The Playgroup

by Janey Fraser

  It was such a relief to zoom back to Notting Hill on the Friday night and park his bike outside his own flat, where he didn’t have to worry about getting up early for his bathroom slot.

  It was also a relief to find that there weren’t the usual messages from Ed, either on his mobile or the home answerphone. Nor, as it turned out, did she appear unannounced at the flat over the weekend. Ed was so unpredictable! You never knew what she was going to do next.

  The following week, the office was in a fever of excitement about the imminent Parents’ Social on Thursday. The parents were just as bad, chattering about what they were going to wear and did anyone fancy going out to the new pizza place afterwards?

  Meanwhile, he’d managed to avoid his fellow lodger by getting up early, and putting in extra hours in classroom preparation so that he came back late. At some point he’d need to make time to see a doctor about this wretched ankle, which was still puffed up.

  ‘Everything all right?’ trilled Joyce when he’d left his monthly rent on the kitchen table. ‘Sorry I haven’t been around much, but my daughter had a baby. My first grandchild, you know!’

  No. He didn’t know and frankly he didn’t want to. Not where babies were concerned. And he couldn’t wait for tonight’s event to be over with so he could get on with his real job of drumming facts into heads, and also trying to think of a stand-out entry for the bank’s competition.

  On the night of the social, Joe groaned inwardly as the parents began trooping in, headed by the blonde newly single mum who was making a beeline straight for him. Even Di gave him a sympathetic look, handing him a glass of cheap wine.

  Despite his earlier intentions to avoid the stuff, Joe took a swig. Disgusting. But it numbed the pain. A bit.

  ‘So I told him that if he was going to talk like that . . .’

  ‘It’s not right for children to hear their father say such things, don’t you think?’

  ‘The trouble is that there aren’t many places where single people like us can go, are there?’

  ‘I say like us, Joe – I can call you that, can’t I? – because I can see from your left hand that you don’t wear a wedding ring . . .’

  The room was getting slightly blurry.

  ‘Joe,’ said a familiar voice. No. It sounded like Gemma’s, but softer somehow. ‘You look a bit pale. Are you all right?’

  At the same time, Joe realised that the throbbing in his head was being overtaken by the throbbing in his right ankle.

  ‘I do feel a bit odd,’ he began and then stopped. Things must be really bad if he could imagine that Ed was striding across the room towards him in an impossibly tall pair of black heels and one of her beautifully tailored business suits, which revealed her chest (which he’d always admired) to perfection.

  ‘Joe, darling!’ The image that pretended to be Ed flashed a smile at Single Mum, who was now looking decidedly put out. ‘So sorry I’m late.’

  Late?

  ‘Your landlady told me I’d find you here.’ Ed flashed another smile at Single Mum. ‘We live in London, you see, so my poor husband has to live out here during the week.’

  We? Husband?

  Gemma and Single Mum both seemed to take a backward step, as though they didn’t want anything more to do with him. Too late, Joe wished he hadn’t drunk that cheap wine. It had made his head go horribly fuzzy. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken a double dose of painkillers before leaving the bedsit, either.

  ‘This woman,’ he managed to gasp out before collapsing on a chair, his ankle now throbbing in white pain, ‘is not my wife. She’s . . .’

  And then it all went black.

  THE PUDDLEDUCKS PLAYGROUP

  NEWSLETTER

  OCTOBER ISSUE

  Yes! Another month has already passed and we’re into October already! Please remember to put the following dates in your diary:

  Parents’ Evening on October 15

  Half-term on October 20

  Halloween Dressing-Up Day on October 28

  We’d also like to give you advance notice of:

  Fireworks Night (sparklers only) on November 5

  Shoebox Day on November 12. For those of you who are new, this is when we ask you to fill shoeboxes with suitable Christmas gifts for children abroad who are not as fortunate as ours. They will then be distributed by the Shoebox Charity.

  Christmas Bring and Buy Sale on December 9

  And of course, the Nativity Play on December 14.

