Cathy rang early, waking Effie, who stretched a weary arm out to pick up the receiver. She had a dreadful premonition that it was her daughter. Who else would ring that early on a Saturday?
‘Mum, are you all right then? Jim said you were quite upset. He was back very late.’
‘Yes, darling, I’m sorry about that, but I was upset. It suddenly hit me. He was incredibly helpful, Jim I mean, really helpful and I’ve got to get that window properly fixed, but he did a good job.’
‘Glad to hear he’s doing something useful somewhere. Anyway, if you really are OK I’m just checking whether you are still ‘on’ to baby sit tonight. We’ve got one of Jim’s boring dinners. A three-line whip, and I hate work stuff getting into the weekend, and they’re a boozy lot his work mates, and not so easy to get another babysitter this late on a Saturday.’
Effie was aware that she hesitated for a moment before replying:
‘Of course, darling. I’m fine. I’ll see you at 7 then. Must get going now and ring that glazier.’
She put the phone down in a cold sweat, her daughter’s voice ringing in her ears. Her mind was going to explode any minute and her stomach turned like a butter churn. What had she done? What had Jim done? What actually happened? Think! Don’t think! Where to go with those thoughts? You are a train careering out of control?
Now this really won’t do. Effie pulled herself out of bed with a degree of resolve, showered and swallowed a strong cup of coffee. The main thing, she told herself, was to get through the day in as calm a fashion as possible so that she would be fit to baby sit in the evening. She didn’t even want to ring Susie to tell her about the break-in because she knew she would not be able to hide her disturbed state of mind from her friend’s sharp scrutiny. And right now, she felt so utterly shamed about what had happened that she could not acknowledge it to anyone. Distraction was the answer and a good start was to check last week’s forecast for the stock market. She did this every Saturday, was rarely far out and this Saturday was no exception. Thus armed with some evidence that life was not totally random, that she was not solely subject to her most basic animal instincts, she set off to the shops with a long list of items to purchase which included a Marks and Spencer cake – she would still go to the bazaar - sweets for the children and flowers for Cathy. It was normally some fruit for the kids and a packet of herbal tea for Cathy but today felt different. Doesn’t the guilty man come bearing gifts? said a voice in her head. The guilty woman too, or the guilty mother? Hideous thought!
However, the steel grey sky was beginning to shift, shafts of sunlight were breaking through and Effie’s volatile mood gradually settled as she immersed herself in the hurly burly of the high street. She arrived home laden with groceries and a large bouquet of sweet-scented lilies as the glazier’s van drew up. The window was soon replaced by the young man who assured her that ‘that’ll keep ‘em out’ as he gave her a rather too friendly pat on her arm.
The bazaar was being held in the grounds of the town hall and by the time Effie arrived there was quite a throng. She wove her way through the stalls of jams, honey, fruit and bric-a-brac until she spotted Sally standing tall over a stall laden with a colourful display of cakes and biscuits. She was busy with a batch of small chattering youngsters who were drawn with big eyes to the display of top-heavy cup cakes iced in garish pink and blue. Sally noticed Effie as she hovered, cake platter in hand.
‘Ah, hi, Effie. Great. You made it’ she said taking the cake from her ‘but not the cake I see.’
Effie grimaced. Did this woman know everything?
‘Sorry, Sally, I just didn’t have time for baking. Anyway, how are you?’
‘Oh absolutely fine. Now hang on, keep your fingers out, please’ she addressed a small red-haired child. ‘Frank’s here somewhere. In charge of the treasure hunt and I think Oliver’s manning the tea stand. Sure he’d like to see you. Can’t talk now. No, Sasha, you can’t have another one when you’ve bitten into one already.’
Effie left Sally to it. She had to admire her competence, her confident certainty while she was feeling bowled over by self-doubt and guilt. She couldn’t imagine Sally being so weak as to allow herself to get into such a tangled situation and she had a brief fantasy of telling her all about it, of sitting in a chair and having Sally sit opposite listening and giving her clear expert advice. But the atmosphere of the afternoon was cheerful and she soon relaxed into the festive mood. She wandered through the crowd, letting the autumn sunshine warm her, greeting a couple of people she knew, stopping to buy a pot of honey for Cathy, more sweets for the children. She had a go at the tombola, throwing with unusual accuracy so that she found herself walking off clutching the prize of a huge bright pink teddy bear.
