by Janey Fraser
‘Come inside,’ said Nancy warmly, wondering if she might ever have a daughter like this. ‘Billy and Danny are playing with clay in the kitchen and I’m doing something called a mosaic . . . Oh no!’
Horrified, she stared at the kitchen. There were shapes where clay bits had clearly been thrown at the walls. On the floor was broken glass from her mosaic ‘homework’ for class, which she had – foolishly – been doing on the side counter. And out in the garden, through the kitchen windows, she could see Billy and Danny climbing the blue frame that she’d had delivered from Kids And Toys last month.
How could they? Her immediate instinct was to march out into the garden and yell at the pair of them. But then she recalled her own mother going ballistic once when she had brought home a new schoolfriend and together they had left dirty footprints on the carpet. She’d been really embarrassed at the time, and the friend had never asked her back to her house after that. No, Nancy told herself, she couldn’t do that to her son. Not when he seemed so happy playing out there.
‘Do you want to join them?’ she asked Lily. Their guest didn’t need a second invitation. She was off! For the next hour, all three seemed to play in their own way. Lily would just stand and watch while Danny and Billy hurled themselves around. It was too much of a girl-stereotype thing, perhaps, but they all seemed perfectly happy like that.
Maybe Lily would talk when it was teatime. But no. Instead, she ate delicately while the boys chomped their way through cold sausages followed by jelly beans, a menu that Danny had specifically requested. OK, it might not be that healthy but it wouldn’t hurt for a special occasion.
And then it happened. Nancy had seen Billy behave oddly before. Everyone had. He would go a bit wild, it was said, if things didn’t go his way. But she was totally unprepared for what happened next. ‘Finished, Billy dear?’ she asked, her hand out to pick up his plate.
Billy’s face turned red. ‘Don’t touch that!’ he screamed and slammed his head on the table so loudly that he simply had to have knocked himself out. Nancy felt sick. ‘Billy, Billy, what are you doing?’
He was lifting up his head now and roaring, throwing the empty plate at the cooker. It splintered into large bits which flew back across the room, narrowly missing Lily.
‘Are you all right?’ screamed Nancy, wondering if the boy was having a fit. Billy rushed out of the kitchen.
Lily shook her head. ‘The plate,’ she said quietly and slowly. ‘Do not touch. Billy not like it.’
There was another crash. This time from next door. He had gone for the stereo. Sam’s stereo! Horrified, Nancy watched this small dervish tearing round the room, hurling whatever he could on to the floor in a blind fury. For someone who didn’t like his own stuff being touched, he didn’t seem to care about ruining everyone else’s.
Danny, who seemed to think this was a fantastic game, joined in, despite her pleas to stop. Somewhere in the midst of all this, Nancy could dimly hear the doorbell ringing but there was no way she could take her eyes off this lot.
‘Please, stop,’ she began.
‘What on earth is going on, Billy?’
Nancy whipped round to see Brigid standing behind her. Lily must have opened the door.
‘Blimey, Nance, what has he had to eat?’
Desperately, she tried to think. ‘Sausages. Jelly beans . . .’
‘You’re joking?’ Brigid groaned. ‘Didn’t you find the note?’
‘Note?’
‘The one in the bottom of his bag. Look. There!’
She flourished the sheet of paper in front of Nancy.
Thank you for inviting me to tea. My behaviour may seem strange at times because I don’t like it when people touch my things because I have put them in a special order. If you want me to do something, please look at my face when talking or I may not bother listening to you. It can be useful to repeat instructions at least twice. The good news is that my mum has put me on a new diet that might help! Please do not give me any of the following . . .
Below were listed several foods including sausages, sweets and anything containing artificial colours.
‘It’s a standard printout that I give to everyone who is brave enough to have Billy,’ explained Brigid. ‘It was Gemma’s idea. Sorry. I thought I’d pointed it out to you.’
‘No,’ said Nancy, feeling the anger welling up inside her. ‘And I have to say, Brigid, if Danny was allergic to all these foods, I would darn well tell another parent about it instead of leaving them to find a note, or rather not find one.’
