The Kindness Club on Mapleberry Lane - Part One: A Summer Surprise Read online

  ‘He said two o’clock.’ It was a sure thing Veronica would not only be in but that she wouldn’t have to nip out on errands or for an appointment. That simply didn’t happen. ‘Can we play a game until then?’

  ‘A game sounds like a lovely idea.’

  They decided Monopoly would take too long, Layla didn’t want to play Ludo or Scrabble, no way was Veronica risking her life playing Twister, and so they settled on Uno. They managed almost ten games, both taking it as seriously as each other, before Charlie knocked on the door.

  ‘I think you have something of mine,’ he said, the little scar above his top lip visible after he’d had a shave. He didn’t always shave, favouring a bit of stubble, which suited him. Rich brown eyes suggested a man you could depend upon and trust, and his smile had a way of putting you at ease.

  ‘I do, come in.’ To an onlooker who didn’t know any better, Veronica was like any regular granny, if there was such a thing, but sometimes people gave her little house a strange look when they passed by, and she knew what they were thinking. There’s that weird lady from number nine. She’d had similar insults yelled through her letterbox one day. ‘You’re a freak!’ the first voice had taunted; ‘Weirdo!’ followed a different voice laced with laughter. She had no idea of the culprits – kids who’d heard rumours on the grapevine, probably, and had decided to terrorise her in whatever way they could. But the insults had stuck in Veronica’s mind because some days they felt like appropriate labels. She was only glad Charlie didn’t think so. He’d always been kind to her and she’d valued his friendship right from the start.

  ‘Who’s winning?’ Charlie looked at Layla’s cards.

  ‘Five games to four in my favour,’ Veronica told him, although it quickly became a tie when Layla lay down her last card after saying Uno. ‘Looks like it’s a draw,’ Veronica smiled, shaking Layla’s hand. As usual Layla was in no rush to leave, which suited Veronica, as there were too many hours she was on her own as it was. She tidied the pile of cards and wrapped them in an elastic band once, twice, a third time to keep them all together.

  Layla frowned at Charlie. ‘Didn’t you bring it?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ he answered with a grin. And off he went. Veronica heard the front door open and close, and after a couple of minutes during which Layla looked like she had ants in her pants, she was fidgeting so much, Charlie returned with a cake on a board, one of his hands shielding the burning candles as he came towards them.

  Layla’s face lit up and she launched into singing ‘Happy Birthday’, along with her dad.

  ‘For me?’ Veronica’s eyes fell to the chocolate cake decorated with white and dark chocolate curls, a few candles in the centre, still flickering away.

  ‘Seeing as we didn’t get to celebrate last week because you had your cold, we thought we’d do it this week.’ Charlie set the cake down on the table.

  ‘You didn’t have to do this.’ Although choked at the gesture, Veronica was thrilled to bits. Last week on her birthday she’d had a terrible sore throat and a runny nose. She’d been thoroughly miserable, but in no way selfish enough to have either of them visit, even though Charlie had insisted on checking up on her, delivering some cold remedies from the local chemist and a pot of hearty chicken soup. With only a brief visit compared to usual, it had been a lonely few days for Veronica and she hadn’t liked it one bit.

  ‘Make a wish!’ Layla ordered. ‘You have to.’

  It wasn’t hard to know what to wish for, but she didn’t tell anyone. It wouldn’t come true then would it?

  At Layla’s insistence Veronica blew out her candles. ‘What happened, couldn’t fit seventy-one on?’ she teased Charlie.

  ‘Didn’t sell that many in the shop.’

  ‘Cheeky thing.’ She laughed as she dug out plates and forks and a cake slice she used to cut generous portions.

  Another year, another celebration. Lots to be thankful for, lots she wanted to forget.

  Charlie smiled at his daughter, who had chocolate smeared below her lip and another streak down the side of her hand. ‘You’re a messy thing, you need a tissue.’

  Layla ran her tongue all the way around the outside of her mouth to get the most she could and went so cross-eyed she had Charlie and Veronica laughing.

