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

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘I left, and you know something? I’m glad I don’t have to go to that hellhole for two weeks. Which means I’m free from it until September. Thank god!’

  ‘Audrey, come back here.’ But this time she made no effort to stop her daughter stomping up the stairs. Slam, went her door. If Sam tried to talk to her now she’d have no chance, and she had a headache brewing, right behind her eyes, creeping up to her entire head. All she wanted to do was lie down in a dark room, fall asleep and wake up as though today had never happened.

  She took a couple of headache tablets but going for a lie down wasn’t an option, not with her mind doing overtime. She checked her phone and sure enough the call she’d ignored was from the school. She fired up her laptop in the study, unsurprised to find their email waiting. Reading through it, the suspension would stand for two weeks, and judging by the tone, Audrey should think herself lucky it wasn’t more severe after she walked out of school today. The school suggested both she and Audrey go in for a meeting early next week to discuss a way forward. Sam knew that there wouldn’t be much point appealing the decision to exclude her either; the last time Audrey had messed up, shouting at a teacher when she was told off for not handing in her homework on time, she’d had a warning that anything else would be dealt with more harshly. Sam guessed this was the ‘anything else’.

  Despite the hopelessness she felt, Sam couldn’t sit there and do nothing until a meeting next week. Audrey was supposed to be sitting her GCSEs next June so this year was important. She didn’t throw herself into her schoolwork as it was, and this latest development would only give her the go-ahead to slack off even more.

  She tried to call Audrey’s form tutor but he was in a meeting; she attempted to speak to the head of year but she wasn’t available, so she resorted to an email asking whether there was any way the school would reconsider the punishment given the importance of Year Ten. Even if they lessened it to one week perhaps.

  She doubted her correspondence would make any dent in their decision. She thought of all those kids and parents inconvenienced by the hoax letter and knew there would be outrage if Audrey wasn’t punished for her part in the debacle. Last term a girl had kicked another student at the top of a flight of stairs and when confronted by staff, the girl cried and was let off the looming punishment. The parent of the child who was kicked was furious; she took to social media to vent and it all got very nasty. Sam would do anything to support Audrey, but she didn’t want Audrey’s business plastered everywhere; she didn’t want her daughter judged by those who didn’t know her. Sam wanted, somehow, to find the girl she suspected was in there somewhere, the daughter who had once smiled and laughed and loved hot buttered crumpets by the fire on a winter’s evening, the six-year-old girl who’d cried when Sam told her that she’d probably want to move out of home one day and into her own house. Back then Audrey had never wanted to be apart from Sam.

  Times had changed.

  Audrey had never accepted her dad leaving them behind and starting a new life on the other side of the world. She blamed Sam for everything, made comments and had digs whenever she could that told Sam exactly who she thought at fault. Simon could do no wrong in Audrey’s eyes, and because he wasn’t in his daughter’s life in a big way, Sam had let the blame settle on her shoulders. She held back criticisms of Simon because she wanted Audrey to have a relationship with her dad. She never wanted to be the person who came between them because if she was, she had a funny feeling it would be her who was seen to be in the wrong and ended up losing out.

  Audrey didn’t appear until well after seven o’clock that evening, lured by the smell of chilli con carne drifting up from the pot on the stove. Sam’s headache had gone, her practical coping attitude had come into play and she’d made the dinner as usual. She had a plan – eat, try to talk to Audrey without one or other of them shouting at the other, then sit down and do her finances.

  It was always Audrey’s job to set the table. She did so without prompting this evening, but threatened to bring back Sam’s headache every time she plonked something down on the table – the cutlery, the bowls, the side plates for the garlic bread.

  Damn, the garlic bread. She’d forgotten all about it. And when Audrey noticed her oversight, she uttered her first words in three hours, swear words Sam was pretty sure her own father never would’ve stood for under his roof.

