Cathy Kelly 3-book Bundle

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘Right.’ Connie digested this information. ‘Is your dad home soon, then?’

  ‘He gets home at six.’

  It was a quarter to five. Connie couldn’t leave this child sitting out on the step for another hour and a quarter.

  ‘You could come into my apartment and wait for him?’ she suggested.

  ‘I’m not allowed to talk to strangers or go anywhere with them.’

  ‘That’s very good advice,’ Connie agreed. ‘I’m a teacher and I understand that. If you know your dad’s phone number, we could phone him to check what he thinks. Does he know you’re on your own?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘I had a mean teacher once. She got cross all the time. Are you a mean teacher?’

  ‘I only get cross once a week and I make sure I’m not in the classroom when I do it. I go into a park and get mad there. Isn’t that a good plan?’ Connie said. ‘I’m Connie. What’s your name?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to tell strangers my name.’ The girl smiled up at Connie happily.

  ‘OK.’ Connie took out her mobile phone and handed it to the girl. ‘You phone your dad and tell him what’s happened, and then I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘This is a boring phone. My dad’s one has a screen you touch and you can play games.’

  ‘I bet you can work a computer really well, too,’ Connie said thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes, I’m very good at it. Dad says I’m a genius.’

  She dialled a number and waited patiently. ‘Hi, Dad, it’s me. Lilly hurt her knee and I’m on the step at home and this lady teacher who isn’t mean and goes into a field to be mean there says I can come to her house and play. But I said I can’t talk to strangers. Her name is Connie. She’s the crazy lady next door you said got angry when you parked in her place but she isn’t angry now. And I told her about Miss Rochester my teacher and she has a boring phone and do you want to talk to her?’

  Connie listened and bit her lip.

  The voice on the other end of the phone talked urgently and the girl listened and then handed the phone to her.

  ‘My dad,’ the girl said.

  ‘This is Steve Calman,’ said the voice. ‘Ella’s message is a bit garbled. What exactly’s going on?’

  ‘I’m Connie O’Callaghan from the house next door and I saw her sitting on the step outside your apartment. I know I’ve never seen her on her own before, so I came over. I teach in St Matilda’s down the road, I’m used to children. Well, older girls, it’s a secondary school, but still. I think the girl she normally goes home with had an accident, and Ella came home on her own. I said she could come into my apartment until you get back. I totally understand if you don’t want that. We can wait outside together till you get here.’

  Connie exhaled.

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ Steve said. ‘She’s never on her own. Three days a week, she gets picked up by her friend Lilly’s mother, Fee – she works as a childminder and she takes Ella for me until I get home from work – and I don’t know what happened, or how she came to get home on her own. It’s not far, but she’s not used to it –’

  Connie could hear the panic in his voice.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said soothingly. ‘She is absolutely fine. She wouldn’t even tell me her name because you’ve told her not to give it to strangers.’

  Ella beamed up at her.

  ‘Can I tell her my name now, Dad?’ she roared in the direction of the phone.

  ‘See?’ said Connie. ‘She’s fine. She can still come to me. I have no men around my home, no strange loopers, it’s just me and I was going to mark essays and have a cup of tea. She can sit and watch TV till you get home. I promise I won’t be a mean teacher person, Ella,’ she added.

  Ella grinned her impish grin.

  ‘Or we can wait on the step until you get here.’

  ‘No, no. That would be fantastic, if you could bring her to your place.’ He still sounded upset.

  ‘I understand your fears totally. You can phone Matilda’s and they’ll tell you I’m a teacher there and –’ Connie racked her brains for other proof of her trustworthiness. ‘Rae in Titania’s Tearooms knows me. I’ve lived here for eight years. I used to share with my sister, Nicky – you know, pretty blonde girl. She just got married.’

  ‘I know her,’ he said.

  Connie grinned. Everyone remembered Nicky.

  ‘I’m sorry about the whole crazy-lady-next-door thing,’ he added.

  ‘Forget it,’ she said briskly. ‘You have my mobile phone number now and my apartment is 2B in the house beside yours. Does Ella have a snack after school?’

  ‘Chocolate cake and 7UP,’ Ella said loudly.

  ‘A sandwich and a glass of milk,’ her father said.

