Once in a Lifetime

by Chrissie Manby

  The walk took much longer with Jezza on the lead but at last Jane and Sarah persuaded him it was time to go home. They climbed up the stairs to the car park. While Jane was brushing sand off her feet, so she could put her shoes back on, Sarah’s attention was attracted by a fracas near the car park exit onto the main road where a crowd was gathering around a police van. Somebody was shouting.

  ‘Isn’t that Flossie?’ asked Sarah, putting on her glasses to get a better look.

  ‘Hmm?’ Jane was busy tying her laces.

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah confirmed. ‘Yes it is. It’s our Flossie. And Jed.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jane asked.

  Sarah hurried in their direction.

  ‘Jane, come quickly for heaven’s sake. I think Flossie’s being arrested!’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  By the time Jane and Sarah reached them, Jed and Flossie were already in handcuffs.

  ‘That’s my granddaughter!’ said Jane. ‘What’s going on? You can’t put her in handcuffs! She’s a minor. Where on earth do you think you’re taking her? Let her go at once.’

  The female police officer who had cuffed Flossie merely shook her head at Jane and gestured that she should move right back.

  ‘You can see your granddaughter at the station,’ said the male officer who was tackling Jed.

  ‘What? No! What has she done?’

  ‘It’s OK, Grandma,’ said Flossie. ‘I’m fine. Jed’s dad is a lawyer. He’s going to get us out. We’re innocent. This is a travesty of justice. You pigs are going to pay for this cock-up big time!’

  ‘I’d advise you not to call them pigs,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Good advice,’ said the female police officer.

  ‘If we don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace!’ Jed suddenly shouted at the gathering crowd, waving his cuffed hands in the air. ‘No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace. No justice …’

  Jed tried to start a chant but nobody except Flossie seemed particularly interested in joining in.

  ‘Oh, please shut up,’ said the female officer.

  The crowd just stared and licked their ice creams as though they were watching the incident unfold on a television screen.

  ‘Don’t worry, Flossie,’ Jane yelled as Flossie was put into the back of the patrol car. ‘Whatever you’ve done, we’re right behind you. We’ll come straight to the station. We’re going to get you out.’

  ‘Hey hey hey! Ho ho ho! Police brutality got to go!’ Jed tried another chant. Still no one joined in.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ said the male police officer, who was handling Jed especially gently considering. ‘Don’t embarrass yourself.’

  ‘No justice, no peace!’ Jed yelled one more time before he added. ‘My dad is going to hear about this, you know.’

  ‘And I’m sure he’ll be able to explain the law to you when he does,’ said the police officer.

  ‘No justice! No peace!’ Jed shouted.

  ‘No kidding,’ said someone in the crowd.

  The police car drove away, with Flossie and Jed in the back, leaving Jane and Sarah open-mouthed in the car park.

  ‘They’ve taken Flossie. I can’t believe it.’ Jane was on the verge of tears.

  ‘Come on,’ said Sarah, taking control. ‘We need to get down to the police station and phone Dani on the way.’

  ‘But Flossie!’

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ said Sarah. ‘Though I can’t imagine what she’s done.’

  ‘They had an illegal cake stall,’ said one of the women who had watched the whole incident unfold. She was a Brummie, who had spent too much time in the sun that afternoon. Her face was as pink as her swimming costume. ‘They were selling cupcakes and stuff. The police asked if they had a licence to be trading and obviously they didn’t so the police told them to move along. And that’s when your granddaughter’s mate got a bit mouthy. I reckon the police would have let them go with a warning before that idiot crusty started ranting about being free to make a living and called the female one the “bastard capitalist bitch daughter of Maggie T”. Or something like that.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Sarah.

  ‘And your granddaughter stood up for him.’

  ‘Well, they are in love,’ said Jane.

  ‘I hope for your sake she gets over it,’ said the Brummie woman.

  ‘Oh, you’re not the only one,’ said Jane. ‘Believe me.’

