Mummy's Little Helper (18 page)

‘Been here?’

‘
You
. Having a lorry load of grief! Remember Spencer? Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten why you had to move house in the first place? I mean, it’s turned out brilliantly, but just remember what led up to it.’

‘I know, love. I do …’ I remembered it all too well. The terrible shame of our last landlord paying us a visit that day. He had brought round a petition that most of our old neighbours had signed, demanding that something be done about ‘the type’ of children we had living at our house. They’d been referring to Spencer, of course, who had caused no end of grief around the neighbourhood. House breaking, fire starting and fighting were just a few of his misdemeanours. No, I certainly hadn’t forgotten why we’d moved.

‘Well,
exactly
,’ huffed Riley. ‘Why the hell should you be made to feel like this all the time? Everything you do –
everything
– you do because you care about the kids you get, and if they can’t see that –’

‘John
can
see that, love. He one hundred per cent can.’

‘Yeah, but what about the rest of them? Honest, Mum. This is a load of trumped-up nonsense, and I’ll bet there’s something going on with that woman that you don’t even know about. Don’t let them give you trouble, okay? You just stand up for yourself. And then when you’ve done that, if you want to tell them all to stuff it, you do that. Who could blame you? The cheek of it!’

I felt tears prickling in my eyes watching my daughter so animated and upset on my behalf. And I also knew it was because she could see my own resilience weakening, which wasn’t like me.
Casey, you need to man up
, I told myself.

‘Oh, I’m not at that stage yet,’ I told Riley firmly. ‘It’ll get sorted. I know it will, and I refuse to waste another moment worrying about it. Far more important things to do, frankly. We have a party to plan.’

And so we did. Though the business with all my cupboard contents still niggled at me, I resolved to put it to one side and concentrate on my own family, because that, in the end, was what mattered most. And Riley and I, list-makers
par excellence
, went into party planning overdrive, committing everything – from the invitations to the music, the food, the decorations, the contents of the party bags – onto our usual array of carefully scribbled lists. Within the hour we had it all organised, written on our matching sheets of paper, which were then carefully stowed into our respective handbags. Roll on the weekend, I thought, as I cast my eye over our expanding guest list, and having my house full of friends and family.

However, it was difficult to stop my thoughts straying back to Abby and how, in terms of her OCD behaviour, there seemed to be something of a backward slide. And that was another thing, I huffed to myself. Where was everyone’s sense of urgency? They (whoever ‘they’ were – both social services and Sarah felt like they were on my case right now) seemed much more interested in my perceived transgressions against everyone than in the business of dealing with this little girl’s mental state. Which, as Wednesday became Thursday, was giving me real cause for concern.

I’d got up early – having decided to cram my shower in before either Mike or Abby – and tiptoed across the landing to the airing cupboard to get myself a towel. I opened the door and just stood there in amazement. Normally I just took clean towels out of the tumble dryer, folded them into quarters and returned them to the cupboard. But it was as if the fairies had been and visited overnight. The shelf had now been reorganised into four distinct sections. Each section was devoted to towels of similar colours, and the towels were no longer crudely folded into fours. Instead, each had been folded once lengthways and then tightly rolled and stacked, end facing outwards. They reminded me of those liquorice rolls you used to get as children, all wound up like a pin wheel, with a coloured centre. I carefully extracted one, being careful not to disturb any of the others. The work, clearly, of a fairy called Abby.

When she came down to breakfast I decided to be direct. I was still acutely aware of monitoring the bald patch she’d created, and as I put her cereal down in front of her I stroked her head, exposing it. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to be getting any worse.

‘Well, now,’ I said, picking up the milk carton and pouring some over her puffed wheat. ‘What a neat job you’ve made of my airing cupboard, sweetie. Where on earth did you find the time to do all that?’

She looked up at me nervously. ‘Am I in trouble?’ But when she saw I was still smiling, she gave me a rueful one of her own. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night. Not at all. So I thought I’d be useful. So I got up and did some more sorting out for you. Is that okay?’

