for lunch.’ She gauged her son’s response and she thought, when I was thirteen, would I have dared roll my eyes at my mother? And then she softened. My son with the hollow legs. ‘I’ll make them for you. Homework?’
‘Chemistry and maths.’
‘How awful.’
Sam thought about it glumly. Then he perked up. ‘I can show you how to do a mind map on the computer – it’s the best way for organizing ideas. It can cure your Writer’s Block. I swear on my life.’
Frankie looked at Sam, looked at the pages in front of her, woefully devoid of a single word or image. Her body felt compressed and inert from the effort of spending all day creating nothing.
‘OK, but you still have to do your homework.’
‘I’ll do it later. This’ll only take me ten minutes to show you. It will change your life. I swear to God.’
‘Sam – if I can plan my next book in ten minutes, I’ll do your homework for you.’
‘Sick! Promise?’
‘No.’
He rolled his eyes at her. ‘Can I just check Instagram?’
‘No. And don’t roll your eyes – it makes you look like you’re having a fit. And that’s not funny.’
Forty minutes later, Frankie was still flailing about with the technical demands of on-screen mind mapping. Her son truly wondered whether she was pretending to be so thick or whether it was an avoidance tactic because she didn’t actually want to do another Alice book. One time, he’d watched her clean the inside of the dishwasher rather than write.
‘Sorry darling – about the crisps.’
‘Annabel will be far angrier than me. You promised her, remember.’
For a hideous frozen moment, Frankie could not move.
‘Oh shit – not again.’
Listening to his mother fulminate her way through the house, tripping over her own shoes strewn in a doorway, hunting for keys tossed goodness knows where that morning, Sam thought to himself that resurrecting the swear jar might be a very good idea indeed. He and his sister would be rich in a matter of days.
Frankie backed her car down the driveway. Today, it infuriated her that she’d bought a house with a driveway but with no space to actually turn a car. Every day, it cricked her neck. Added to that was the headache of being really late already and now she found she was going to need to wave and wait and wave again at Mr Mawby. The elderly farmer next door was manoeuvring his tractor from the road into his yard as cautiously as if it was a Ferrari he wanted to keep pristine. Oh God please don’t get out of the cab, please don’t come over. Get back in the cab, Mr Mawby. No time for a little mardle today.
It did occur to her that she hadn’t had time last week either.
‘Hi, Mr Mawby, hi.’ She wound down her window but kept her car creeping along. ‘Are you well? Mrs Mawby too? I have to go – I’m late for Annabel.’
And Mr Mawby thought, When will that girl slow down and bed in?
Over the last few months, it had struck Frankie that the sharp bends on these empty and stretching country lanes were every bit as taxing as heavy traffic in the city she’d left nine months ago. As she drove, she suddenly felt nostalgic for the crafty back-doubles she knew off by heart around the roads of North London. There didn’t seem to be any short cuts to Annabel’s school. Or perhaps there was a clever route she didn’t know about because she wasn’t yet local enough.
Even from a distance, she could see that Annabel was glowering at her. One of the few children in After School Club and now the last child in the playground.
‘I’m so so sorry,’ Frankie called out in general, as lightly as she could, as she approached. ‘Oh dear.’ She was so out of breath she couldn’t even swear under it. ‘Mrs Paterson, I am so sorry – I was writing. And the time – it just …’
‘That’s all right, Miss Shaw. Annabel and I were having a very interesting conversation.’
Frankie didn’t doubt that.
‘Good afternoon, Annabel.’ Mrs Paterson said goodbye with a formal handshake.
‘Good night, Mrs Paterson,’ Annabel said.
‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,’ Frankie told her daughter as they walked to the car.
‘That’s what Grandma says,’ said Annabel. ‘I don’t know what it means exactly – but I do know that you say oh God I sound just like my mother like it’s the worst thing in the world. So I wouldn’t say that one, if I were you.’
Sometimes, thought Frankie, there really is nothing you can say to a nine-year-old who has all the answers. She took Annabel’s hand, persevering until, after snatching it away twice and then turning it into limp lettuce, her daughter finally furled her fingers around her mother’s.
‘Not much more than a year, then it’ll be better. When you and Sam are at the same school, same bus.’
‘But I don’t want to leave my school,’ said Annabel quietly.
Frankie looked at her. ‘You like it here, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Annabel said. ‘I’ve only been here two and a bit terms but I like it much more than my old school. In fact, I hardly ever think about London.’
‘Nowadays we have the sea,’ said Frankie.
‘And a big garden,’ said Annabel, ‘and a room of my own.’
‘I’m truly sorry I was late, darling.’
‘Sometimes I really hate Alice.’
‘Why? What happened? Shall I speak to Mrs Paterson? Hate is a terrible emotion.’
‘Not Alice in my class, Mum. Your Alice. She’s like this stepsister or something. It’s like you favouritize her. What’s for supper?’
‘Baked beans, chips. Tomato and cucumber. Possibly.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t have time to go to the shops. I was working.’
‘Does that mean there are no crisps?’
‘I’m so sorry, darling.’
It was Annabel’s forlorn silence, the way her little fingers slackened as if sighing, that made Frankie feel suddenly useless at everything. She knew Annabel blamed Alice. But Frankie had no one to blame but herself.
‘Come on – let’s go via Howell’s and I’ll buy you two packets and one for tomorrow.’
But then she realized she’d come out in a rush without her purse. And she wondered, does nine months living here warrant credit at the local shop?
* * *
Alice & the Ditch Monster
Alice & the Ditch Monster Hatch a Plan
Alice & the Ditch Monster Brave the Storm
Alice & the Ditch Monster Save the Day
Alice & the Ditch Monster Go for Gold
Alice & the Ditch Monster Halloween Howls
Alice & the Ditch Monster Wonder What the Fuck They’re Going to Do Next
Children quiet in bed, one asleep, the other reading. A glass of Rioja to hand. The paper is still stark white and glaringly empty in front of Frankie. It’s raining outside and it shouldn’t be. All that relocation research done quietly in Muswell Hill over a two-year period was proving pointless, the websites and books were inaccurate. North Norfolk in May should have lower-than-average rainfall. It should