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

  Sam called Audrey this time and left an irate message. Audrey didn’t call back but Sam’s phone pinged with a text message moments later: Gone to the cinema with Sid. Won’t be late.

  Just like that, as though she hadn’t stolen money, as if their earlier conversation hadn’t even taken place, as if she hadn’t been suspended from school. And never mind the rule that Audrey didn’t go out after seven on a school night. She spent most of her evenings on her damn phone scrolling through Instagram posts so it wasn’t a real hardship, but it was a rule that had been broken tonight on top of everything else.

  Sam had been the complete opposite of Audrey at the same age. Holed up in her bedroom every night, partly because her father was always drumming it into her that she needed an education if she wanted a good life, Sam had studied hard to make him proud. Even after he died, his approval followed her everywhere she went. When she passed her driving test only months after he passed away, she pictured his smile; when she graduated, she imagined him in the audience watching her dressed in her robes and being presented with her degree certificate. When she got her job as a customer services manager, she could hear his congratulations and pride; when she got divorced, she felt his disapproval. But as well as wanting to please her father, Sam had realised very quickly that the harder she worked and the more secure job she landed, the better chance she had to escape the prison of the home her mother had made unbearable to live in. And after she met Simon it became even easier. They got together, married in a whirlwind and moved to a different part of the country to start over.

  Thinking of how her relationship was with Audrey, Sam knew she’d messed up just as much as her own mother had. Maybe for different reasons, but the end result was the same. They’d both ended up with a daughter who didn’t want to spend time with them, a daughter who wanted to get away. The Veronica Bentley Sam knew from her late teens, and for every year since, wasn’t the mum Sam remembered from when she was little. Something had changed along the way, and Sam had no idea what. All she knew was the mum who had once been there for her, laughed with her, shown a sense of pride in everything Sam did, had all but disappeared. And now, history was repeating itself with Sam and Audrey.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. She didn’t often cry but with everything she’d had to contend with today, she couldn’t stop it. Still wrapped in her towel, she called her best friend Jilly, who lived a five-minute walk away. The pair had been friends since they met when Jilly’s son and Audrey had been in the same playgroup. Jilly had been there to pick up the pieces when Simon left, she’d babysat enough times so Sam could meet with her lawyer, she’d listened to Sam bitch and moan when Simon emigrated to New Zealand with someone else. Tonight Jilly let Sam vent over the phone, she listened, spoke in all the right places and was able to calm Sam down. Good friends, their lives were very different. Jilly had two sisters and two brothers who all lived within a twenty-mile radius, as well as hands-on parents who regularly visited the grandkids and interacted with them in a way Sam could only dream of. And she had a husband who worked hard but never neglected his family. A husband who was by her side every step of the way. What Sam would give for that kind of simplicity.

  Sam went upstairs and got dressed. She sat on the end of the bed, the silence in the house almost too much to bear. When Simon left, one of the big things Sam had wanted was to keep her home, the bricks and mortar that gave her and Audrey stability. Audrey had had enough upset without having to shift schools, move into a new home, leaving behind the bedroom that had transitioned with her from the days of pale blue walls and fluffy white clouds to the black and white phase she’d gone through aged eleven and now, the metallic silver-dotted wallpaper she’d chosen for one feature wall along with three others in white with a hint of grey. Sam hadn’t wanted to take anything else away from Audrey and with hard work at her job, it was possible to stay in the house until Audrey finished her education. Then, when the dust settled, when Audrey was a grown-up and perhaps able to see and understand that it took two people to make a marriage work, Sam was planning to look for somewhere smaller and ease the financial pressure on herself. But now, redundancy had thrown everything up into the air.

  Thoughts of her finances niggled Sam enough that in the end, she knew that if she didn’t look at them right now she’d go crazy waiting for Audrey, and so with a pen and pad, and her laptop open so she could bring up her bank account, she wrote out calculations on how long the redundancy money was going to tide her over.

  As she suspected, it wouldn’t last long.