I sat down across the table from her. ‘It’s fine, love. Of course it is. But, you know, you need your sleep. The middle of the night’s not the time to be doing housework, is it? Especially on school nights.’

‘I know. I’m sorry,’ she mumbled.

‘No need to be sorry. It’s just that we could have done those jobs together – like with my kitchen cupboards. You did them as well, didn’t you? But you know those are really my jobs; in any case, you shouldn’t feel you have to do them.’

She put her spoon down. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I know you’ve been so busy. And you’ve been so sad –’ That caught me short. I kept my mouth shut, however. ‘And seemed so stressed, and what with the party, and having so much to do, I just thought it would be better if you didn’t have to worry about the house on top of all that …’ She picked up her spoon again, but then seemed to think better of it. ‘Casey,’ she said. ‘You know you shouldn’t keep open bags in your cupboards, don’t you? I was going to tell you. That’s why I had to throw so much away. Did you know that little beetles breed in flour once it’s been opened? And you could accidentally eat them … it’s just
asking
for trouble.’

She picked up her spoon again, while I concentrated on not letting my jaw drop. This poor child. She was obviously so tuned into the emotional temperature because of years of constantly watching and assessing her mother and worrying, day to day, if she was feeling okay.

I also felt helpless, and, once again, angry, because I knew nothing would even begin to be done about it till this whole business of Sarah’s allegations was out of the way.

Wednesday, I decided, couldn’t come soon enough.

Before I woke Abby up on her birthday morning, I decided I would take a few of the balloons I had bought for the party, and decorate the breakfast table for her. I was pleased that two cards had already arrived in the mail. One, which was fat and squashy, had been franked by the hospital, so I assumed it must be from Sarah, and I imagined the other might be from Bridget, which made me give her a mental brownie point. It was usual for social workers to do this, of course, but given their somewhat new and strained relationship I was particularly pleased to see it in this case. I popped both on the kitchen table by her place mat.

Once I’d also fixed the balloons to her chair, I pulled out the presents from the family that I’d hidden under the stairs – now it was ‘properly organised’ I knew it would be the last place she’d look – and placed them alongside the cards. Finally, as a special treat (and for me as much as Abby) I made pancakes and syrup for breakfast.

‘Come on, lazy bones,’ I smiled, once I’d gone upstairs to wake her. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and smiled blearily. ‘Happy birthday, sweetie!’ I said, planting a kiss on her head. ‘Why don’t you get dressed after breakfast today – come down in your jim-jams. I’ve made you your favourites.’

She roused herself at that. ‘Pancakes?’

‘And syrup. Just the way you like them. Quickly then, before they go cold.’

Following me into the dining room, Abby squealed when she saw the table. I had added a daisy cupcake with a candle in it to blow out, and also scattered the table with glitter shapes. She spent a moment taking it in. Had anything like this ever been done to her?
Of course
, I told myself. Sarah loved her. That was never in question. Still, her astonishment seemed genuine. She threw her arms around me. ‘Oh Casey,’ she said. ‘It looks so great! Thank you, thank you!’

And for all that she didn’t ‘do’ birthdays very much, Abby certainly tore into her presents. I watched her happily. Sarah’s card contained a delicate silver charm bracelet – the present she’d been buying when she’d had her fall in town – with two charms already: a little heart and a diamante star. And our family had done her proud as well. Kieron and Lauren had bought her a lovely silver locket on a chain, and Riley and David a jewellery-making kit. My sister, bless her, had got her a child’s baking set, complete with a new apron and natty chef’s hat. ‘Oh look, Casey!’ she cried as she put it on. ‘My own set. I can wear these when I go to work at the café!’

I felt a stab of irritation. It was so silly, her not being allowed to go there. I would definitely state my case about that, come Monday. But just as quickly as I thought that, I put it out of my mind. I was more interested, anyway, on what she thought about what we’d got her, which – inspired by what Kieron had done with the picture of Bob – was a virtual pet. It was a hand-held game console in which lived a ‘real life’ puppy, which would march up to the screen and start yapping till you patted it, and, once you’d programmed it, needed all the attention a real pet did – regular feeds, exercise and lots of love. It had seemed mad to me the first time I’d come across such a thing, but my niece had had one and had loved it to bits.

