by Jules Wake
‘Did you do this?’ I asked pointing at the pile of clothes.
She lifted one shoulder in defiant lethargy. ‘I’m fed up with her mess. She always leaves clothes and toys everywhere. I just tidied them up for her.’
Count to ten, Claire. Count to ten. ‘You mean, you dumped them on her side of the bed.’ Points for sounding calm and in control, I told myself; in my dressing-gown pockets, my fingers were clenched into tight little fists. This counted as stress and I was supposed to be avoiding it. I could feel my blood pressure rising.
‘Serves her right.’ Poppy’s mouth crushed itself into a mutinous scowl.
This was just a reaction to Alice not coming home. It wasn’t their fault. I chewed at my lip and assessed the inadequate room. They were going to have to share for another week and I could relate to Poppy’s frustration; Ava’s cheerful disregard for shelves, cupboards, and wardrobes drove me mad too.
‘Poppy, you need to help Ava tidy up her bed. Ava, stop making a fuss. You need to put all your clothes away properly.’ I raised a finger as both of them began to protest and said in my best scary-Auntie, second-cousin-to-Darth-Vader, voice which seemed to hold a measure of authority, ‘And I don’t want to hear another word from either of you. We’re leaving for school in twenty minutes.’ I gave them a bland, I’ve-got-this-taped, Mary Poppins, serene smile while inside my heart was thumping uncomfortably but it was rather satisfying to see them both jump to it. For once, I almost felt like I knew what I was doing with them. Thank you, Hilda. Her words of wisdom had helped; we had a good routine, and after living with them for a whole week, I now had a much better understanding of what made each of them tick.
Later that morning, Hilda bounced up to the bench as I was recovering from my longest run yet – according to my phone I’d notched up 4k today, and despite Ash’s claims that it was probably wrong, I was taking it. Buoyed up by my success with the girls this morning – not only did we make it to school on time but I also remembered their PE kits – I’d pushed myself to do an additional loop of the park and it had felt good. I was starting to get addicted to the endorphins that running was definitely releasing.
‘Morning,’ she chirruped and before I could swipe it out of reach, she lunged for my coffee.
Feeling pleasantly weary, I grinned when she pulled a face. ‘Ugh, where’s my cappuccino?’
‘One, it’s not your cappuccino and two, it serves you right.’
‘Polygamous coffee drinking is all wrong.’
‘Says who? I needed the espresso this morning. I’ve been up half the night.’
‘Me, of course,’ said Hilda, calmly digging out a couple of sachets of sugar from her pocket and dumping them in my double espresso before I could stop her.
‘What did you do that for?’
‘It’s the only way I can drink black coffee,’ she replied, as if this was entirely reasonable and she’d not just poisoned my drink.
‘You might as well have it now,’ I muttered sulkily.
‘I will, thank you. So why black this morning?’
‘My bloody sister rang at ridiculous o’clock this morning.’
‘Oh dear, is her flight delayed?’
‘You could say that.’ I sighed heavily. ‘By a week.’
‘Good Lord, where’s she gone? Mars?’
‘No, India. The good news is that she’s found herself; the bad news is that there’s been a landslide and she can’t get to the airport.’
‘Convenient,’ said Hilda. ‘And she discovered this today.’
‘Apparently so.’ She put voice to my own sceptical thoughts. ‘And my nieces are upset of course.’ And I was furious that Alice hadn’t been more proactive about speaking to them. ‘We had tears this morning.’ I was going to phone if she didn’t Facetime later and force her to speak to the girls.
‘Understandable. But they’re young; you just need to take their minds off things. Cake always helps.’
‘It would if I could bake.’
‘Well, I can help with that. I’m a whizz in the kitchen. Dear Mary – Mary Berry, you know – always said I had the lightest touch with a sponge. I miss baking. I don’t get the chance these days and I’m not allowed anywhere near the kitchen at Drearyside, not since I got peckish in the middle of the night and nipped into the kitchen to make some popcorn. I set off the smoke alarms. You’d have thought they might have been quite grateful that they got the chance to test them thoroughly when it was a false alarm. But if they will make them so sensitive, what do they expect?’
I winced, visions of dozens of winceyette-clad pensioners clutching hot water bottles in some car park filling my head. Evacuating an old people’s home in the middle of the night must have been a nightmare.
