by Fiona Field
As soon as her last customer had left the salon, Jenna locked up, grabbed Eliot from the crèche and zipped round to Maddy’s house.
‘You’ll never guess,’ she said without preamble as soon as the door opened. ‘I told you this would happen and it has.’
‘Hello, Jenna. Never guess what? What’s happened?’ Maddy ushered her visitor in, helping Jenna get the buggy over the front step.
Jenna related the details of Chrissie’s visit and Mrs Laycock’s reaction.
‘Was that Sergeant Major Laycock’s wife?’ asked Maddy.
‘Search me. I don’t know half the people who use the community centre. When I worked at Zoë’s salon, back at the old barracks, I didn’t know half the ladies because other stylists dealt with them, and then I didn’t have my own place long enough to build up much of a clientele.’
‘If it is who I think it is,’ said Maddy, ‘she may cause a problem or two. She’s real old school, real dyed-in-the-wool career wife.’
Jenna rolled her eyes ‘That’s all I blooming need on top of Chrissie. You know she had the cheek to have a pop at me over Lee’s savings!’ She held up a hand. ‘Yes, I know I was wrong, I know I shouldn’t have taken his dosh but we were married and I honestly thought I could make a go of it. Anyway,’ she said a bit petulantly, ‘it’s water under the bridge now, not that Chrissie seems to want to let it go,’ she added darkly.
Maddy raised her eyebrows a smidge.
‘Look,’ said Jenna, ‘I know what I did was out of order, but it was Lee’s money I borrowed...’ She saw the look on Maddy’s face. ‘OK, nicked. But it wasn’t hers. I wouldn’t mind Lee having a go at me, but I resent it coming from Chrissie.’
Maddy sighed. ‘You may have a point, technically, but I wouldn’t go taking the moral high ground over this.’
Jenna nodded. ‘No, you’re right. Of course you are. I’m just being a bit of a cow. But,’ she added, ‘Chrissie was too.’
Maddy grinned. ‘I expect you weren’t overly intimidated.’
‘Nah... well... except I don’t want to get involved in another cat-fight. Don’t want to get too much of a reputation.’
*
After Jenna had gone Maddy had to get her skates on to get Nathan from his playgroup before racing home to make lunch for everyone. September had started off nice enough but now, as it was drawing to a close, it was decidedly autumnal but without the poetic mists-and-mellow-fruitfulness baloney. The icy north wind nipped at Maddy’s ankles and rain spat at her intermittently from a sky that threatened worse. The trees, still laden with leaves, were thrashing about and no matter that Maddy had pulled her winter coat tight about her and was hurrying as fast as she could with Nathan standing on the buggy-board behind Rose’s pushchair, she felt chilled through. Bugger it, she decided, when she got in she was going to light the gas fire in the sitting room and she and the kids could hunker down in the warm fug for the afternoon, playing games, looking at picture books, maybe watching Peppa Pig – again.
As she opened the front door she heard the phone ringing. It was a race to get the kids indoors and the front door slammed behind her before the phone stopped. She was panting slightly when the caller spoke.
‘Maddy? It’s Caro.’
‘Caro?’ Blimey.
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘What about?’ Maddy wondered if she should sound more enthusiastic but she couldn’t help feeling wary. After all, her last couple of encounters with her former friend had hardly been congenial.
‘Look, can I come round?’
‘Suppose so.’ Hardly gracious but did she care?
‘I’ll be round in five.’
‘See you then.’ Maddy put the phone down. Bloody hell, she thought as she got Nathan out of his all-in-one and then lifted Rose out of the buggy, what was this going to be about? Another rant about Seb’s promotion, maybe? Or had Caro found something else to have a go at her for?
The kids pottered off into the sitting room and Maddy went into the kitchen. She supposed she ought to offer Caro a cup of tea. Not to would be pointedly churlish – although given the way Caro had treated her when she’d tried to book Rose into the crèche she was sorely tempted to repay in kind.
The kettle had just clicked off when the doorbell rang. Maddy took a deep breath and went to answer it.