She hadn’t meant to sound angry, but it was all pouring out now. Somehow all the hurt over Sam, coupled with this awful mess around them, was making her act in a way that she never had before. Even as a child, her mother used to say, she’d been remarkably placid.
‘Flip, Nancy, I’m sorry.’ Brigid got down on her knees and began to pick up the shards of china and glass and goodness knows what else that had got broken.
‘No! Leave it. I just want you to go now.’
Brigid’s face was a picture of repentance. ‘I’m really, really sorry, Nancy. It was my fault. I should have thought.’ She lowered her voice. ‘To be honest, I was so grateful for a bit of time to myself without Billy that I forgot to tell you about the food thing.’
Something clicked in Nancy’s head when she heard this. It couldn’t be easy to look after a kid like Billy. She was lucky with Danny, who usually did what he was told and rarely gave her any trouble.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, trying to breathe deeply to calm herself down. ‘It’s just that I have so much on my plate at the moment. Honestly, you go.’
‘Really?’ Brigid bit her lip. ‘I’ve got to pick up my daughter from her friend and I’m already running late but I’ll make it up to you, Nancy, I really will. Come on, Billy.’
‘No. Don’t want to go.’ Billy’s arms lashed out at his mother, who deftly caught one before it hit her, as though she was practised. Appalled, Nancy watched Brigid frogmarch her son down the path. What a child!
Meanwhile, Billy’s departure seemed to bring a sense of calm to the house. ‘Want to watch a DVD?’ she asked Danny and Lily who were standing in the kitchen, looking at her and holding hands (so cute!). They both nodded silently. Thank heavens for that. It would give her some time to clear up this mess before . . . Was that the doorbell already? Nancy glanced at her watch. Six o’clock! It would be Lily’s mother or maybe nanny to pick her up. Quickly she glanced at her small guest, who was now sitting on a beanbag in front of the screen. Apart from some mud on her blue silk skirt and a large dab of ketchup on her face (another thing on Billy’s no-no list) she seemed more or less in good shape.
‘This way, Lily. Time to go home.’
It was like leading a doll. Nancy opened the door but – how weird! – there was no one standing there. But there was the large black car outside and the driver, still in her black glasses even though it was a cold autumn day with hardly any sun now, seemed to be waiting. Nancy watched while the little girl glided down the path towards the car until the door opened and she got in.
How odd. How very, very odd.
Nancy went back into the house. It looked like a battlefield. Broken shards of plates were everywhere. The cooker had a large dent on the front. And Danny was dozing in front of the television, his right hand working its way up and down the inside of his trousers. Obviously practising for adult male life.
Clearly the boys had been into Sam’s study, because there was a pile of papers on the floor that had Private written on the top one, as well as a folder containing some photographs. Unable to stop herself, Nancy drew them out. There was Sam, clearly in his late teens or maybe early twenties, with a slim, pretty girl in front of a billboard that said, Welcome to the Grand Canyon!
She hadn’t known that Sam had ever been there. Was the girlfriend, if that’s what she was, American or British? How odd! Someone had blanked out her face with a pen as though they were angry or maybe hurt, or because they di
dn’t want her identity known.
Who was she? Of course it was crazy to think Sam hadn’t had any history before they got together – he was, after all, older than her. But even so, the picture disturbed her.
Oh God. The doorbell again. Brigid had probably left something behind. Hopefully it wasn’t Billy.
‘Hello again . . . Patricia?’
Nancy stared in horror at the tall woman with a thin, haughty, bird-like face, large hooded eyes and a brown suitcase by her side.
‘Nancy!’
Sam’s mother’s clipped aloof voice still had the power to make her quake in her shoes.
‘I wasn’t expecting you.’ Too late, she realised that sounded rude, but then again, so was turning up unannounced. In the books she had read about England as a child, people left calling cards if a visit wasn’t convenient.
Patricia had already swept into the house, taking in the chaos around her with tightened lips. ‘I came as soon as I heard.’