‘So what sort of cake do you think they’d like?’
‘I think it’s going to take more than cake. They’re both a bit upset and another week of sharing a room and a double bed isn’t going to help. Ava’s a fidget and really messy while Poppy is neat and tidy even in her sleep.’
‘And they have to share a room, do they?’
I wrinkled my nose. ‘It’s the only room with an extra bed in. I moved in a while back but just haven’t got around to furnishing the other bedrooms.’ Which was ridiculous. What had stopped me? Work, as usual.
Now I had a reason to get on and do it. Not for me, but for the girls.
‘Actually… sorry, Hilda, do you mind if we take a rain check tomorrow. I’m going to take Poppy and Ava to Ikea, buy them some furniture, and they can have a bedroom each. They can choose their own bedrooms. That might cheer them up a bit.’
Hilda sat up straighter. ‘What an excellent idea. I’ve heard so much about Ikea. I’ll come too.’
I stared at her for a minute. With her and the girls in the car there wouldn’t be any room for furniture. I needed to hire a van if I was thinking of kitting out two bedrooms with beds and furniture… in which case there would be space in my car to take her with us. ‘Okay. We can go and select everything in the morning and hire a man with a van to pick it up at lunchtime and take it back to the house.’
‘That’s easy. My neighbour Dottie, her son Vin, is the man with the van.’ She pulled out her phone and before I had even thought about opening my mouth to protest she started speaking. ‘Dottie, Hilda. HILDA,’ she shouted, muttering an aside to me, ‘Daft old bat’s not got her hearing aid in. Dottie. It’s Hilda. Yes, Hilda. Thank goodness for that. Yes, I’m fine. Just out for my morning constitutional.’ She rolled her eyes and put her hand over her phone as if it were a landline telephone, which amused me because she clearly had no idea how a mobile worked. ‘Wants me to pick up some condoms for her. Yes Dottie. I’ll do that. Thin Feel. Got it. Not the Intense ones. Now what’s Vin up to tomorrow? Can you give me his number?’ Hilda opened the flap of the ever-present silver lamé messenger bag and dug around before offering me a pen and a tiny notebook. ‘Zero, seven…’ She reeled off the numbers and I dutifully wrote them down. ‘Thanks Dottie. See you soon.’ Without even pausing to draw breath, she took the notebook from me and dialled the number.
‘Vin, Hilda here. I need you tomorrow.’ She mouthed, ‘Twelve-thirty?’
I nodded.
‘Can you meet me at Ikea in Leeds? Twelve-thirty tomorrow. And mates’ rates.’
I heard the rich laugh down the phone telling Hilda she was a ‘right one’.
And just like that, it was all organised, Hilda preening like a sunshine-yellow peacock. ‘That’s all sorted. I’ve always wanted to go to Ikea and see what all the fuss is about.’
‘Are you sure?’ A morning in Ikea was a lot of people’s idea of hell.
‘It’s the best offer I’m going to get. It’s that or leathery bacon and Arthur Sanditon reading out this week’s obituaries from the Times.’
I worked out the timing in my head. ‘We can have lunch there. Would you like me to pick you up?’ Hilda wasn’t keen on me coming to the old people’s home, so we arranged to meet on a nearby c
orner. Her reason being that every Tom, Dick, and Herbert in the home would want her to get a ‘bit o’ shopping’ for them.
‘Hopefully the place will be crawling with handsome Swedes. Now, have you seen Ash this morning? I’ve had the most brilliant idea.’
I sat there with my mouth doing the goldfish thing because sometimes it was just impossible to keep up with the hairpin bends and racing turns of her conversation.
Finally, I caught up. ‘Yes, he was running with the dog but heading towards the other side of the park when I was coming this way.’ He had even given me a perfunctory nod.
‘Excellent, he’ll be here soon.’
It struck me that in just one week, the three of us had fallen into a pattern of meeting here, even though Ash clearly eschewed company and pretended that his being here at the same time each day was completely coincidental.
‘So what’s this brilliant idea?’ I asked, a touch nervous, well aware that I’d only just missed being saddled with a dog by the skin of my teeth.
Hilda’s shark-like smile only added to my nerves.
