by Kitty Wilson
‘No, you know we can’t do that. I’m sure we’ll all survive,’ Rosy said firmly. Pippa harrumphed comedically as if her world would break without coffee.
Sheila was right, though; there was barely any time before the bell rang to signal the end of break. Then Richard’s attention was caught by the sound of his youngest son’s voice floating in through the playground door. ‘It worked, it actually worked.’ It sounded jubilant, as if he was jumping and punching the air.
Richard’s stomach plummeted to his toes; they did have something to do with this! For goodness’ sake, he was going to kill them. But as he turned to glance across at the outside door that led into the hall – as did the others, having noted a change in tone coming from the children’s murmur by the door – he saw the pupils parting like the Red Sea when faced with Moses.
And there, striding in through the granite doorway like the Amazonian queen she was, stood the sexiest woman Richard had ever seen. Confidence exuding from every pore, dressed in a bright red snakeskin summer dress, matching kitten heels and with her hair cut and styled into a new, shorter, far edgier crop and with a slash of scarlet lips, markedly different from the Fuchsia Crush she had been wearing for years, was his wife.
She was magnificent.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Marion couldn’t help the glimmer of a smile on her face as she marched up the steps, through the children and into the school cloakroom that led in turn to the hall. Walking into the hall, the first person her eyes lit upon was her ex-husband. Standing there in the dress-down clothes that he seemed to have adopted as his uniform recently, he was surrounded by other members of the PTA and the staff. She caught his eye; it would be hard not to – he was staring at her with so much admiration that it was difficult not to bask. It made her stand even taller.
She knew she looked good but she hadn’t known how Richard would respond to the little changes she had made. She had told herself she didn’t care; they were no longer together and he no longer had an opinion that she was going to listen to. But she knew as she saw him standing there that his opinion did matter. It mattered a lot and she was a teeny bit cross with herself for caring as much as she did. So much for her feminist ideals. But with a job – no, not a job, a roaring new business – and the changing way she defined herself, she was enjoying the shaping of her new identity.
She had always been proud to be both wife and mother, feeling they were seriously overlooked roles that were never given the status that they deserved. She didn’t disagree with that now; she just knew she felt so much better doing what she was doing. Fresher.
And, a little upsettingly, because she knew it should be the last thing that she cared about, she was secretly over the moon that Richard liked the way she was looking. She was keeping that secret tightly close to her chest.
‘Hello, everyone.’ She attempted her breeziest tone. She had been trying to make some changes about how she dealt with people and had discovered that if she took the ‘Alice approach’, the more-flies-with-honey-than-vinegar thing, then people were even more helpful than they had been when she was putting the fear of God into them. That had always been so much fun. If people were willing to be told what to do then that was really up to them, but she had left a meeting recently at the Hall for Cornwall and overheard two of the employees talking about her, in a positive way. As if they liked her. It had made her feel as if her head was touching the clouds.
And now she was going to sprinkle some of the magic dust she had accrued all over Penmenna School, show them this Magical Marion rather than the Monster Marksharp which she knew for a fact they had been calling her for years.
Although she would have to be firm about the llamas. That was ridiculous.
Oh, and she may have to park herself at the fire engine, just to oversee things – obviously.
As she approached the group of adults clustered in the hall, she put a big beaming smile on her face and saw that Jenny had red-rimmed eyes, Alice had a mop in her hand and Richard was holding a very heavy-looking binbag.
‘Everything alright?’ she asked in as jovial a tone as she could manage without sounding like she should be sectioned. ‘Jenny, have you been crying? Whatever for?’
Serena jumped in to answer. ‘Jenny’s fine, aren’t you, Jenny? We’ve just had a bit of a hiccup with the loos.’
‘Oh, my poor love, don’t let it distress you. There’s nothing we can’t sort together.’ Marion leant forward and stroked Jenny’s shoulder. Jenny startled. Marion couldn’t help but think Jenny was a bit of a tit who had failed to rise to a challenge, but continued working on the fake-it-until-you-make-it school of nice. If she kept doing it, it may become ingrained and even start to come naturally.
As to the chaos that greeted her as she made her entrance, truth was she hadn’t really expected any better, but she did believe that bit about everyone pulling together to be true. Together the Penmenna School crew could probably sort anything. But having her at the helm, albeit only for today, couldn’t hurt.
The bell rang, heralding the children back through the hall to their classrooms, the more confident ones stopping to ask what was going to happen, the others whispering behind hands and giggling as they trailed past.
She had missed their little faces. Their curiosity, their mischief.
Some of them saw her and, having obviously noticed her absence around school over the last few months, tentatively waved. It was funny how the children were less scared of her than some of the adults were. She flashed another conciliatory glance at Jenny.
‘Right then, Marion and I will see if we can sort this,’ said Richard, all assertive and masculine-like. She liked him when he took control.
‘Okay, I’ll go and see if we need to cancel the fayre, work out if moving it to the church hall is a sensible move and try and work out a plan. Should a miracle occur can you let me know, Richard, and then I can get back to what I was meant to be doing this afternoon,’ Rosy addressed him before turning back towards her office.
