Mummy's Little Helper

by Casey Watson

  ‘No need to be sorry. It’s just that we could have done those jobs together – like with my kitchen cupboards. You did them as well, didn’t you? But you know those are really my jobs; in any case, you shouldn’t feel you have to do them.’

  She put her spoon down. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I know you’ve been so busy. And you’ve been so sad –’ That caught me short. I kept my mouth shut, however. ‘And seemed so stressed, and what with the party, and having so much to do, I just thought it would be better if you didn’t have to worry about the house on top of all that …’ She picked up her spoon again, but then seemed to think better of it. ‘Casey,’ she said. ‘You know you shouldn’t keep open bags in your cupboards, don’t you? I was going to tell you. That’s why I had to throw so much away. Did you know that little beetles breed in flour once it’s been opened? And you could accidentally eat them … it’s just asking for trouble.’

  She picked up her spoon again, while I concentrated on not letting my jaw drop. This poor child. She was obviously so tuned into the emotional temperature because of years of constantly watching and assessing her mother and worrying, day to day, if she was feeling okay.

  I also felt helpless, and, once again, angry, because I knew nothing would even begin to be done about it till this whole business of Sarah’s allegations was out of the way.

  Wednesday, I decided, couldn’t come soon enough.

  Chapter 18

  Before I woke Abby up on her birthday morning, I decided I would take a few of the balloons I had bought for the party, and decorate the breakfast table for her. I was pleased that two cards had already arrived in the mail. One, which was fat and squashy, had been franked by the hospital, so I assumed it must be from Sarah, and I imagined the other might be from Bridget, which made me give her a mental brownie point. It was usual for social workers to do this, of course, but given their somewhat new and strained relationship I was particularly pleased to see it in this case. I popped both on the kitchen table by her place mat.

  Once I’d also fixed the balloons to her chair, I pulled out the presents from the family that I’d hidden under the stairs – now it was ‘properly organised’ I knew it would be the last place she’d look – and placed them alongside the cards. Finally, as a special treat (and for me as much as Abby) I made pancakes and syrup for breakfast.

  ‘Come on, lazy bones,’ I smiled, once I’d gone upstairs to wake her. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and smiled blearily. ‘Happy birthday, sweetie!’ I said, planting a kiss on her head. ‘Why don’t you get dressed after breakfast today – come down in your jim-jams. I’ve made you your favourites.’

  She roused herself at that. ‘Pancakes?’

  ‘And syrup. Just the way you like them. Quickly then, before they go cold.’

  Following me into the dining room, Abby squealed when she saw the table. I had added a daisy cupcake with a candle in it to blow out, and also scattered the table with glitter shapes. She spent a moment taking it in. Had anything like this ever been done to her? Of course, I told myself. Sarah loved her. That was never in question. Still, her astonishment seemed genuine. She threw her arms around me. ‘Oh Casey,’ she said. ‘It looks so great! Thank you, thank you!’

  And for all that she didn’t ‘do’ birthdays very much, Abby certainly tore into her presents. I watched her happily. Sarah’s card contained a delicate silver charm bracelet – the present she’d been buying when she’d had her fall in town – with two charms already: a little heart and a diamante star. And our family had done her proud as well. Kieron and Lauren had bought her a lovely silver locket on a chain, and Riley and David a jewellery-making kit. My sister, bless her, had got her a child’s baking set, complete with a new apron and natty chef’s hat. ‘Oh look, Casey!’ she cried as she put it on. ‘My own set. I can wear these when I go to work at the café!’

  I felt a stab of irritation. It was so silly, her not being allowed to go there. I would definitely state my case about that, come Monday. But just as quickly as I thought that, I put it out of my mind. I was more interested, anyway, on what she thought about what we’d got her, which – inspired by what Kieron had done with the picture of Bob – was a virtual pet. It was a hand-held game console in which lived a ‘real life’ puppy, which would march up to the screen and start yapping till you patted it, and, once you’d programmed it, needed all the attention a real pet did – regular feeds, exercise and lots of love. It had seemed mad to me the first time I’d come across such a thing, but my niece had had one and had loved it to bits.