Caro came in, taking off her coat. ‘Hello, Maddy.’
No ‘how are you’ or ‘nice to see you’, Maddy noticed. ‘Caro,’ she said, without any warmth. She took Caro’s coat.
‘Nice and warm in here.’
‘I gave in and put the heating on.’
‘Lucky you. Will won’t hear of it, says we must put an extra layer on. Still, it keeps the bills down.’
Was that a dig that Maddy and Seb could afford to because of his promotion? Maddy refused to rise to the bait. ‘The money from the crèche must come in handy,’ she said.
‘It’s useful. And with everyone out all morning it doesn’t matter if the house is a bit Baltic – that is, till I come back at lunchtime.’
Maddy led Caro into the sitting room and went to make tea for them both. When she returned Caro was sitting on the rug helping Nathan with a jigsaw with one hand while helping Rose post shapes into a box with the other. At least she had the decency to be nice to the children, even if she was no longer friends with their parents.
‘Right, kids, you’re on your own for a bit while I have my hot drink,’ said Caro, getting up off the floor and plonking down on the sofa as Maddy handed her a brimming mug.
‘I don’t know how you do it,’ said Maddy. ‘My knees seize up after five minutes crawling round like that.’
‘Practice,’ said Caro. ‘If you did it all morning, every morning, your joints would soon loosen up.’
‘So...?’ said Maddy.
‘So? Oh yes, the reason why I’m here.’
Maddy nodded encouragingly.
‘I’m worried.’
‘About?’
‘Ella and Katie.’
‘Oh.’ This wasn’t what Maddy expected. She felt a small ripple of relief that Caro wasn’t going to have another go at her over something she or Seb had done – or not done.
‘You’re friends with Susie; haven’t you noticed anything?’
‘Well, a bit. I mean, I don’t see much of the girls these days but I know things aren’t completely happy at home. I had Susie crying her eyes out here the other day.’
‘Oh, no. Why?’
‘She and Mike had a row. She said something inappropriate that the twins overheard and they threw it back at their dad. I think her comment was meant as a joke—’
‘OIC sandbags?’
Maddy nodded. ‘How...?’
‘She made that comment to me when she didn’t realise Ella was right behind her. And it was kind of funny at the time but I can also see how Mike might take it the wrong way.’
‘Anyway, it seems that he feels he’s let them all down, the twins are being horrible, they’re miserable at their school, the other kids are ripping the piss out of them because they talk posh...’
‘So the Collinses aren’t playing happy families.’ Caro took a sip of her tea.
Maddy shook her head. ‘And I don’t know what to do to help. I suggested that I should have the girls for the night, so she and Mike could have a proper heart-to-heart but she thought the girls might think they were being excluded, not wanted. The last thing she wanted was for them to feel they were being punished for causing the row.’ Maddy told Caro about the twins’ note of apology and the pains they’d taken to make up by tidying the kitchen.
‘Bless them,’ said Caro.
‘I know. They’re good kids really. They didn’t mean to cause trouble, I’m sure.’
‘Do you think I ought to try talking to them?’
Maddy looked doubtful. ‘And say what?’
Caro put her cup down on the table beside her. ‘I could tell them what a great guy their dad is, how much Will liked working
for him.’
Was there a hint there that Mike was an OK boss but Seb wasn’t? Maddy ignored it. ‘I suppose. It can’t do any harm, at any rate.’
‘And I think they’re lonely. Any friends they had on the patch are away at their own boarding schools so the only kids around in term time are far too little for Ella and Katie to play with. And as for their new school – they’re very tiny fish in a very big lake.’
Maddy agreed. ‘Winterspring Comp is huge. Susie told me that there are nine tutor groups in each year. Nine!’
‘I hoped they’d get to know the kids on the school bus but it doesn’t help that they get two different buses a day. And I don’t think it helps that the other kids on their bus go to the soldiers’ patch when they get off, while they come here with me.’
‘So everything about them sets them apart.’ Maddy shook her head. ‘That’s not good for integration.’