  Finally, if your little Puddleduck is allergic to dogs, please let us know immediately.

  PS. Below is another Puddleducks song. As usual, we’d be really grateful if you could practise it at home. Thank you.

  THE PUDDLEDUCKS POLITE SONG

  We are the little Puddleducks

  We try to be polite.

  To say ‘yes please’ and ‘thank you’

  From morning through to night!

  Chapter 23

  ‘MRS MERRYFIELD, MRS MERRYFIELD! They’re coming. The puppies are coming!’

  Danny was hopping up and down in front of her, his eyes wide with the pure excitement that you only really saw in the under-fives. When they went to Big School, some of them gradually lost their sparkle, Gemma noticed, because a teacher had told them that they weren’t good at a particular subject. Then bang went that natural confidence, possibly for the rest of their lives.

  Others became arrogant, as though to provide a protective layer between themselves and outside critics. A sudden flash of a small Joe in school uniform came into her head for some reason. Was that what had happened to him at school, or later in life, and explained his difficult manner?

  If, on the other hand, you could make a child feel good at something, they took that certainty into adulthood. And that was why she loved her job so much, just as her grandmother had done before her. ‘Teachers can make the difference,’ she had told Gemma when she was growing up, ‘between a happy adult and a discontented one.’

  Now, as Gemma bent down and held Danny’s hot hands in hers, she wanted to bottle his excitement and squirt it out at some adults she knew – no names mentioned! – who could do with a large dollop of imagination and spontaneity not to mention integrity.

  Some people, she thought, couldn’t help distorting the truth, just like Joe had at the school social. ‘We’ve split up,’ he had kept muttering when his glamorous companion had helped him into the ambulance en route for A&E. As Single Mum had remarked acidly after his departure, ‘There goes one more married man pretending to be single so he can have a good time.’

  Her words had made Gemma shiver. All she wanted was a simple life with a husband and three, maybe four children who looked just like Danny, with those shiny eyes and that earthy smell. She’d always thought it would happen by her thirtieth birthday, but time was running out.

  ‘Here they are!’ Danny’s excitement had mounted to fever pitch, and she could see a small trickle of yellow dribble down the inside of his leg.

  ‘Danny, I think you might need to go somewhere first!’

  Bella, helpful for once, cut in. ‘I’ll take him. Darren needs to go too.’ Her eyes met Gemma’s pointedly. ‘He had two breakfasts this morning apparently. One with Mummy and then one with Daddy.’

  Why did divorcing parents do this sort of thing? Meanwhile, Toby’s dad was coming in, carrying a large box. At his side was a beautiful elegant dog that was so clearly feminine, her udders still swollen from feeding her puppies, that she might as well have had a Chanel dog jacket on.

  ‘Do come in,’ said Gemma. ‘That’s right, children, sit down in a nice circle. Now what do we say?’

  ‘Morning, Toby’s dad,’ chorused the group.

  She had taught them to say Mr Thomas, but clearly they’d forgotten. Never mind. Greeting people socially was all part of the playgroup curriculum; she’d have a word with them later.

  Now Toby’s dad was explaining how long Millie, the beautiful black pointer who was sitting quietly next to Gemma, had carried h
er puppies for, and how they had been born in what looked like plastic bags.

  ‘Like H&M or Topshop?’ demanded Clemmie keenly, but before Gemma could answer Sienna had her hand up, straining urgently.

  ‘Why do dogs come out in bags?’

  ‘Good question,’ said Toby’s dad enthusiastically. ‘It’s to keep them safe when they are being born, rather like wrapping up a fragile parcel.’

  It was a great lesson which managed to roll biology, parental care and hygiene all in one. Afterwards, the questions were endless.

  ‘Mrs Merryfield! Do dogs have arty fishal in cement Asian too? That’s how my mummy got me!’

  ‘Toby’s dad! How do the puppies get out of their plastic bags when they are born?’

  ‘What if you don’t like them? Can you take them back to the shop? My mum does that.’

  ‘Why does that puppy have a funny tail?’