  Of course, Abby being Abby, she immediately started making plans about how she was going to take care of him. ‘Oh, he’s so sweet, Casey. And I’m going to call him Snowball ’cos, look, he’s just like a fluffy ball of snow. And you’ll have to mind him when I’m at school because I won’t be allowed, and, oh God – what if he misses me?’

  I grinned at her. ‘I’m sure he’ll be just fine, love. You’ll be the perfect mummy for him, and while you’re not there I’ll be his foster mum. Now, let’s get stuck into those pancakes, shall we?’

  What with having to set the console to ‘pet’ her virtual puppy at various intervals in her absence, it was a bit of a mad rush getting ready without keeping the taxi waiting, and I had a moment of anxiety about my ‘inspired’ choice of present. Would she now – on top of everything else – worry about Snowball all day?

  But I put that out of my mind too – she was going to be made better, I felt sure of it. And it was all about dealing with worries, not doing away with them. And besides, I had a party to get organised, didn’t I? It didn’t matter how much you pre-organised, a party took work, and there was a lot that couldn’t be done until the day.

  First up, of course, was the cleaning. Riley would be over later to give me a hand with the preparations, but before that I needed to get the place clean. Mike, of course, thought I was barmy for doing this. ‘You’re mad, love,’ he’d said before setting off to work. ‘We’re going to have a houseful of dirty little toddlers, making a right mess everywhere, and you want to clean it up ready for them. Bonkers, that’s what you are, love, plain bonkers.’

  ‘Oh go on, you, get off to work,’ I’d chided. ‘It’s a woman thing. I don’t expect you – a mere man – to understand.’

  ‘Woman thing? No, just a Casey thing,’ he chuckled, swiftly ducking to avoid a flicking with my duster.

  And, naturally, I took no notice of him, because it was my party, and I’d clean if I wanted to – it was one of the few things I felt I could control in my life right now. So by the time Abby arrived home again we were pretty much good to go, which meant she could lavish all her attention on her puppy. So maybe not such a bad idea, then, I thought, as I watched her fuss with it. Though Riley and I both couldn’t help smiling as she called to us over her shoulder. ‘Just feeding Snowball – and then I’m ready to give you guys a hand!’

  ‘All done, love,’ I told her, ‘and you’ve got something to do anyway – get out of your uniform and get changed for the party. Go on, off you go. I’ve laid some clothes out for you on the bed.’

  That was her other surprise. I’d bought her another, secret, present: a proper party dress – pink and white polka dot with a net tutu underskirt. I had no way of knowing whether it would be something she’d choose herself, but judging by the Glee obsession and the pink obsession generally, I figured that she might, and she did.

  ‘Oh, it’s so pretty!’ she cried, blushing as she gave us all a twirl in it. Then she ran across and stood on tiptoe to give me a kiss. But the pleasure was to be short-lived, because she was soon looking past me, her intake of breath an indication of what was soon to come.

  ‘Casey, look at Riley,’ she whispered anxiously. ‘She’s just given Jackson a whole sausage roll!’

  I turned and looked at my little grandson happily chomping his way through it. ‘It’s okay, love. He can eat things like that now. He’ll be fine.’

  But my words of re
assurance were clearly falling on deaf ears. Abby crossed the room anyway, and sat down on the floor with him. ‘I’ll watch him for you, Riley,’ she told my bemused daughter, then promptly took the remainder of the sausage roll out of his hands. She then tore him off a tiny morsel and offered it to him. ‘I won’t let him choke,’ she reassured both of us. Jackson, disgruntled now, tried to snatch the rest back. But Abby was too quick for him. ‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said. ‘You must finish what’s in your mouth first, and then you can have some more.’

  And so it went on. There wasn’t an aspect of this party business that wasn’t fraught with danger. The balloons were deemed dangerous if they were attached to the backs of chairs, because the older ones could pop them and then the little ones might choke on them. The cakes needed to be passed for an absence of E numbers; any E numbers present and we were courting a disaster, because the kids would ‘all go hyper, and we definitely don’t want that’. The living-room rug was a potential trip hazard, the kitchen floor a potential ice rink, and every corner of every piece of furniture was ‘an accident waiting to happen’. So, by the time the first guests arrived Riley and I felt certain that Abby was already far too stressed to enjoy a moment.

