‘Grandpa Fisher was here, again?’ Ellen frowned thoughtfully for a brief moment before shaking it off and glancing playfully at me. ‘Sounds like you’ve had an exciting day. Jenny can fill me in on how much of that actually happened while we sort out dinner.’
‘All of it happened,’ Dawson said. ‘Apart from Jenny being like a superhero. Also, we were late for school, and she gave me the wrong lunch. This whole thing is a complete disaster. Ask Maddie.’ He thumped out of the room, leaving a horrible silence. A trickle of sweat ran down my back.
‘I can explain.’Really, Jenny? Does your explanation include being both incompetent, and a danger to yourself and these kids?
‘I know.’ Ellen smiled, her eyes dancing. Somehow that made me feel worse.
10
No more death-defying rescues were needed that week, which was the only discernible improvement. Chaos, lateness, clinging onto a whisper of control. Countless more mistakes. Spending a few precious hours sifting fruitlessly through documents and clearing out junk before bracing myself to pick the children up again. Each evening, Ellen and Will came home to a house upside down, a list of Dawson’s complaints and a very frazzled nanny pretending she was just starting dinner. They insisted I ate with them, which was a mixed blessing as the kids revealed more of my bad decision-making, poor time-management and general failures through the hilarious (or so Ellen and Will thought) stories of their day.
I felt utterly useless and miserable. Being out of my depth was not good for me. It brought back black, oppressive memories: the constant gnaw of anxiety, the mind-numbing exhaustion, feeling trapped in a situation I was too pathetic to handle, but too hopeless to leave. My previous breakdown, floundering to live up to pressure and demands, had nearly destroyed me. After that I had held back the shadow of that bleak time by carefully living within my capabilities. Sticking to work I found easy, safe, manageable. By staying in Zara’s apartment, refusing promotion, avoiding a social life, choosing a relationship where I had no power, I abdicated any sort of meaningful responsibility in order to prevent the trauma of being overwhelmed, and the horror that came with it.
Now –now–as if taking on the responsibility of a derelict house weren’t enough, I’d added five helpless, vulnerable, impossible children to the mix.
It was pretty clear I was messing this up. Why on earth didn’t Ellen fire me?
Friday, I slept until late, then lay in my lovely, warm bed for another couple of hours just because I could, ignoring the Hoard on the other side of the door. Too physically wiped out to face yet more cleaning, too emotionally wiped to go through more paperwork, I read for the rest of the afternoon, which seemed appropriate considering I had the book club later that evening. At seven, I dressed in my most Friday-night-ish clothes (a bottle-green wrap dress Zara had worn once before deciding it was too last season and a denim jacket), slung a silver pendant round my neck and slipped into a pair of shoes that had been so expensive that I really ought to get around to selling them. I felt too bone-weary to be nervous, but I did feel a buzz of anticipation while waiting for Kiko’s friend Frances to pick me up.
Frances had none of Tezza’s qualms, veering between the piles of junk and skidding right up to the front door before repeatedly tooting the horn on her pick-up truck until I hurried around the side of the house. She leant over and opened the door, offering a hand to help me up.
With cropped white hair and tiny blue eyes peeking out from a road-map of wrinkles, she looked so frail as she stretched across the seat that I feared she might snap in two inside her tweed suit. I hesitated, briefly, and she yanked on my wrist so firmly that I scraped an inch of skin off my shin while hoisting myself up.
‘Frances,’ she said, in between reversing out onto the road and zooming forwards. ‘And behind you is Florence.’
Florence was a brown Labrador, sitting up on the back seat as straight as her mistress, tongue dangling.
‘Thanks for the lift.’ I pushed my glasses more firmly up my nose and gripped the door handle with my other hand.
‘No problem. Only a minute or two out of my way,’ she barked, deftly speeding around the corner.
‘I’m eighty-four,’ she went on. ‘Did you guess?’
‘About ten years too young.’ I smiled.
She knotted her wispy eyebrows at the road ahead. ‘I hope that wasn’t an attempt at flattery. I’m not ashamed of looking, or acting, my age.’ We screeched into the Common car park and pulled up right outside the café, on the grass. Opening her door, she climbed out. ‘I gave up worrying about what anybody thought about me years ago.’
‘Come on now, Frances.’ A man near the café entrance stopped, reaching into the truck to take out a beautiful walking-stick and handing it to her. ‘Youneverworried about that.’
‘Ha! Well. If we all stopped fretting about other people’s opinions, we might actually get something done around here.’ She waited for Florence to join her before striding forwards at a fine clip for a woman with a walking stick.
‘And no, this isn’t to steady my old bones.’ She twirled the stick. ‘It’s to prevent bushes, nettles, wild animals or nincompoops from getting in my way.’
* * *
The rest of the club was already inside. The man made sure Frances had a seat before introducing himself as Jamie. He coughed twice, tried in vain to smooth a fluffy clump of hair sticking out on one side of his head and said hello to Sarah, before helping her load glasses onto a tray.
Everyone else sat down around two tables pushed together, covered in a red cloth with a dinky vase of flowers in the centre, Florence curled up underneath. Kiko and Ellen waved and grinned ‘hello’ before burying their heads back in their notebooks.
‘Hi. I’m Jenny,’ I said to the person next to me.
She glanced up from her phone long enough to look me up and down. ‘I know. Ellen’s hired help.’
I vaguely recognised her from the school playground. ‘Are you Lucille?’ I guessed.
‘Yes.’ She slipped her phone into her bag. ‘I hope Kiko made it clear that this is a serious club. We hold serious, informed, educated and intelligent discussions. Forseriouslovers of literacy.’
‘Um. Do you mean literature?’ Usually I would have ignored this slip, but the way her thin nostrils flared when she said the nameKikomeant I felt it my duty as a fellow lover of literacy,andliterature, to correct her for the sake of future discussions. If she was going to be, like,seriousabout it.