  Though she had always tried to see what Flossie saw in him, Jane’s true feelings about Jed were coming out at last. The arrogance she had seen when he held forth around the kitchen table had got her granddaughter into trouble with the police!

  While Jane talked to the woman from Birmingham, Sarah quickly called a taxi. When the driver arrived he said he didn’t want to take Jezza, who smelled as though he had rolled across a fishmonger’s stall, but Sarah waved a tenner and the problem magically disappeared.

  Jane called Dani on the way to the station.

  Dani was there less than fifteen minutes after they were. She arrived on her bicycle. Red-faced and still sweating wine from the day before.

  ‘What on earth has happened now?’ she asked.

  The Brummie woman on the beach was right. Jed and Flossie had been selling illegal cupcakes. Remembering how Flossie had said that she and Jed were planning a cupcake stall, Dani sighed. Hadn’t she told them this would happen? All the same, they probably would have got away with a warning if Jed hadn’t started shooting his mouth off. It had gone from being a matter of the police having a quiet word and giving Jed and Flossie the option to pack up and leave, to being a matter of a breach of the peace. And assaulting a police officer. Flossie had knocked the hat off the female officer’s head.

  It did not look good. Dani asked if she and Flossie could contact a lawyer. The officer on the front desk assured her that one was on his way. Jed’s dad.

  When he arrived, he did not look happy.

  ‘I had to interrupt a family barbecue for this,’ he said.

  And when he was introduced to Flossie’s family, he greeted them so frostily that Dani wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d turned her to ice just by shaking her hand. He was the polar opposite of Jed when it came to appearance – he might have been at a family barbecue, but he still looked ready to stride into court – however, Dani, Jane and Sarah quickly saw where Jed got his arrogance from.

  ‘This had better not be a waste of my time,’ Jed’s dad said when the attending officer came to take him through to the cells. ‘If you were paying for this,’ he added as an aside to Dani, ‘it would be costing you five hundred an hour plus VAT.’

  ‘Hang on!’ said Dani. ‘It was your son who …’

  Jane held Dani back.

  It took an hour for Jed’s father to persuade the police that Flossie at least should be allowed to go home. Even then, she couldn’t resist shouting out, fist raised in the air as she was led to where her mother and grandmother waited. Sarah had already taken Jezza home.

  ‘Solidarity, Jed! We’ll get justice! I promise! I love you!’

  Dani pulled her daughter’s fist down. ‘And I love you but this time, Florence Parker, you’ve really gone too far.’

  ‘She certainly has,’ said Jed’s father. ‘Selling cupcakes without a licence. A ridiculously hare-brained scheme your daughter came up with.’

  ‘What? My daughter?’ Dani just about managed not to point out that it was Jed who’d come up with the idea and Jed who’d upped the ante with his wrong-headed chants. Instead she thanked Jed’s father – perfunctorily – and bundled Flossie into a cab.

  The drive back to Schooner Crescent was silent and deeply uncomfortable.

  Dani had generally resisted grounding her daughter but following that afternoon’s events, she really had no choice.

  ‘You’re not seeing Jed any more,’ she told Flossie when they got home. ‘I don’t care how much you love him, he’s not a good influence. You nearly got yourself a criminal record today, Floss
. You haven’t even finished school.’

  ‘This is a police state,’ said Flossie. ‘We weren’t doing anything wrong. We were just selling cakes to make some money for the summer.’

  ‘And insulting a policeman? And knocking off another one’s cap?’

  ‘They deserved it.’

  ‘You are out of control. And I’m not having it. Tomorrow I’m going to phone Xanthe and Camilla’s parents and tell them what happened so that they can be aware of the sort of people you’ve been hanging out with too.’

  ‘Mum!’ Flossie covered her eyes. ‘Don’t embarrass me.’

  ‘When you stop embarrassing me …You’re still only sixteen,’ said Dani. ‘You’re my responsibility.’

  ‘I thought you said that people learn by their mistakes.’

