I don’t know why I have a sudden urge to bake when I get home, but I figure it’s better than curling up on the sofa bed and crying, which feels like my only other option right now. When I go to collect ingredients from the pantry I spot a jar of peanut butter. Not the one-hundred-per-cent-nuts-and-nothing-else gloop that Mum gets from the organic grocer, but real, salt-and-sugar-added stuff. Dad must’ve bought it without thinking about the consequences. If Mum sees it tomorrow, it’ll go straight in the bin. Unable to bear the thought of so much bad-goodness going to waste, I add it to the pile of chocolate, flour and sugar cradled in my left arm.
I make my usual brownie recipe and pour it into the battered and stained baking tin before gently stirring through the peanut butter with a spatula. Well, I start off gently, but the nutty texture makes the peanut butter want to clump, rather than make the pretty swirls I’d pictured. I try using a fork to scrape it through the chocolate, rather than stirring it in, but it’s still pretty lumpy. Then Boris arrives and starts whingeing for his dinner, which means it’s six o’clock. If I’m going to get these brownies cooked before Dad and Gran get home, I have to get them in the oven now, so I give up on the swirling and hope that the heat will somehow melt the lumps evenly.
“Just give me a couple of minutes,” I say, hoping Boris is feeling reasonable.
He lets out a long, pained meeee-ow to tell me that he’s not, which Rocky immediately mimics. “Reee-row, reee-ow, reee-ow,” sings Rocky, bouncing on his perch. Boris pauses to give him the death stare before repeating his plea more loudly, and the two of them are soon in such fierce competition that Boris doesn’t even notice when I empty a tin of Senior’s Feast into his bowl.
I get my portable CD player and earphones from the study and crank up the volume on the Good Things mix that Siouxsie made me for my birthday. I wish I’d thought of washing up to music years ago. Aside from shutting out the cat/bird cacophony, I’m surprised by how many dance moves you can do with your hands in soapy water. Plus, the scrubbing brush makes an excellent microphone.
Cleaning to music is so much fun that I figure I may as well try to get Mum’s study back to a pristine state while I’m at it. I’m dusting the desk and belting out the chorus to “Rock the Casbah” when Dad walks in. I stop singing and push my earphones back.
“Hello, Sausage, do you have something in the oven? It smells like a peanut factory’s burning down.”
The downside to cleaning with earphones on: you can’t hear the oven timer when it rings.
The sky was still a tiny bit light when I went to sleep last night, and blazingly blue when Dad knocked on the study door a few minutes ago to tell me he was off to fetch Mum. He sounded chirpier than he has since Mum first told us she was sick.
Things I don’t want to do today
1. Scrape burnt chocolate and peanut butter off the baking tin.
2. Tell my friends I’m not coming to the New Year’s Eve picnic that was my idea in the first place.
3. See in the new year with an annoying old bag and her demented bird.
If Mum wasn’t coming home today, I’d leave the blackened baking tin for a while longer and spend some quality moping time on the sofa bed, where I’ve been for approximately the last thirteen hours. It was probably a bit melodramatic to burst into tears over burnt baked goods and storm off to the study but, after the day I’d had, a more rational response didn’t come to mind.
Dad was pretty understanding when I told him that I’d clean up in the morning and that everyone should just stay out of my way until then. I guess he had no choice since I’d locked the study door behind me. No doubt it’ll be held against me next time I beg for a lock on my bedroom door, but I needed to cocoon myself to get some thinking space.
Dan said he was catching the early train to his mum’s, so he’s probably at the station by now. I wonder if he called last night. Part of me hopes he did, just so whoever answered could tell him that I was already asleep and he’d know that his going away wasn’t keeping me awake at night … and that my uncontrollable crying yesterday afternoon was purely a symptom of being overtired.
I go upstairs for a shower but Gran’s in there, either with Rocky (ew) or doing bird impressions (freaky). On the upside, at least this way I’ll be able to get the baking tin scrubbed without her watching over my shoulder to make sure I’m doing it right. But when I get to the kitchen I can’t see the tin. It’s not soaking in the sink, it hasn’t been stowed out of sight in the oven and it’s certainly not on any of the spotless counters. Ziggy comes in from the garage while I’m searching through the cupboards.
“Morning, Fraymond. Over your PMS yet?”
“Shut up, rodent.”
“I’ll take that as a no.” Ziggy pulls off his T-shirt and wipes his armpits with it. “What are you looking for? If you mess up the kitchen, Gran’ll kill you. She made me eat breakfast outside so I wouldn’t leave crumbs.”
I press my lips together to keep from smiling. “I can’t find the brownie tray. Dad must’ve hidden it away so Mum doesn’t see it.”
“Isn’t that it?” Ziggy points to a shiny silver tin on the bottom shelf.
I pull it out of the cupboard to inspect it more closely. It’s the same size as my brownie tray, but it looks brand-new.
Gran comes in with Rocky on her shoulder. “Scrubs up all right, doesn’t it?”
“Did you do this?”
Gran nods. “I managed to save most of the brownies, too. They were okay once I cut off the top and bottom layer. I think that recipe would’ve been a winner if they’d come out of the oven on time.”
