Authors: Julie Cohen
It was on the pushchair, wedged into the folded canopy. She found it and unzipped the top. ‘Sorry, I’ve only got a five-pound note.’
‘No change,’ said the bus driver. Jo looked
back at the other people behind her in the queue. Some gazed back blankly; some averted their eyes.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Just take it. It’s still less expensive than paying for parking.’ She pushed it under the glass barrier with a self-conscious laugh.
‘Can we sit upstairs, Mummy? In the front seat?’ Oscar pulled at her jacket.
‘Not with the pushchair, sweetheart. Go ahead and find a seat, I’ll
park Iris.’
There was only one seat, near the back. Oscar scampered to it while Jo manoeuvred the pushchair to the space near the front. Thankfully, there were no other pushchairs this time. A woman in an overcoat buttoned up to her neck was in the fold-out priority seat and she gave Jo’s loaded pushchair a dirty look.
‘Sorry,’ said Jo. ‘We’ve done rather a lot of shopping.’ She glanced from
Iris, strapped in, to Oscar in the back, alone.
‘Mummy!’ he yelled.
‘You forgot your ticket!’ called the bus driver.
Jo went back for it. As she took it, her phone rang in her pocket. She shoved the ticket in her pocket along with her ringing phone and returned to Iris. The little girl grinned, holding out her hands to her mother. Chocolate stained all round her mouth, even though Jo had wiped
it with a napkin after they’d been to the café. It always came back. How?
‘I’ll just get you out, sweetheart,’ she said, smiling down at her daughter, and the bus pulled away with a lurch. She caught herself on the post and heard Oscar calling for her, the beginning of panic in his voice.
‘Oscie,’ Iris told her.
‘Just a minute.’ She unbuckled Iris, the little girl’s sticky hands going round
her neck, into her hair, sweet breath on her cheek. The pushchair, without the weight of Iris to keep it steady, tipped backwards under the weight of the shopping. Jo righted it with one arm, the other around her daughter. The woman in the priority seat sighed.
Have you forgotten what it’s like to have children, you old bat?
Jo thought, but instead she smiled and said, ‘Sorry,’ and carried Iris
up the aisle to where her brother was sitting. She passed another group of teenagers in their school uniforms, earphones in, talking loudly to each other, long legs sprawled over seats they had no intention of giving up. In her pocket, her phone stopped ringing. She picked up Oscar with her other arm, settled both children on her lap, though Oscar was hanging half off, trying to peer out of the
window past the man sitting next to him.
The pushchair fell over again. The woman gave it an even filthier look, and moved her handbag conspicuously six inches to the right.
I will tell this story to Sara tomorrow
, Jo thought,
and we’ll laugh.
‘Mummy.’ Oscar squirmed on her. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘It’s not far now, sweetheart. And you just had a muffin at the café.’
‘I’m
really
hungry.’
Jo snaked
her arm round so she could reach into her other pocket, the one with her keys instead of her phone, and found a small plastic container. ‘Cheerios,’ she said, producing it, grateful that there was something in it other than a used wet-wipe. She packed these small pots every morning, hiding them in various places, to be apparated like a bunny in a magician’s hat at vital moments when distraction
was needed. Sometimes she forgot. Sometimes she found pots she’d left there days before.
‘No!’ said Iris, and filled her chubby hand with the cereal. Little Os dropped onto Jo’s lap, onto the seat and the floor. The man sitting next to the window stared straight ahead.
‘Save some for your brother,’ Jo said.
‘I don’t like Cheerios. What does this button do?’ Oscar pressed the big red button
on the post in front of him. It dinged. Delighted, he pressed it again.
‘Ten minutes till we get home!’ said Jo, though it would be more like twenty until they passed out of the cramped streets of Brickham town centre and into the broader leafy suburb. And then a walk through the park and down the street before they reached their house. Under her jacket, her armpits were damp, and her hair was
bound to be a mess. ‘Not far now! Do you want to sing a song?’
‘The wheels on the bus,’ sang Iris through wet Cheerios.
‘If you don’t stop that bloody kid pressing that bloody button I’m going to stop this bloody bus right now!’ The driver’s voice came via a microphone and blared through the bus. The teenagers laughed.
‘Sorry,’ said Jo, her words lost, catching Oscar’s hand and holding it.