  ‘Watch your language, Audrey,’ Sam bristled, all plans not to clash with her daughter impossible to execute when Sam found herself the only disciplinarian. At least if someone else set the rules sometimes, it wouldn’t all be her fault. ‘I’ve been at work, come home and cooked a meal – don’t you dare swear at me for forgetting one simple thing.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you won’t be able to say that tomorrow will you.’

  So she had heard her say she lost her job. But it hadn’t exactly elicited sympathy. ‘No, I won’t. And have you thought about what me having no job will mean to you?’ She was met with a shrug. ‘No, you haven’t.’ She cursed when she knocked the wooden spoon onto the floor and tomatoey liquid splashed across the tiles. She swiped a piece of kitchen towel across the spill.

  ‘It means you’ll be home all day,’ Audrey said, as though that would be the biggest obstacle. Mind you, she kind of had a point.

  ‘It does mean that. But it also means I have to watch finances. Which means no more allowance.’ She shoved the soiled kitchen towel into the bin and slammed the lid shut.

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Call it punishment for getting suspended.’ Allowance was due tomorrow and Sam hadn’t intended to withdraw it quite so soon, at least not until Audrey had caused her even more stress to add to her day.

  ‘Seriously!’

  ‘We’ll need to tighten our belts until I find something else.’ And stopping the allowance would mean Audrey wouldn’t flit off so much at the weekends or in the evenings when Sam had no idea what she got up to. ‘It’s not up for discussion, Audrey.’

  Her announcement was met with a steely gaze before Audrey put the oven on and found the garlic bread from the freezer. She must be extra hungry or a revelation like No Allowance would’ve sent her storming out again.

  Sam washed the spoon, dried it and gave the chilli another stir.

  ‘You’ll get another job though, right?’

  Sometimes it was like living with two people when it came to Audrey: the one who yelled at her that everything was unfair and everything was Sam’s fault, then the Audrey who took a step back and looked at a situation with a different eye. Sam had to admit the latter didn’t happen all that often but when it did, she grabbed onto it with both hands.

  ‘I could leave school early, get a job myself,’ Audrey suggested.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’ The sympathetic Audrey moved over and bolshie teen took her place.

  ‘Because you’re fifteen!’ She almost added that she shouldn’t be so stupid, but insulting Audrey when she was in this mood was like pouring brandy onto a Christmas pudding and setting it alight.

  ‘I could get a part-time job.’

  ‘We’ve talked about this.’

  ‘No, we haven’t.’

  ‘Audrey, we have.’

  ‘No, you talked, you didn’t let me have a turn.’ Her voice softened. ‘Loads of kids my age have a part-time job.’

  ‘And as I said before, when your school work improves, go for it. Until then, your focus has to be on that.’

  Audrey toyed with the pieces of frozen garlic bread as she waited for the oven to preheat.

  Sam turned the gas off beneath the pot of chilli. She’d learnt to read her daughter’s moods through looks, words, tone and body language, and she sensed Audrey was at least willing to enter a discussion now rather than closing her off. ‘Are you worried about your school work?’ Probably not the smartest thing to be involved in a prank if she was.

  ‘Not really. But I have thought about my fu
ture, much as you think I don’t give a —’ She stopped when Sam gave her a look that suggested foul language wouldn’t be tolerated a second time. ‘I do care about my life. And I still want to be a make-up artist.’

  And there it was. The career choice Sam tried to gloss over whenever Audrey brought it up because it wasn’t what Sam thought of as a reliable career path. She wanted Audrey to have job security, a future. ‘You still need qualifications. In the long run you won’t regret it.’

  ‘I’ve looked into it. I could get a college diploma – there’s no need for me to go on to do A levels.’

  ‘I want you to have options, that’s all,’ Sam insisted, doing her best to remain calm.