  ‘How have I done?’ Veronica asked. ‘Any on my face?’

  Charlie pretended to inspect closely as he handed Layla a tissue to wipe her hand. ‘You’re a professional, I’d never even know you’d had chocolate.’

  ‘See Layla, I could teach you a thing or two, one being how to eat chocolate without anyone realising. It’s a life skill.’

  ‘Hey, no teaching her naughty things.’

  ‘Would I do that?’ Veronica asked innocently, sharing a conspiratorial look with Layla.

  ‘Yes, I believe you would.’ Charlie’s rakish grin and unexpected smile where his mouth turned up at one side ever so slightly more than the other somehow kept him looking younger than his forty years. He’d celebrated his birthday a couple of months ago and in much the same style as now, they’d gathered here at the same table to eat the lamingtons – his favourite – that Layla and Veronica had baked together. Layla had given him three lamingtons in all, telling him he worked too hard and deserved it. And she was right. As well as looking after Layla on his own, he had a challenging career as a paramedic where he was often among the first on the scene, having to make life-saving decisions. Occasionally he talked about making a change, no longer working shifts, fitting in with Layla more, but he loved his job and was good at it, and Veronica knew exactly what that was like. Or at least she had.

  Veronica thanked them both again for the cake. ‘With that and the veggies, you’ve made an old lady very happy.’

  ‘Less of the old,’ Charlie instructed before he turned to his daughter. ‘Are you ready to go, sweetheart?’ He took charge of the plates and cleaning the cake slice before Veronica stopped him. Clearing up would give her something to do when they left; it wasn’t always easy to fill the days. Sometimes they stretched out endlessly in front of her, and not in a good way.

  ‘Do I have to come with you while you get your hair cut?’ Layla whined.

  ‘Yes, because you’re getting yours cut too. Now put your shoes on – you can come again later, if it’s all right with Veronica.’

  It was always all right with Veronica. And Charlie knew it, but he was so polite he always asked first. ‘I’ll look forward to it, and if the sun stays out and the heavens open and it rains, then who knows, we might see a rainbow.’

  When Layla picked up her pen and ran her finger across the date squares of the kindness calendar rather than putting everything into her backpack, Charlie warned, ‘Stop stalling.’

  Layla found what she was looking for. ‘Bake something for a neighbour,’ she read out loud before striking a line right through it. ‘We baked you a cake,’ she smiled at Veronica. ‘And I can tell Mrs Haines on Monday so I’ll get my name on the big calendar in class. Anyone who does more than twenty acts of kindness in a month gets a special prize at the end. Last month Elliot Bainbridge got Golden Time, ten minutes extra of play time while the rest of us had to clear up after art class.’

  ‘Sounds like the top prize.’ Charlie winked at Veronica. Kids at this age were easily impressed. Unfortunately this stage didn’t last anywhere near long enough. Perhaps Charlie realised that and had already decided to make the most of it. And he was never going to be a bad parent – he didn’t have it in him to fail. Not like Veronica.

  ‘And don’t forget, Daddy,’ Layla went on, ‘I have to get someone else involved with the calendar – it’s a way of spreading the kindness.’

  ‘We’ll see, I’ve got a job remember, a busy one at that.’ With a sigh and a wave, he led his daughter out of the door and in the direction of home.

  Veronica watched them go from behind the shutters until Layla’s bright pink backpack was out of sight.

  When Layla had mentioned needing another perso
n to help with the kindness calendar, Veronica had almost leapt in to volunteer. Helping other people was one of the things she missed, but she supposed it made more sense for Layla to ask for Charlie’s help rather than an old lady who might end up letting her down.

  Alone again, she went over to the Welsh dresser next to the bookshelves in the kitchen diner. She took out the framed photograph that had once stood on the mantelpiece with others: a family, the people she’d once had around her. But not anymore. Apart from the occasional Christmas and birthday card or the odd terse phone call, her family had more or less given up on her.

  But Layla and Charlie hadn’t.

  She bit back the tears that threatened to come, jammed the photograph back in the drawer, and began the countdown to when her favourite visitors, the neighbours who felt more like her family than her own, would come back later this afternoon.