  Ella shook her head. ‘Chocolate cake and 7UP,’ she whispered.

  ‘Slug juice and beetle buns?’ Connie whispered back.

  Ella’s laugh was explosive.

  ‘You talk to your dad for a moment,’ Connie said, handing the phone back.

  Ella listened quietly and nodded at whatever her father said.

  ‘Love you too,’ she said and pressed the ‘end’ button.

  She picked up her school bag and looked enquiringly at Connie. ‘Do you really have slug juice?’

  ‘Only for emergencies,’ Connie said. ‘It’s very expensive.’

  Ella was only a small person but she filled Connie’s apartment in a way it hadn’t been filled since Nicky had left. She left her coat and schoolbag on the floor by the door, took off her shoes and left them where they lay, and walked around looking at things.

  She loved Connie’s many candles, and her earthenware birds and the red cushions with the gingham hearts on them. She picked up ornaments, running her tiny fingers over them, then putting them back in exactly the right place.

  ‘Oooh, I love this,’ she kept saying, touching, examining, rushing from place to place. She spent ages gazing at the pictures of Nicky’s wedding, taking one big group photo and looking at it steadily.

  Connie watched her from behind the counter in the kitchen, making very slow work of getting a glass of milk and a sandwich. She had nothing interesting to eat in her cupboards, so it would have to be the healthy snack Steve wanted her to have.

  She wondered what Steve and Ella’s story was. Where was her mother?

  Connie only had a vague impression of Steve Calman and he was a big man, the sort of person she imagined wearing a hard hat and working on a building site, whereas Ella was a pixie with neat, skinny limbs and a tiny heart-shaped face. Ella’s mother must have been a pixie person too. No wonder he’d noticed Nicky.

  When Ella had finished her exploration of the living room, she looked enquiringly at Connie. ‘Can I see everywhere else?’ she asked politely. ‘I don’t get to see many houses. I’ve seen Lilly’s and it’s nice but untidy. And Petal lives in a flat, ‘cos her mum’s divorced. Can I see your room? Please?’

  Connie grinned. ‘Sure. But after your snack.’

  At the table, Ella sniffed the milk cautiously. ‘Is this slug juice?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I was teasing. It’s plain old milk and a cheese sandwich. I’m sorry I don’t have anything more interesting.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘I have profiteroles in the freezer.’ Keeping them there was a great way to diet. That way, it took half an hour for them to defrost and normally, she couldn’t wait long enough, so the desire for the sweet thing would be gone by then.

  ‘What are proff…poff…– those things?’

  ‘Little cakes with chocolate on the outside and cream on the inside.’

  Mouth full of sandwich, Ella made a thumbs-up sign.

  Connie drank her tea and wondered why it felt different to have a child in her home instead of standing in front of a classroom of them. Yet it was different. She felt responsible for this little person in a strange way. In class, she was responsible for the girls’ learning and for their wellbeing in school, but that was a shared responsibility. Their parents, other teach
ers, a whole host of other people were involved. But now, with Ella, she was totally in charge.

  ‘My dad said a shark bit someone in the sea in India,’ Ella announced.

  Connie considered this.

  ‘Did that scare you?’ she asked.

  ‘A bit,’ Ella admitted. ‘Why do sharks eat people? Don’t they like people?’

  Connie believed that all children’s questions should be answered seriously.

  ‘They don’t know people at all,’ she said gravely. ‘That’s the problem. They might love us if they did, but we can’t invite them in for a cup of tea, now, can we? So they’re a bit scared and maybe hungry, and when a shark is scared and hungry, it bites.’

  ‘Like the big furry dog in number 8?’

  ‘Did he bite you?’

  ‘No. He nearly did once.’

  Connie briefly wondered what a nearly-bite was.

  ‘The shark could be having a sad day,’ she went on. ‘Maybe he got up and was late to school, and the whole day didn’t work out nicely, and he was so grumpy, he bit a person. Or…’ Connie thought of the next bit. She was enjoying this. ‘Maybe he had a mean teacher and that’s what did it.’

  ‘Or he had a row with another shark and they sulked and he bumped his nose into the person and he got a fright…’ Ella began to get into it too.