  It was blindingly obvious she’d have to sell the house. Even if she landed a job in the next few months, the risk of keeping hold of this place was too high. Instead, she’d have to rent somewhere far smaller and in a different area for a while, to at least get rid of this one noose around her neck. She should’ve done it back when Simon left and Audrey’s life had fallen into pieces anyway, then they’d be settled somewhere else already, the mortgage a fraction of what it was now, the stress a fraction of what it was.

  Sam moved from her calculations to looking at estate agent websites and rentals. Three bedrooms would be ideal and a garden, preferably detached with a driveway, but after half an hour of finding prices were astronomical, she’d narrowed her criteria to two bedrooms, semi-detached or terraced, anywhere within a five-mile radius of Audrey’s school. There was one, perhaps two, options and she sent off queries to both if only to have a look around while she organised the sale of this place. She couldn’t afford to be sentimental any longer; she had to be realistic. So before she could change her mind, she fired off two requests to estate agents to come and value her house, the home she loved.

  Her head aching from so much time staring at the screen, she made a hot chocolate and moved back to the lounge where she stayed in the same chair until she heard the front door click open and shut quietly, and footsteps creep along the hallway. Audrey was halfway up the stairs before she turned and saw her mum sitting in silence.

  ‘I haven’t got school. I figured being late wouldn’t matter.’ She shrugged as though it was any other ordinary day, their conversation earlier hadn’t happened, and she and Sid hadn’t done something so stupid Sam wanted to wring both of their necks.

  Finally Sam reached the end of her tether. ‘You’re grounded, for two weeks!’ she yelled. ‘You will not leave this house in that time, do you hear me, Audrey?’

  Audrey was shocked but stood her ground and soon went back to acting like she didn’t care. ‘I figured you’d do that.’ She turned and took another step up towards the solace of her bedroom.

  ‘And no phone either,’ Sam hollered after her. That had her attention.

  ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘I can and I will. And where have you been?’

  ‘I told you, the cinema.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me why you stole money from my purse?’

  ‘It’s my allowance.’ Audrey’s voice wobbled.

  ‘I told you, without my job, that has to stop for a while. And do you really think you deserve it this month? And who is Sid? I’ve no idea who this boy is and you go out with him until this time of night.’

  ‘He’s my friend.’ She pulled out her phone and showed Sam a photo of him, a selfie with the both of them, sitting on a slide in the local park eating ice-creams. ‘There, that’s him, a bit taller than me, blue eyes, Yorkshire accent, not much more you need to know.’

  ‘Sid’s a bad influence – you never used to get into this much trouble.’

  With a hard stare, Audrey retaliated. ‘Yeah, well, we used to be a family – things change.’

  ‘I’m still your mother – you don’t get to be rude to me.’

  ‘I’m not surprised Dad left you!’ she shrieked, her voice shaky.

  Sam shook her head in despair. ‘I can’t even look at you right now.’

  ‘Fine by me, I don’t want to look at you either!’

  And that was how the night ended, door slamming, swea
ring, but Sam couldn’t face any of it. She crawled into bed hoping that by the next morning she could somehow wake and find it had all been a terrible nightmare.

  Sam woke the next morning and for one blissful moment forgot the night before. But it all came flooding back to her when she looked at the time and realised her body clock hadn’t got the memo about her redundancy. It was six o’clock and she was wide awake.

  In the kitchen Sam boiled the kettle for tea. Jilly had texted her to ask whether Audrey had got home safely, ask how Sam was coping, but even her best friend’s constant support didn’t work to lift Sam out of her mood this morning. She stood looking out of the kitchen window, the morning rain shrouding the garden in a dismal cloak of misery.

  Sam’s desperation over what to do about Audrey had been mounting up for a while, particularly since yesterday. She thought about how other people coped with family life’s ups and downs. The time Jilly had a stomach bug and her husband was away on business, Jilly had called her mum to come and look after the kids for an entire week, letting Jilly rest up and get back to normal. Sam’s colleague Marcus had struggled with his kids – he’d sent his wayward son off to stay with his grandad, who had been so strict when Marcus was growing up that he credited him with teaching him how to live in the real world. Sam had never really been sure what that meant – or whether it was entirely a good thing – but it seemed to have worked. Marcus’s son had come back with an entirely different attitude and all Sam knew was that now he was a lawyer, working in London and on his way to making partner. So something must have gone right.