‘But I don’t want to worry Susie. I wondered... I wondered if you might have some ideas.’
Maddy stared at Caro. Was Caro – trained in childcare – really asking her advice or was she using her worry about the twins as an excuse to extend an olive branch? And if it were the latter, was Maddy prepared to forgive and forget the way Caro had treated her recently? She’d think about it. In the meantime, she needed to give Caro a reply.
‘I think you’re just going to have to give them as much support as you possibly can when they’re at yours. And they may talk to you, more than they do their parents, you being an outsider and everything.’
‘You think?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘I’m not the expert. And I think you are going to have to tell Susie about your concerns. If the kids are really miserable at school, mightn’t it be a symptom of something worse, like bullying?’ She gave Caro a long stare. ‘When someone thinks that someone else is being mean and unpleasant, just because they can be, it’s very upsetting.’
Caro lowered her eyes. ‘Indeed.’ She picked up her mug and drained it. ‘Well, I mustn’t keep you, I expect you’re busy. Thanks for the tea.’ She stood up.
Maddy wondered about asking if the crèche was still fully booked but decided to leave it for the time being. A first, tiny, step had been taken. Maybe it was best to leave things as they were for the time being. Communications, of a sort, had been re-established and she ought to be grateful for that.
Later, when Seb came home, she told him that Caro had visited.
‘And?’ said Seb. ‘That’s news? You and she used to practically live in each other’s houses.’
‘That was then,’ said Maddy.
Seb’s brow crinkled into a frown. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘You remember that row – when Caro discovered you’d be made OC?’
‘That isn’t still rumbling on? You are kidding me. Will and I managed to put most of our differences behind us weeks ago.’
‘Well, Will obviously hasn’t told Caro that. Or maybe he has – finally.’ Maddy told Seb about the lack of space for Rose at the crèche.
‘Oh, that’s just plain childish. I’ll have a word with Will.’
‘No! No, leave it. I think this row may have run its course but if you criticise Caro to Will... well, it might all kick off again.’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘Seb, I haven’t wanted to burden you with stupid patch politics. You’ve got enough on your plate, what with being OC and PMC and having to jump through Rayner’s bloody hoops and everything but I’ve hated falling out with Caro and if we can make up again, well, no one will be happier than me.’
‘But you should have said something sooner. I might have been able to do something.’
‘As I said – you’ve got enough to cope with. And I’m a grown-up, I can fight my own battles.’
Chapter 26
‘Got any homework, girls?’ asked Susie as they drove away from the barracks and back to the estate at Winterspring Ducis.
‘No,’ said Katie.
‘What, again?’
‘We do it at Caro’s,’ said Ella.
‘Properly?’
There was a heavy sigh from the back seat, then Katie said, ‘It’s all baby stuff. The kids know nothing. We’ve done it all before, most of it at prep school.’
‘Even so,’ said Susie as evenly as she could, ‘it won’t hurt you to repeat things. Look at it as revision. Besides, it won’t do you any harm to do really well at your new school.’
Beside her, in the passenger seat, Ella snorted. ‘Oh yeah, like being the class swots is going to make us so popular.’
Susie dropped the subject and they drove the rest of the way home in silence. When they got back the girls banged up the stairs to their bedrooms and Susie was left feeling bereft at the continual lack of communication between her and the twins. Every time she tried to reach out to them they swatted her away – and it was worse with Mike. Even when she’d been super-kind to them and bought them a few treats to thank them for their apology for causing that awful row they’d seemed diffident and almost embarrassed. And since then they’d barely spoken to her. Maybe she ought to have a word with Caro? Maybe they confided in her.
The next morning, after she’d dealt with the previous night’s bar chits and talked to the chef about menus for the following week, Susie locked her office and headed through the barracks to the community centre. It was noisy with conversations emanating from the coffee shop and over those could just be heard the noise of a hairdryer from Jenna’s salon. She made her way along the main hall to the crèche at the back and leaned over the stairgate that blocked the entrance.