‘Heard what?’ Nancy’s heart quickened. Had something happened to Sam? Suddenly all those things she’d been thinking earlier, about not caring if he didn’t come back, disappeared. She needed Sam. Of course she did. And now he’d been hurt in some accident or God forbid, a terrorist attack, because otherwise why else would his mother be here?
‘I came,’ announced Patricia, ‘because I heard you were on your own now Sam has decided to walk away until Christmas.’
Patricia’s voice was even more imperious than usual. Sam had warned her before they’d met that the shock of his father leaving had resulted in his mother sometimes using the wrong words or mispronouncing them, and that it was best to ignore them. Privately, Nancy thought Patricia’s verbal mistakes were deliberate, in order to sound posh, as Brigid would say.
‘Sam hasn’t walked away. He’s working away.’
Patricia’s eyes glinted dangerously. ‘That’s what I said.’ Her gaze fixed on the broken plates, and then on her. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, it’s obvious I was right to come down. I have to say, Nancy, that I do think you have got yourself into a terrible mess. It’s not even as though Sam is your husband.’
There was a noise behind them. ‘Excuse me?’ It was Brigid, who had come through the French windows into the kitchen. ‘Sorry. Didn’t think you’d heard the bell so I came in the back way. I’ve brought you these.’ She held out a pot of tired-looking grey chrysanthemums: a speciality from the local garage. ‘It’s to say sorry for Billy’s behaviour and for me forgetting to tell you about the list. Oh and by the way, I think I might have forgotten Billy’s plastic hammer. He’s a nightmare without it.’
Patricia’s eyebrows rose. ‘Did you say hammer? Is that suitable?’
Nancy felt hot with embarrassment, and not just because of what her mother-in-law was saying right now. It was the bit before . . . Silently, she picked up Billy’s hammer from the floor and held it out.
Brigid smiled at Patricia. ‘It’s all right. I take your point but it keeps him quiet, which is something. No one can understand what it’s like unless they have a son like Billy, but I wouldn’t swap him for the world. Bye then, Nancy. Thanks for the hammer and sorry once more. See you on Monday.’
She’d gone! Too late to explain, thought Nancy desperately. Too late to ask her not to tell anyone that she and Sam weren’t actually married. Not that that would really matter in this day and age.
But what did matter, at least to her, was why Sam had always declined to marry her even though, to make things easier, she had taken his name with hers and referred to him as her husband. There was something else, too. Why, she wondered, as she watched Patricia take off her coat and begin to clear up without being asked, did she have that funny niggling feeling that that photo with the crossed-out face might have something to do with Sam’s refusal?
Chapter 20
JOE BALLS GOT up early for the morning meeting. Very early. Anything so as to get into work without being seen.
There was no doubt about it, he told himself, tiptoeing down the stairs in order not to wake the rest of the house, it was awkward. Extremely awkward. Joe hadn’t believed his eyes when Gemma had turned up at his door, claiming to live in the room next to him.
Then, before he could take it in, there had been the hamster incident, which had had Lynette and Mike in stitches when he’d described it. It had surprised him: somehow, the mercy dash to the vet had made him see a completely new side to himself. Who would have thought he could have got so worried about a tiny creature?
But when the vet had made that embarrassing assumption that he and Gemma were a couple, he had realised that it would be impossible to carry on living next door to each other. It simply wasn’t professional, which was why he had felt obliged to be rather cool with Gemma when they were back at school the next day.
How, he wondered, as he got on to his bike, parked in Joyce’s garage, could he possibly share a bathroom with a colleague? And how could he have a serious staff meeting with Gemma if they’d both seen each other that morning in their dressing gowns? Hers had been a rather pretty pink one, down just below her knee. His was navy blue paisley silk, a present from Ed a few Christmases ago, which covered more of him than Gemma’s had of her. Even so, she had looked aghast at him as though he was virtually naked.
By the time he arrived at school, he had decided the whole situation was untenable. He would definitely have to find another room to rent. Meanwhile, he needed to concentrate on this morning’s security meeting after that horrendous newspaper report on Lily Dalung, which had led to some extremely terse emails between him, Gemma, Beryl the headmistress, Dilly Dalung and the school governors.