  And our prediction was correct. It was like she was the old woman in the shoe. Because there were so many children she didn’t know what to do. Her eyes swivelled constantly, alert to the smallest cry or unexpected noise, and no morsel of food touched a lip without her eyeing it concernedly, as if the world would end if she didn’t maintain her vigil. If it weren’t for Levi, who kept repeating that she was only a ‘little mummy’, and taking the wind out of her sails, it would have felt like a mini-dictatorship.

  In the end it was Kieron who called a halt to the stress of it and gave all the other kids a break. ‘Hey, Abby,’ he said. ‘Could you do me a favour? Poor Bob’s been stuck out in the back garden all this time, so I thought, as I’ve got to nip out and get some more milk, that you could pop his lead on and come to the shop with me.’

  Abby, we could all see, was torn by this request. On the one hand, it was a chance to do something with Kieron, but on the other – could she bring herself to leave?

  Her responsibilities won out. ‘Oh Kieron, I don’t think I can yet.’ She glanced around her. ‘Can’t you go by yourself?’

  Kieron shook his head. ‘No can do, Abs. I need you to watch Bob outside, while I go in.’

  ‘Love, we’ll be fine,’ I reassured her. Which seemed to swing it. She just needed permission to let herself off the hook.

  We took the opportunity to play pass the parcel while they were gone, Riley quickly sorting the music so we could get it done before they returned. She laughed. ‘God knows what unseen dangers she might have found,’ she observed. ‘What with play dough and chocolates and other deadly stuff.’ She passed me the parcel. ‘And I hope you haven’t mentioned the MRSA!’

  I grinned. ‘You think I’m mad?’ We got the game under way.

  But for all our levity there was obviously a serious side to all this. Abby’s problems were serious. We both knew that. And as the children started handing the enormous newspaper-wrapped parcel from hand to hand, I was about to discover things were even more serious than we thought.

  I caught Lauren’s eye. She was waving my mobile from the far side of the breakfast bar and mouthing that there was someone on the phone for me. I thought it might be my mother – she and Dad hadn’t arrived yet so perhaps they’d been held up. But then I realised she’d have called the house phone. Perhaps Kieron, then, thinking of something else we might have forgotten. But when I grabbed the phone and answered, it was John Fulshaw’s voice I heard.

  Back from holiday, then. ‘John,’ I said, wondering if this was going to be about the meeting. ‘It’s party time here, sorry,’ I said, taking myself off into the garden, so I could hear above the music. ‘There,’ I said. ‘That’s better. Can you hear me okay?’

  ‘Loud and clear,’ he said. And I was just about to ask him about his holiday – I’d rather talk about that than my impending ‘supervision’ frankly – when he cut straight in. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid, Casey.’

  There could be worse news? I thought, shocked. Had she complained about something else?

  ‘What?’ I asked him.

  ‘Sarah. She’s taken a turn for the worse. It’s serious. Apparently she’s had some sort of reaction to one of the drugs they’ve been giving her. Anaphylaxis.’

  I’d heard of that. I’d definitely heard of that, in relation to bee stings.

  ‘Oh dear, John. And?’

  ‘And I don’t know much more, to be honest. Only that I was to call you, because there’s a chance you’ll have to take Abby up to the hospital. They’re going to keep me posted. I just wanted to forewarn you.’

  I took this in. God – on Abby’s birthday, as well. ‘Look, John, why don’t I just bring her up now to see her? I mean she was going with Bridget tomorrow anyway. I’m sure Sarah would be glad to see her …’

  ‘No, she won’t. Not right now. Sorry, Casey. I’ve not made myself clear enough. She’s in shock. She’s gone into anaphylactic shock. She’s on a ventilator. On a life-support machine.’

  Chapter 19

  The rest of the party passed in a bit of a blur, and for the first time ever I was relieved to close the door on my family and my little house guests. By the time Mike arrived home, after having an unusually late shift at work – yeah, right – I had already cleaned up all the mess and Abby was having a soak in the bath. I was glad to have her away from me for a bit, to be honest, as I felt sure she’d pick up on my radically altered mood, hard as I was trying not to show it.

