Best Supporting Role (5 page)

What? They were expecting terrorists to burst in and take control of the nonemergency crime helpline?

“Oh, I’d definitely call Jack Bauer.”

The sergeant, stony faced, looked at me and wrote something on his notepad. I’m guessing it was “candidate displays inappropriate use of humor.” I’d clearly blown it.

“So, if you had to list your strengths, what would they be?” He was just going through the motions now.

“Well . . . for eleven years I was married to a gambling addict. Coping with that as well as raising two children took a huge strength. A few months ago my husband was killed in an accident. He left me with massive debts, so things haven’t been easy, but I’m working hard to get my finances back on track as well as give my children the care and emotional support they need.”

I thought I detected a flicker of approval.

Ten days later I received a letter telling me that I had the job, subject to police checks. I also had to attend a race, disability and gender awareness course. Three weeks later, I started work at the
police station. The kids were convinced I’d be given a uniform and handcuffs. They were seriously put out when I wasn’t.

The nonemergency crimes the public were encouraged to report included car theft, damage to property and drug dealing. The nonemergency crimes they actually reported were very different.

“Hello, is that the police? I’m at Burger King and they’ve run out of Diet Coke.” Or: “Can you tell me how to defrost a turkey—do I take the giblets out?” Or: “I’ve don’t have any bus fare, can the police give me a lift home?” Or: “My boyfriend wants me to do anal. That’s a crime, right?”

There were four of us manning the helpline. Everybody except me was retired. Don, our team leader, had owned a hardware store. Maureen and Glenys had been nurses at the local hospital. Tony had sold cars for fifty years and thought all immigrants should be repatriated—not that he was racist, mind you. Don called him Tony the Fascist to his face. He said it was the first time in his life he’d been given a nickname and seemed to rather relish it, so we all joined in. Every Friday, Maureen brought in one of her homemade cakes. Don was always highly complimentary about her baking. In fact he was highly complimentary about Maureen in general. It was pretty clear that it wasn’t just her Victoria sponge he was after. When the phones were quiet, we drank tea and joked about the stupid callers. “IQs lower than their shoe size,” was Tony’s favorite line. He put their lack of intelligence down to too much cross-pollinating with undesirables.

Don would react by calling Tony a fascist prat. Tony would call Don a commie and then we’d all have another cup of tea. Nobody could get really angry with Tony. He was knocking on seventy. His
wife had just died and he had no family. Deep down we all felt sorry for him.

Sometimes Glenys and Maureen would tell us grisly hospital stories . . . corpses that sat up, the man who came into the ER and announced he had
gentile
warts, the surgeon who shouted at Maureen, “Here, nurse, catch,” and threw her a leg he’d just amputated—which she of course dropped.

Being a nonemergency helpline operator was an OK job, but it was hardly a career.

Mum said that with a million people out of work, I should be grateful for a job, even if it did mean talking on the phone all day to idiots.

“I am grateful. But I need more. The thought of doing this for the next thirty years fills me with absolute dread. I mean . . . suppose this is it. . . .”

“Sarah, God knows you have been through hell, but you have to stop feeling sorry for yourself and stay positive. You’re thirty-six—a young woman. You will turn your life around. I mean . . . look at Erin Brockovich.”

So, according to my mother, in order to give my life new meaning, I had to start wearing boob tubes and skirts up to my navel, find a gas company dumping toxic waste and sue them. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

Spring the Following Year

“. . . S
o, after the Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed and blew the little pigs’ house down, the little pigs decided to make a house of bricks, but there were problems at the brick factory and they had to wait weeks and weeks for the bricks to arrive. . . .”

“That’s not how the story goes,” Dan declared. “Plus the way you’re telling it is boring.”

“I know,” I said. “Bedtime stories are meant to be boring so that they’ll send you to sleep.”

“And I’m too old for the ‘three pigs’ story. It’s for babies.”

“I like it,” Ella shot back. “And I’m not a baby.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I . . . am . . . not. You’re a baby.”

“No. You are.”