By now Effie was dying for a cup of tea and a sit down so that any reservations she had about meeting Oliver again were overruled and she wended her way towards the tea tent. At first she did not recognise him. He was standing behind a large urn filling and handing out cups of tea and slices of cake. There was definitely something different about him. He looked less scruffy and all over the place. She realised that it was his hair: the awful wispy bits had been cut and his balding head now looked neater, he looked younger, surprisingly modern.
‘Effie! Sally told me you might be here. What a pleasure. So how are you? Tea?’
‘Yes, thanks.’ She took a plastic cup from his eager hands. ‘So....? How have you been?’
‘Good. Better, yes, in fact, very well. Sal’s been taking me in hand and I really do think life looks good. I’ve joined the local history club and getting involved in it and it really has opened things up for me. I think I was needing something to focus on, you know. But what about you? You know I felt after our last meeting that perhaps I needed to apologise to you for something but I wasn’t quite sure what.’
‘Really? That’s funny because that’s exactly what I felt. I don’t think I left your house with much glory. And Sally is such an amazingly competent woman. She’s quite hard to live up to.’
Oliver laughed. ‘Oh Sal’s certainly a super-woman, but hugely nice with it. She and Alice used to get on well although they were very different. But how are you? It’s so nice to see you, I can’t tell you’ he beamed.
A couple of hours later Effie was staggering off the bus laden with bags and clutching the pink teddy. In her enthusiasm to come bearing gifts she had forgotten that her car was at the garage and she would have to carry her shopping. Not the only weight I’m carrying, was her thought as she pressed the bell which was opened promptly by Cathy.
‘Good god, Mum, what on earth’s that?’
‘What?’
‘That hideous pink thing you’re carrying. You’re not thinking of giving that to the girls are you?’
At that moment Daisy and Rosie appeared and promptly began to squabble over who should have ownership of the furry beast so that Effie felt compelled to dig into the bag for the sweets and also to offer the bunch of slightly sagging lilies to her daughter.
‘I thought you might like these, darling, they smell nice, and sorry about the teddy. I won it this afternoon.’
Cathy took the proffered flowers, frowning and holding them away from her.
‘They may smell nice but the pollen is a nightmare if you get it on your clothes. It never comes off. I mean, Mum, this is my best dress.’
‘Oh dear, well, let me put them in some water. There’s some honey and things for you too.’
‘Mum, it’s all very lovely but, honestly, you know I don’t like the kids having too many sweets and just look at them, listen to them. Sugar goes straight to their heads. You’ll be lucky if you get them settled for a few hours and that pink thing is quite gross, totally tasteless like processed cheese. Yuck.’
Cathy was warming to her task of having a go at her mother as she jammed the lilies into a vase. ‘Anyway, I’m happy to leave those two in your capable hands while Jim and I go off and have a marvellous time with his oh so exciting work-mates. And where is he? That man’s never around when I need him. Seems to spend his time helping other people.’
Effie said nothing. She had very little defence and her daughter’s ill-humour seemed quite justified and appropriate, even quite a relief. But she had little time to reflect on this as the noise coming from the direction of the girls was increasing exponentially and Cathy was clearly in no mood to intervene.
‘Your call, I think, Mum’ she said turning to leave the kitchen as Jim entered.
‘Ah, there you are. Come on, Mum’s arrived as you can hear and if we’re going I’d rather not be late.’
So saying, Cathy swept out of the kitchen, Effie headed for the noise and Jim followed his wife, turning as he reached the door to call a goodbye to the girls. Effie looked round as he did so, catching his eye in a moment of hesitation when he smiled at her briefly before disappearing, with the result that Effie had to tackle her over-excited grandchildren with a bright red face and thumping heart.
The process of calming them down, however, had the effect of settling her own feelings so that by the time the girls were tucked up in bed Effie could tell herself that there was at least a semblance of normality and she was ready to throw herself into the bedtime story. ‘So what’s it to be tonight? Rosie, I think it’s your turn to choose.’
