into an angry pout.
Tough. Maybe I shouldn’t have dissed her ancient chunky television but every now and then one of her needles hit home and I couldn’t help retaliating.
‘Does it have cartoons?’ asked Ava suddenly glancing up from her toys.
‘Er, I think so.’
‘You mean DVDs, stupid,’ snapped Poppy.
‘I’m not stupid.’
‘Yes you are.’
Ava went over and pulled one of Poppy’s plaits with a sharp tug and threw one of her toys at her head. Poppy seized it and hurled it back, hitting Ava square in the face.
Ava immediately began to wail, indignation giving her lungs a certain power.
‘Poppy!’ snapped Alice rushing over to scoop Ava into her arms. ‘It’s okay, baby. Poppy Harrison, apologise to your sister this minute.’
I frowned. Hardly fair. Ava had clearly started it, but unfortunately the scenario was horribly familiar.
Poppy pursed her small mouth and glared at her sister. ‘Soz’, she said with begrudging defiance.
Alice rocked Ava for a minute until the overloud noisy sobs abated. ‘Poppy, you’re the oldest; you’re supposed to be nice to your little sister.’
Old patterns, I thought.
Look after Alice, she’s only little. Remember, Alice is the youngest.
‘What about the house?’ I asked. ‘Bills etc. Anything need sorting out?’
Alice shrugged. ‘Dad takes care of all that. Everything’s on direct debit.’
Dad really did take care of everything. At our farewell dinner he’d taken me aside and asked me to keep an eye on Alice while he and Mum were away with the words, ‘Seriously, I’d like to wring the neck of the guy she got in to do the hedge. It cost me £150 and you should see the state of it. She needs a bit of support with that sort of thing. I think they see her coming.’
I absentmindedly rubbed at the scratch on my arm, which was finally healing thanks to the course of antibiotics. ‘Anything else?’
Alice shrugged. ‘Don’t think so.’
She stood on the doorstep to see us off, both girls waving madly from the car.
‘Who wants to make pizza when we get in?’ I asked, determined that for the next seven days I was going to be ‘fun Auntie Claire’ and that they would have such a good time they wouldn’t miss their mum too much.
‘Me, me!’ yelled Ava from the back.
‘That sounds cool,’ said Poppy with an approving nod as she sat next to me in the front seat.
I nodded back. They were both good kids; there was no reason that this week shouldn’t be a breeze. All I had to do was entertain them over the weekend, get them to school each day next week and feed them each evening. My stomach started to knot at the thought of all that that entailed. What if I couldn’t do it all? What did I know about children?
Chapter Six
Oh my God, I was dying. Already, Monday morning was a train wreck. I wished I was in the office where I knew exactly what I was doing. Who knew getting two children up, dressed, fed, and ready for school could be such hard work? I was making enough of a hash of my own life at the moment, how did I think I could manage the lives of two little girls as well?
Despite doing several Everest-sized mounds of washing – I think Alice had been saving it all up – I’d missed Poppy’s school shirts and she’d thrown a teenager-in-training strop when I’d suggested she wear one of last week’s.
‘You can’t be serious,’ she’d yelled. ‘That will ruin my life.’
‘I hardly think so,’ I said, almost laughing at the drama, except it wasn’t funny, and I went into the utility room to rummage in the pile. I found a Poppy-sized white short-sleeved shirt with the school logo and gave it a quick shake. It seemed clean enough.
‘Look, here you go. This will do and I’ll wash the rest today.’
‘No,’ she wailed.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. ‘Poppy, just for today, please wear this shirt.’
‘No! You’re being mean and horrid.’ She snatched it from my hand. Bright tears shone in her eyes and then she left the kitchen, slamming the door with enough force that all the dishes on the draining board rattled.
‘I haven’t done my homework,’ announced Ava placidly from the kitchen table where she was toying with her toast as Poppy’s feet thundered up the stairs.
‘I think that, under the circumstances, your teacher won’t mind,’ I said calmly. Why hadn’t she said anything last night?
‘Do you think?’ asked Ava. ‘She gets really, really cross.’ She began pulling things out of her book bag, endless bits of paper which dragged in the bacon grease on her plate, a couple of reading books, and assorted bits of artwork as there was another almighty crash of a door slamming upstairs. ‘Do you like my lantern?’ She held up a bedraggled bit of paper Sellotaped together into a tube with long slashes down the side. ‘Here,’ she produced a yellow exercise book.
‘What were you supposed to do?’ I looked up at the ceiling wondering whether I should go after Poppy.
‘Spellings.’
‘Maybe we can practise them on the way to school.’
But she’d already opened the book and with her lip between her teeth had begun copying the list of ten words.
‘You need to go and get dressed Ava.’ My voice was firm, even though inside I felt a slight sense of panic.
‘But…’
‘There isn’t time.’
‘Pleeease, Auntie Claire.’ Her eyes started to brim with tears. ‘I’ll b-be b-bottom again. I’m always bottom an’ Lucy Chambers always gets ten out of ten.’
I winced. The girls had been so good all weekend and quite brave about their mother going away without them. Alice had made it sound as if she was going to have the jolliest adventure and she would bring them back something lovely. I had my doubts about that. The retreat she was going to was in the foothills of the Himalayas and was an hour’s domestic flight from Delhi. It looked very beautiful but also very remote.
‘Okay, two minutes. Let’s have a look.’
Where had I got the foolish notion that getting two children up and ready for school would take only an hour and a half and that we could leave at eight-thirty and be at school in plenty of time?
And now it seemed I couldn’t even run and breathe at the same time. I was back from my first school run and attempting a gentle jog. Bent double, I tried to suck in another breath. Definitely dying.
With a wheeze I straightened. This was supposed to be the start of my new keep-fit regime. Unable to help myself – it was a legitimate reason for contacting work – I’d emailed Dave and volunteered to join the 5k team. I might also have asked how things were going in the office.
With disgust I glanced back down the leafy path. I hadn’t even run that far.
There was only one thing for it: coffee. And thank God for The Friendly Bean, which was within staggering in distance. Urging my protesting wobbly thighs back into action, I walked to the café, grateful for the emergency fiver tucked into my phone case.
With coffee in hand, too self-conscious and aware of my beet-red face