  ‘I was thinking about bad outfits and hair colour,’ said Dani. ‘Not mistakes that could define the rest of your life. You got arrested today, Florence Parker. That’s no small thing. If Jed’s father hadn’t been there to talk the police out of pressing charges, you might have been had up for assault! Now, I’m going to need your phone,’ she added. It was the ultimate sanction.

  Flossie’s mouth dropped open in horror.

  ‘Mum! No way!’

  ‘Yes way.’

  ‘But what if I need it? What if you need to know where I am?’

  ‘I will know exactly where you are,’ said Dani. ‘Because from this moment on, you’re not going anywhere or staying with anyone I haven’t already approved. And Jed will not be one of those people.’

  ‘You trying to keep me from Jed isn’t going to stop me loving him,’ Flossie cried. ‘I love him and I always will! You can’t keep us apart.’

  ‘Watch me,’ said Dani. She turned Flossie’s phone to ‘off’.

  As Dani crawled into bed that night, her happy afternoon at the pub with Will seemed a very long time ago. Indeed, the whole day had been one long exercise in mortification, she thought. She’d woken up with a headache and she was going to bed with a bigger one. She was grateful when Jezza climbed up on the bed for a cuddle. He was getting big enough to get onto the mattress without needing to be lifted up now. He pressed his wet nose against her face to let her know how much he loved her.

  It was only then that she noticed just how bad he smelled.

  ‘Oh Jezza. What on earth have you been rolling in?’

  She heaved him off the duvet but it was already too late. The scent of dead fish lingered around her all night. It really was the perfect ending to a red-letter sort of day.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The whole debacle had been terribly upsetting for Jane too. Her granddaughter being arrested was not something she had ever expected to see. It had frightened and unnerved her. Waiting in the police station for Flossie to be released had aged Jane by ten years, she was sure. And then the arguing when they got home.

  Jane knew that Dani was right. Flossie had to be punished for what had happened. It was not something that could be laughed off, though she knew it might be in some households. Jane had been raised to be law-abiding. She’d instilled the same ethics in Dani. And she thought that Flossie felt the same way. It was quite a shock to hear about the level of disrespect she’d shown the police officers, who were only doing their job after all. They were pointing out a rule that protected the public. You couldn’t just sell food on the beach. There were hygiene issues. Jane was frankly surprised that anyone would want to buy food from Jed anyway.

  Jane thought it was a very good idea that Flossie and Jed be kept apart for at least a while. He was arrogant and hotheaded. What if he’d acted that way in more dangerous circumstances?

  All the same, Jane was not happy to see Flossie’s tears when Dani told her that she couldn’t see Jed again. She never could bear it when Flossie turned on the waterworks. It hurt Jane’s heart to hear her granddaughter still crying at ten in the evening, two hours after she’d stormed upstairs when Dani took her phone.

  Jane paused on the landing on her way to bed and heard Flossie let out a choking sob. It was no good. She had to make sure Floss was OK.

  ‘Grandma!’ Flossie sat in her bed, dabbing at her red eyes. She looked so small and young.

  ‘Oh sweetheart,’ said Jane. ‘I hate to see you crying.’

  ‘What am I going to do, Grandma?’

  ‘Everything your mother asked,’ Jane said firmly.

  ‘But she doesn’t understand. She can’t keep me from Jed. She can’t! I’m going to die without him, Grandma. I really am.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Jane. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘He’s my everything.’

  Jane patted Flossie’s hand.

  ‘Look, I know we made some mistakes today …’ Flossie began.

  ‘I’ll say,’ Jane agreed.

  ‘But I’m sure that Jed understands what we did wrong and he would never do it again. He’s a good person, Grandma. He just gets carried away when he sees injustice going on. This punishment is just too cruel. Talk to Mum for me, Grandma, please.’

  Jane shook her head.

  ‘I can’t ask your mum to change her mind about this, Flossie, and honestly, I think she’s right. You’re too young to be in such a serious relationship. Especially with someone who seems a little immature.’

  ‘But you were sixteen when you met Granddad! You know sixteen’s not too early to fall in love for good.’

