Читать книгу Mum in the Middle: Feel good, funny and unforgettable - Jane Wenham-Jones, Jane Wenham-Jones - Страница 12

I was beginning to need a few more hours myself. I’d been up since six and so far had achieved nothing but a lot of cleaning – there was still a fine layer of dust over the whole house from experimenting with Jinni’s electric sander –the posting of a new office interior in Bromley that had only got three likes, and a chat with Meg and Jim next door I couldn’t quite follow, about their problems with the water board.

I’d finally settled down to the latest job, when the bell rang. Jinni strode into my front room, a sheet of paper in one hand and her phone in the other.

‘That FUCKING woman,’ she yelled, by way of greeting. ‘I shall wring her scrawny neck.’

I walked through to the kitchen and shut the lid of my laptop. Workstations for twenty in an office block in Cardiff would clearly have to wait. ‘Coffee?’

‘What’s she done now?’ I asked as the kettle boiled, pushing the latest missive from Ingrid – urging us to protest on the steps of the town hall about the state of the footpath through the allotments – out of sight before it inflamed Jinni further. Her hair was twisted up on top of her head and fixed with a turquoise scarf that matched her bright boiler suit. She undid it, shook her tresses about a bit, screwed them back up into a knot and retied it all.

‘Well HE will have done it, of course – it’s just the sort of sneaky, smarmy, underhand thing he would do. Anything to make life difficult for me.’ She thrust the piece of paper at me, opened the back door, stepped out and lit a cigarette. A gust of cold air came in. ‘Sorry!’ she shouted, shutting the door after her and standing the other side of the glass, puffing furiously. ‘I didn’t know you smoked!’ I called back, trying to make sense of the document I was looking at.

‘I don’t. Only when under duress.’ She abruptly dropped the cigarette and ground it out under her foot, before carrying the squashed end back in with her. ‘One of the plumbers left them behind. Bin?’

‘Under the sink. So someone has put a tree preservation order on your horse chestnut.’

‘Exactly! Now I’ve got to have this bloody “Mr Turner” looking at it. He’s bound to be a wanker too and if I can’t cut it down it’s going to block out half the light in the back bedrooms, fuck up my plans for the garden, not to mention probably crash through the roof in the next big storm and kill me in my bed!!’ Jinni glared. ‘All because that bitter old bag and her weedy son can’t stand to lose out to anyone else.’

‘Weedy?’ I asked, surprised, a fleeting image of the tall, masculine David popping into my mind. I cringed as I remembered my floppy hand extended into nothingness.

‘Tosser, then’, said Jinni, dismissively. ‘Smug bastard.’

She picked up her phone, tapped at it and presented it to me with a flourish. ‘And guess what I found on my doorstep at the same time?’

I looked at the screen. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

‘A turd!’ Jinni confirmed.

I peered at the photo again. A small brown, sausagey-looking object lay on the stone slab. ‘Could it be an animal?’ I asked cautiously.

‘Well, yes, obviously. Fox shit, I think,’ said Jinni impatiently. ‘Or a very small dog. But look at the position. Dead symmetrical.’

‘I really don’t think …’

‘I wouldn’t put it past these zealots. God knows who Ingrid’s wound up on social media. I emailed it to Gabriel – he thought it was suspicious too. He wanted to run something, but that miserable git of an editor–’

I stifled a smile at the thought of Malcolm faced with a picture of a fox poo and a conspiracy theory.

‘We had foxes in the garden at my old house,’ I said, reasonably, my face as straight as I could manage. ‘Sometimes they’d leave mess right in the middle of the path up to the front door. Probably just how it came out.’ The ludicrousness of this sentence made me giggle despite my best intentions. Jinni gave me a sharp look.

‘Well, I think someone’s been sniffing around my garden,’ she said. ‘I thought I saw someone the other night.’

At this, I felt a frisson of alarm. I had only just started to sleep better, without imagining an axe murderer lurking in every shadow.

‘It might have been his tricky mate,’ said Jinny. ‘He doesn’t like me either, since I got the size of his extension knocked back. But, bloody hell, it was bigger than the bloody house – and looked right over my garden …’

‘It might also have been a trick of the light,’ I said, grasping the coffee pot and pouring the contents into two mugs.

‘Have you got sugar,’ asked Jinni. ‘Or brandy?’

Visitors are like buses. No sooner had I packed a slightly glazed Jinni off across the road, suggesting that she left the knocking down of the next partition wall till she’d had an afternoon nap, than Gabriel appeared.

‘I was just passing,’ he said, ‘and thought I’d say hi. Am I disturbing you?’

‘Not at all.’ I shut my laptop lid for the second time and put the kettle on again. ‘How’s it all going?’

Slowly, was the short answer. Gabriel reported a dull week in which he’d been scratching about for a decent lead story for Malcolm, who’d been more than usually grouchy. The revelation about the strategically placed poo had gone down particularly badly, with Malcolm bellowing that if it was the best Gabriel could come up with, he’d better go for a job in the chippy. Gabriel did not look traumatised about this – he grinned widely as he took off Malcolm’s voice with impressive accuracy. ‘And you’d probably mess that up too!’ he finished loudly. We both laughed.

‘A fox had done it,’ I said. Gabriel nodded. ‘I know. But there is some backlash going on. You know the woman with the holiday cottages who had her tyres slashed?’ He looked serious again. ‘She’s had quite an unpleasant anonymous letter.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, I only found out when we were right up against deadline so I’m holding on to it till next week – in case anything else happens. I haven’t even told Malcolm yet.’ He lowered his voice. ‘So if you can keep it to yourself …’

‘Of course.’ I looked into his solemn face and once again suppressed the urge to snort. The whole thing had a bizarre village who-dunnit feel to it, and I couldn’t believe Gabriel and Jinni were taking it so seriously.

‘What are you doing for Easter?’ I asked. ‘Going home to see your parents?’

Gabriel shook his head. ‘I’ve only got Good Friday off. He imitated the editor’s gruff tones once more. ‘News doesn’t stop because it’s a bank holiday!’ Gabriel pulled a face. ‘I’ve got to go to the Easter Fair on Monday – my punishment for the window company thing.’

I smiled. ‘Well, my boys will be home for the whole weekend if you want to pop in and have a drink.’ I was filled with a warm glow. All my children would be home …

‘I’d like that,’ said Gabriel.

He gave me another kiss on the cheek as he left. I wondered if he had any friends to invite round to the tiny studio flat he’d mentioned. I guessed he was homesick and a bit lonely and I reminded him of his mum.

As I waved him off, I saw Ingrid walking slowly past the Rectory.

Jinni was right – she did come along this road a lot.

I hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to scuttle indoors or take the lead and call out hello.

But Ingrid was staring straight ahead. She didn’t look over at me at all.