by Beth Moran
I decided the best thing to do was finish my final ever coffee while admiring the view, enjoy the birds soaring overhead and not think at all about the swanky flat where I’d use to live, the swanky law firm where I’d worked as a personal assistant, the swanky lawyer who I’d assisted a little too personally, or my swanky sister, who’d been the reason I’d moved to Scotland, and the reason I left.
While I was busy not thinking about Zara, or Richard, or Zara and Richard, more to the point, a queue began to form at the café hatch. It was a Saturday, and a mix of families, ramblers with walking sticks, and dog owners were all either lining up or milling about waiting. After five minutes or so, noticing the queue hadn’t moved along at all, I walked over to see what was happening.
As I approached the building, the door burst open, releasing a small child brandishing a handful of chocolate bars and an egg-whisk, closely followed by Sarah. The boy ran past me squealing, and instinctively I reached out and scooped him up. After freezing for a moment in shock, he began beating me with the whisk, screaming while his minute yet surprisingly hard feet kicked against my hip.
Sarah, wild-eyed and red-faced, pulled up in front of us. ‘Edison, pack it in!’ she commanded.
Edison thrashed and bucked. I adjusted my grip, ducking to avoid a whisk in my eye. ‘Shall I put him down?’
Sarah blew a strand of pale pink hair off one eye, and reached out her arms. ‘I’ll take him. He gets like this sometimes. It’s not right, a four-year-old stuck in a café with boiling oil, sharp knives and shelves full of sweets. A few minutes to calm down’ll sort him.’ She grimaced as he stopped struggling, his cries settling into big, jerking sobs. ‘The problem is, that lot won’t wait a few minutes, and neither will them burgers on the grill.’
‘I can help,’ I said.
Sarah lifted her head up. ‘Are you sure? I can’t pay you or anything.’
‘How about a mug of soup and another coffee?’
She closed her eyes, shoulders dropping six inches. ‘The pinnies are in the drawer by the sink.’
An hour later, I sat at a bench sipping my soup watching Edison cavort about the Common with a group of boys. The Common, I had picked up, was the actual name for this clearing, which explained the café’s name. These new boys were triplets, judging by the identical copper-brown hair in various states of disarray and three pairs of slanted blue eyes. Watching them play together felt like a designer stiletto stomping on my bruised heart.
The triplets had arrived with a woman and a man, along with a slightly older girl and a boy around eleven, now building a den with fallen branches. It didn’t take much earwigging to deduce that this was all one family. I felt overwhelmed just watching them.
Once the den stood complete, the younger boys tossed their pretend swords away and scampered inside. They called for their mum to join them, and she persuaded the little girl to go in as well. Once the whole family – and Edison – had squeezed in, the man’s head nearly poking out at the top, somebody requested a photograph. The woman beckoned me over, saying, ‘Excuse me, would you mind?’ and handed me her phone.
Holding the screen up, I took a moment to focus on this gaggle of smiling, windswept faces. The older children, slender like their father, with the same flyaway blond hair. The mother, beaming as she wrapped strong arms around her wriggling triplets. Edison crouching in front of them. Somebody made a joke at the very second I clicked, capturing the moment the family collapsed into laughter, knocking the den over in the process.
At that point, the oldest boy burst into angry tears, shouting and kicking at the fallen sticks. Illusion of perfect family bliss shattered, the man bent down to speak with him while the mum hurried over to retrieve her phone.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ I said, showing her. ‘You have a wonderful family.’ The stiletto stabbed me once again.
She grinned. ‘Thanks. They keep me busy, but days like today make it all worth it.’ She tipped her head on one side. ‘Are you a friend of Sarah’s?’
I made a wilful effort to slam the lid on the ugly box of memories that watching this family had opened in my brain. ‘I hope so. A new friend, anyway. I moved here a couple of days ago.’
‘Oh! Charlotte Meadows’ old place. I heard about that. You’re not afraid of hard work, then.’
I shrugged. ‘No. Unfortunately I am afraid of spiders, rats, mice and bacterial poisoning. I’m just hoping that somewhere in there a lovely cottage is hiding.’
