Late Night Shopping

by Carmen Reid

  White clip-on earrings (Vintage eighties, back of

  jewellery box)

  Practical white handbag (John Lewis)

  Total est. cost: £160

  'Oh no!'

  By nine the next morning, the entire household was in a state of pandemonium. Now it was Owen's turn to sulk because Annie and Ed had agreed that he couldn't take his violin to Italy.

  'There's a pool!' Annie was shouting at him in exasperation. 'It's going to be sunny! You'll be outside, swimming and having a lovely time.'

  'You know we should be grateful that he's so keen to practise,' Ed reminded her. 'Some of the other kids . . .'

  'Stay out of this,' Annie warned him.

  Meanwhile Lana, who had finally been persuaded with the promise of a new handbag, shoes and boots – Annie had secretly been impressed with her daughter's uncompromising negotiating tactics – was weeping down her mobile. 'I'm going away! I won't be able to see you! No, not until Monday night at the earliest . . . I know, it's just terrible.'

  Annie's large suitcase was packed, but now she was bossily interfering with Ed's packing.

  'Don't you own anything ironed?' she snapped, 'or anything that's white and not grey? Where are those nice shirts I bought you at the start of the summer?'

  Everyone was acutely aware that the taxi would arrive in about twenty minutes. Still, it was something of a shock when the doorbell rang.

  'Oh God! It's early!' Annie cried. 'Come on! Bring your bags down. I've got the passports and the tickets.'

  As Ed, Owen and Lana bumped and banged bags down the wooden stairs towards the hallway, Annie opened the door for the taxi driver.

  To her astonishment, there on the top step looking fresh and smelling fragrant, in a brand new flowery dress, was Fern, Annie's mother.

  'Good morning, dearie! How are you doing?' Fern asked raising her arms for a hug and a kiss. She stopped in her tracks, 'Oh my God, your head! You said you'd had a bit of an accident but I had no idea . . . oh darling, I'm sorry, I've not phoned you for days, I've been rushed off my feet.'

  'Mum!' Annie exclaimed as she was pulled towards a soft, carefully made-up cheek and enveloped in a cloud of Givenchy.

  'Hilda's in the car, dear,' Fern went on. 'We left really early to miss the worst of the traffic. But I thought I'd get Ed to help me with the wheelchair, it's a bit of a struggle getting it out by myself.'

  'Hilda?' Annie asked, wondering why on earth her mother could have thought to bring hideous old Aunty Hilda with her for a visit so early on a Thursday morning.

  Just then Lana came to the front door and looked round from behind her mother, suitcase in one hand, mobile phone in the other.

  'Hi, Gran!' she exclaimed cheerfully. 'What are you doing here?' Turning to her mother, she added, 'Dinah's just phoned, Bryan can't come to Italy with us, he's not going to be able to get away from work. Hey, why don't you come, Gran?'

  Just as Fern was beginning to grasp the meaning of Lana's words, Annie was coming to the vaguest recollection of a hurried conversation with her mum, something about Fern going away and Hilda needing care and Annie volunteering and . . . could she seriously have agreed to look after Aunty Hilda this weekend? Founder's weekend?

  Annie looked over at her great-aunt again. The old bat was so infuriatingly opinionated that it wasn't possible to bite into a sandwich without her letting you know what she thought about your bite, your bread and your choice of sandwich filling. Someone else would have to have her.

  'But I'm leaving for France in three hours!' Fern exclaimed with horror. 'You can't be going away! You're the ones who are supposed to be looking after Aunty.'

  'But I'd completely forgotten!' Annie tried to defend herself. 'I got mugged and whacked on the head and since then, I've not thought about it at all. You should have reminded me!'

  'Oh my God!' Fern's voice was growing more and more high-pitched. 'Why didn't I phone you yesterday to check? I meant to. I even tried, but the line was engaged and then I was busy packing . . .'

  'What's the matter, Annie?' Ed called down the stairs.

  'Oh! Hello Fern,' he greeted Annie's mother in astonishment. 'You've picked the wrong moment for a surprise visit.'

  He jogged down the stairs and was brought up to speed astonishingly quickly by both extremely agitated women.

  'And Bryan's not coming,' Lana announced to them all once again.

  Although Ed's first reaction to the Italian long weekend had been fury and a flat refusal to accompany them, in the hours since then he'd decided it was too late to complain about the money, because it was already spent, so he might as well look forward to the trip. Now, the idea of swimming in the pool, basking in the sun, eating some fantastic Italian food and drinking a little too much Chianti was all highly appealing.

  The fact that an elderly aunty he'd only met once before was about to jeopardize it all was not exactly great news.

  'Where else could she go?' Ed asked, trying not to make it sound too brutal.

  'I don't have any time to find anyone else!' Fern exclaimed, her cheeks growing pink with stress. 'I'm supposed to be catching my bus in three hours.'

