Lemonade and Lies (3 page)

“Awesome.”

The word didn’t sound right coming from Emily. But her reaction to my interest in the new job didn’t surprise me. For she was on the edge of teenage slang, not at its beating heart.

Awesome
was now past its sell-by date. So were words like sick - meaning excellent - epic, wicked, random, skank and emo. Still, Emily thought it her duty to keep an eye on cultural trends, and an ear out for student jargon.

But the new tide of teenage buzz words changed so often, even ‘cool’ was now uncool, had been replaced by ‘dope’. It was hard to keep up. Unlike Emily, I didn’t bother trying, for I figured teens needed a language of their own. One that no-one else could hijack.

“There’ll be the usual interview with HR of course,” she said. “But that’s just a formality we have to go through - keep the books straight. I’ll put in a strong recommendation for you.”

She included me in her knowing smile. It said we were both women of the world who understood how these things worked.

“Fine.”
What else could I say? I wasn’t sure I really wanted the job. But what choice did I have? We needed the money.

“Right, I’ll clear your timetable until 5th period this afternoon, so you’ll be free to shadow Mandy, get the flavour of her day.” She nodded.

We both knew there was no typical day; a lot of the job was fire-fighting. Or, as Emily liked to put it, troubleshooting, which she felt had a more serious ring to it.

I wondered who was about to baby-sit my AS poetry class, and if I should warn the poor bugger.

“Right, I’ll leave you in Mandy’s capable hands. She’ll be expecting you next door.”

I tried to follow the admin routines Mandy took me through. I’m not unintelligent, but the small room was hardly more than a cupboard. There were no windows and the lack of fresh air made me feel drowsy.

My mind wandered off, and Mandy’s voice faded into the background. The result was a notebook full of random scribbles that I doubted I’d be able to make sense of later.

“That more or less covers it. Any questions?” she asked, as I shook myself free from the last thought I’d had. Nothing to do with my new job, but the nagging guilt that I still hadn’t done anything about the trainers I’d promised Millie.

“Ah . . .” I scoured my memory for a clue to Mandy’s last theme.

“Yes?”

Brains are wonderful things. Mine suddenly leapt into forward gear and made a sensible contribution to the current topic (a deputy’s responsibilities, not Millie’s new trainers).

“I was just wondering about lesson observations,” I said, trying to look as if I really was.

“Excellent point. Yes, it’s possible you may have to take on some lesson obs – that sometimes happens when Emily’s busy. Then of course there are the interviews for next year’s new student intake. But you won’t have to worry about those until next term.”

Mandy smiled at me. The sort of smile you’d give a small child, or a relative showing the first signs of Alzheimer’s. And she was looking closely at the scribbles in my notebook.

“Tell you what,” she said, briskly (like someone you’d expect to find on a hockey pitch wearing large, sensible knickers and a sports bra) “you get on with whatever else you’ve got to do, and I’ll jot down some bullet points for you.
Summarising
is one of my strengths.”

Obviously it wasn’t one of mine
. So I nodded. Said a gracious ‘thank you’.

She looked relieved. Whether that was because I was leaving, or she’d managed to tick another box in her busy to-do list, I could only guess.

I’m not good with lists. Or small, airless rooms with no windows. I wondered what Emily Thomson, my normally sensible boss, had spotted in me that made her think I might be management material. I gave up. It’s impossible to see yourself as others see you. But I made my mind up about one thing. I’d keep the office door open. I’ve never been happy in small spaces. They freak me out.

*

The footsteps were still there. Regular as clockwork. Regular as mine. They’d been there since I started walking. I felt like a kid bunking off school, but my classes were sorted until late in the afternoon and Mandy had dismissed me. So, ideal. I could get a decent lunch and nose around the shoe shops. It couldn’t be that hard to find a cheap pair of kid’s trainers.

It was a good day for a walk. Not summer-like exactly, but still warm for an October day. Whoever the footsteps belonged to must have felt the same. Why didn’t they pass me? I wasn’t going that fast.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I looked over my shoulder; one of those casual glances into the distance. Like I’d suddenly thought of something important and wanted to check it out.

A middle aged woman was behind me. It was her wide-fitting, sensible brogues that were keeping up the regular rhythm on the flagstones. The only other person around was a tall man. But he was several yards behind the woman and neither of them seemed to have any interest in me or anything I was doing.

I felt like a stupid, drama queen. And it was all that man James McDonald’s fault. He’d planted the seed in my head that something strange was going on, and now I was looking for melodrama around every corner.

Dear God, it suddenly came to me. He said he’d gone to check on the kids. But what if, when I’d fainted, he’d searched my house? Suddenly, the warm day felt chilly. But he’d seemed so pleasant, more than that, I’d actually allowed myself to believe in the guy. In his concern for me, and in his smile. A smile that said he found me attractive.

