by Beth Moran
Ashley turned to glare at me, wincing as she jarred her ankle. ‘That… person was not Hillary West!’
‘It might have been.’
She stuttered, failing to get out a reply.
‘Just because she writes beautiful books about love, doesn’t mean she has to believe it. Maybe we caught her on a bad day. Maybe that was her housekeeper. Or cook, judging by her fondness for obscure kitchen utensils.’
‘Hillary West would never employ someone like that. And besides, she’s allergic to avocados.’
‘You don’t know that for sure.’
‘THAT WAS NOT HILLARY WEST OR HILLARY WEST’S HOUSE!’
I slowed down to turn onto the main road. ‘Okay. It’s your challenge.’
‘Do you WANT to go back?’ Ashley cried. ‘Look at me! I’m bruised and filthy and, as well as a sprained ankle, I think I may have a serious concussion because for a moment there it sounded like you wanted to go back to the house with a couple of pork chops and face those Hounds of the Baskervilles for a rematch while that hideous woman sharpens her apple-corer!’
I thought about it. ‘You’re right. A pork chop would only hold them off for a couple of seconds. I’m sorry. I haven’t had so much fun in ages.’
I thought a bit more. ‘I haven’t ever had so much fun.’
I glanced across at my partner in crime, her eyes bulging through her ski mask, a large rip down the sleeve of her jacket, a bloody tissue pressed against her ripped nail.
‘Next house, you do the climbing, I’ll make notes,’ she said.
‘Deal.’
We drove for a few more minutes in silence. ‘Maybe we should ask Jamie for a job,’ I said, pondering my conversation with Frances about what made me feel alive.
We laughed the whole way home.
I was squelching around the side of the cottages towards my back door when Mack’s opened, and a woman stepped out. She glanced at me briefly, then took another sharp look, eyebrows raised in alarm.
I froze, Old Jenny painfully aware of the leaves in her hair, mud streaking her clothes and wonky glasses hanging off one hinge. Mack’s wife wore a mint-green sundress and red heels. Expensive-looking sunglasses held toffee-coloured hair off her round face. Honestly? I had been expecting Mack’s wife to look like a snobby bitch. She was more like a pretty, shiny apple. Under the fitted dress she was soft and curvy and… luscious.
I swallowed, hard, and tried to force my limbs towards my own door, aware I must appear like a demented puppet.
Before I reached her, she disappeared, slamming the door shut. I jerked my way inside and scurried upstairs. It had only been a few days. We hadn’t even been that close, yet. But I missed my friend all the same.
I stripped off my filthy clothes and took a long shower. Cried some lonely tears, ate a packet of chocolate biscuits, then decided that was enough wallowing. If Mrs Mack was here to stay, why couldn’t that mean two neighbours to be friends with – double the best friends? If Mack loved her she had to be a nice person.
Of course, anyone with half a brain knew why the lonesome neighbour couldn’t be hanging out gooseberrying with the recently reconciled couple next door.
I flopped into bed, briefly wondering if Mrs Mack would want her duvet back, a thought swiftly followed by the image of her cuddled up in bed on the other side of the wall, and realising that, no, she’d probably be fine without it.
30
I hustled into the playground with five very late children. Irritable and distracted, I felt as if I’d slipped back two months in my childcare capabilities. I’d given Dawson a perfect excuse to moan and snipe at his sister all the way to school, while she fussed about rushed plaits, thrown-together lunch and the upcoming spelling test I had failed to find the time to test her on.
I hoped no one would notice the triplets’ wrinkled shirts, mismatched (or, in Billy’s case, lack of) socks and unwashed faces.
Then I spotted Adam running across the street towards the playground with his three daughters and I knew that absolutely no one was going to notice Jonno’s felt-tip tattoo.
He tumbled through the gate, getting Hannah’s pushchair stuck on the railings for a frantic couple of minutes, while the older girls hopped with agitation at their increasing lateness.