The meeting was meant to have taken place in the main school but Beryl had changed the venue to Puddleducks, declaring she wanted to walk round the pre-school building and check for any possible security lapses on site. What did she expect? Holes through the walls where the paparazzi could poke their cameras? Beryl, like so many of the staff out here in the sticks, was so parochial!
Now, as he let himself into Puddleducks early, thanks to Gemma and the bathroom issue, Joe’s stomach churned, although not with apprehension. The takeaway he’d had last night from that place on the high street hadn’t settled, but he’d felt unable to do anything about it in the lodgers’ bathroom, knowing that Gemma might try to turn the handle on the other side at any minute.
It reminded him of life on the fourteenth floor, where some bright spark had decided to combine the Ladies and Gents to form unisex loos in order to create space for a new office. The younger lads had immediately brightened at the thought of ‘new mating ground’, but Joe had found it excruciatingly embarrassing to perform in a cubicle containing machines for Tampax.
Consequently he had often ‘hung on’ as his mother used to say, which was just what he was doing right now. But the urge was increasing – it always did that in times of stress – and dammit, he simply had to go.
Wildly, Joe looked around for the staff loos. Snatching open a door hopefully, he groaned at the sight of the broom cupboard with a stack of metal buckets and mops. Still, he might just need them if he couldn’t find the real thing.
In desperation, he tried another door. With relief, he found it led to a row of loos all right, but then his heart sank again. They were built for Snow White’s dwarfs with miniature seats and slatted doors that had huge gaps both at the top and the bottom, presumably so staff could check that the occupants were all right.
Joe’s stomach gurgled once more. Groaning, he flung himself in, shut the door behind him – no locks! – and closed his eyes in relief, even though it was like sitting on an egg cup.
Bloody hell. A noise! A female noise! Gemma and Beryl were outside in the hall and he, stupidly, had left the main door to the loos ajar so he could hear snatches of their conversation.
‘Can’t understand how it could have happened.’
‘None of the staff would have done anything like that.’
‘Mind you, sin
ce I called the police the other day, we haven’t had any other trouble.’
‘Probably found another story to chase by now.’
Quietly, Joe pulled down the lavatory roll. What was this? Each square had a printed letter of the alphabet on it, with a picture of an object starting with that letter. At the moment, he had D for Drum in his sweating hands.
Now he was in a quandary. If he pulled the chain, they would hear him. But if he didn’t . . . No. That didn’t bear thinking about.
‘What’s that?’
Joe froze. It was Gemma’s voice.
‘Hang on. The door’s open. Someone’s in there. I can see feet.’ She was whispering, but he could still hear her. ‘Men’s feet.’
One man, he wanted to shout out. Just me.
Desperately, he put himself together and stood against the door so she couldn’t get in.
‘Be careful,’ called Beryl’s voice.
There was the sound of something being scraped along the floor. No! Someone was carrying a stool and was about to stand on it to look over the top!
There was no other option now. ‘It’s me.’ His voice came out cracked with embarrassment. ‘Joe. Joe Balls. I got caught short, so to speak. I’ll be out in one minute.’
The shocked silence, followed by more whispers and a definite suppressed giggle, was everything he had feared. Pulling the chain (well, what else could he do?) he came out, washed his hands with the tiny bar of pink soap and shook them dry, not fancying the look of the towel, which clearly hadn’t been changed from the day before.
‘Sorry about that.’ He sheepishly waved his hand about as though he made a habit of sitting on miniature loos every morning. ‘Thought I’d test out the er, “facilities” as part of the security check.’
Beryl’s face, which reminded him of a crinkled King Charles spaniel at the best of times, exploded into tears of laughter. ‘Get a life, lad. You needed to go, didn’t you! Nothing wrong with that. It’s happened to us all.’ Her expression grew serious again. ‘Now, we need to talk about this situation. Luckily, Dilly Dalung has said she still wants to keep her daughter at Puddleducks.’