  The last one came from Danny, who was sitting almost nose to nose with the smallest one in the litter. Gemma’s heart melted and when she looked across at Bella she could see her assistant mouthing, ‘Sweet!’

  Wow, if the pair had melted Bella’s heart, they definitely must be cute!

  Toby’s dad put a large gentle hand out and stroked the puppy’s back. ‘Each one of us is different in life, you see. Some of us are born with two arms and some with one.’ He glanced at Gemma to see if he was stepping out of line, but she nodded in encouragement. No doubt this would lead to more questions later, but that was why they had talks like this.

  ‘Pongo here has a kink, which means he might not be so valuable when the puppies are old enough to be sold. But to us he’s as special as all the others, because we love him.’

  Pongo gazed up at his master with a look that clearly said ‘thank you’. Gemma felt her eyes fill with tears. This was happening more and more recently: something that was to do either with her impatient hormones, or the official letter that had arrived in the post that morning.

  Toby’s dad – such a nice man! – stayed for over an hour, and was still there when the mums arrived to collect their offspring.

  ‘You won’t prise Danny away very easily,’ Gemma warned the quiet American woman whom she was beginning to warm to. They might only be five weeks into term but already she’d noticed that Nancy Carter Wright was much calmer. She loved it when that happened. It meant that she, Gemma, and her team were doing their job in helping not only the Puddleducks to grow, but also their parents to start letting go.

  Together they looked at Danny, who was sitting now with Pongo in his lap while Toby’s dad carefully supervised. ‘He’s head over heels in love with that gorgeous puppy.’

  ‘Head over heels in love,’ repeated the American softly. ‘I was that once.’

  Gemma glanced at the woman’s damp eyes. ‘Is there anything you’d like to talk about?’ she asked quietly.

  The woman shook her head. ‘I’m going through some stuff at the moment.’

  Gemma’s heart sank. Not another, after Darren’s parents? Children are resilient, she tried to tell herself, but her experience at Puddleducks had shown that wasn’t always true.

  ‘Let me know if I can do anything.’

  The woman nodded. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ Danny was calling out to her. ‘Look. This is Pongo! Can we have him? Pleeeease!’

  The American woman laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. It was an ‘are you kidding on top of everything else that I’ve got to cope with’ laugh. Gemma had learned to recognise those, over the years.

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart. But a dog wouldn’t be right for us at the moment.’

  Danny’s face was crestfallen. ‘Why not, Mummy? Pleease.’

  Toby’s dad was talking now, softly but in an authoritative manner. ‘Puppies need someone to be at home with them all day.’

  ‘But my mummy is!’

  ‘They also need lots of care and attention.’

  ‘I can do that!’ Danny’s voice was getting more tearful. ‘If Daddy was home, he’d let me have a puppy.’

  There was a hushed silence. ‘You know that Daddy will be home by Christmas,’ said the American woman quietly. ‘We’ll see then.’

  Danny’s voice rose in a wail. ‘But Pongo might have gone to someone else then.’

  ‘That’s enough, Danny. Besides, someone would have to pick up his . . . pick up his business and we know that means nasty germs, don’t we?’

  Toby’s dad shot Gemma a shocked look.

  ‘Come on, Danny.’ Mrs Carter Wright’s voice was rising now with impatience. ‘We need to go back now. Granny’s waiting.’

  ‘Hate Granny. She’s a bossy boobs.’

  The American mother gave a sad smile. Poor, poor thing. ‘All things must pass,’ whispered Gemma to her. ‘It’s an old saying, but true. Difficult times don’t go on for ever.’

  Danny’s mother bent her head in acknowledgement. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And by the way.’ She’d almost forgotten. ‘Your mural idea. We’ve got the go-ahead from the head. So if you can organise a team of parent volunteers, we’re on!’

  The woman’s face lit up. ‘That’s great. Really great.’