The eldest, Lily, was wearing what must have been her younger sister’s school trousers, revealing three inches of ankle and a pair of jelly sandals. She clearly hadn’t been near a hairbrush since her mum left on Friday, and, instead of her usual Pokemon rucksack, was clutching a plastic carrier bag.
Her little sister had apparently dressed herself, foregoing the regulation school uniform for that worn by princess fairy ballerina mermaids everywhere, including a huge matted blonde wig and a pink flashing sword.
She stamped her rainbow wellies like the star of Riverdance. ‘Come ON, Daddy! You have to tell Miss Howe about the washing machine so I don’t get in trouble.’
‘I know, hang on.’ Adam pulled and twisted the pushchair to no avail, as Hannah wailed.
‘I’ll sort this,’ I said, hurrying over. ‘Go and get the girls signed in.’
He gave me such a look of relief I almost felt a teensy bit sorry for him.
‘Um, I’d take Abbie’s wig off, though.’
‘NO!’ Abbie screamed, grabbing both sides.
‘There was an… incident with a pair of scissors,’ Adam mumbled.
I remembered my promise to Kiko, and beckoned to Abbie. ‘Come here, let me see what I can do.’
A few minutes later, I bounced Hannah about on my hip while Adam took the girls inside, Abbie’s real hair now twisted to cunningly conceal the missing chunks, Lily’s neatly brushed.
It was only when he jogged back out that I noticed Adam was wearing pyjama bottoms. He clearly hadn’t shaved, and, judging by the reek as he took Hannah out of my arms, hadn’t showered either.
I pushed my glasses up. ‘Going well so far?’
He wrestled a squirming Hannah into the pushchair, and straightened up to face me. ‘About as well as it would if I landed Kiko with the job of running the charity out of the blue.’
‘This isn’t a job, it’s your children.’
‘No. My job is nothing compared to this.’ He shook his head. ‘I have no clue what I’m doing.’
‘Didn’t you find the manual?’ We started to walk back towards Kiko’s house.
‘The manual doesn’t include what to do when Abbie refuses to eat dinner because one of her noodles wriggled like a worm, or how to stop them arguing over every single, little, infinitesimal thing. Or why Hannah won’t stop trying to climb out of the pushchair. Or a reminder to check the washing machine for foreign objects before you put the kids’ clothes in there and rip them to shreds.’
‘Hannah wants her rabbit.’
‘What?’
‘She’s crying for her rabbit. Well, she probably wants her mum, but Rabbit is better than nothing.’
Adam, having reached his front path, stopped and looked at me. ‘I am a terrible father.’
‘Yep.’
‘I can’t believe you knew that, and I didn’t.’
I didn’t ask if he meant Rabbit, or being a rubbish dad.
‘It’s not hard to believe, considering how little time you spend with your family.’
‘I thought Kiko enjoyed it. She wanted three kids. She chose not to work…’
‘Are you managing to get much work done and look after them, with absolutely no help from a partner? Can you imagine what her life would be like if she tried to work on top of this? Do you think she would enjoy it then?’
He rocked the pushchair, face drooping.
‘There are women who do it – and men – spend all the time they’ve got, wearing themselves to the bone working and looking after kids, being there for them, providing love and affection and time as well as hot dinners and clean clothes and all the other ten million practical things it takes to raise a family. Always, always putting themselves last, with hardly
a thanks or a well done. Let alone a hot cup of tea or a foot-rub. Those people are called single parents. When was the last time you made Kiko feel cherished, precious? Beautiful? Didn’t you make a vow about that once?’
He ran a hand over his stricken face. ‘It’s just, my job, it’s so important and…’
‘And your family isn’t?’ I pointed at him, just about shaking with rage. ‘You can train people to do your job, give them some of your hours. Presumably the charity hasn’t ground to a halt now you’re taking some time off? You are the only husband and father they have. Well. At the moment you are.’
His face crumpled. ‘What do I do? How can I make this right?’
‘Number one, man up.’ I looked at him for a long moment. Did he really expect me to give him the answers? ‘That’s it. Just be a bloody man and make the right decision.’