At that point, two of the triplets rushed up and threw themselves at her, one on each leg. ‘Mum! Mum! Can we have a cake ’cos Dad says if you say we can then we can ’cos Dawson won’t stop crying ’cos he hates the Common and wants to go home.’
‘Hang on, boys. I’m talking.’ She began untangling them from her skirt. ‘I’d better go. Nice to meet you, though. I’m Ellen Cameron.’
‘Jenny.’
‘Bye, Jenny. I’m sure we’ll see you around.’
Sarah gave Edison a packet of mini crackers to eat while we cleaned up.
‘Thanks again. It’s a nightmare having to bring him to work. I don’t know what’s worse, risking him running off into the woods, or cooping him up within spitting distance of a scalding chip pan.’ She scrubbed harder at the griddle. ‘I could kill Sean.’
‘Who?’
‘Sean. His dad. I would never say this in front of Edison, but he’s a total dud. Usually my mum helps out, but she’s gallivanting round the world on a cruise.’
‘And Sean was supposed to watch him?’
‘Yeah, but of course he cancelled last minute, like a typical dud.’
‘Did he have a good reason?’
‘That depends if you think hanging out at the bookies is a good reason to ditch your only child. Or going out getting bevvied. Maybe he was too busy slobbing in bed. Waster.’
‘Are you together?’
‘Do I look like a dud?’
We reached a deal. I would help Sarah out on Saturdays for the next three months, in return for free coffee and all the mega-cobs I could eat. I knew that probably translated as less than minimum wage, but right then having a friend and proving myself useful felt priceless. And hopefully by the time Sarah’s mum returned I could eat in my kitchen without risk of catching a deadly disease.
4
I settled into something of a routine over the next few days. Sleeping in a bath was not ideal, even one as luxurious as the one that the bathroom had been endowed with. The growing crick in my neck pushed me to brave clearing out a bedroom. I picked the smallest, on the basis that it had the least stuff to get rid of, and the least foul stench, but even my plan to simply relocate most of the contents and sort them later proved pointless. The rest of the house was so chock-a-block that I soon ran out of places to move them to.
Some things I could easily bag up and put outside in the ‘complete rubbish’ pile. Others I was more unsure of. With no one yet phoning me up out of the blue and offering me a job – which was how I’d got my previous, and only so far, employment – I felt all too aware of my empty pockets. Anything that could be sold, would be.
Afraid of unknowingly throwing out a priceless antique – or a cheap bit of tat that might fetch a couple of quid online – I held onto most of the bedroom’s treasure, squishing it between random gaps in the stacks. So far, I’d sorted: half a dozen lamps, about four million wooden coat hangers, eleven plastic bags stuffed with other plastic bags, crates of assorted glass containers, piles of mouldy linen and a complete shop mannequin.
I dressed the mannequin in a moth-eaten paisley dressing gown to preserve her modesty and found a spot for her at the end of the hallway. I called her Diana. Besides Sarah, on my twice-daily trips for coffee, and then soup or a jacket potato (it turned out my capacity for unlimited mega-cobs was pretty limited, so Sarah kindly agreed to broaden the scope of my pay), Diana was the only person I had spoken to in four days. There were plenty of mice, woodlice, spiders and moths to shriek, swear and hiss at, but they wer
en’t people. Despite my self-imposed solitude, I could still tell the difference, and Diana almost counted.
Mack had disappeared back into his non-abandoned side of the house. Fine by me.
I received no messages from the world beyond the forest. This shouldn’t have surprised me. I had always been a hanger-on, a shadow, firstly in my family, then more recently in the elite world of Dougal and Duff. And, given how things had ended, I could hardly blame my colleagues for not staying in touch.
And as for Zara and her shiny new fiancé, Richard the Richest. Well. They had made their choice. I tried not to compare what they had chosen to my current situation. Especially not when picking the mould off cheese while sitting on a toilet lid, as this was the cleanest, most hygienic seat in my new home. I didn’t at all imagine them dining at the fancy restaurants he’d taken me to, sipping one-hundred-pound bottles of wine and slurping oysters. Barely crossed my mind.