He struggled to free himself. ‘You can’t press the button, Oscar, the man asked you not to.’
‘That man is rude,’ said Oscar.
‘Oscar loves riding on the bus,’ Jo said to the man sitting next to them. ‘And he loves pressing buttons. Any button at all. He keeps on changing the television settings. I’m hoping he’s going to be a computer programmer or an engineer.’
The man grunted and continued
to look out of the window. They passed by the end of Jo’s old street, the one she’d used to live in with Stephen and Lydia. If she craned her head, she could see the brick front of their old house. And then up the hill, down the road, trundling into the suburbs, stopping to let more people on and off with a hiss and a sigh.
‘I’m really hungry, Mummy,’ said Oscar. ‘And I’m bored.’
‘Do you want
to play with my phone?’ Oscar nodded vehemently and Jo let his hands go to reach in her pocket for it. ‘Oh, I missed that call. Do you think it was Lydia?’
‘No,’ agreed Iris, bouncing up and down on Jo’s lap and reaching for the phone, too. Iris loved talking to her big sister on the telephone. Jo held it up, squinting at the missed call number on the screen. A London code, unfamiliar number,
message left.
‘Just a second, sweetheart, I need to listen to this first.’ Unease twiddled in her belly as she dialled the voicemail number.
‘Hello, Mrs Merrifield, this is Ilsa Kwong at the Homerton University Hospital. I wonder if you could return my call as soon as possible, on this number. Thank you.’
It’s Lydia. It’s Lydia. Taken the train into London, hit by a bus. Hit by a car. Assaulted
by strangers. Why didn’t she call me herself, why did she go without telling me, my little girl, oh Stephen—
‘Mummy, I want to play Angry Birds.’
‘Just a second, Oscar,’ she said, disconnecting from voicemail. ‘Mummy has to make a quick phone call.’
It couldn’t be Lydia. Why would it be Lydia? School had only just finished for the day. Lydia would be walking home with Avril, pausing in the
park to hang out and trade banter with the boys, but not too much, because she had to study. Jo was being silly, being a crazy mother hen. Still, she checked her phone to make sure there were no missed calls or messages from Lyddie.
‘But I want to play Angry Birds!’
‘As soon as I return this call, sweetie.’ Her fingers were shaking as she dialled. She squeezed Iris to her, smelling chocolate
and child, remembering Lydia at that age, not quite two, sticky and precious.
The phone rang several times before it was answered – long enough for Jo to run through the entire scenario in her head: Lydia stepping off the kerb, in front of a bus, in hospital in a coma …
‘Thomas Audley Ward, Ilsa Kwong speaking.’
‘Oh hello,’ Jo said into the phone, falsely bright, feeling the man next to them
twisting with irritation in his seat. ‘This is Joanne Merrifield, I’m just returning your call?’
‘Joanne Merrifield … Joanne Merrifield. Just a moment, let me find my notes.’
Jo gripped the phone and held her youngest daughter tighter.
‘Mummy,
owie
,’ whined Iris.
‘Why do people feel they have to use their mobile phones on public transport?’ said the person sitting in front of Jo, one of the
people who hadn’t offered her and her two young children a seat. ‘As if we all want to hear what they have to say.’
‘You just rang me five minutes ago?’ prompted Jo, for the first time thinking of Richard, driving too fast, talking on his phone in traffic. But they wouldn’t ring her if Richard was hurt.
‘Oh yes, here we are. Mrs Merrifield, we have your mother here, admitted earlier this afternoon.’
‘
My
mother? My mother is … oh, do you mean Honor?’
‘Honor Levinson, that’s right. She had a fall at home. She gave us your number to ring as her next of kin.’
‘I’m her daughter-in-law.’ Jo sagged in her seat with relief. Of course it was Honor. ‘Is she all right?’
‘She’s been admitted and she will probably need to stay in for several days, but she’s stable. She’s resting comfortably.’
‘Good.
She’ll need— I’ll—’ Jo paused, thinking ahead, planning as she always seemed to be doing. Her mind reshuffled circumstances and responsibilities.
‘Hungry, Mummy!’
Oscar was squished up against her, plucking at her sleeve. They weren’t at their stop yet, but they were close enough to get off the bus and walk. Jo punched the red button.
‘I want to press!’ Iris cried in her ear.
The nurse, or
whoever she was at the end of the phone, was silent. Jo pictured her rolling her eyes, writing on paperwork. Multi-tasking.