  No response. Her sweet, kind, loving daughter was in there somewhere, hidden beneath this firm shell, this exterior that gave off warning signals if she tried to get too close. But Sam was rarely sure how to crack open the surface unless it was on Audrey’s terms. Some of it was the usual mix of teen emotions, the egocentric perspective on life that was par for the course at this age, but her father leaving had stolen a part of Audrey’s childhood, which seemed to have manifested itself in her defensive attitude when it came to anything Sam might have the audacity to suggest or approve of. Sam felt on tenterhooks with her daughter the whole time. She never knew what to expect from day to day, and without realising it, Sam had slowly become more and more stressed. Her best friend Jilly had suggested she go to a doctor but Sam didn’t want to go down that road. They’d likely write a prescription for antidepressants just to get rid of her and move on to the next patient, and Sam didn’t want to admit she was at that point yet. Some days Sam wondered what had happened to her. Even when she was going through her divorce, grappling with the legalities and the practicalities, she’d handled one day at a time and managed to miraculously keep a clear head, telling herself it would all work out in the end. She didn’t seem to be able to do that anymore. With Audrey it was a whole new ball game and one she wasn’t sure if she could win, or even be a front runner in for that matter.

  She watched Audrey slide the garlic bread into the oven and poured herself a glass of crisp sauvignon blanc. She may not have a job but she had wine and tonight she needed it. She felt the welcome effect of the alcohol make her shoulders relax instantly.

  ‘There are a lot of options in make-up artistry you know,’ Audrey announced. ‘I could work with a theatre company or on a television drama. I wouldn’t mind working on something like Poldark.’

  Whether it was the wine or the relief at having a conversation, Sam didn’t know, but she was going with it for now. ‘Hey, get in line,’ she laughed. ‘We’d all like more of Poldark.’

  Between them they served up the dinner and avoided talk of Sam’s work – past and future – or any discussion of Audrey’s suspension. Perhaps she was being irresponsible by doing so, by not issuing her punishment or lecture right now, but just for this evening Sam wanted a moment of calm.

  ‘We could make a deal you know,’ Audrey suggested as she shook her head at the offer of the last piece of garlic bread. ‘I could finish school, study hard to get good GCSE grades but you let me skip A levels as long as I have a place at a college.’

  Leaving school at sixteen had never been an option for Sam; she’d never had a choice about following anything other than an academic path. ‘We can think about it,’ she told Audrey. ‘But you would have to knuckle down and get your GCSEs. That’s the first thing. And before you tell me you don’t necessarily need qualifications to be a make-up artist, I want to you get some so that you have a back-up plan. You never know if you’ll change your mind and I’d hate for you to find you were limited.’ Her words came out as a diatribe, without Audrey interrupting. She braced herself for fallout, topped up her wine and slotted the bottle back into the fridge. She never drank during the week but seeing as she no longer had a job to get up for in the morning, she let up with her own rules for once.

  ‘OK.’ When Sam looked at her in disbelief, she repeated herself, ‘I said OK, let’s do it your way, Mum.’

  ‘To do what I’m asking, you’d need to be in school, Audrey.’

  ‘Which I will be in September.’

  ‘And how much will you have missed?’

  ‘Not a lot happens in the last two weeks of term, believe me.’ Her nonchalance didn’t last when she saw Sam’s expression. ‘I’ll make sure I’ve caught up with everything by the time we go back after the summer holidays.’

  She was saying all the right things, but Sam knew from experience that talk and the follow-through were two very different things to Audrey. Last month she’d gone on and on about how she’d cook the dinner every night for a week after she’d been given a detention for not handing in her homework. That had lasted all of one evening until she looked so stressed with her studies that Sam had given in.

  Sam began to load the dishwasher as Audrey handed her scraped plates one by one before she emptied the leftover chilli into a plastic container.

  ‘I know I’m a disappointment.’

  Her words took Sam by surprise. ‘Is that what you really think?’

  ‘I can see it when you look at me. You’re disappointed I’m not more like you, that I don’t work hard enough.’

  ‘Audrey, I don’t need you to be like me, and I’m not disappointed in you.’ How could she explain how disappointed she was in herself? Disappointed she couldn’t keep her marriage together enough for her child, ashamed she never had best worked out the way to manage solo parenting and keeping your teen on side when they blamed you for everything. Sam sometimes wondered if she wasn’t hard enough on her daughter, if overcompensating for Simon’s absence was half the problem.