On the floor were two of Caro’s assistants playing with some toddlers while other children were occupied in the Wendy house or were tearing around the big conservatory on scooters. Caro herself was sitting on the big comfy chair that she mainly used when it came to story time, feeding a small baby from a bottle.
‘Can I come in?’ asked Susie.
Caro smiled. ‘Be my guest.’
Susie opened the stairgate and stepped through. Caro nodded at a stool beside her chair. ‘Pull up a pew. What can I do for you?’
‘Is this a good time?’
‘As good as any. It isn’t often I get the chance to sit down in this job.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Susie.
‘So?’
Susie took a deep breath. ‘I’m worried about the girls.’
Caro looked down at the sucking baby. ‘You too.’
‘So, I’m not imagining that things really aren’t great.’ Caro looked back up at her. ‘I’m not being an over-anxious mother, am I?’
‘No,’ said Caro. ‘And if I’m honest, I think things are getting worse not better. When they first came to me they used to settle down, do some homework, play with the boys, maybe help me in the kitchen but now... now they sit on the sofa, watch TV, barely speak. They don’t want to talk about their day, they don’t want to talk about any friends they might have... or not, they don’t want to talk about school... or home for that matter. They seem to be unnaturally introverted.’
‘And they’re the same at home. They seem very unhappy. Caro, it’s tearing me apart but they won’t talk to me and they certainly don’t talk to Mike. I was rather hoping they might have talked to you about it?’
‘They barely say a word to me these days. I do ask them, Susie, but when you keep getting stonewalled it’s really difficult to keep asking. After a bit it stops looking like casual interest and more like prying.’
Susie nodded. ‘So you’ve got no more of an idea about why they seem so unhappy than I have.’
Caro shook her head. ‘Although I do wonder about bullying. They stand apart from the rest of the kids – their voices, their previous school, the fact their dad was an officer. I know most of the kids at that school have nothing to do with the army but there are a few off the soldiers’ patch and they might make life difficult.’
‘I thought about bullying too,’ said Susie, quietly. ‘But if their lives are being ma
de miserable why don’t they say something?’ She felt stricken for them. Then she said, ‘You say they watch TV. Do they do their homework?’
‘They tell me they’d rather do it at home.’
‘They tell me they’ve done it at yours.’
The two women gazed at each other.
‘I think,’ said Susie, ‘I need to talk to their head of year. Things aren’t right; in fact, things are probably worse than I thought.’ She stood up to go. ‘Don’t tell the girls I came to see you. I don’t want them to think that you and I are ganging up on them too; I think they’ve got enough to cope with at school without thinking that we are swapping stories about them.’
‘Which we are,’ said Caro.
‘Yeah, but only because we care about them.’
Susie returned to the mess but found it hard to concentrate on her work. In the end she gave up and rang Seb.
‘Major Fanshaw,’ she said when he answered his phone.
‘Mrs Collins. Problems?’
You don’t know the half of it, she thought. ‘Not with the mess. I just wondered if I could have a half-day off.’
‘Of course. When?’
‘I don’t know yet. I need to go into Winterspring School. I wanted to get agreement in principle before I make an appointment.’
‘God, Su— Mrs Collins, you really don’t need to ask my permission for something like that.’
‘Maybe not, but I don’t want to take liberties.’
‘That’s not a liberty. Just let me know when you’re off.’
‘Thanks.’ She hung up, dialled nine for an outside line and then dialled the school.
*
‘I had Susie on the phone today,’ said Seb when he got home at lunchtime.
‘So? You’re her boss.’
‘She wants time off to go into the girls’ new school. But it’s not a parents’ evening interview, she’s making an appointment to see someone there.’
Maddy put the knives and forks she was holding down on the table. ‘Is she now.’
Seb nodded.
‘I had Caro round here the other day because she’s worried about the girls, she’s got a suspicion they’re being bullied. She wanted to know if I’d picked up anything from Susie, seeing as how we used to be so close. But what with that and the row Susie had with Mike I’m beginning to think things are far from happy for them all.’ Maddy picked up the cutlery again and began to lay the table. ‘I wish I could do something for them.’