‘Of course, I will,’ Richard answered, as if he had been doing this sort of thing all his life, being the heart of their community rather than working away in a slinky, high-powered office in London.
‘Yes, we need to get back to class,’ Pippa said and Alice nodded.
‘But we’re here to help, what do you need?’ Serena added.
‘Marion and I will try and troubleshoot this; are you guys happy to just keep prepping as if it is all going ahead for now and we’ll have an emergency meeting at lunch and see which way the land lies? That way if everything is already out of cupboards and organized it’s just a matter of moving things from one place to another. Oh, and Marion, do you know how Serena and Jenny can access the May Fayre playlist you complied a couple of years ago? We can’t find it anywhere on the network.’
‘Yes, yes of course. It’s not on the network. I’ll email it across now,’ Marion said whilst looking at her husband, the easy-going man she had known forever who was taking charge so beautifully. Even if he had somehow managed to stick her on blocked loo duty. She was fairly sure in all her years at Penmenna that was one job she hadn’t taken upon herself.
‘Right, you and I can get stuck in. I’ll go find some gloves. I’m sure Sheila will know where to find some.’
‘I’m sure she won’t,’ Marion said darkly. ‘Why have you got me cleaning loos?’
‘Not cleaning, my love – oh, I wonder if they’re in here.’ He flung open the cleaner’s cupboard and rifled. ‘Aha! Brilliant, look there are heavy-duty gloves for you here, and a box of disposable ones here. The boys and I can take those.’
‘The boys? Why the boys? Aren’t they in class?’ She realized her voice was pitched slightly higher than her new-Marion-who-is-friendly-and-chill-whilst-remaining-efficient voice was meant to be, but really!
‘They are at the moment,’ Richard agreed, a firmness in his tone that she hadn’t heard for a while. ‘But we’re going to get them now.’
&n
bsp; ‘To clean loos?’ Marion could hear her outrage. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband wasn’t some new confident man who pitched in to help; he was a maniac. Why on earth would her boys need to be dragged into this?
‘Because I have a strong feeling our dear sweet sons are responsible for this. We just need to find out why.’
‘My boys? Madness!’
‘Our boys and highly probable. What I don’t understand is why. Why would they want to mess everything up? There is nothing more important than your friends when you’re young; why bugger up the May Fayre? It makes no sense. We both know they’re naughty…’
She caught Richard glancing at the fury that she knew would be clear on her face.
‘Yes, yes, I know. You’d say not naughty, terribly bright and not challenged enough.’ And then he rolled his eyes and faux yawned.
Wow.
She would have had anybody else’s eyes out. But his face was such a picture. She fought the chuckle rising up; someone needed to defend her babies.
‘But you’re convinced it’s them.’ Her maternal ire was starting to bubble. ‘I’m sure they didn’t have anything to do with this, Richard. And besides, what happened to innocent until proven guilty – where are you going?’ Richard was, most irritatingly, walking away from her.
‘To get a confession.’
This was ludicrous; what a waste of time. They should be looking for alternate venues or negotiating with the insurance company or using all their cards to get some emergency Portaloos installed.
Then she saw the looks on Rupert and Rufus’s faces as her husband led them out of their respective classes. They were a mishmash of all sorts of emotion: she could identify fear, presumably at being caught; guilt, ditto; and yet some kind of jubilation mixed in, the two of them repeatedly shooting each other we did it looks.
They were as guilty as hell.
Chapter Thirty
It took a while. Firstly, Richard got the boys to crack. It hadn’t been as hard as she would have hoped. Rupert held out, but Rufus was much younger and struggled under his father’s rare, stern glare. Rupert remained mutinous, stony-faced and refusing to be drawn. Yet he gave away his guilt the minute he gave his brother a narrow-eyed you’re so dead later look.
The whole family had pitched in and emptied and unblocked the loos. The majority of them hadn’t been used so the job itself wasn’t too unpleasant, the thought being far worse than the actuality.
Any warmth that Marion felt at seeing the family working together was quickly replaced with an all-over feeling of abject guilt. The boys had conspired to do something dreadful, ruining their and their friends’ fun, all in an attempt to get Marion into school so she could see Richard in a setting outside of him cooking dinner and then leaving.
Rufus cocked up explaining, his emotion making it hard to work out what on earth he was going on about, so at the end of the toilet clean Rupert confided that they had hoped to get his mum and dad together in an out-of-house situation, try and force them together with a problem that needed solving, knowing that the two would have to actively collaborate rather than just rub along. They wanted to throw their mum and dad together, knowing Marion wouldn’t be able to help but interfere. They also had noted how seamlessly their dad had slid into school and wanted their mother to witness that. Quite adult principles had gone into a remarkably juvenile stunt. But the fact was, if Marion and Richard hadn’t separated the boys would never have dreamt of putting the May Fayre in jeopardy just to try and create a rapprochement.