  ‘And he wanted to say sorry, but humans don’t speak shark.’

  ‘Sharks don’t know how to kiss to say sorry,’ Ella said happily.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Ella performed a conversational swerve. ‘Why don’t you have any children?’

  Connie had been a teacher long enough not to choke on her tea, but it was a close call. ‘Not everyone is lucky enough,’ Connie said in a voice that sounded overly pious, even to her.

  ‘Why not?’ Ella asked. ‘Do you have to be very good to get children?’

  ‘N-o. It’s not about being good or bad.’ This was worse than discussing licentious sixteenth-century popes with the fifth years.

  ‘But how did the pope get to have children, Miss O’ Callaghan?’

  And Connie wasn’t used to kids Ella’s age. Who knew what a ten-year-old had been taught about where babies came from.

  ‘When mummies and daddies love each other very much, they can be lucky and have babies,’ she ventured.

  ‘You never got lucky enough with a daddy?’ Ella said.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Connie, relieved.

  ‘My daddy did, but my mummy died when her car crashed into a wall,’ Ella said, still chirpy.

  ‘That must have been very sad for you,’ Connie said slowly. How awful. The poor, poor child.

  ‘I was a baby, I don’t remember,’ Ella said in matter-of-fact tones. ‘I’ve finished my sandwich. See? Can I see your room now?’

  ‘Oh!’ Ella’s gasp was of pleasure as she stood at the door to Connie’s bedroom. ‘It’s like a princess’s room,’ she breathed. She flitted around, reverently touching Connie’s flower fairy lights on the dressing table, petting the pretty cushions massed on the bed. ‘If I slept here, I would never go to sleep. I’d lie and look at it all,’ she said softly, and suddenly Connie’s heart ached for this motherless child.

  Ella was keen to put on some of Connie’s limited supply of make-up and Connie was equally keen that she didn’t.

  ‘Your dad mightn’t like it,’ she said firmly.

  ‘He won’t mind,’ Ella said, dimpling up at Connie. ‘I have my own lipstick. It’s Hello Kitty and it’s pink and sparkly and it gets on clothes and Dad puts that pink washing goo that makes stains come out on it and it works but not on his best white shirt even though he did it lots of times and I’m not allowed to put my lipstick on him any more.’

  It was five to six when Steve Calman arrived and when he walked into the room, Connie felt instantly at ease with him. There wasn’t any of the ‘does he like me, do I like him?’ anxiety she always felt when she invited in a man she was dating.

  After spending the time with Ella, Connie had a clear vision of Steve Calman. He was Ella’s dad and a widower and she didn’t really register his looks or his suitability as a date. What she did register was his smile of delight when he picked Ella up in a great hug.

  ‘I can’t thank you enough for all of this,’ he said to Connie, with Ella clinging on to him like a koala.

  ‘Lilly’s mother phoned me in bits from the hospital and said she’d totally forgotten about Ella, but that when she’d phoned the school in a panic, they’d said Petal’s mother had taken her. And it seems this monkey had said the same thing to the teacher and snuck out. Your teacher is going to kill you tomorrow, by the way,’ he added to Ella.

  ‘I can go home on my own now, Dad,’ Ella said, affronted. ‘I’m old enough.’

  ‘No, you can’t. Lilly’s not in school tomorrow and I have too many meetings to come away early, but Petal’s mother kindly volunteered to have you for a few days until Lilly’s back at school and Fee can mind you again. I can collect you from Danielle’s house if I leave work early…’

  ‘I can take Ella after school.’

  Even as she said it, Connie knew he’d say no. What would a single woman, who taught kids all day, want with another child around in the afternoon? He’d think she was mad. How could she explain that Ella had been like a little spark of light into her day?

  ‘She gets into your heart, doesn’t she?’ Steve said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Connie instantly.

  ‘She can be a monkey too.’

  ‘I’m sure she can.’

  Ella sat there, pretending not to listen. Whatever Steve had done, he’d made her happy and confident. How did parents do that?

  ‘It would just be tomorrow,’ Steve went on.

  ‘Of course,’ said Connie. She was too busy to take care of Ella any other time, obviously.

  ‘But if you’re stuck anytime,’ she found herself saying. ‘I can babysit, you know. She can come here.’