Rosie chose a book of ‘modern-day fables for young people’, a tome which Effie picked up doubtfully, but which she couldn’t resist faced with the child’s insistence that she was definitely a ‘young people’. The story was the tale of how ‘Awful Andrew’ sends a text message to ‘Cool Carol’ pretending to be her boyfriend Johnnie, setting up a date to meet after school, so that Awful Andrew can turn up at the rendezvous ready to step in when she finds out that her boyfriend has let her down.
‘But what Awful Andrew does not know’ read Effie ‘was that Cool Carol has checked the message with Johnnie, realises that it is a trick and the two of them decide to teach Awful Andrew a lesson. So Cool Carol arrives on time whereupon Awful Andrew appears from the bushes where he has been lying in wait, only to be confronted by Johnnie who has been filming the whole thing on his I-Pad including a shot of the hoax message. Johnnie wants to take his mobile phone off him but Cool Carol persuades him that he has had punishment enough and the two of them go off arm in arm to get a coke, leaving Awful Andrew skulking in the bushes, wondering how he is going to face everyone at school the next day.’
The two girls listened intently to the story with only one interruption from Rosie who asked what ‘skulking’ meant.
‘So there we are’ said Effie closing the book and mentally telling herself she wasn’t going to read one of those again. ‘Time to go to sleep.’
‘They were doing a lot of pretending’ said Daisy as she snuggled herself down under the duvet. ‘I don’t see why Awful Andrew had to pretend he wanted to see Cool Carol, I mean, what was wrong with him?’
‘Darling, I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t think she’d like him.’
‘But she didn’t like him when he played a trick’ protested Daisy.
‘Yes, I think that’s the point of the story, it’s helping us to see that it’s better not to pretend things, to be as open and honest as we can’.
‘Mummy says I can pretend if it’s a game’ piped up Rosie ‘and I like when we play ‘let’s pretend I’ve got two pounds to spend... I’d spend one pound on sweets and one pound on colour pens and one pound on buying Mummy a bag of crisps.. and..’
‘That’s more than two pounds, silly’ interrupted a sleepy Daisy ‘and I don’t like it when people don’t tell truthful things. Big people shouldn’t do that, should they, Grandma?’
‘No, poppet, they shouldn’t’ said Effie as she tucked the little girl in, willing herself not to think about the mammoth-sized lump of guilt that was pressing hard inside, at least not until she’d settled the children for the night and she could escape downstairs to pour herself a stiff drink.
By the time Cathy and Jim returned Effie had consumed a considerable quantity of Scotch, not having found any open bottle of wine in the fridge and not wanting to appear too eager by opening a new one. It felt, anyway, as though it was spirits that would do the trick, if anything, tonight. And do what exactly? The sense that a clash of titanic proportions was engulfing her between her desire and her worst fear was only partially ameliorated by the Scotch and a couple of hours spent watching trivia on the television.
Around 11 o’clock she heard the key in the door. Cathy threw her bag down on the sofa.
‘Well, that was a waste of a Saturday evening. The food! I’m always telling you there’s no such thing as a little garlic. I must be reeking.’
‘I thought the food was rather good’ Jim shrugged ‘you were determined not to enjoy yourself.’
‘No! I was sitting next to a man who quite honestly had nothing to say and just kept on saying it. Bo. o.o..ring.’
Neither had yet looked in Effie’s direction.
‘Well, I guess I’d better get going. The girls are fine. They settled OK’ said Effie rising and suddenly a bit dizzy as she searched in her bag: ‘where’s that umbrella, it’s raining, isn’t it?’
‘You mean you haven’t got your car, Mum?’
‘No, it’s at the garage, what with the break-in and everything, I haven’t been able to pick it up. Drunk a bit much, anyway. Sorry, darling, don’t worry. I’ll get the bus.’ There was definitely some relief in being able to apologise for something openly.
‘Oh don’t be silly, Mum’ said Cathy irritably ‘Jim’ll take you home, won’t you?’ She glowered at her husband. ‘He’s happy to take you and I’m grateful for the baby sitting, so everyone’s happy, and I’m off to bed ‘perchance to dream’ – as Macbeth or someone said.’
As though to take up the theatrical reference, or soften the mood, Jim swung his coat round his shoulders, bowed to Effie like one of the musketeers and fixing on her with his blue eyes assured her that he would be ‘honoured’ to take her home. It was a request Effie could not refuse.