The two of them, she and Richard, had kept it together and presented a united front of disappointment, sending the boys to Rosy Winter as soon as the toilets were unblocked where they were to explain that all the toilets bar two were now cleared and that they were responsible and were very, very sorry.
‘I hope she tears a strip from them,’ Richard said. For a man who was so kind, so compassionate about people, Marion never understood why he was harder on the boys than she was. Surely he could see that the boys were hurting, doing their best to resolve family difficulties. Well-intentioned, as she put it to him.
‘Yes, but the thing is, Marion, I do understand why they do the things they do – I get it and it breaks my heart – but everyone who has ever done bad things from the dawn of time has a good reason for what he or she is doing; that doesn’t make it right. The boys need to learn to fit in with society’s rules, that when they are doing things to make themselves happy they need to look at how it’s impacting others around them and then make a decision that is the best for the most rather than the best for them. And if our boys don’t learn these lessons, as much as we love them, they’re going to grow up into over-indulged and entitled sociopaths. So yes, I understand why they took the action they did but I also understand that it’s our role to make them understand how to fit into society as a good man. So damn right they’re admitting to their crime and then they will do whatever Rosy tells them and we will not step in to defend them, enabling them to get away scot-free because we feel guilty. Protecting them in the short term because we understand why they behave as they do may appear the compassionate option but may well damage them in the long term.’
Marion took a deep breath and looked over at her husband, the determination writ upon his brow, and fell in love all over again with his integrity, his resolve to stand up for what was right not what was easy. A rare trait, and one she frequently knew she failed at. This man, though.
‘They can’t be allowed to go to the fayre tonight,’ she said to him, the two of them still standing in the hall but locked in each other, oblivious to the unpacking and organizing happening around them.
‘Nope.’ Richard scrunched his mouth and shook his head.
‘Means we can’t go either.’
‘I know, I was looking forward to it as well.’
‘You can go, you’ve been involved with this one. There is no reason for you to miss out.’
‘No, there are plenty of face-painters to step in and the boys need to learn their actions have consequences; me missing out on something I wanted may well counterbalance their idea that they’ve won. I believe they’ll feel bad about that and I have every intention of making sure they’re aware of the fact that I had been looking forward to it.’
‘I’ll wingman you.’
‘I know you will. We’ve always had each other’s backs.’
‘We have.’
Marion looked at him and everything was a crazy tumult. She wanted to lean into him so badly, rest her head on his shoulder as she always had, just be.
However, she couldn’t. She had made the decision to walk away, and still believed that she couldn’t give her permission for cheating, but oh my goodness she hadn’t known the sheer physicality of being apart was going to be so hard. The keeping her body away from him, not just in a sex way – although she was definitely struggling with that side of things – but in a companionship way. Those little touches, the hand on the hollow of the back as you walk past, the tucking of a lock of hair behind an ear as you talk, the squeeze of a hand at any given opportunity: these she ached for. Here, standing so near to him, the two of them close because of their sons’ appalling, effective plan, brought the hurt of it all to the surface. She stood torn between a whole mishmash of feelings, not quite sure of her next step.
‘Mind you, I was quite keen on face-painting. I reckon that’s some art even I could do.’
‘Oh bless you, face-painting is not fun. It’s several levels of hell, the first starting the minute the child tells you what they want and only ending when they realize that they just look like themselves but with colour on their faces as opposed to actually becoming Spider-Man or The Hulk. Trust me.’
‘Probably.’
‘I’ll tell you what, if you really want you can face-paint me this evening.’
‘Oh yes?’ Richard raised his brows in tandem and smirked.
‘Face paint.’ She smirked back and then got a hold of herself, remembering a time when they
had been at uni and painted each other’s entire bodies blue for fancy dress, and then getting so carried away with the painting and the body bit that they never made the party anyway. Although they did have to throw the bedsheets out.
‘Maybe we should do the boys as well, something they really don’t like and take photos and post it on their social media.’ Richard changed the subject, his face flushing as he remembered the same thing. At least so she assumed. He could be blushing for any reason, but they were fairly well attuned and she’d place money on this being why.
‘I think that might start a revolution.’ Marion realized they were talking in half-whispers, making the conversation intimate, indicating to both themselves and the outside world that this was just between the two of them. She could only imagine Rupert’s response to the suggestion that they paint his face. The boy may only be ten but he behaved, the majority of the time, as if he believed he was in his thirties at least.
‘The three of them banding together may be too powerful a force for the two of us to counter.’
‘Oh God, we need to punish them hard.’
‘We do. They need to know they can’t do whatever they want; the end does not justify the means.’
‘Should we saw their legs off?’
‘It’s their minds that are their problem.’
‘Legs, arms and lobotomize?’
‘Sounds more like it.’
‘Hire them out as paid agent provocateurs?’
‘Now you might be onto something. Although I’m not sure that’s been a real thing since the nineteenth century.’
‘Oh, it is. I think they just call them influencers these days. Seriously what are we going to do? Let’s be practical, are there any jobs you need doing that you really don’t want to do?’ Marion asked her husband. She had already made them scrub the walls down the other day and was running out of punitive housework.