I open the lid of the plastic container she’s pointing to. Inside there’s a neat layer of brownies. They’re thinner than usual and covered in thick, shiny chocolate icing. The fact that they look and smell delicious makes my blood boil.
“What gives you the right to mess around with my brownies? Do you have to interfere in everything?”
Rocky clacks his beak at me menacingly and stands taller on Gran’s shoulder, but I refuse to be intimidated. I glare at the two of them.
“Here we go,” mutters Ziggy as he leaves the kitchen.
Gran’s voice is quiet. “I didn’t mean to interfere, Bloss. You were so sad last night, I just wanted to do something nice for you.”
I just wanted to do something nice for you, nine words to which there is no comeback. “Oh … well … thanks.”
“That’s all right. I always find giving something a good hard scrub therapeutic. It gives me something to take my anger out on, you know? Plus, it’s great for the arms – helps keep the dreaded bingo wings at bay.” She holds up her trim arm as evidence, waiting for me to smile, but I’m more interested in the first part of her explanation.
“What were you feeling angry about?”
“Oh, you know.” She walks towards Rocky’s perch, keeping her back to me as she settles him. “My daughter having cancer, not being with Archie on New Year’s Eve, missing my little flat and my friends at the villa … But you know what they say: busy hands still the brain.”
“Well, thank you, but I would have done it myself.”
Gran smiles and shakes her head. “You know what you are, Bloss? A control freak, just like your mother.” She turns back to making her tea before I can argue.
At least I can cross the first chore off my to-do list, even if I didn’t do it myself. Now, onto the second. I email Vicky, Steph and Siouxsie saying I can’t come tonight because Mum’s coming home. It’s not a lie, I tell myself as I hit send. Before I’ve even finished cleaning out my spam folder, a reply from Siouxsie arrives. She’s sick and can’t come either. I’m not sure what to make of it. At least I know she’s not cancelling because she doesn’t want to go if I’m there, but the Sooz I know would have to be on her deathbed to miss a night out with her friends.
I race to open the door when I hear the Volvo pulling into the driveway. I don’t know what I expected – that the hospital would send her home with a wheelchair maybe, or at least that she’d need to lean on Dad – but I’m surprised to see Mum get out of the car and walk to the front door by herself. She notices me waiting for her and walks a little faster, enveloping me in her arms even before saying hello. She’s wearing her usual perfumed oil, but the antiseptic hospital smell still clings to her skin. Hugging her back, I try not to brush against the row of stitches I imagine running like a railway track across the right side of her chest.
“It’s good to be home,” she says when she finally pulls away from me.
Dad arrives, clutching Mum’s overnight bag and a plastic bag from the pharmacy. “I’ll just do a quick tidy in the bedroom,” he tells Mum. “I didn’t have time to make the bed before I picked you up.”
“Already done,” says Gran, coming out of the kitchen wearing Dad’s apron and holding a large knife. “And I changed the sheets while I was at it.”
Dad’s cheeks go bright red. Having glimpsed the state he left the bedroom in this morning, I’m not surprised: if it wasn’t for the queen-size bed, I could’ve mistaken it for Ziggy’s sty. Dad mutters thank you and takes Mum’s stuff upstairs.
“I’ve got the kettle on for a cuppa,” says Gran, turning back towards the kitchen.
“I appreciate you tidying up, but you really shouldn’t have gone into our bedroom,” says Mum when the three of us are sitting at the table with steaming mugs of tea and a plate of gingersnaps. “I think Terence is a bit embarrassed.”
Gran dunks a biscuit into her tea and sucks on it loudly. “Does he think I’ve never seen a pair of dirty underpants before? What’s this family got against accepting a bit of help?”
“Nothing, but–” Mum is cut short by a violent screech from the corner of the room. She jumps in her chair, wincing when her right arm bangs the edge of the table.
“You haven’t met Rocky yet, have you?” Gran goes over to the perch and holds out her wrist for him to step onto. “Gene, this is Rocky. Rocko, this is your big sister, Gene.”
Mum and Rocky exchange looks of mutual distrust.
“You’d better say hello,” I advise her. “Rocky gets aggro when he thinks he’s being ignored.”
Gran gives me the old-lady death stare. “He just wants to feel included.”
“Very nice to meet you, Rocky,” says Mum, “but perhaps you’d be more comfortable back on your perch?”
Gran looks miffed but she takes Rocky back to the other side of the room, handing him a gingersnap as compensation.
“Where’s Zig?” Mum asks me, glancing towards the garage as if she expects him to walk through the door at the mention of his name.
“He’s probably at Biggie’s place. He’s pretty much moved in there while you’ve been away.”
Gran tsks as she takes her seat again. “I don’t like that Biggie boy, Gene. I told Terry that he’s a bad influence on Ziggy, but he said–”
“I said that I thought all of us had enough to worry about at the moment and that Gene and I will deal with it once things are back to normal,” says Dad from the doorway.
Gran scowls and picks up her mug.
In the five minutes that she’s been home, Mum’s gone from grinning like she just won the lottery to looking like she misses the peace and quiet of her hospital bed.