I spun on the heels of my trainers and strode off, straight to Sarah’s for a koala doughnut and a smoothie. Adam was an idiot. He’d made some giant mistakes, but I didn’t think he was a mistake. He’d lost his way, but for all their sakes I prayed he could find his way back. I texted the number Kiko had left us and offered to have a look through Maddie’s old uniform and see what I could find to fit his girls.
He replied five minutes later: Thanks, but I think they deserve something new.
The notebooks were dry. I had planned to get started on them straight away, but now, feeling twitchy and stressed, I instead logged onto SquashHarris.com. Seven new comments. Six of them made me smile. The seventh made me screw up my nose and hit delete. After another couple of hours figuring out how to get a spam filter on the website, I felt so stressed I was ready to look at the notebooks just to change the subject.
I gingerly placed one on a clean tea towel. Taking a deep breath, I opened the first page:
1 January 1962
Charlotte Meadows’ diary.
My hand shook so hard as I turned the next page, it ripped right down the middle.
Charlotte Meadows was a woman in love with the minutiae of everyday housewifery. Her diary, far from consisting of amusing anecdotes, an outpouring of her deepest feelings or the antics of a young newly-wed, was 90 per cent lists, 10 per cent footnotes about the lists.
Shopping, meals, housework, money spent, people she’d seen, snails on the cabbages, hours and minutes spent each day doing nothing of any interest whatsoever. And yet to her, all of it was wonderful. Some pages were unreadable, the ink having run into a giant smudge, others torn to shreds when I tried to open them. I didn’t feel as if I was missing out on much.
But I kept going. This was the kind of boring, ordinary stuff that other people got to find out about their grandparents just through seeing them from time to time. I learnt her favourite recipes, that she’d knitted her husband a cap for his birthday, had once enjoyed a social life:
Harvest Supper. Brought two apple and raspberry crumbles.
A life emerged from the pages as I pressed on – a woman, with little time and not a spare ha’penny, but determined to enjoy what she did have. Strong, hardworking, competent.
That evening, after hastily packaging up a broken transistor radio that I’d auctioned off for a bewildering amount online, I continued into the second notebook. I read of her delight in becoming pregnant, caught a whiff of worry once the midwife told her to prepare for twins. The list of jobs done shrank as days became consumed with getting ready for her babies: knitting, decorating, scrimping and saving. She sewed nappies and sheets, sold her mother’s jewellery to buy a cot large enough for two, drank each night the half-pint of stout the doctor recommended.
Slept, ate, slept even more.
And then, Isobel:
Isobel Anne Meadows born at home. S. at the Red Lion so no time for hospital.
5lb 1oz. She is healthy.
The boy died. I called him Thomas.
In three lines, everything changed.
I shut the notebook and spent the rest of the evening watching stupid videos of pets online.
They failed to shift the boulder of granite sitting in my chest, but at least helped muffle the sound of my weeping heart.
When I arrived back from school the following day to find a car in front of the house, I initially assumed it was more Freecyclers. However, as I walked closer, a man stepped out from behind a broken wardrobe, wearing a hard hat and holding a clipboard.
‘Ah. Are you the owner of the property?’
‘Yes.’
‘Darren Smith. Environmental Health.’ He held out a hand. I shook it for the shortest length of time possible.
‘Oh.’
‘Want to know why I’m here?’ he asked, with a cheery grin.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well, legally I have to tell you.’ He rolled his eyes, as if to say, ‘Silly old laws!’
I waited until he’d cleared his throat, tapping his pen on the clipboard a few times. ‘A concerned citizen contacted us about the waste accumulation, pest hazard and general disrepair of your property. Somebody is worried you’re going to do yourself a mischief.’
‘Who?’
‘Well, me, for starters.’ He chuckled.
‘Who contacted you?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say. But…’ he screwed up his face as if talking to a small child ‘… they do have a point.’