  Chapter Two

  Sam

  Someone had once told Sam that if she wanted to make God laugh, then she should tell him her plans.

  Well, he must be rolling around the floor right now, because just when she thought life couldn’t get any harder, she’d been thrown another curveball.

  Over the last decade she’d gone from a stay-at-home married mum to a divorced parent of one, and fought her way from being a customer service assistant to a customer services manager. Today she’d tumbled right back down the career ladder to unemployment after being made redundant. For years Sam had thrown all her efforts into her job, given that her personal life and family life were, for want of a better phrase, absolute shit, and she’d been thrilled to finally land the managerial position. But unfortunately the retail giant wasn’t a big enough company to hold onto its eight hundred employees when it merged with a competitor.

  She edged her way out of the revolving door to the office, a cardboard box filled with her things. Inside lay a photograph of her and her daughter Audrey standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, smiling away as though things between them were perfect; a plant that looked so sorry for itself Sam suspected she’d throw it out when she got home; her favourite floral mug that held enough coffee to get her through a morning; a spare jumper she kept in her drawer in case the office air-conditioning was overzealous; and the nine packets of Post-its she’d taken from the supply cupboard not because she needed them, but because she could. Nobody in the office had really spoken as those dealt the raw deal had packed up and left. Anyone in the same boat was too angry or upset, and those who got to stay probably felt guilty about their colleagues and an enormous sense of relief that it hadn’t happened to them.

  The only silver lining that Sam could see to this was that the ones on the receiving end got to leave work straight away – company policy – and wouldn’t be penalised for doing so. And her redundancy payout wasn’t bad, she supposed. It would keep her going for a while, but for how long was anyone’s guess; she had a fifteen-year-old daughter, a mortgage to pay, and an ex-husband who had put them both out of sight and out of mind by fleeing to New Zealand with his new wife who was, as he’d so tactfully put it once, the love of his life.

  Shame he hadn’t realised that person wasn’t Sam when they’d married almost seventeen years ago.

  Sam climbed into the driver’s seat of her car, ignoring her phone when it rang the second she pulled out of her parking space. Whoever it was would have to wait; she had plenty to deal with right now. She wished she had someone to run to, a boyfriend who could console her for the crappy day she was having. But all her efforts at injecting romance into her life since her marriage broke down had fallen flat on their face. Not that there had been many opportunities over the years, and even when there were, Sam tended to put Audrey first and soon lost focus on anyone else coming into their lives, and she had a certain reluctance to risk getting close to a man who might simply change his mind the way her ex-husband had. Nobody deserved that kind of hurt, and certainly not twice in a lifetime.

  She drove the thirty-five minute commute for the last time, taking her from the office to the smart detached residence she shared with Audrey in a small village in Cheshire, an area of the country far enough away from her home childhood home in Mapleberry that she’d felt like she was starting over when she first moved up here and got married at the age of twenty-two. Mapleberry hadn’t held too many good memories in the end, and Sam had been almost as desperate to get out of the village she grew up in as she had her family home.

  She pulled up on the drive, struggled up to the porch with the box in her arms and fumbled her attempt to put her keys in the front door to open up. ‘Damn it!’ she yelled when she dropped the entire lot as Audrey pulled the door open from the other side.

  ‘Not my fault, I was trying to help. You shouldn’t be so clumsy.’ Audrey’s voice was as harsh as the pixie cut she’d had done recently. The haircut had no doubt been an act of rebellion but it rather suited her, with her dark eyes, high cheekbones and button nose, traits she’d got from her father rather than Sam, who was blue-eyed with blonde hair touched up with subtle copper highlights. Audrey’s hair had once had the same big waves that Sam’s had now, sitting on her collar bones – but not anymore. Sam had complimented her daughter after she returned home from the hairdresser that day, but even if she hated the new look, she would’ve still said the same, because Sam was pretty sure Audrey had only had it done to get under her skin. Maybe Sam wouldn’t mention how much she hated those slug-like eyebrows the girls all seemed to paint on nowadays. If she did, that would be the next thing Audrey altered about her appearance.

