In her eyes, her son Sebastian was not only a genius whose potential was unacknowledged by the school system, but he never misbehaved either. She unnerved Tom more than the mothers who were Plastics (always in full make-up and neat clothes, married to company men, only using the state system till the Common Entrance Exam came around) and the Power Tools (dads who made tits of themselves at sporting events by being too competitive).
He waited for the opening salvo.
‘Ah, I see you’re here,’ she said and Tom heard the unspoken ‘that’s no surprise’.
‘Well, looks like you’ve been called in too,’ he shot back. ‘I saw Sebastian waiting in the corridor.’
There was a patronising smile. ‘Sebastian is not an instigator, he’s a peacemaker. He will merely have gone along with the dominant character to avoid confrontation.’ There was a stare at Hattie to underline who that dominant character was.
Tom was boiling to say any number of things in response to that, ranging from ‘You do know Sebastian trades in his fruit for Cheesy Wotsits, don’t you?’ to the less reasoned ‘You’re a sanctimonious cow’, but he figured that saying any of that in front of Hattie would yet again prove what a very bad father he was.
By the time they got to the car, Hattie had Gummy firmly in place.
They drove in silence before he remembered that he needed to ring Kath and tell her she didn’t have to come to school to pick up Hattie. Perhaps he could take her directly to Kath’s? That way, he could leave Hattie there and return to work.
Was that fair on Kath though – an out-of-sorts Hattie? He decided to cancel Kath altogether and take Hattie to work – really hammer home the punishment.
He pulled over and as he retrieved his phone, it rang.
‘How did you get on?’ Liz asked.
‘Tell you when I get back. I’ve got Hattie with me. She can sit and wait for me to finish.’
A glance in the mirror told him what Hattie thought of that.
‘OK. Sounds serious. I’m thinking arson in the quiet corner or—’
‘What was it you wanted, Liz?’
‘Oh, like that, is it? Right, well, had a call from Fran. She’s finished the squirrel and I thought as you have to come right past her place, you could bring it in. She’s not got a car at the moment. You still there?’
He was, but frantically trying to devise an escape plan. ‘Nobody else who can come and pick it up? Or couldn’t she bring it along on the bus?’
Liz came right back at him. ‘Tom, strap on a pair, will you? Believe me, I understand the embarrassment of getting hauled into school, but you’re driving right past. You really want Fran to sit on a bus? What if the bloody thing gets damaged? If we can get it here this afternoon, Derek can book some studio time and get it photographed over the weekend. You trying to give me more to worry about?’
He had no counter-argument – other than a dread of
making a complete tit of himself and adding ‘man in the throes of a mid-life crisis’ to the other roles he’d been playing since the evening before. So far they included ‘thwarted lover’, ‘appalled son’ and ‘shamed parent’.
He started the car reluctantly, yet if anyone had appeared to say, ‘OK, forget about going to see Fran,’ he would have knocked them out of the way to get to her.
*
As soon as Fran appeared round the side of the bungalow, he knew this was going to go badly. She had the dress on that she’d been wearing the first time he’d seen her and her hair was loose. Bare legs. Nothing on her feet. Like she’d just stepped out of bed and thrown the dress over her head and possibly had nothing on underneath it.
She was getting tanned and seemed so full of life and vitality that he wondered if he put his arms around her, would some of that energy transfer to him? His body would feel her warmth and it might, just for a minute or two, make him forget what it felt like to be alone and stuffing up as a parent.
But then the torturous conversation he’d had with her when he’d returned home the night before started playing in his head again.
He’d tied himself in knots about the play and it seemed obvious to him that she knew he hadn’t seen it all, even
though for most of his spiel she’d been looking down at his feet.
It was only when he went upstairs to bed that he realised one of his socks was inside out.
‘Oh, and Hattie’s here, too,’ Fran said. ‘How lovely to …’
She had obviously caught sight of Hattie’s mouth, with gum shield.
‘I’ve come for the squirrel,’ he said, abruptly.
Fran jerked her head back and blinked. ‘Well hello to you too, Tom.’ And then her attention was back on Hattie. ‘Have you been stung on the mouth?’ she asked.