“OK—enough,” I said. “Nobody’s a baby. Now can I please carry on with the story?”

At this point, Dan threw back his duvet and began jumping on the bed.

“Dan, stop that! You’re going to damage the springs. Come on . . . settle down, both of you. It’s way past bedtime.”

Dan carried on jumping. “So, Mum . . . is Dad a skeleton yet?”

“What?”

Judy, the grief therapist, had warned me that one of the ways children cope with death and try to make sense of it is to gather information. As the months passed, I should be prepared for more rather than fewer questions on the subject. “And don’t be surprised if they become a bit obsessed—particularly with the more macabre aspects. Ghosts, the devil and hell might well become hot topics.”

We’d had the occasional discussion about ghosts and whether Mike might come back as one. Dan pretended to be intrigued by the idea, but I could tell that it scared him. My response was unequivocal. There were no such things as ghosts.

Dan wondered if there was TV in heaven. If there was, did Dad get to watch football? And did they get earth news or heaven news? He decided they probably got both.

Neither of the kids had mentioned cadavers. Until now. “So, is Dad a skeleton?” Dan repeated the words slowly—in case I hadn’t heard the first time.

“I don’t know. . . . Dan, will you
please
stop jumping.”

“Mum, tell Dan to shut up. My daddy’s not a skeleton.”

“Maybe not yet,” Dan came back, landing hard on his rear. “But he will be once his body has rotted. That takes ages. He’s most likely still got worms and maggots crawling inside him, eating his flesh.”

Ella burst into tears and started howling. I got up from Dan’s bed, moved across to hers and pulled her onto my lap.

“Dan, that’s enough. If you want to talk about this, come to me. But I will not have you upsetting your sister, and especially not at bedtime.”

“I want my own room,” Ella sobbed. “I hate Dan. I hate him. I had my own room in the old house.”

“I know, hon, but for the time being you two are going to have to get used to sharing.”

“But why do we have to share? Why did we have to leave the old house?”

“You know why. Now that Daddy isn’t here anymore, there isn’t as much money coming in as there used to be.” The children still knew nothing about Mike’s gambling or all the debt he’d left, and while they were young, I intended for it to stay that way.

“So we’re poor and we’re going to starve like Bob Cratchit and all the people in Africa. . . .”

“What? No. Dad’s been gone for months—have we starved so far? I’ve got my job, so we’re going to be absolutely fine. I don’t want either of you worrying.”

This was our second night in the new rented house. It had taken over a year to sell the old one. It wasn’t that there had been no interest. There had been plenty. I must have had a dozen offers, but these days the mortgage companies weren’t lending the huge amounts that London buyers required, so people pulled out. The couple who finally bought it were in the music business. She had a sleeve of tattoos. He had a Hitler Youth haircut and said the house had a real Velvet Underground vibe. They paid cash.

I’d driven past a couple of times since they moved in and seen their Mercedes Sport in the drive. Meanwhile, the kids and I had moved into a two-bedroom Victorian terrace on the wrong side of the tracks. Literally. The Reading-to-Waterloo line was a couple of hundred yards beyond the back garden. At the end of the street was the level crossing, the border post between our new scruffy neighborhood and our old swanky one.

“What a difference a mile makes,” Mum had said when I took her with me to view the house. I watched her shudder as she took in the greasy pavement covered in gray disks of gum, the corner shop with sheets of security mesh protecting its windows.

“Mum, this is all I can afford. And anyway, I quite like it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. What can you possibly like about it? The dirt? The homeless? The fact that you’re practically living on the railway line?” Then she got upset because she and Dad didn’t have the money to help me buy a house in our old neighborhood.

I insisted that the trains weren’t a problem. “You can hardly hear them—particularly if the wind’s in the right direction.” Then I launched into my spiel about how good it would be for Dan and Ella to be raised in a neighborhood where the kids weren’t ferried to school in the nanny’s Jeep Cherokee. “Plus there’s real cultural diversity here. They need to know that the world isn’t made up of rich white people.”

“Fine. Let them watch
Roots
or
Gandhi
.”