  ‘I’m disappointed you got suspended,’ Sam braved saying. Talking to Audrey was like doing a tentative dance where if you put your foot down too hard then you threatened to shake up the entire floor. ‘I didn’t expect it and you’ve got to admit that what you did was wrong.’

  ‘I didn’t think anyone would take it seriously – I honestly didn’t.’

  ‘How did you get the email to everyone anyway? You wouldn’t know their email addresses.’

  ‘Sid hacked into the school’s computer system.’

  Sid. The boy Sam had never met face-to-face but who she suspected was a bad influence. ‘How on earth did he manage that?’

  ‘He’s clever.’

  ‘Not so clever he didn’t get suspended. I’m assuming he did too.’

  ‘He did, and his dad went ballistic.’

  ‘Then you got off lightly with me,’ Sam barked.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I really am.’

  With the food, the apology, the tablets and the wine, her head and her stress levels had at least begun to simmer and she pulled Audrey into a hug and kissed the top of her head. ‘It’ll all be fine, I promise. We’ll be OK.’ It’s what she’d wanted to say to her daughter, to herself, for years, as though the repetition inside her head would be a way to make it come true. ‘I’m going for a bubble bath. Could I leave you to wipe the table for me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Sam trudged up the stairs and ten minutes later sank down into warm water laced with her favourite Diptyque bath oil. She didn’t care that it was summer and already warm inside; she needed this, and she soon shut her eyes to let the aroma of the oil take away her heavy thoughts. The hardest thing about being a single parent had to be this: having the whole weight of responsibility resting on your shoulders and nobody else’s. Simon was off on the other side of the world doing whatever he was doing, he had brief flurries of contact with his daughter and when he did, his stories were full of excitement; tantalising tales of a foreign land Audrey had never been to, a lifestyle she wasn’t a part of. Whereas Sam… Well, she got the day-to-day grind, the pushing her daughter to get out of bed on a school morning, the nagging over homework, the snippy attitude and mood swings, the constant attempt to find a window into her child’s life.

  Sam lay in the bath so long she’d begu
n to drift off when she heard the front door bang. She hoped it wasn’t anyone to see her; not only wasn’t she dressed, she didn’t want to have to talk to anyone. She understood why some people didn’t let it slip about losing their job. There were people who continued to put on a suit every day and look as though they were driving to the office when really they were hiding out in a coffee shop until they could return home as usual. She got it. Admitting to failure wasn’t something she liked to do and it definitely wasn’t something she wanted to share.

  She hurried to get out of the bath, wrapping herself in a towel while she waited for Audrey’s holler up the stairs to tell her who was waiting. She hoped it wasn’t Sharon, her neighbour; she’d been over three times last week trying to get Sam to sign up for the bloody park run. The whole street was in on it, going en masse down to the local park in their Lycra and brightly coloured trainers. Sharon saw it as a good way to get to know your neighbours. Sam saw it as her idea of hell. She wasn’t a runner and she definitely wasn’t one to mingle with the neighbours. She had her friends and at home she liked a bit of anonymity. She wanted to be able to come and go and have an escape in her own space without interruptions.

  Maybe she wasn’t all that different to her mother.

  ‘Audrey,’ she called out from the bathroom door. If it was Sharon, she’d go down in her towel and pretend she was rushing to get ready to go out.

  When there was no answer, she went downstairs and called her daughter’s name a second time, went into the lounge, the dining room, back up to Audrey’s bedroom and then downstairs again. And when she realised the bang of the door had been Audrey leaving, she picked up her phone from the kitchen bench and bashed out a message to her daughter demanding to know where she was.

  When she got no response, she lost her temper and typed an angry, ‘You’re grounded!’ The get-home-now implication was in those words without even trying.

  She slammed her phone down again and when she saw her bag open on the floor by the stairs where she’d left it, her heart sank. She pulled out her purse and sure enough the twenty-pound note from the back section had gone.