  ‘Dad doesn’t go out,’ Ella said informatively. ‘People ask him. He says he gets a headache when he gets asked to boring parties and dinners and ladies smile at him.’

  Connie caught Steve’s eye. ‘You forgot to mention the fact that I hate washing up and that I have a tattoo,’ he said to Ella.

  She perked up. ‘Dad has a tattoo on his shoulder. It’s a bit of an eagle and he said it hurt, but he got the wing done and I like it.’

  Steve looked resigned. ‘There are no secrets with Ella. It’s easier to let her tell everyone everything.’

  ‘Secrets are bad,’ Ella recited. ‘Secrets are only for your family and if anyone tells you something is a secret, you have to shout loudly until another grown-up comes along.’

  ‘If you come tomorrow, you can tell me everything,’ Connie said to Ella, casting a sideways grin at Steve. ‘You can tell your dad I have fairy lights in my bedroom.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And fluffy pillows and pink things,’ said Ella quickly, ‘and shiny lipsticks and a picture of a man with no clothes on on the front of a book and a lady kissing him –’

  ‘That’s enough, Ella!’ said Steve.

  ‘It’s a romance novel,’ Connie said, her face puce. ‘He’s got clothes on, it’s just his shirt is off –’

  ‘Fine,’ said Steve, suddenly busy getting Ella’s coat.

  The next day, Connie left work at four and drove to the address Steve had given her.

  Danielle was mother to Petal, a ten-year-old in Ella’s class. Connie liked flower names but always wondered what happened when cute little poppets named Petal grew up and tried to get jobs as engineers or scientists.

  ‘Dr Petal has been working on the vaccine,’ sounded a bit daft.

  Petal opened the door with Ella beside her. Petal was a sweet child, though not, Connie thought biasedly, as cute as Ella.

  Danielle was right behind them, a slim and glamorous blonde wearing jeans, a teeny pink hoodie, and plenty of lip gloss.

  Connie was in her customa
ry navy – a long-sleeved dress and flat knee boots – and felt ninety beside this trendy creature.

  ‘Hello, you must be Connie, I’m Danielle.’

  Danielle looked at her curiously and Connie was sure that Steve was the source of much interest in his daughter’s school. There probably weren’t that many good-looking, unattached, single fathers around and she remembered Ella saying that Danielle was divorced. Sure enough, Danielle began a bit of idle questioning as Ella collected her school coat and bag.

  ‘So,’ Danielle said, all chatty and smiley, ‘you’re a friend of Steve’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Connie, just as smiley.

  ‘She lives next door and I go to her house sometimes,’ Ella said, keen to keep secrets at a minimum.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Danielle, ignoring Ella totally. ‘How long have you been –’

  ‘– friends?’ said Connie artlessly. ‘Oh, not long.’ True.

  ‘He parked in her space once,’ Ella added.

  Also true, although it sounded much more interesting than it was.

  ‘Just once,’ Connie said, nodding. She and Ella made a good double act. ‘Steve really appreciates you picking Ella up. I couldn’t because I was at work.’

  She waited for Ella to fill in details of Connie’s job, with a possible mention of fairy lights, but Ella was now keen to go.

  ‘Come on,’ she said to Connie, pulling her sleeve. ‘You said we’d have more por…proffo…– those cakes with the chocolate you have in the freezer.’

  Connie grinned wickedly at Danielle. ‘She loves profiteroles.’

  ‘Petal’s mummy thinks you’re Daddy’s girlfriend,’ Ella announced as they got into Connie’s car.

  ‘Really?’ Connie put her seatbelt on. If Danielle had a lick of sense, she’d see that this was highly unlikely. Given that Steve was surrounded by foxy mums on the prowl like Danielle, he’d hardly be dating Connie, now, would he?

  ‘I told her he likes you a lot. More than the ladies at dinner parties who are bored. You could bring him to a dinner party.’

  ‘But who’d take care of you?’ Connie asked.

  ‘I could sit on your bed in your fluffy pillows.’

  ‘No you couldn’t,’ said Connie cheerfully. ‘There are too many of them. You’d get stuck, I’d have to hang around to pull you out or else you’d get sucked into the bed and get lost in fluffy pillow land.’