Hattie took out the gum shield, said ‘No’, put it back in again and then almost immediately removed it once more to add, ‘You’ve put a paving stone where I had a wee.’
‘Ye-es, I have.’
Had that been there on his last visit? If it had, Vasey must have mowed around it.
‘Think of it as X marks the spot,’ Fran said cheerily. ‘Like pirates do with treasure.’
Hattie nodded morosely and re-positioned the gum shield and Tom saw the sideways look Fran gave him.
‘The squirrel?’ he reminded her.
‘Yes, yes, of course. Come along in, round the back.’
‘We won’t, thank you.’ Tom was quite definite about that. ‘We’ll just take the squirrel and go.’ If he stayed here
any longer, he’d start thinking about Fran’s bare legs and whether there was anything separating them from the material of the dress which he was sure he could hear making a seductive ‘slip, slip, slip’ noise whenever she moved.
Had he been too abrupt? ‘We don’t want to disturb your work,’ he said, less brusquely.
‘But I’ve finished my work, that’s why you’re here. Come on.’ Short of refusing to budge, he didn’t see what he could do. Hattie was already trotting along and he followed, absolutely not looking at Fran’s backside or the way the dress swished at the hem.
Since his last visit, a delicate metal table and matching chairs had been put out on the grass and he guessed they must belong to her. Too stylish for Vasey.
‘Sit down and don’t move,’ he told Hattie. ‘And don’t pick anything and eat it.’ She plonked herself down on one of the pale-lilac cushions, folded her arms and lowered her chin.
Fran gave him another one of her out-of-the-corner-of-her-eye looks before saying, brightly, ‘What would you like to drink, Hattie? I’m not really sure what children—’
‘She’ll have water,’ he said before Hattie could even get a hand to the gum shield.
‘Water?’ Fran repeated, as if unconvinced, and when
neither he nor Hattie added anything further, she said, under her breath, ‘Right, water it is, then.’
Tom followed her into the kitchen and watched her open the fridge and take out a jug of water before pouring some into a glass.
‘Tea for us,’ she said, and he looked around the kitchen because it hurt less than looking at her. There were more wild flowers in jam jars than last time and the cooling rack was full again.
‘See you’ve been making biscuits,’ he said.
‘Actually, they’re scones.’
He didn’t know what to say to apologise and she kept moving around the kitchen, picking up plates and cups, and that dress of hers going ‘slip, slip, slip’ over her breasts and her hips.
‘I … I need to get Hattie’s sun hat from the car,’ he said, heading for the back door.
When he returned, Hattie already had the glass of water in front of her on the table. Gummy was next to it. ‘Here,’ he said, holding out the hat, and she took it without a word and plonked it on her head.
Back in the kitchen he asked, ‘Mind if I look at the squirrel?’ and didn’t wait for Fran’s reply.
Since he’d last seen the sitting room, it had become even more of a workplace. The piles of paper had multiplied and
been joined by tins and tubes of glue, a jumble of tools with metal tips, an old baby-milk tin filled with scalpels and large sheets of the foam board Fran used to make the boxes for keeping her sculptures safe. There was one sitting on a chair and he carefully lifted the lid and looked inside.
It was Mr Tufty. He looked more lifelike than last time Tom had seen him. Also, none of his intestines were showing.
Tom had expected a classic sitting-up pose, with it gnawing on a berry or a nut, but the squirrel was on the ground, one of its paws lifted. Fran had captured the moment beautifully when it had heard something and was about to skitter off in that distinctive running-stitch bounce.
You could sense the power of the muscles in its hind quarters and jaws and easily imagine the barely there tip of its tail, wafting in the breeze.
‘What do you think? Honestly?’ She was behind him.
I think you’re lovely
.
‘Amazing. You’ve nailed him.’
A low laugh that reverberated within him. ‘Not a very good choice of words given the circumstances.’
He didn’t answer, knowing that he was being weird and uncommunicative, and was saved by a noise from the kitchen. ‘Hattie,’ he said loudly, ‘what did I say about
staying put?’ He was moving past Fran and found Hattie jiggling about, looking uncomfortable.
‘I need to go to the toilet,’ she said. ‘I could do it outside again, but then Fran would have to get another stone … unless I did it on exactly the same spot.’ She looked towards the back door.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Fran, where’s your …’ He turned and found Fran right there. ‘Bathroom.’