  When Sam tipped away the cold dregs of tea, the warm liquid not working any of its usual morning magic, her desperation about Audrey gave way to practicality and before she knew what she was doing, she found herself making a decision even she couldn’t have foreseen.

  Sam had never asked anything from her own mother, certainly not since she moved away from the family home in Mapleberry, but what alternatives did she have?

  All Sam knew was that if she didn’t do something, she wasn’t sure her relationship with Audrey would survive.

  Chapter Three

  Veronica

  Veronica opened up the shutters in the sitting room so the sunshine as well as the floral scents from the garden could spill in through the windows. She wiped the windowsill, a favourite place for the dust to gather. She didn’t mind cleaning much at all. Some people moaned about it; on television this morning had been a feature about cleaning your home in only fifteen minutes each day, but to Veronica that seemed pointless. Cleaning and keeping things ship-shape was a way to fill her time when it was school term and Layla couldn’t visit whenever she liked, or when Charlie was on shifts and times for him to visit didn’t line up either.

  Once she’d mopped the kitchen floor, Veronica made the gardener, Trevor, a tea, which she left on the front doorstep along with a couple of Bourbon biscuits for when he was ready. Trevor had been coming to the house, modest in size like most homes on the street apart from a couple of bigger residences at the end, for almost eleven years now. He kept everything looking marvellous, weeding the beds below the sitting-room window where passionate red geraniums flourished at the end of their cycle, mowing the lawn and trimming its edges, pruning bushes that overhung windows or the path, keeping the privet hedge on either side of the front gate a neat welcome for those who ever came to number nine Mapleberry Lane. A quiet chap not much younger than her, Trevor was very polite and if Veronica wasn’t in the mood to talk he’d simply tip his cap in greeting or farewell. She’d made an effort to chat with him this morning though and he respected some days she could manage more conversation than others. Layla told her she was unique and quirky, although Veronica thought those adjectives were perhaps a bit generous as she really wasn’t all that interesting.

  With her own cuppa on the table beside her in the sitting room, Veronica took out her needle and thread to sew on Layla’s Grow Your Own badge to the sash she wore for Brownies. While she stitched, she thought about her next knitting project. She hadn’t picked up her needles in a few days, but it was halfway through the year already and she knew it was time to put in a phone order with the wool supplier and make a start on another cardigan for winter. She didn’t get to shop on the high street for new things so this was her way of treating herself. Perhaps she’d even go for something luxurious this time: a chunky wool in winterberry or a crocus-blue cashmere, or a rich plum colour she’d seen last time she looked on the website.

  Just after four o’clock, after Trevor had packed up and gone home, Layla went past with her childminder, Bea, and as usual held up both hands so Veronica could see as she looked out of the window. She held up ten fingers, clenched them into fists, then flashed another ten, scrunched them again and did it a third time. That meant she’d be over in thirty minutes. Veronica put up a thumb and went into the kitchen. She’d got some chocolate milk delivered as a treat for Layla as well as the Bourbon biscuits that were her all-time favourite. Her late husband Herman had disapproved of treats, so Veronica used to prepare vegetable sticks with homemade dips for after-school snacks, but when Herman was away she would make pancakes sprinkled with sugar and drizzled with lemon juice. She knew the importance of healthy eating – she’d been a nurse once upon a time before she’d been forced to leave the career she loved – but Herman had always thought he knew best and Veronica had done her best to keep the peace as much as possible. Now she was free to do as she liked, so she set out a few chocolate biscuits on a plate in readiness for Layla. Everything in moderation, she thought.

  ‘How was your day?’ she asked when Layla finally joined her.

  ‘Fun.’ The little girl smiled, skipping inside with the usual pink backpack on. ‘And Bea says I can stay for an hour before we have to go to my swimming lesson.’

  ‘Then you’d better eat quickly so you can digest them and not have your tummy too full. You’ll sink otherwise.’ Veronica ushered her towards the table and the awaiting plate of biscuits.