‘I’m clearing out my grandmother’s house. She had a lot of stuff. I’m selling what I can, and either recycling the rest or offering it up on Freecycle, but that takes time. Once I’m down to just the rubbish no one wants I’ll hire a skip and move it all out in one go.’
‘Yes, I completely understand and that’s no problem at all, as long as it’s all gone in the next seven days.’
‘What?’
‘You have seven days to clear the outside of the property and restore it to what I deem to be an acceptable standard. Now, if you don’t mind. Well, whether you mind or not, I need to inspect internally.’
‘Why?’ I tried to summon up New, Kickass Jenny from where she’d hidden behind my pale, lily-coloured liver. ‘Do you have a warrant?’
‘I have all the required documentation.’ He flipped over the top sheet on the clipboard and waved it under my nose.
‘Why do you need to inspect it internally? It’s not affecting anyone else.’
‘Rat infestations don’t respect property boundaries. Neither does substandard plumbing. Damp. Dry rot. Poorly repaired roof. Electrical issues posing a fire hazard.’
‘Did next door call you?’ My voice wobbled weakly.
‘As I stated clearly before, I’m not at liberty to confirm or deny that. Shall we proceed?’ He strode up to the front door.
‘I don’t use that one. You need to come round the back.’
He frowned at me, all pretence of jollity gone. ‘Do you have documentation to confirm you are the owner?’
‘Not in my pocket, no.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘If you’re being obstructive then I’m within my rights to call the police to obtain forced entry.’
‘I’m not being obstructive! The front door is obstructive, so I use the back.’
‘Please watch your attitude. Environmental Health employees have a no-tolerance policy regarding physical or verbal abuse.’
Not trusting myself to reply, I stalked off, assuming the power-crazed inspector would follow. As I marched past Mack’s kitchen, the blind twitched back into place.
That gave my mind pause. I knew Mack hadn’t tipped off the council. But was there a chance his big-city wife had? And if so, why?
Nearly an hour later, I had trailed Darren Smith around every inch of my house. He’d scrawled pages and pages of notes, accompanied by those teeth-sucking noises builders made and lots of head shaking.
I followed him right to his car, ensuring he couldn’t do anything sneaky like plant a rat’s nest in the cracked sink on my drive.
‘So, what’s the verdict?’ I asked, aiming for confident, breezy, on-it. Sounding more lik
e a woman who’d only just realised the green and brown speckles on her dining-room wallpaper weren’t part of the original design.
‘I will be sending a full report.’ He pursed his thin lips. ‘To summarise, however, as well as needing to clear the exterior of the property, there is extensive work required internally in order to render the dwelling fit for human habitation. This includes a full rewire, multiple plumbing works, damp-proofing, mould treatment and control of the rodent infestation. To start with.’
‘How long do I have?’
‘We try to be reasonable, Ms Birkenshaw. The grounds need to be cleared within the week. As does the infestation. I’ll give you a month for the rest.’
‘I can’t get all that done in a month.’
‘Well, that’s no problem. We can do it for you.’ The grin was back. ‘Only it will cost significantly more if we have to arrange for the works to be carried out. No good reason why decent, honest taxpayers should be forking out for us to clear up your mess, now, is there?’
‘I’m clearing up my own mess – it just takes time. You can’t expect…’
I was arguing with the wind. Darren Smith, Environmental Health Officer and all-round twazzock had driven off.
Five seconds later I was hammering my fist against Mack’s kitchen door.
‘Oh, hi, Jenny.’ He wore a spotty shirt and jeans that were, in my opinion, way too skinny for a man over the age of twenty-five. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘I just had a visit from the council.’ I barged into the kitchen, resisting the urge to sweep two breakfast bowls off the table and onto the floor.
‘What did they want?’
‘They wanted,’ I snapped, ‘to carry out an inspection in response to an anonymous tip-off from someone concerned about the effect of my house on the neighbouring property.’
‘Ah.’ Mack crossed his arms and leant against the worktop.
‘Did you call Environmental Health about me?’ I blinked hard to stop any tears leaking out.