She waved Hattie towards her. ‘Through here, come along.’ Before they both went out of the room, Fran looked at him as if he was an ogre.
When she came back without Hattie, she nodded at the loaded tea tray on the side.
‘If it’s not too much trouble, perhaps you could carry that out to the table. Or if you prefer, you could just throw it on the floor and grind it under your foot.’ There was a click of her tongue. ‘Perhaps you were right – you shouldn’t have come in.’
He wanted, suddenly, to make her understand that he was not the angry man she saw before him.
‘Look, I’m sorry for the bad atmosphere. But I’ve had to collect Hattie early from school. She’s misbehaved.’
‘Well, it must have been something terrible,’ Fran shot back. ‘I’ve never seen two people so out of sorts with each other. Can I ask what she did?’
He checked Hattie wasn’t on her way back. ‘She and a group of her friends stripped all the herbs out of the new herb bed. The children who have packed lunches put them in their sandwiches. Hattie, who has a cooked lunch, sprinkled them over her own and everyone else’s meals. She was the ringleader.’
He was still watching the doorway so he only became aware near the end of his explanation, of a noise from Fran. She had closed her eyes. Her mouth was closed too, her lips pressed together, but little snorts were escaping that were unmistakably laughs. All at once she cupped both hands round her nose and mouth and let it all come out.
‘It’s not funny,’ he said, sharply.
She moved her hands long enough to wheeze, ‘Oh, but it is,’ and then she was off once more.
It felt as if she were laughing at him as well as the incident. ‘The poor woman had only just finished the beds,’ he said. ‘And it was a county-wide initiative.’
Another suppressed gale of laughter.
‘How would you like it if someone did the same to one of your sculptures?’
‘What? Ate it?’ She had to turn away and put her hand on to the worktop to steady herself.
He checked the door again. ‘Look, can you stop this before Hattie gets back?’
She nodded, but he didn’t notice any change, so he went to find the bathroom. ‘You nearly finished?’ he shouted through the door.
‘I’m having a poo,’ Hattie called back.
‘Wash your hands afterwards.’
He returned to the kitchen where Fran was wafting air towards her face with her hands. Every now and again her chest would convulse and he must be angry, because normally he would have liked to watch her chest convulsing.
‘Quite finished?’ he asked, when she had taken in and expelled a couple of deep, calming breaths.
‘I’m sorry, Tom,’ she said, ‘really sorry. But it’s
such
a middle-class crime.’ She took a few more deep breaths. ‘Shock horror, the great basil theft! Where
will
we get our pesto now?’
‘It wasn’t just basil. It was mint and thyme and chives too.’
He saw her press her lips together again.
He looked away. ‘The whole thing has been ruined for the others.’
‘Except …’ she said, ‘it sounds like the others all got a taste.’ She must have seen the look in his eyes, because she went on, quickly, ‘You’re right, of course. Very bad. Although … they actually used them in the way intended. They didn’t kick them round the playground.’
As she made him more and more angry, part of him
thought that this was good. He would go off her now. She didn’t understand how the real world operated.
He heard the toilet flush.
‘Could you just stop talking?’ he asked.
‘Of course. But … how long does the punishment go on for?’
‘What?’
‘Well, presumably she’s been told off at school? She’s been sent home, plus I should think you’ve given her a good talking-to before you got here. So …’ She shrugged. ‘How about you forget it now and we can all have a nice—’
‘I’m sorry?
You’re
offering
me
childcare advice? Am I giving you advice on your paper sculptures?’ He paused to register that she had raised both her eyebrows at that. ‘Children need rules and they need to know when they’ve broken them and let you down.’
He went to pick up the tray, but she put her arm out to bar the way.
‘I agree on the rules thing, Tom, but has Hattie really let you down
that
much? Aren’t you just being hyper-sensitive about people judging you because you’re a single parent and, shock horror, a man? My mother brought me up single-handedly and had exactly the same problem.’ She frowned. ‘Although, of course, she wasn’t a man.’
‘I am not hyper-sensitive,’ he said in a tone that betrayed
he was and she just smiled knowingly and, as Hattie trotted back into the room, picked up the tray herself.
*