  Sam wondered whether it was a teenage thing, the rebellion against anything your mum approved of or liked? Or was it just a symptom that her and Audrey’s relationship wasn’t far from breaking point?

  When she’d had a little girl, Sam had been overjoyed. She didn’t mind what sex the baby was when she was pregnant, she would’ve been happy with either, but as soon as she knew, she began to plan for their future. Her imagination had gone into fast-forward, picturing dressing Audrey in the cutest outfits – OshKosh B’gosh, Gymboree, Baby Gap – then when she was a little older, playing tea sets and dolls houses, teaching her how to ride a bike, one of those with the streamers flying out from the handlebars in the wind. She’d pictured the cosy chats they could have as Audrey got older, confiding with her about boys, the best friend Audrey had, the relationship being one that Sam had never been able to form with her own mother.

  What had happened to those dreams? she wondered as she gathered the detritus to put it back into the single box that was all that was left of her job.

  ‘You been stealing Post-its?’ Audrey, leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen with a bowl of cereal balancing on one palm, her other hand operating the spoon, noticed the packets scattered over the floor – one near the bottom stair, the other by the radiator, one further down the shiny wooden floorboards of the hallway, some at her feet.

  Sam ignored the jibe. ‘What are you doing home?’

  She’d been so preoccupied with doing household maths all the way home, fathoming how to pay bills when her redundancy money dried up, she hadn’t thought about what time it was. But now she could see the kitchen clock and it was well before four o’clock, the usual time Audrey got home from school – five o’clock if she dawdled and hung out with her friends – and the way Audrey was acting so casually, as though it was a Saturday rather than a Monday.

  Audrey tilted her bowl to get the last of the milk, turned her back and went out to the kitchen, ignoring Sam.

  ‘Audrey, I asked what you’re doing home.’ Sam stepped over the box. She’d deal with it later. She flapped the front of her silk blouse; the house was always stifling from early summer until autumn, and then freezing in the winter. ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘Nope.’ Audrey put her bowl in the dishwasher and flipped the door shut before she turned around and leaned on it. ‘Here’s the thing, Mum. A friend and I, well, we played a bit of a joke.’

  ‘On who?’

 
; ‘The school.’

  ‘That narrows it down.’ Sam filled a glass of water and downed it in one. Packing up her desk and trying to take in the fact she’d gone into the office with a job and was leaving without one, had already caused a knot of anxiety to lodge itself in her chest. ‘Audrey, spit it out, I need details.’

  Audrey inspected her nails rather than meet Sam’s gaze. ‘Me and Sid sent a hoax letter from the Head – to all nine hundred and seventy-one parents.’

  Oh dear God, don’t let them have created a bomb hoax. She had visions of Audrey being led away in handcuffs. Then again, if that was what it took to separate her daughter from troublemaker Sid, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing. Trying to stay level-headed, she asked, ‘What was in this letter?’

  ‘It was just a joke. We said that the school was closed until further notice because there’d been an outbreak of infectious diarrhoea caused by a fungus found in the classrooms.’ Her voice wobbled with amusement but clocking her mum’s hard stare, she soon stopped smiling. ‘How were we supposed to know people would take it seriously?’

  ‘How seriously are we talking?’

  The corners of her mouth twitched. ‘Over half the school didn’t turn up.’

  ‘Audrey.’ Sam covered her face with her hands. ‘I don’t need this.’

  ‘Of course,’ she snapped, ‘I forgot it’s all about you. It’s always about you.’

  Sam grabbed her daughter’s arm before she could stalk away. ‘I just lost my job and come home to find my daughter, what, at home for the rest of the day or longer?’

  ‘Suspended,’ she snapped, yanking her arm back. ‘You’ll get an email to tell you officially.’

  ‘Hang on a minute…Surely they didn’t send you home – they should wait until a parent collects you or at least gives permission.’ She felt her hackles rise; she wasn’t sure who she was more annoyed at – Audrey or the school.

  ‘I walked out.’