’s supermarket brand clothing did not.
The tune was along the same lines as “Skip skip skip to my Lou”, which wasn’t the world’s most tuneful song to begin with, and repeated with a room full of twenty mothers it had lost any pep it might otherwise have had by baby number four.
Added to the song, which didn’t change session to session, we met weekly and in my opinion there really was very little excitement in the world of baby-land that required a weekly update report from every single mother in the room. I wondered which part of Maslow’s self-actualisation triangle this circle time achieved for us all. After all, somewhere along the line, a need for this service had been identified by the Health Visiting team and given the strain on NHS resources, this had to achieve something or the budget would never have been allocated.
I groaned inwardly. Was it any wonder mothers got depressed after a baby if this was what they had to contend with! I loved Lillian, don’t get me wrong, but I still had a brain. It needed stimulating. Singing Skip skip skip to my Lou twenty times each week was not stimulation. I wondered, not for the first time, why I actually came, and then I remembered… towards the end of the session there was a five minute cup of tea where we all took it in turns to leave our darlings in each other’s care while we had a cup of tea alone, un-babied, in the other room.
The singing came around to me. I looked up into the room. Should I mention the house break? Dare I spill the beans about the fact Irene and I were about to come face to face with the police’s prime suspect in a matter of hours? I watched them all looking at me expectantly.
“Er… she ate breakfast herself this week.” It was the best I could do. I really should start planning for this a day in advance…
“How delightful,” Pat beamed back as if I was a moron. “It’s really important at this age to encourage finger foods. It gives them more independence.”
“Hmmm,” I agreed, wishing she had seen the state of the dining room. Building firms could use warm baby cereal as glue, it set so hard. I hoped that was enough and I wouldn’t be forced to elaborate further. I may not be planning, but at least I was self-censoring now, more than I managed back when Lillian was five months and crying almost all day and night. Apparently admitting that you felt like whacking your child’s head off a work top was not the correct thing to say in circle time.
Of course, I had no intention of ever harming Lillian; I was just explaining how her incessant wailing was making me feel. I now had a lot of sympathy for parents who lost it and shook their babies. It was amazing what a 10 pound ball of pink screaming baby could do to your sanity over a protracted length of time. Lauren may have achieved three teeth, but I had endured nine already and every precious white protrusion had been preceded by days and days of inconsolable screaming, sleepless nights and temperature swings.
What I needed was a distraction, a stunning distraction. Which was why my days were filled with baby groups. The fact I didn’t really fit into the yummy mummy set was the only snag to an otherwise excellent plan.
It was no surprise really that I had grabbed hold of Irene’s friendship like a lifeline. And now she said she needed me, I wasn’t about to abandon her. The house break had woken me up. I craved more stimulation. Like a druggie I was looking for the next fix.
Chapter Six
The rest of the day seemed to drag and 4.30 took longer to arrive than I could have believed possible. It was like waiting for Christmas as a child. Time seemed to slow down and no matter what I did, the minute hand just didn’t move fast enough.
I decided the use the timer facility on the oven and get a stew on the go for Lucus’s return. The beef and jacket potatoes could cook while I was out with Irene, and to all intents and purposes it would appear as if I’d been at home all afternoon planning the meal like the good wife he chose to believe I was. Pigeon holing someone was all very well, but once assigned that box, it was very easily faked if you needed to maintain appearances.
Lillian played with her cooking set while I rushed around my real one, trying to get everything done before she required mummy-time. Stews didn’t take look to prepare thankfully, and I was cleared up before she’d noticed I’d not joined in with any game.
The afternoon revolved around the usual round of nappy changes, play time and washing, until I could string it out no further and walked down to Helen’s with the usual knapsack of spare nappies, her cuddle rabbit and tippy cups. I knew Helen wouldn’t mind a bit of early company, and so we had a cup of tea while Lillian explored Thomas’s things and got settled.
At the allotted time I made my excuses and left, taking care to walk towards the dentist before doubling back on myself once I was out of line of sight of Helen’s house, just in case she happened to be watching.
I could see Irene waiting in her car as I crossed the park, taking the swiftest route straight through the middle past the wooden café that had changed hands just about every year since the park opened. In truth, I wouldn’t have minded taking it on myself; but coffee shop dreams were a thing of the past now I had Lillian.
I passed the pond and watched the ducks swarming towards a small child in wellingtons with her mother. They were both bundled up in scarves, gloves and hats, feeding the ducks and chatting to each other. I couldn’t wait for Lillian to talk. It was like a whole world was out there for us. Once she was talking, I’d have company. Not very vocabulary rich company, but no longer would I be alone with a baby. We’d reach a milestone and suddenly it would be me and Lilli
an doing things together. Lillian and me baking, Lillian and me walking the dog. We could chat about things. She wouldn’t be a dumb witness to anything any more. Once she had words, she could learn to do things. She could become my “helper”. I tried to gauge the age of the child. Going on their height, that could be us in one year’s time. One year. So much could change in so little time.
I looked towards the houses on the opposite side. The trees were still bare and through their branches I could see the whole horseshoe of red brick Edwardian homes which surrounded the park. We really did live in an architecturally rich area. Each house was a little different, each house had its distinctive features, even if it was just a different pattern in the apex plasterwork. They didn’t make houses like they used to. I hadn’t seen any modern estate which had built houses on quite such a grand scale. The Edwardians knew how to do it properly. Even the two houses Irene had pointed out as the same had slightly different qualities. The way the shrubs were arranged in the gardens, the colour of the woodwork, even a slight difference in the bay window design and rendering.
I looked down from the houses to the road and Irene’s car. She was seated in the driver’s seat and glanced quickly in my direction but didn’t show any sign of recognition. I had changed, smartened myself up a little, (which I thought was what you did for a house viewing), but was sure I was still recognisable.
She had a clipboard on the steering wheel; I could see that much as I reached the bandstand just 30 or so feet away from her. Still she didn’t make eye contact. This was all very cloak and dagger stuff. I smiled a little at the ridiculousness of it all, and then I firmed up my mouth again. If Irene was taking it seriously, she probably had good reason and that was when I noticed the police car parked at the end of the road.