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 weren’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.’
‘Oh!’ She grinned. ‘No. That’s the kids’ questions. I’m training to be a midwife. A whole lot of different questions. Although I did have a boyfriend once who considered pregnancy a man-trap.’
We followed the boys down a gravel driveway to the Victorian house at the end.
‘It’s a life-long dream, and after giving birth to five kids I think I’ll be a flippin’ good one. But I haven’t exactly worked out how we’re going to manage it yet.’
After shooing the boys inside, Ellen led me through a tiled hallway full of coats and shoes into the kitchen. A battered oak table stood in the centre. An enormous oven, two solid dressers and rows of open shelving filled the walls.
‘Sit down. I’ll put the kettle on.’ Ellen brushed a pile of crumbs off one of the chairs, and I perched on the end, trying to make sure none of the food remains on my jeans rubbed off. She kicked a path through the toys to the back door, letting the triplets into the garden, and dashed about chucking dirty pots into the Belfast sink before rummaging in an enormous freezer. She put a plastic tub in the microwave to defrost, poured the tea and offered me a doughnut.
‘You have a lovely house,’ I said, admiring the walls covered in children’s artwork, the pots of herbs lined up on the counter-top and the brightly coloured window seat.
‘It used to be. Lately it feels like the chaos is winning.’
‘Chaos?’ I laughed. ‘You want to see my cottage. Actually, you probably don’t.’
‘Is it that bad?’
‘Worse. Chaos and mess I can live with. Filth and animal infestations have been more of a challenge. I don’t know whether to be worried or pleased about not gagging at the stench any more.’
‘Are you sure it’s safe to live there?’
‘Right now, I don’t have any other options.’
‘Where were you before?’
‘Living with my sister in Edinburgh.’
‘So why tackle the cottage now? It’s been empty for years.’
I shrugged. ‘I needed to move on. When my mum offered me the cottage it seemed like the perfect answer.’
Before Ellen could ask me anything else, the door burst open and Dawson and his sister ran down the hall, Dawson elbowing his way in front as they approached.
‘She’s lying! I didn’t do it, she pushed me first. And then she called me a brain-dead cyberwimp who doesn’t even know the genetic code for E. coli. And Austin says he won’t walk home with me any more if she’s there, even if he is my cousin, cos she didn’t shut up the whole way about bacteria and micro-things.’
‘Not true! He’s lying! He threw my bag over the hedge, and made me give him my crisps. He said he’d tell Austin I wet my pants in the car if I didn’t.’
Dawson interrupted her. ‘LIAR!’ They carried on arguing at full speed, voices growing louder.
Ellen stood up, pushing back her chair, and placed one hand on each child’s arm. ‘Excuse me?’ Her voice was quiet, but by golly it sent shivers down my spine. ‘I think we’d better start again.’
After another ten minutes of he-said, she-did, Ellen wangled an insincere apology from both the children, and they stomped off to other parts of the house. She stood there, hands tugging at her hair. ‘Sorry. Dawson walking Maddie home from drama club was supposed to solve one of my childcare headaches. It’s a five-minute walk with no roads to cross, but Dawson is anxious about me not being around so much and he’s resisting responsibility. I don’t blame him. I’m anxious about it. In a couple of weeks the course properly kicks in, and the nanny I’d hired has taken an au pair job in California with an only child and a swimming pool instead.’
The back door crashed open and three stick-brandishing four-year-olds came hollering through, knocking over a chair, stepping on the cat’s tail and leaving a trail of mud and leaves behind them.
‘I can`t imagine why.’ Ellen shook her head, righted the chair and glanced at her watch. ‘Oh boy.’ She eyeballed the mess, the uncooked dinner, the mud. ‘It`s days like this I wish I had a wife. Sorry, Jenny, I don`t mean to be rude, but I really need to press on. Do you mind if we chat while I get things sorted?’
The sounds of battle wafted in from the hallway, followed by a loud thud, a high-pitched scream and a wail. Ellen closed her eyes and sucked in a juddery breath.
‘I`ll see what`s happened. You carry on with dinner.’ Before realising what I`d said, I was following the sobs to where Maddie stood in a bedroom doorway, clutching the broken pieces of what had once been a microscope. Her brothers were nowhere to be seen.
I pointed at one of the doors, questioningly. Maddie shook her head, extending one trembling finger to the door behind me. Opening it up, I entered an empty room. Empty apart from three pairs of muddy feet poking out from beneath the curtains.
I summoned up my best impression of Zara facing an opponent`s client. ‘Which one of you broke Maddie`s microscope, and why are you hiding here instead of out there telling her how sorry you are?’
Silence.
‘Believe me, it`ll be a lot nicer if you make a voluntary confession.’
‘Jonno did it.’ Two voices chorused from behind the curtains. ‘I did it.’ Another voice, raspy with emotion, echoed them.
‘Right.’ I pulled back the curtains to reveal three very contrite little boys, holding hands and wondering what on earth this scary lady was going to do. ‘Who`s Jonno?’
I`m not quite sure how it happened, but I bundled the triplets – or as I now knew, Jonno (with the freckles), Billy (with the curls tumbling well past his ears ‘`cos he`s scared the scissors will chop off his head’) and Hamish (with a front tooth missing from falling out of a tree) – into the shower, out again and into some clean clothes. I managed to re-connect Maddie`s microscope, and gather up the pieces of glass from the shattered specimen slides. I cheered her up with a promise of some bacteria-riddled samples of dirt from my cottage, and even coerced the four of them into tidying up some of their toys while I wiped the mud from the stairs and hallway.
It took the best part of two hours, but by the time Will returned home, Ellen had dinner in the oven, a reasonably clean kitchen, a nicely laid dining-room table and five children playing Uno with an utterly exhausted stand-in childminder.
I cycled home through the frosty evening with a tub of chicken casserole tucked into my rucksack. I’d have to eat it lukewarm, but, compared to another pot of rehydrated pasta, it’d taste like manna.