  'Where does she live?'

  'In a nice little village not far from Bishop's Stortford.'

  Ed's face seemed to light up. 'Isn't Bishop's Stortford right beside Stansted?' he asked.

  Annie saw Ed's look and, all at once, caught the meaning of his question. 'Oh no. No, no you don't,' she warned.

  'Is she fit to travel?' Ed directed this question at Fern.

  'Who?'

  'Aunty H.'

  'Hilda? Well, she has her wheelchair, she can walk a little more these days, she's coming along . . . Oh no!' Fern added, also catching Ed's meaning, 'You can't take her to Italy!'

  'Why don't I go over there and have a little chat with her? She must be wondering what on earth's going on up here,' Ed said and before anyone could stop him, he bounded down the steps towards Fern's sleek green Jag, parked right in front of the house.

  Annie could see Aunty Hilda sitting primly in the front seat, looking just as disapproving as ever. Oh, she was going to love this, wasn't she? She was never going to let Annie forget about this mix-up.

  Fern, Annie and Lana waited anxiously on the threshold of the house as Ed crouched down at the car door, which he'd partly opened in order to chat to the old battleaxe.

  'He's really a very nice man,' Fern couldn't help commenting, 'I don't know what he's doing with you,' she added huffily. Annie knew then how much she'd annoyed her mother; this wasn't the sort of comment she'd usually make.

  'He clearly has a way with older women,' Annie snapped back.

  'Does Ed seriously think Aunty Hilda should come to Italy with us?' Lana was asking in a tone of disbelief. 'That old bat?'

  'Lana!' her mother warned her.

  But Owen was now behind them, sitting on the stairs lacing up his trainers and declaring, 'WHAT? Aunty Hilda!'

  'I see you're bringing them up to respect their elders,' Fern snipped.

  'Oh yes,' Annie shot back. 'It's so important.'

  It was with no small amount of horror that Annie watched Ed stand up and head towards the boot of the car.

  'He's getting out the wheelchair,' she said faintly. 'He's persuaded her to come with us.'

  'Well, thank goodness for that – even though it's absolute madness,' was Fern's reaction. 'At least if she dies when you're in charge, it won't be my fault.'

  'Dies?' Annie spluttered. 'Look at her! She's going to outlive all of us. Owen included.'

  As Ed carefully unloaded Aunty Hilda from the passenger's seat and into the wheelchair, the long-awaited taxi arrived.

  Fortunately Annie had specified 'a big car' and a super-sized people-carrier was now pulling up in front of the house.

  'Hello everybody!' Aunty Hilda called up from her wheelchair to the little crowd on the doorstep. 'Well this is quite a surprise, but Frank and I used to go to Italy every summer and I've always wanted to go b
ack . . . just not on my own.'

  And even Annie, who suspected this was because Aunty Hilda couldn't possibly have any friends, suddenly felt just a tiny bit sorry for the old dear.

  Look at her, sitting in her wheelchair smartly dressed in a summer frock with a pink and white necklace, pink lipstick and sensible white shoes. Annie could always find sympathy in her heart for a woman who accessorized. Aunty Hilda's hair was a bit skew-whiff though, as if she'd done it before putting on her glasses.

  In a flurry, the house was made ready and locked up while bags, luggage, children, wheelchair and Aunty were loaded into the people carrier. The plan was to stop off at Aunty Hilda's house as quickly as possible to pick up her passport and a few essentials.

  'She can go to the bathroom herself, can't she?' Annie whispered into her mother's ear frantically as they said frantic goodbyes.

  'Yes. But no stairs and she might need a hand getting out of the bath,' Fern informed her, adding nervously, 'I can't believe I'm letting you do this. Are you sure you're going to manage?'

  'Of course, it's only for a few days and anyway, Connor's coming, he loves old ladies and Dinah's going to be there.'

  Fern seemed to relax slightly when she was reminded of this. Dinah could be trusted not to do anything too crazy, whereas Annie . . . well, sometimes Fern wondered what was coming next with Annie.

  With a final wave and a cry of 'Have a lovely time!' the taxi containing Annie, her family and their latest addition pulled off and disappeared round the corner.

  Chapter Twelve

  Holiday Connor:

  Loud Hawaiian-style short-sleeved shirt

  (Paul Smith)

  White jeans (Armani)

  Sandals (last holiday – Morocco)

  Foot wax and pedicure (The Men's Room)

  Total est. cost: £230

  'No bread, no pizza and no pasta. No wheat.'

  'Hallelujah! This must be the place!' Connor enthused as he brought the mighty people carrier beast to a standstill outside a rather dingy-looking rustic-style restaurant bearing the sign 'Taverna' and a flickering light above the door.

  Everyone was hot and exhausted, crammed into the car. Owen, on Annie's lap in the back, had puked six times between the airport, the villa and the restaurant.