She held Iris up so she could press the button, which she did with a little shout of glee. ‘You press it too, Oscar, it’s OK,’ she whispered, then said into the phone, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m on a bus with my children and we’re at our stop. Thank you for ringing; please tell
Honor I’ll be in to see her today, as soon as I can get there.’ As she ended the call, Oscar was pressing the red button over and over. ‘OK, time to go, sweetie!’
Oscar hopped off her lap and trotted to the front of the bus, his ginger head bobbing. Jo carried Iris after him. The bus braked just as she leaned over to pick up the toppled pushchair and she staggered, banging her hip against the
luggage rack.
‘Just a minute!’ she called, and for speed’s sake wheeled the pushchair towards the bus door without strapping Iris into it.
‘Thank you,’ Oscar trilled to the driver as he opened the door.
‘Thankoo!’ Iris trilled, being carried past.
Jo thought this more than sufficient, actually. She shoved the pushchair out onto the pavement, took Oscar’s hand, and stepped off the bus, balancing
Iris on her hip. The bus hissed at her and moved off almost before they’d fully disembarked.
The pushchair fell over backwards.
‘Next time we are taking the car,’ said Jo, heaving it upright yet again and settling Iris more securely on her hip. ‘There are adventures, and then there are
adventures
. Shall we run?’
Oscar squealed and scampered off down the broad pavement, lined by neat gardens,
towards the park. Jo ran after him, steering the pushchair with one hand. Lyddie would be home already, or in a minute, or maybe she’d see her in the park, and Jo could settle the children and take something out of the freezer, iron Lyddie’s uniform for tomorrow quickly, put away the shopping, brush her hair and teeth and jump into the car. With any luck she could be on a train to London before
five o’clock. It would be rush hour on the Tube – would it be better to drive? What would the North Circular be like?
Her mind went to Honor as they ran. A fall. She couldn’t picture Honor ever falling. She could only picture Honor standing straight.
IT STARTED WITH
yoghurt.
Does that sound dramatic, or dumb? The How To Write book I’m reading says that you should open your stories with a dramatic line, something to pull the reader in. The problem is, of course, what sort of dramatic line do you choose, when nothing really dramatic happens to you ever? Just a series of little events that cause way more worry than you would
think, if you observed them from the outside?
Well, there was the one dramatic thing that happened to Dad. But I wasn’t there.
Anyway, it did start with yoghurt, so that’s how I’ll begin my story. I was in the lunch queue trying to decide between a strawberry and an apricot yoghurt. Apricot is vile, but it was low-fat, and the strawberry was full-fat. Personally, I do not give a flying monkey
about whether a yoghurt is low-fat or not, but Avril is doing this thing where you check the package of everything you eat for how many grams of fat and sugar and carbs it has, and then you enter it into some app on your phone. Erin and Sophie and Olivia are doing it because they are the eating disorder girls, and for some reason Avril has taken it up too because of some imaginary cellulite on her
thighs. It won’t last. She can’t resist Maltesers.
But right now they’re obsessed, and I knew that if I came back to the table with a full-fat yoghurt after eating my entire packed lunch, they would all watch every mouthful I took, imagining it appearing directly on my hips. Not that I care about what the Bulimia Buddies think. I eat when I’m hungry like a normal person.
But Avril. So I reached
for the apricot.
‘Hey, lezza, move your fat arse.’
It was Darren Raymond, standing ahead of me in the queue – I recognized the spots on the back of his neck, which are my pleasant view every Maths lesson. He was talking to someone standing in front of the service area. Tall, lumpy, holding her empty tray in front of her. That new girl, the one with the funny name.
‘Yeah, get moving, you’re
holding up the whole queue,’ said another boy.
‘Some of us are hungry for something other than pussy.’
The queue erupted into laughter. The new girl’s face was bright red. Her eyes were searching for a grown-up, someone to say something, to tell the boys off for swearing, but the dinner ladies had disappeared.
‘I’m – I’m waiting for my lunch,’ she stammered. ‘I’m – it’s a special lunch, gluten
free.’
‘It’s a special lunch, gluten free,’ mocked one of the boys, I couldn’t see which one. But I could see the girl’s hands on her tray: white-knuckled, and shaking. I didn’t know her name, but anyone could see how she felt.