Eventually, the room was empty, save for a large pine wardrobe and a bed. I kept the iron bed-frame, but dragged the mattress through the hoard-tunnel and into the garden with the rest of the irredeemable rubbish. To my joy and amazement, one of the eight vacuum cleaners scattered throughout the house actually worked. I ripped up the carpet and took down the curtains, then vacuumed every surface before sucking all the dead insects out of the wardrobe.
After scrubbing every surface raw, I left the room to air and decided to celebrate by cycling into Middlebeck to stock up on supplies. Maybe I would happen upon a brand-new mattress discarded by the side of the road, still in its cellophane packaging. Or a washing machine. Or a fridge – oh, imagine it, a lovely, shiny, clean fridge! With a little freezer section at the top!
As lost as I was in this daydream, it took me a good quarter of a mile of pumping through the trees before I realised the bike was moving a lot faster than usual. Had my ham-fisted attempt at patching up the punctures mysteriously started working four days later? Or had all the exercise, humping furniture, carrying boxes downstairs, finally kicked in?
Stopping at the Common, I checked out the tyres. The fat, rock-solid, unworn, brand-new tyres. I wiped my glasses on my top and looked again.
Either my fairy godmother had paid a visit, or somebody, no doubt after watching me huffing and straining, red-faced and sweaty, through the forest, had taken it upon themselves to replace my tyres. I so wanted to be furious. This was my independent, fend-for-myself, need-no-one-and-trust-nobody new start. And who even knew about the bike? I always left it tucked behind the café. Either a stranger had been spying on me, then snuck over to the cottage and found the bike in the shed before risking the switch. Or else, someone who wasn’t quite a stranger, who knew where the bike was kept, had done it.
Mack had fitted brand-new tyres on the bike.
I now owed him a window, a saw and two tyres.
I wondered if he’d take two hundred thousand coat hangers in payment. Or a lawnmower with no motor.
I let out a laugh and pedalled on, unfortunately coming across no household appliances along the way. Wondering if I should invest in a padlock now that anyone making off with the bike stood a decent chance of a getaway, I propped it beside the store entrance and hurried around the aisles, sweeping items into my basket. I had rapidly become an expert on what food a person without a kitchen should buy. No to the cheese, yes to the dehydrated soup and noodles that only needed boiling water to be transformed into, and I quote the packet, ‘a delicious, heart-warming and nutritious meal’.
I thought about the juniper and burnt-butter hare I’d eaten in a private dining room overlooking the river Forth – and before I knew it, I found myself next door in the bakery, buying a cream tea.
Sitting by the window, I nursed a lukewarm cup of tea and pretended I didn’t regret spending a stupid proportion of my remaining pennies on a grey scone covered in strawberry syrup that I felt too depressed to eat. As I prepared to take the plunge, the door to the bakery burst open and Ellen, who I’d met in the forest, came hurtling through, her three youngest boys swarming round her skirts.
She skidded to a stop at the counter, dumping several bulging carrier bags on the cheap carpet. ‘Bread, please!’ she barked, plucking one boy off the nearest table. Another one squeezed behind a display of home-made chutneys (they didn’t say they were home-made, but you could tell, and I don’t mean that in a good way), causing the tower of jars to rattle dangerously. The third triplet dived under his mum’s skirt, lifting it up and pointing two fingers in the universally acknowledged gun shape at his brother.
‘Excuse me?’ the woman behind the counter asked, furrowing her brow. The boys drowned out Ellen’s reply with their chorus of pows, bangs and explosions. The one she’d lifted off the table struggled as he tried to turn upside down and pull his mum’s skirt up higher.
Ellen pointed to a loaf of sagging French bread, before calling out, ‘CEASEFIRE!’
The boys instantly froze. A split second later they all scurried towards a table and sat down. Ellen then asked for six doughnuts to go. By the time the shop assistant had slowly picked up the items with her pastry tongs and put them on a sheet of paper, folded a box out of cardboard, lined it with a doily, carefully placed the doughnuts inside, managed to close the box and add a sticker to keep it shut, worked out six times sixty-five pence, then started the sum again including the price of the bread, the ceasefire had ended.