  Whoops! Johnnie and Sienna had got their hands on the paints and were face-painting each other (‘The brush just jumped up, Miss Merryfield!’). And Bella was half-heartedly washing up the orange, blue and pink plates from elevenses so she could get to an ‘appointment’ somewhere. Gemma had a feeling that the various appointments Bella had had recently were not with the doctor or optician, as she had claimed, but were job interviews.

  Maybe it would be only kind to help. ‘What’s happened to the shopkeeper?’ she teased as she bent down to collect the plastic apples and pears which had rolled on to the floor. ‘Honestly, you just can’t get service like you used to! By the way, Bella, thanks for cleaning the sink. Great lemony smell!’

  Bella shot her a filthy look. ‘That’s my new perfume.’

  Oh dear. Still, in this job you won some and you lost some. A bit like life, really. A memory came into Gemma’s head of the appointment she had had in town on the day that she’d accidentally reversed into Joe’s bike. That reminded her. She needed to make a phone call or two. Just to make sure that everything was still on track for Christmas.

  Chapter 24

  BY THE END of the following week, Gemma was exhausted. She loved Puddleducks – oh how she loved it – but unless you were in a classroom from 7.30 a.m. to gone 7 p.m. on some nights, it was impossible to imagine what it was like.

  Sometimes she felt like a mini United Nations. (‘It’s nice to share, Kyle. Why don’t you swap your spade for Lucy’s sand bucket?’) At other times, it was like being on a junior version of University Challenge, answering a constant barrage of on-the-spot crazy and not-so-crazy questions from the children.

  Take Harry, who still sucked a dummy at the age of three and wanted to know how ‘they’ got glass in windowpanes. Maybe she should get someone in from the local glaziers to talk about that?

  Then, before she’d had a chance to reply, he’d asked if the window hurt when the glass got put in and that was why it was in pain.

  So Gemma had written both ‘pain’ and ‘pane’ on the whiteboard and explained the difference. Harry might be glued to his dummy but he was a strong reader, and this was just the thing to help.

  Then Kyle had clobbered his spade rival and although no one was hurt, it had led to tears. ‘Naughty,’ reproved Clemmie in such an adult voice that, for a moment, she’d thought it was the child’s mother speaking.

  ‘My mum’s naughty too,’ Clemmie added.

  Gemma wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this. Some of the children came out with howlers about their parents that could never be repeated.

  Clemmie, however, whose vocal skills were far above the average age, was clearly bent on telling her. ‘She’s always on the computer when I’m in bed. I can hear her on the keyboard.’

  Was that all? Thank goodness for that.
>
  Then one of the mothers had flown into the playgroup after the morning session, in floods of tears. ‘I’ve locked Dillon in the car by mistake!’ she’d yelled. ‘I put him in and then came back to get something but I must have left my keys inside and it locks automatically.’

  Easily done, Gemma told her, Jean rushed off to ring the AA and Gemma went out to try and pacify Dillon, who had started at the same time as Danny and Lily.

  ‘Want out,’ he had said plaintively from his toddler seat in the back.

  How did you tell a child that he needed to wait until help arrived? ‘I know!’ Gemma clapped her hands. ‘We’ll sing a Puddleducks song.’ So she did, while Dillon mouthed the words back through the window. Lily, who was staying on for the afternoon session, solemnly stood next to her.

  ‘OK, Dillon, OK,’ Lily had said in a soothing tone and sure enough, when the AA man arrived in record time and released the poor child, she was the first to give him a big hug. Children were so affectionate to each other sometimes, thought Gemma. It always brought a lump to her throat when she watched them holding hands in a queue or very gently stroking their faces, like Lily was doing now to Dillon.

  ‘You need a break,’ commented Kitty when Gemma filled her in on all this during one of their catch-up mobile chats. ‘Come up to town for the weekend.’

  ‘Town’ in Kitty language meant London. She’d heard Joe use the same expression. It was tempting.

  ‘Come on,’ urged Kitty. ‘I don’t understand why you won’t let your hair down every now and then.’

  ‘Yes you do.’

  ‘All right. But I still think you should put the past behind you now. When’s your next appointment, by the way?’