Of course, Abby being Abby, she immediately started making plans about how she was going to take care of him. ‘Oh, he’s so sweet, Casey. And I’m going to call him Snowball ’cos, look, he’s
just
like a fluffy ball of snow. And you’ll have to mind him when I’m at school because I won’t be allowed, and, oh God – what if he misses me?’

I grinned at her. ‘I’m sure he’ll be just
fine
, love. You’ll be the perfect mummy for him, and while you’re not there I’ll be his foster mum. Now, let’s get stuck into those pancakes, shall we?’

What with having to set the console to ‘pet’ her virtual puppy at various intervals in her absence, it was a bit of a mad rush getting ready without keeping the taxi waiting, and I had a moment of anxiety about my ‘inspired’ choice of present. Would she now – on top of everything else – worry about Snowball all day?

But I put that out of my mind too – she was going to be made better, I felt sure of it. And it was all about dealing with worries, not doing away with them. And besides, I had a party to get organised, didn’t I? It didn’t matter how much you pre-organised, a party took work, and there was a lot that couldn’t be done until the day.

First up, of course, was the cleaning. Riley would be over later to give me a hand with the preparations, but before that I needed to get the place clean. Mike, of course, thought I was barmy for doing this. ‘You’re mad, love,’ he’d said before setting off to work. ‘We’re going to have a houseful of dirty little toddlers, making a right mess everywhere, and you want to clean it up ready for them. Bonkers, that’s what you are, love, plain bonkers.’

‘Oh go on, you, get off to work,’ I’d chided. ‘It’s a woman thing. I don’t expect you – a mere man – to understand.’

‘Woman thing? No, just a Casey thing,’ he chuckled, swiftly ducking to avoid a flicking with my duster.

And, naturally, I took no notice of him, because it was my party, and I’d clean if I wanted to – it was one of the few things I felt I could control in
my
life right now. So by the time Abby arrived home again we were pretty much good to go, which meant she could lavish all her attention on her puppy. So maybe not such a bad idea, then, I thought, as I watched her fuss with it. Though Riley and I both couldn’t help smiling as she called to us over her shoulder. ‘Just feeding Snowball – and then I’m ready to give you guys a hand!’

‘All done, love,’ I told her, ‘and you’ve got something to do anyway – get out of your uniform and get changed for the party. Go on, off you go. I’ve laid some clothes out for you on the bed.’

That was her other surprise. I’d bought her another, secret, present: a proper party dress – pink and white polka dot with a net tutu underskirt. I had no way of knowing whether it would be something she’d choose herself, but judging by the
Glee
obsession and the pink obsession generally, I figured that she might, and she did.

‘Oh, it’s so pretty!’ she cried, blushing as she gave us all a twirl in it. Then she ran across and stood on tiptoe to give me a kiss. But the pleasure was to be short-lived, because she was soon looking past me, her intake of breath an indication of what was soon to come.

‘Casey, look at
Riley
,’ she whispered anxiously. ‘She’s just given Jackson a
whole
sausage roll!’

I turned and looked at my little grandson happily chomping his way through it. ‘It’s okay, love. He can eat things like that now. He’ll be fine.’

But my words of reassurance were clearly falling on deaf ears. Abby crossed the room anyway, and sat down on the floor with him. ‘I’ll watch him for you, Riley,’ she told my bemused daughter, then promptly took the remainder of the sausage roll out of his hands. She then tore him off a tiny morsel and offered it to him. ‘I won’t let him choke,’ she reassured both of us. Jackson, disgruntled now, tried to snatch the rest back. But Abby was too quick for him. ‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said. ‘You must finish what’s in your mouth first, and
then
you can have some more.’