“Oh, so it’s OK for them to learn about ethnic minorities, but not to live among them.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that. I may be a lot of things, but I’m not a racist.”

“No. Just a snob.”

“Sarah, you and my grandchildren are living in a poor, deprived, crime-ridden neighborhood. Are you telling me I shouldn’t be worried?”

I informed her that I had done my research and discovered that the crime figures were a fraction of what they used to be. “This is an up-and-coming neighborhood.”

“Who told you that? The estate agent?”

“No. I know for a fact that several of the kids’ teachers lived here. There’s an Italian deli just opened, a great new coffee shop, and the church hall holds judo and gymnastics classes for the kids. There’s even a gospel choir that invites people to join them for a sing-along once a week.”

Mum threw up her hands. “A gospel choir! I take it all back. What more could a Jewish girl want?”

The estate agent’s blurb had described the house as bijou. Mum said “bijou” was code for “suitable for contortionist with growth hormone deficiency.” “Compact” was even worse. That meant you could wash the dishes, watch TV and answer the front door without getting up from the toilet.

Despite Mum’s misgivings about the area, she agreed that the house had a lot going for it. The young couple letting it (while they went traveling) had spent the last two years renovating the place. They’d restored the cast-iron fireplaces, stripped the floors, put in a new kitchen and bathroom. There was only one downside. It was rather more bijou than I had imagined. The entire ground floor was about the size of the kitchen in the old house. I’d looked at umpteen bigger places, but they were shabby student houses. This
house was a little gem. It would be perfect—for the time being at least.

Back in the kids’ bedroom, I turned to my son. “So are we agreed? There’s to be no more talk of skeletons and maggots in front of your sister.”

Dan shrugged. “I’m only giving her the facts. Tom in my class told me how bodies rot. He found out from his cousin who’s twelve. He looked it up on the Internet.”

Clearly playdates chez Tom—Dan’s best friend—weren’t the innocent affairs they’d once been. “That’s a mean, cruel thing to do. He knows your dad died and he’s trying to scare you.”

“He didn’t scare me.”

The child was eight. Of course he was scared. Petrified, probably. And now he was paying it forward, bullying his sister the way this older child had bullied him.

“But Ella
is
scared,” I said. “You have to stop. I don’t want any more arguments.”

Dan shrugged. “OK.”

“My daddy’s not a skeleton,” Ella was saying now. “He’s in heaven. He’s with his mummy and daddy and all the angels.” She looked at me. “Do you think he’s still making TV ads in heaven?”

“Oh, I would think so.”

“And what about if he meets the devil? The devil could take him to hell, where it’s really hot like in Majorca.”

I decided it was time for some light relief. I reached for the scruffy copy of
The Twits
, which was lying on the floor. The description of Mr. Twit’s beard and the bits of old breakfasts, lunches and dinners that clung to it always had them shrieking with laughter.
“OK,
Twits
time,” I said. “But only if you both get back into bed and lie down.”

They did as I asked. I thought Ella might get upset again when we got to the bit where Mrs. Twit serves Mr. Twit worm spaghetti, but she laughed as usual. Twenty minutes later I kissed them both good night, turned off the light. As I headed downstairs, I could hear them giggling.

“Night-night, Mummy Twit,” Ella called out.

“Night-night, Daughter Twit.”

More giggles.

•   •   •

M
um was in the kitchen getting up off her hands and knees. She made an oo-phing sound as she went. “Right, that’s the floor done. It took three goes, but it’s finally come up OK.”

“Three goes? It looked pretty clean to me.”

“Believe me, it wasn’t. I had to get between the floorboards with Q-tips. You should have seen the muck that came up.”

Mum and Dad had insisted on helping me move in. Yesterday and today, Dad and I had arranged furniture and unpacked boxes. Mum had scrubbed, scoured and dusted. The place reeked of ammonia and bleach.

“You know,” Mum said, rinsing her cloth under the tap, “that sofa’s far too big for the living room.”

“I know, but it reminds the kids of the old house.” I’d been forced to sell all our old furniture because there wasn’t space for it here. I couldn’t face parting with the sofa.