  I couldn’t get the image of Sarah, lying on a ventilator, out of my mind. It took me straight back to Sophia, and the image of her mother on a ventilator, which still haunted me.

  So I was glad to see Mike, not least to distract me from my morbid thoughts. I filled him in on the latest news and told him that we were to expect a phone call later on.

  His response was typically pragmatic. ‘Oh, and just how are you meant to take her to the hospital?’ he wanted to know. ‘I thought you’d been banned.’ Which was a fair point. This was a fairly radical change of circumstance, though. Plus hadn’t Bridget said she wouldn’t be around anyway?

  ‘I don’t know, love,’ I sighed. ‘Maybe it’ll be Bridget who takes her. Or maybe they’ll find someone else. But, you know, if Sarah’s that ill I think I’d bloody insist that I took her. Because Abby’s going to need me – and then some. Poor little mite. Anyway, John didn’t say. Just let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, eh?’

  As luck would have it, Abby was already happily tucked up in bed by the time the phone rang again. I prayed it would be better news as Mike handed the receiver over. ‘Please tell me she’s getting better,’ I begged, before John had the chance to speak.

  ‘A little,’ he confirmed. I felt my shoulders drop as he said it. I hadn’t perhaps realised quite how anxious I’d been; how much I’d unconsciously been braced for the worst. ‘Well, they’ve moved her to a high-dependency unit, anyway, which I’m hoping means she’s out of immediate danger. And they say she’s comfortable and showing signs of improvement. She’s also been asking for Abby, obviously, so Bridget is going to come over first thing in the morning and pick her up, if that’s okay with you?’

  ‘Oh course. But what do I tell Abby?’

  ‘Oh, reassure her, obviously, that things are okay. But also prepare her for seeing her – the message I’ve had passed to me is that, physically, she doesn’t look too great.’

  I agreed I’d do so, and once again, as I put down the phone, felt a wash of relief that I wasn’t going to have to greet Saturday morning with the task of telling Abby something so, so much worse.

  She obviously didn’t take things well, however. In this case, though, she seemed less traumatised by her mother’s condition (which trauma she was perhaps already used to processing) than by the news that, once again, it wo
uld be Bridget who’d be taking her. And this time she was really kicking off.

  ‘No, Casey!’ she said plaintively. ‘I want you to come! I need you to come with me. Please, Casey!’

  Try as I might, I just couldn’t deflect her from this, and by the time Bridget arrived she was furious.

  ‘I want Casey to take me to see Mummy, not you!’ she railed at her, before she’d even had a chance to step into the hall. ‘Why can’t Casey take me?’

  ‘Because I have to …’ Bridget began, equally plaintively, to my mind. She was clearly no happier than Abby about this. And no wonder. It was supposed to be her day off.

  ‘But why can’t Casey come with us?’

  ‘Come on, Abby,’ I tried to soothe her. ‘Let Bridget have a chance to have a sit-down first. She’s driven all the way over here, just so she can take you to see Mummy, and –’

  ‘But why can’t you take me? No one’s told me why you can’t. Why can’t you?’

  I looked towards Bridget, while talking to Abby. ‘Time for a quick drink before you set off?’ I suggested. ‘Abby, Bridget has to take you, and that’s all there is to it.’ My tone clear, I went to switch on the kettle.

  ‘So, did you have a nice birthday, Abby?’ Bridget tried gamely. ‘A lovely party?’

  But Abby was having none of it. Where I knew she’d given up with me, she had no similar plan to acquiesce with Bridget. Ignoring the question, she placed both her hands on her hips. ‘I’m not speaking to you, ever again,’ she said, ‘unless you tell me right now why Casey can’t see my mummy no more!’

  Bridget looked helpless. But she then seemed to make a decision. ‘I tell you what,’ she said. ‘You’re right. Why don’t we all go?’ She glanced at me. ‘I’m sure that’ll be fine.’

  Abby’s whole demeanour changed. ‘Oh can we, Casey? Please?’

  Which meant, for all that I didn’t really want to – the last person I wanted to see right now was Sarah, and I’m sure she felt likewise – I could hardly refuse. But perhaps I wouldn’t actually have to go in and see her. Not if she was currently in the HDU. ‘I suppose …’ I said. ‘Should I phone John first?’ I asked Bridget.