Ellen, flicking the curls out of her eyes, grabbed the shopping bags and ordered her children to fall in line. ‘Soldiers! Qui-i-ck … march!’ They wouldn’t have won any parade medals. As they wriggled, jostled and argued about whose turn it was to go at the front of the line, Ellen herded them towards the door. She paused by my seat, dropping one of the bags.
‘Jenny! Great to see you again.’
Was it? ‘Hi.’
She looked at the scone. ‘Aren’t you eating that?’
I pushed my glasses back up my nose. ‘Um. No.’
‘Brilliant. I’m having an unexpected-in-laws-for-dinner emergency and I’ve not eaten all day.’ She grabbed the top of my scone and crammed half of it in her mouth, crumbs spraying everywhere. Grimacing, briefly, she then winked, mouth bulging, before resuming the march out of the bakery. ‘Hup, two, three, four. Come on, troops, what comes after four?’
I sat and watched her line up the boys to cross the empty road. But, as they stepped off the pavement, one of them attempted to go AWOL, his little legs powering down the road. Dropping the bags, which bounced off the edge of the kerb, Ellen snatched up the other boys’ hands and raced after him.
While she shooed the absconder to the safety of the grass verge, I hurried outside to retrieve the shopping. As I scrambled after the contents, now rolling across the street, a familiar-looking taxi careened out of a side road and headed straight towards me. I scrabbled to get out of the way, but as the car veered to avoid a collision it ran right over two of the bags, the contents of which exploded in a shower of cream, eggs, passata and what smelt like vinegar. Nice.
I flicked the globules from my hair, smeared the cream off my face and wondered if it would be okay to eat it.
Tezza wound down his window. ‘Are you a complete idiot? Standing in the main road, waggling yer backside at unsuspecting drivers? If it warn’t fer me superior road skills I’d’ve hit one of them kids.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘If that shopping has messed up me paintwork I’ll be sending you the bill,’ he sneered before screeching off. Ellen bustled over. The boys, bouncing alongside, made no attempt to hide their peals of laughter.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t manage to save most of it.’
‘You’re sorry?’ Ellen shrieked. ‘What if you’d been hit by that maniac? Dinner with Will’s parents is not worth risking serious injury or death for.’
I shrugged.
She screwed up her nose and peered at me. ‘Are you always this recklessly selfless?’
‘I’ve been sat in the bakery for twenty minutes and the only
traffic was a mobility scooter. It wasn’t quite as fast as Tezza.’
She nodded. ‘Fair point. Let’s get you home and cleaned up. And you can save me from eating the remaining three doughnuts.’
I accepted her proffered packet of baby wipes and stole a glance at the triplets. Felt the bruise on my heart tremble. ‘Thanks, but I’m fine. You’ve enough on your plate.’
I took a step back towards the bakery, to retrieve my own shopping. ‘I hope your dinner goes okay.’ Flicking a blob of sauce off my hand, I pulled open the door.
‘Please come.’
‘What?’ Turning back, I saw Ellen still standing there, clutching at the ruined bags.
‘I’m begging you. No. Not quite begging. Strongly inviting you to come and have a decent cup of tea and a doughnut with me, while I decide how I’m going to salvage my family dinner.’
I couldn’t help glancing around, sure she couldn’t be talking to me.
‘Please?’ She bit her lip, and I realised to my surprise the invitation hadn’t come from pity. ‘It’s not going to be very nice cycling home in soggy jeans.’
I wiggled my hips, assessing the damage. ‘All right.’
She beamed. ‘Hurrah! I haven’t had a proper conversation with an adult – other than my husband – in at least a week. I’ve been buried in prep for my new course.’ She gestured at herself. ‘Can you believe it? I’m finally going to university! Me! Anyway, I’m not sure I can handle any more questions about man-traps or medical mycology this afternoon.’
We began walking along the main street, the triplets hopping and climbing walls and spinning along the wide pavement.
‘Sounds like an interesting university course.’
‘Eh?’
‘Man-traps and mycology. I’m trying to figure out what the course is. If I knew what mycology meant, that’d help.’