  Veronica approved of Bea, at least from everything Layla and Charlie had told her. She was living at home with her parents while she studied through the Open University and so she was flexible when it came to Charlie’s shifts, an essential job requirement for whoever he hired. He’d been caught out once and it was the reason Veronica had met the pair of them. Charlie and Layla hadn’t been living in Mapleberry for long when Charlie came to the front door. Veronica had peeked through the shutters in the lounge and seen a stranger, and so she ignored the knocks at first, hoping he’d go away. But when she looked again and saw how frantic the man was and that he had a small child in tow who was sobbing by that point, she unlocked the door and opened it with the chain on. Charlie’s account of the problem had come out garbled in his panic. His phone line still hadn’t been sorted, he was late for his shift at work and he was desperate to get hold of the childminding agency to tell them that his regular childminder was sick and couldn’t make it today. Charlie had asked to use Veronica’s telephone and she’d let them in to do so. Layla had been so upset, clutching at her daddy’s leg as he made the call, but it was easy to see that this was a man managing the best he could. He made his frantic call, Layla begged him not to leave her, and he briefly explained to Veronica that their lives had been chaotic for a while, that his wife had died when Layla was a baby and so now it was just him, and Layla sometimes took a while to trust anyone new.

  They hadn’t stayed long, but the following day Layla knocked on Veronica’s door clutching a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies to say thank you. Charlie was with her and had noticed Veronica’s front gate still didn’t shut properly. He’d offered to fix it there and then, they’d had a cup of tea, and rather than counting the time until they’d leave her alone, Veronica had found herself warming to the pair. Ever since that day, the three of them had formed a friendship that felt like family, and now, when Charlie had childcare problems, Layla came to Veronica’s. She even stayed for the odd sleepover if
Charlie was working a night and Veronica thrived on the company.

  Layla slurped her chocolate milk sitting at Veronica’s table, her legs swinging from the chair as she drank. ‘My teacher showed us how to smash up a plate today,’ Layla beamed, wiping away her chocolate moustache.

  ‘You smashed up a plate?’

  ‘Yes, it’s for the community flower wall.’

  ‘Ah, that makes sense now. I read about the flower wall on the local news website this morning.’ The community centre past the big field in Mapleberry had a wall separating it from the road and the council had given their approval for a community project to add flower mosaics as though it was an upright garden. To do this, they’d need lots of coloured china smashed into pieces.

  How Veronica wished she could be a part of something so significant in Mapleberry. Once upon a time she might have been.

  ‘It’s on the kindness calendar,’ Layla smiled. ‘We can do it as part of the class in a group or with family or friends outside school. Our teacher says it will make people who don’t normally talk to each other, more friendly.’

  ‘I can see how that would work.’

  ‘The class is having an after-school club to come up with a flower design for those who want to.’ She shrugged as though unsure.

  ‘And you don’t want to do it?’

  ‘The club is on a day I have Brownies.’ Her spirits fell. ‘I can’t be a part of it.’

  Veronica almost blurted out that she’d do it, she’d form a club with Layla instead. But how could she?

  ‘Daddy said he’ll go to some second-hand shops and see if he can find some colourful old plates or china for me to break up, but he doesn’t know when he’ll have enough time to work on the wall with me. He says he doesn’t have a creative bone in his body. Is it true? Do we have a creative bone? And where is it?’

  Veronica grinned. ‘We don’t have a special bone, no. It’s a figure of speech.’ Poor Charlie. He did his best, juggling work with parenting. And while she wouldn’t be able to help with the wall, she could take part in a different way perhaps. ‘I have some crockery you could smash into pieces if you liked.’ She went into the kitchen and foraged in the back of the corner cupboard where an old teapot and a couple of mismatched cups and saucers sat. She’d kept them as spares, never had got around to getting rid of them. She pulled them out and handed them to Layla. ‘You can have these.’ The teapot was duck-egg blue, the cups an off-white, perfect for making mosaic pieces. ‘And if you reach even further back in the cupboard, there are a few cups that’ll be perfect.’