‘Don’t you think it’s brilliant?’ Hilda sat back on our bench fifteen minutes later and clasped her hands over her heart. Opposite, on his own bench, Ash shuffled as uncomfortably as me.
‘Come on people, where’s the enthusiasm? It’s not as if either of you have got anything better to do.’
When she put it like that she had a point, if a somewhat blunt one.
‘It’s… it’s an idea, Hilda,’ I said, ‘but… well, we don’t know if anyone else would be interested.’
‘Of course, they will. Remember the bible. About Noah’s Ark. Build it and they will come. Remember.’
‘I think that was a Kevin Costner film actually,’ said Ash. ‘I’m not sure there’s much call for a baseball field in Churchstone.’
‘You know what I mean, young man.’ Hilda was suddenly at her Maggie Smith Dowager Countess finest. ‘It would be a wonderful thing for Churchstone. I’ve been doing some research on the interweb. There are these parkruns all over the country. Hundreds of them. I don’t see why we couldn’t have one here. The nearest one is in Harrogate and that’s a forty-minute drive away. I can see it now. A real community event. Bring everyone, like you two, together.’
Ash and I exchanged indignant looks but Hilda ploughed on, oblivious. ‘And it’s not as if the park is used as much as it should be. It would encourage people to come here. And it would make people exercise a lot more. You could run with… the dog.’
‘Bill,’ said Ash.
‘Bill?’ Hilda was back to maiden aunt again.
‘He looks like a Bill,’ said Ash, standing his ground before adding with a supercilious sneer, ‘And no one else wanted responsibility so I feel I’m entitled to name him.’
Hilda suddenly looked very smug. ‘Very good. Now, what do you say?’
It sounded a completely mad idea to me. Who would want to come and run around the park? The three of us were hardly serious runners but with Hilda’s bird-bright eyes focused with such expectancy on me, I said, ‘I don’t suppose it could do any harm to make a few enquiries.’ And enquiries would probably kill the idea stone dead; the council were bound to object.
‘Hilda, have you ever done a parkrun?’ asked Ash. ‘Have you any idea what’s involved?’
‘No.’ She sniffed at her regal finest. ‘But there was a man on Radio 4 and he said jolly good things about them. I think it’s just what this park needs. Everyone knows more people need to exercise. Running can help prevent heart disease, cardiovascular problems and strokes. And look at you. Slimming down already.’
Ash’s mouth twitched but he turned to me without acknowledging her comment. ‘What about you? Have you done one?’
‘No and I’ve not been tempted before. Although there’s a guy at work’—Dave, who’d set up the charity team—‘and he does the one in Hyde Park in Leeds. But he’s a proper runner. Runs to work every day. Five miles. Has an extensive wardrobe of Lycra and does marathons in places like Athens and Boston for his holidays. They do not sound like fun holidays to me.’ I shuddered.
As far as I was concerned, I was not a proper runner. Jogging around the park each day on my own was a means to an end, to make me fitter and healthier, so that I’d be stronger when I got back to work, and signing up for Dave’s team had been my attempt at keeping a channel open with work. Despite that, I was starting to enjoy my daily run; it gave my day a format and was good thinking time. Just this morning I’d been planning the colours for the kitchen. I fancied something really sophisticated and stylish. Dark and pale grey walls and black slate floors. Why hadn’t I been able to focus on this sort of thing before? I knew the answer straight away. I’d let work take up far too much headspace.
‘Claire.’ Hilda was waving a hand in front of my face.
‘Sorry, I was thinking.’
‘You see,’ crowed Hilda to Ash. ‘Claire thinks it’s a good idea.’
‘Why don’t we have a think about it over the weekend and talk next week?’ suggested Ash.
I shot him a grateful smile and he gave me shy smile over the top of Hilda’s cloud of white hair.
‘Excellent,’ said Hilda. ‘We’ll reconvene on Monday.’
Chapter Twelve
‘I want a princess bed like this.’ Ava grabbed a fistful of the diaphanous fabric swathed around the head of the little wooden bed. ‘It’s so pretty. And please, please, please can I have some fairy lights too and the pink elephant. I’ll be ever so good.’
I laughed at the sight of her hopeful parted lips which had fallen into an ‘O’ of wonderment as she gazed at the room set in Ikea, which had overdosed on pink and white and pretty things. The centre piece, a white-framed bed, was curtained by gauzy drapes and dressed with a bubble-gum pink duvet set and a pile of cushions and soft toys. Even the more reserved Poppy was touching the fairy lights and chains of pink and mauve butterflies with a tentative hand.