  To comfort him, Annie had had to give up driving on the twisty roads. She'd had to hold him across her lap as he groaned into a plastic bag for the grindingly long journeys.

  A quick tour of inspection of their holiday home had found it pleasant enough but it was in such a remote spot that the village shops were a twenty-minute walk away and of course, on a Thursday evening, all shut.

  'A restaurant? Ristorante?' Annie had begged the villa owner, adding theatrically and with a really very pretty accent, 'Sono mormorare di fame, dove manghi pronto,' which was supposed to mean, 'We are dying of hunger and need to eat straight away' but actually meant something like, 'I have been to murmur of hunger, he needs mangoes straight away', much to the villa owner's bemusement.

  Nevertheless, he got the idea and gave them directions to a restaurant he assured them was not too far away.

  A twenty-minute journey had followed, which had passed fairly quietly apart from Owen's nauseated groaning, Billie's incessant 'Are we nearly there yet? You said we were nearly there!' and Aunty Hilda's stream of disapproving complaints.

  'Goodness me! Self-catering! Frank and I would never have done something like that,' she'd warbled from the back seat. 'When you arrive after a long journey, you want it all laid on for you. You want dinner to be served in a nice restaurant with no cooking and no washing up afterwards. I suppose it's too expensive for you though is it, Annie? A nice hotel?'

  Annie had curled her fingers up into her hand and told herself that punching old women who were currently wheelchair-bound was pretty indefensible. Probably even more so in Italy, where grannies were sacred.

  She looked out of the window and tried to make out something of the view, despite the fact that it was dark out there and she had an exhausted, limp figure on her lap who probably wouldn't be able to eat one mouthful and would still have to face the journey back home again.

  Dinah was pale, Ed was quiet, only Connor in the driving seat was jollying everyone along. Hallelujah for Connor! Annie couldn't help thinking, not for the first time in her life.

  Parked up in front of the Taverna, everyone piled out of the car. The place looked deserted. Fortunately, two waiters seemed to spring to life when the party entered though the creaky wooden door.

  It was after 8 p.m., surely not too late for dinner in Italy? No, no, too early, Annie assured everyone. In her crazed Italian, she instructed the waiters that this was 'Many, many big family of London, much mangoes and very big wine.'

  Nevertheless, they ushered everyone to the large table in the centre and hurried to bring menus, bread, olives and little earthenware jugs of water and wine.

  Several platefuls of antipasti were also brought out without much delay, and once everyone had started digging into slices of salami and strips of red pepper a feeling of relief and relaxation spread over them.

  Owen was thoroughly washed down in the bathroom and after he'd had a glass of water and a small piece of bread, began to perk up considerably.

  The devoted waiters, chatting to the children, charming the grown-ups, flirting shamelessly with Annie, went through the menu at length, discussing their recommendations in full in both Italian, which Annie went to great lengths to translate, and broken English.

  A large selection of home-made pizzas and pastas was ordered to follow the antipasti, and when the fabulous pizzas were brought out they were on crusts so crispy and fine that even little Billie wolfed down the anchovy and caper toppings without blinking.

  The problem wasn't with the toddler at the table. It was with Connor. He was trying to explain to one of the waiters that he couldn't drink any alcohol and he wasn't going to eat anything with wheat.

  'No bread?' the waiter was trying to establish.

  'No bread,' Connor confirmed, 'no pizza and no pasta. No wheat.'

  'No pasta!' The waiter sounded utterly appalled. 'Perche no?! Che problema con pasta?!'

  Then began a long, impassioned speech which seemed to be about how this was the best pasta in Le Marche, no one had ever said no to the pasta, it was his mother's own recipe, the most tender, delicious, light and flexible pasta once again, in the whole of Le Marche, if not all of Italy. It was an insult to his mother's memory not to enjoy the pasta, without doubt the best pasta in all of Le Marche. That was clear.

  When one of the waiters held a plateful right up in front of Connor's face, twirling the moist quills round in the oily green sauce, then offering up the forkful to him with a look of pleading, he had no choice but to give in.

  Everyone watched as he opened his mouth and the waiter fed him the forkful. He began to chew slowly and started to smile, then, sensing his audience's anticipation, went into full-blown raptures of delight.

  'Oh! Mama mia! Fantastico!' he enthused, 'That is so good, brilliant. Bella! Bella! Delicious! I must have all of that!'

  Everyone around the table began to laugh, even Lana, who seemed finally to be getting into the holiday spirit.

  'How's Andrei?' Ed, who was sitting next to her, turned to ask quietly. 'Is he holding up without you?'

  'He's doing OK,' she smiled at him. 'You can actually speak Italian, can't you?' she had to ask, suspecting this was why all Annie's attempts to do so were sending him into silent hysterics.