Just then Dad walked in carrying a bag of Chinese food.

“Did you tip the delivery guy?” Mum said.

“No.”

“Why on earth not?”

“He was Chinese. I figured he owned the business. I only tip the Poles.”

“But even if he was the boss, he’s still driven out on a cold night. Doesn’t he deserve a tip?”

“You never tip the owner. They find it demeaning. Tell me something. If Hyatt took your luggage up to your room, would you tip him?”

“What? We’re not talking about Hyatt. We’re talking about the guy who owns the China Garden.”

“The principle’s the same.”

“Of course it’s not. Hyatt—if there even is a Hyatt, which I doubt—is a billionaire. The bloke from the China Garden probably drives a fifteen-year-old Nissan.”

“Guys, fascinating as this debate is, do you think we could eat? The food’s getting cold.”

“I still can’t believe you didn’t tip the guy,” my mother mumbled.

After we’d eaten, I insisted Mum and Dad call it a day. “You’ve done enough and you both look exhausted.”

“Fine,” Mum said, “but just let me load the dishwasher and wipe over the dishwasher liquid bottle.”

“What?”

“I noticed it’s a bit gloopy, that’s all.”

Dad tapped my arm. “Best just let her get on with it,” he whispered. “Tends to be quicker in the long run.”

“Guess you’re right.” I glanced at my mother. She looked pale and
she’d lost weight. “Mum . . . come on . . . go home. You need some rest.”

“I’ll rest in the next world. Funnily enough, being here with you and the children has taken my mind off everything.”

By “everything,” she meant her sister, Shirley. Shirley was dying. Having found a lump in her breast, she’d put off going to the doctor. A few weeks after Mike died, Mum finally persuaded her to get the lump checked out. It was cancer. What’s more, it had spread to her lymph nodes. Now, despite a double mastectomy and several rounds of chemo, the disease had traveled to her spine.

“You know, I blame myself,” Mum said. “I should have got her to the doctor earlier.”

“What are you talking about?” Dad came back. “You didn’t know earlier. She had the lump for nearly a year before she told you about it.”

“I know, but I sensed something was wrong. I should have made more of an effort to find out. I look at her lying in that bed and I feel so guilty. . . .” Mum’s eyes filled with tears. “My big sister . . . what will I do without her?”

I put my arms around my mother. “Come on, Mum, you’ve got me and Dad and the kids. We all love you.”

“I know. And I shouldn’t be upsetting you . . . not after what you’ve been through. I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“I’m so fed up with this family,” I said. “Everybody dying. It has to stop.”

“She’ll be out of pain, which will be a blessing,” Dad said.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I finish my shift at three tomorrow
and the kids have got playdates after school. Why don’t I pop in and see her?”

“She’d like that,” Mum said. She folded her cloth and put it in the cupboard under the sink.

Once Mum and Dad had gone, I began collapsing the last of the cardboard packing cases. I’d just added the last one to the pile when the doorbell rang. I peered through the spy hole—which, since I lived in such a lawless neighborhood, Mum had insisted I have fitted—and opened the door.

“Your financial advisor wishes to present his compliments,” Steve said. Then he handed me a bottle of champagne. “Housewarming present.”

“Aw, you really are a sweetie. You shouldn’t have, but I’m glad you did. I can’t remember the last time I had champagne.”

It had taken Steve nine months to ask me out. After that awkward conversation about his bill, he’d started calling every so often, “just to check how you’re getting on.” His manner was always professional: he was glad to hear I was doing well and if he could be of any further assistance, I should let him know. I guessed he had a soft spot for me, but he didn’t push it. He clearly sensed that my emotions were pretty raw and that dating was the last thing on my mind.

Then, in October we erected Mike’s headstone. There was a religious service, which was pretty much a rerun of the funeral—only without a casket and with fewer people. I blamed the so-so attendance on people feeling that they had paid their respects once and that doing it a second time seemed over the top. My mother blamed the rain, which had fallen in lumps.