‘It’s a bit babyish,’ said Poppy dubiously. Ava’s eyes widened with hurt indignation, but before the pet lip began to protrude, Hilda said, ‘But perfect for a princess though,’ a sage twinkle in her eye as she dropped a quick curtesy. ‘I can see you sleeping in this bed, Princess Ava.’ Then she added to Poppy, ‘But I can see that a young lady like you will want something more sophisticated.’
I grinned gratefully at her diplomacy.
Despite Poppy’s disparagement, with a change of duvet and colour scheme, this bed and furniture would move with the times. As far as Ava was concerned, the net above the bed and the fairy lights were the clinchers, so they were added to the list of things we had to hunt down in the marketplace part of the store.
Poppy was less easy to please. Her eyes kept straying to the price tags of everything and she didn’t seem to want to commit whole heartedly to anything. Luckily, Ava was being entertained by Hilda and they were busy conducting a thorough inspection of all the available styles of fairy lights in the different room sets and discussing their merits in great detail.
‘What about this one?’ I asked for the fifth time putting my hand on the end of a more grown-up, simple pine bed.
‘Yes, that’s fine.’
I was about to write down the code for the bed when something stopped me. I didn’t want it to be just fine. I wanted Poppy to love her new bedroom and everything in it. Alice might not care about material things and sometimes I felt she revelled in her altruistic saintliness – it was all very commendable – but she didn’t half go on about it as if she were saving the planet single handed. But at this age, sometimes things mattered and rubbed away like a deep burr. One memory that had always stuck with me, from probably when I was about Poppy’s age, was how I’d hankered for a particular duvet cover and been so disappointed when my mum had chosen a different one, a sensible plain one in navy blue. Alice had thrown a major tantrum and had been allowed to have a Little Mermaid set instead, that two weeks later she had hated.
Poppy liked things
to be just so. I could relate to that. She reminded me of myself at the same age.
No, fine would not do.
Turning away from the pine bed, I started another circuit of the area, this time not saying anything, just watching Poppy. She didn’t give much away but when I saw her hand rest on an old-fashioned white metal-framed bed, I knew that was the bed she wanted. A cross between an old nursery bed and a pretty day bed, it was feminine but also grown-up and immediately I knew it would suit her perfectly.
‘I think that one’s very nice,’ I said.
‘It is but… it’s quite expensive. I don’t want you to spend a lot of money. It’s only for a week.’
‘Yes, but I need to put furniture in those bedrooms and I haven’t been able to choose any before. It’s lovely that you’re helping me. And wouldn’t it be nice to know you have your own room somewhere else? You and Ava could come and stay if Mummy’s going out or something.’
Suddenly I hoped that Alice would let me babysit more often and that perhaps the girls could come and stay occasionally, either together or individually. Poppy needed some space of her own instead of always being the older sister. I’d really enjoyed getting to know my nieces a little better over the last few days. Two distinct personalities had emerged, real people in their own right, instead of being someone else’s children. My nieces. I felt a tiny butterfly flutter in my chest at the thought. They were mine now.
‘I’d like that,’ she said shyly. ‘Are you sure this isn’t too much money?’ She bit her lip, worry gnawing lines into her brow. ‘I do like this one.’
‘I promise it’s not too much money, if that’s the one you’d like.’
‘I’d love it, Auntie Claire,’ she breathed, the dreamy smile on her face making my heart do a funny little forward-roll.
By the time we came out of the marketplace, we’d had to commandeer a second trolley and both were like teetering, rainbow-coloured leaning Towers of Pisa of stuff. Colourful patterned cushions topped rugs, duvets, bedding sets, pillows and three sets of brightly coloured towels, dusky pink for Ava, pale blue for Poppy and lime green for Hilda. There were also scented candles, bedside lamps, and four boxes of fairy lights – after Poppy had succumbed and so had I, Hilda decided that she wanted a set too. Hilda had also decided to buy herself a five-foot palm tree and a magnifying mirror to help her pluck the grey hairs from her lady beard. The man next to her when she’d announced this had looked as if he’d swallowed his tongue.