  ‘The world was a different place. We didn’t get to spend time together in the way you and Jed have. And believe me, if your granddad had got me into trouble with the police, my own father would have given us both a good hiding.’

  ‘I can’t be without Jed,’ Flossie insisted.

  ‘Well, how about you look at it this way?’ said Jane. ‘If you and Jed are meant for each other, then a little bit of time apart won’t matter.’

  Flossie looked unconvinced.

  ‘The fact is, Flossie, when I met your granddad, my parents weren’t happy at all. They said we were too young and I respected my parents so when they told me I wasn’t allowed to go dancing with your granddad, I didn’t even think about it. But your Granddad Tom kept coming into the shop where I worked on a Saturday and kept letting me know that I was on his mind. And when I turned eighteen, he came round to our house and asked my father if he could take me out that very night. That was the real beginning of our story. He waited two whole years before we were able to be together properly. If Jed truly loves you, he won’t be put off by not being able to see you for a while. He’ll hold on for you the way your granddad held on for me. True love conquers all.’

  Jane didn’t add that she rather hoped Jed failed this test. For now, all she wanted to do was see Flossie smile again. Or at least stop the tears from falling quite so fast.

  ‘You’re worth the wait, aren’t you? Think of this as a way to make your relationship stronger.’

  ‘Thank you, Grandma,’ Flossie said. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Now get some sleep,’ said Jane, arranging the covers around Flossie’s shoulders. ‘Everything will look better in the morning.’

  So Flossie went to sleep. Jane got into bed, but at two in the morning she was still awake. Still thinking about the day. About Flossie and Jed. About young love. About her Tom.

  If she had gone first, what would Jane have wanted for Tom in her absence? He would have been hopeless on his own. Like Jane, he hadn’t lived anywhere except with his parents before they were married. His mother was old-fashioned. She didn’t see the need to teach her son to be self-sufficient. He had never boiled an egg or ironed a shirt. It was a wonder he could dress himself, Jane said with exasperation when they had their first marital row. But though she had talked the good feminist talk about dividing household chores, there was no doubt that the new Mr and Mrs Parker divided those chores along fairly traditional lines too. Jane’s domain was the house. Tom’s domain was the garden and the car. And, once Dani was born, bringing home all the bacon.

  Had Jane gone first, To
m wouldn’t have had a clue how to look after himself. Of course, Jane would have wanted him to find someone who could step into her shoes. Perhaps not take her place, entirely, but keep him from being hungry, or lonely, or just too sad. There wouldn’t have been any shortage of contenders. Tom was always so popular. At the NEWTS – Newbay’s theatre society – he was always in demand for the romantic roles.

  She wouldn’t have minded if those romantic roles crossed over into real life if she’d gone first. She only ever wanted him to be happy.

  But for herself? It was much harder to imagine the other way around. She didn’t need a man to provide for her. Or even to take the bins out. She’d been doing that for years. She had the company of her daughter, her granddaughter and her best friend on the other side of the garden fence. A man couldn’t make her life more complete. Could he?

  There was no way that someone like Mr Hunter from the pet shop could really be interested. He had carried her kibble because he was closing the shop for lunch anyway and he wanted to foster Jane’s customer loyalty. He mentioned the opera to make small talk. He acknowledged her on the beach because he was polite. That was all.

  Jane traced a finger across her husband’s face in the photograph that lived on her bedside table.

  ‘I wish you were here,’ she said.

  Once in a lifetime was more than enough for her.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Flossie was confined to barracks all week. It was almost as unbearable for Jane and Dani as it was for her. When she was feeling hard done by, Flossie could sigh heavily enough to shake the house to its foundations. Her miserable face, when she sat at the kitchen table pushing food around her plate, was enough to turn most living beings to stone. Dani was almost glad when she had to go to work so that she could have a break from Flossie’s loudly and frequently articulated pain.

  ‘You could come to Best Behaviour Boot Camp,’ Dani suggested, when Flossie complained that she hadn’t been out of the house for five days.