And so it went on. There wasn’t an aspect of this party business that wasn’t fraught with danger. The balloons were deemed dangerous if they were attached to the backs of chairs, because the older ones could pop them and then the little ones might choke on them. The cakes needed to be passed for an absence of E numbers; any E numbers present and we were courting a disaster, because the kids would ‘all go hyper, and we definitely don’t want that’. The living-room rug was a potential trip hazard, the kitchen floor a potential ice rink, and every corner of every piece of furniture was ‘an accident waiting to happen’. So, by the time the first guests arrived Riley and I felt certain that Abby was already far too stressed to enjoy a moment.

And our prediction was correct. It was like she was the old woman in the shoe. Because there were so many children she didn’t know what to do. Her eyes swivelled constantly, alert to the smallest cry or unexpected noise, and no morsel of food touched a lip without her eyeing it concernedly, as if the world would end if she didn’t maintain her vigil. If it weren’t for Levi, who kept repeating that she was only a ‘little mummy’, and taking the wind out of her sails, it would have felt like a mini-dictatorship.

In the end it was Kieron who called a halt to the stress of it and gave all the other kids a break. ‘Hey, Abby,’ he said. ‘Could you do me a favour? Poor Bob’s been stuck out in the back garden all this time, so I thought, as I’ve got to nip out and get some more milk, that you could pop his lead on and come to the shop with me.’

Abby, we could all see, was torn by this request. On the one hand, it was a chance to do something with Kieron, but on the other – could she bring herself to leave?

Her responsibilities won out. ‘Oh Kieron, I don’t think I can yet.’ She glanced around her. ‘Can’t you go by yourself?’

Kieron shook his head. ‘No can do, Abs. I need you to watch Bob outside, while I go in.’

‘Love, we’ll be fine,’ I reassured her. Which seemed to swing it. She just needed permission to let herself off the hook.

We took the opportunity to play pass the parcel while they were gone, Riley quickly sorting the music so we could get it done before they returned. She laughed. ‘God knows what unseen dangers she might have found,’ she observed. ‘What with play dough and chocolates and other deadly stuff.’ She passed me the parcel. ‘And I hope you haven’t mentioned the MRSA!’

I grinned. ‘You think I’m mad?’ We got the game under way.

But for all our levity there was obviously a serious side to all this. Abby’s problems were serious. We both knew that. And as the children started handing the enormous newspaper-wrapped parcel from hand to hand, I was about to discover things were even more serious than we thought.

I caught Lauren’s eye. She was waving my mobile from the far side of the breakfast bar and mouthing that there was someone on the phone for me. I thought it might be my mother – she and Dad hadn’t arrived yet so perhaps they’d been held up. But then I realised she’d have called the house phone. Perhaps Kieron, then, thinking of something else we might have forgotten. But when I grabbed the phone and answered, it was John Fulshaw’s voice I heard.

Back from holiday, then. ‘John,’ I said, wondering if this was going to be about the meeting. ‘It’s party time here, sorry,’ I said, taking myself off into the garden, so I could hear above the music. ‘There,’ I said. ‘That’s better. Can you hear me okay?’

‘Loud and clear,’ he said. And I was just about to ask him about his holiday – I’d rather talk about that than my impending ‘supervision’ frankly – when he cut straight in. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid, Casey.’

There could be worse news?
I thought, shocked. Had she complained about something else?

‘What?’ I asked him.

‘Sarah. She’s taken a turn for the worse. It’s serious. Apparently she’s had some sort of reaction to one of the drugs they’ve been giving her. Anaphylaxis.’

I’d heard of that. I’d definitely heard of that, in relation to bee stings.

‘Oh dear, John. And?’

‘And I don’t know much more, to be honest. Only that I was to call you, because there’s a chance you’ll have to take Abby up to the hospital. They’re going to keep me posted. I just wanted to forewarn you.’

I took this in. God – on Abby’s birthday, as well. ‘Look, John, why don’t I just bring her up now to see her? I mean she was going with Bridget tomorrow anyway. I’m sure Sarah would be glad to see her …’

‘No, she won’t. Not right now. Sorry, Casey. I’ve not made myself clear enough. She’s in shock. She’s gone into anaphylactic shock. She’s on a ventilator. On a life-support machine.’