My shoe caught the uneven edge of a paving slab and I almost went arse-over-tit. That settled it.
Concentrate. Walk. Don’t day dream. Get the bloody trainers. Enjoy a bowl of soup and a bread roll. A decent cup of freshly brewed coffee. Then get back to work. Teach for the last two periods and go home to real life. Forget the man.

Except that real life doesn’t always go according to plan, does it. Oh, I got the trainers okay. There was a sale in the shoe shop, but even so it wasn’t easy dipping into my overdraft. That was for emergencies. But a promise was a promise and Millie was a good kid, didn’t ask for much.

I headed for the cathedral then, still on track. I figured on a two-birds-with-one-stone approach. A walk through the beautiful and newly restored cathedral and lunch in the Chapter House restaurant.

The soup was great. Sweet potato with peppers. And the bread was homemade with some sort of seeds clinging to it. I savoured every mouthful and was halfway through when the waitress marched up to my table, like a woman on a mission.

She was a real waitress in the old-fashioned sense of the word; black uniform, with white frilly apron and cap. She was middle aged, pleasant, interested in giving her customers good service. She held out a note.

It was like something from a movie. I mean nothing like that had ever happened to me before.

“The young man asked me to give this to you. Said you’d understand that he couldn’t stay.”

My eyes instinctively roamed the room, looking for the young man. He wasn’t there. But I figured I knew who had left the note. The waitress thrust it into my hand and I eyed the thing like it was a king cobra inflating its massive hood. Getting ready to strike.

You have something that belongs to me. I want it back. If I don’t get it back, your life may never be the same again. This is just a friendly warning, but I know how much you value your children.

“Shit!”

“You okay?” The woman seemed concerned. “Only you look a mite pale.”

Who says mite? Not that I could throw stones. I’d just said shit.

“Who gave you the note, can you remember?” I asked urgently, hearing my voice shake.

“The young man. He said you knew him.”

Crap. It was James McDonald again. My shadow.

“What did he look like?”

“Very striking,” she said.

That’d be right. He was definitely striking.

“Wavy hair, mid-brown - dark hazel eyes?” I said. “Intelligent looking. Bit like a younger version of that Irish actor.”

“Actor?”

“Liam Neeson.”

The waitress looked puzzled. “What, the bloke what delivered the note, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t look nuthin’ like that.”

“You sure?”

“I look stupid to you?”

“No, ‘course not.”
I
was wrong. People-reading-skills way off mark.
She wasn’t as sweet as she looked.

“This guy had black hair,” she said. “Sort of straggly, down to his shoulders and an earring in one ear. More like a gypsy. Kind of wild and dangerous. Good luck with that one!” There was criticism in her voice. As if I’d made some kind of risky and unsuitable choice.

The waitress left me to mull over the image and I put the soup spoon down, dropped the remainder of the bread beside it, the appetite frightened out of me.

I knew no one who looked like that. Unless . . .  The new thought hit me like lightning. Christ! I flapped a hand at the waitress, an urgent gesture that brought her back over at a trot. Maybe she figured I was done and wanted to give her a tip.

“This bloke – was he tall?”

“Yeah.”

“But not skinny, right?”

She gave me an odd look. “Definitely not skinny,” she said. “Works out, I’d say.”

My hands were shaking as I took out the money for the bill. I left a tip, even though the family finances were about to slide from the sick to the critically ill. But it had been a slow lunch time for the waitress, only me and one elderly woman eating a muffin. She’d hardly make it to the Bahamas on our tips.

Fear seems to block any intelligent thought. I sat on a bench outside the cathedral, shaking, struggling to bring my terror under control. Trying to think my way through to some ordinary explanation for the note. Nothing worked. My mind had a log jam up there. And I couldn’t get past the feeling of utter disbelief that someone wanted to hurt my children, because I’d been mistaken for somebody else. I had
nothing
belonging to this man, whoever he was. And although I had no idea who he was, I knew exactly what he looked like.

It was too much of a coincidence for it not to be him. And life isn’t made up of that many coincidences. It was the guy who’d followed me into town. The man who wasn’t stupid, because he’d always kept someone else in between us. Like the woman with the noisy shoes. I could see his face in my mind, and the memory of what he’d threatened came back again. My legs weakened and some of my lunch found its way up into my throat.

I forced out a long, slow breath and told myself I mustn’t throw up. Outside the cathedral wasn’t the ideal place to inspect the remnants of sweet potato and pepper soup. And there was probably some sort of city ordinance against throwing up on consecrated ground.

Auto pilot. That’s what took me through the rest of the day. I don’t remember much about how I got back to work, and the only thing that marked my final class out from any other was that Arthur complained of feeling ill.

Arthur’s a Lang/Lit student with a less-than-enthusiastic attitude towards work. I moved him to a seat by the window and opened it slightly, amid exaggerated complaints about the drop in temperature. I turned the radiator up. It’s hard to please everyone.

Arthur’s face took on a light green tint. The others said he hadn’t been to bed the night before. Had been partying. That usually meant industrial amounts of either cider or Jägermeister - a seventy-percent-proof, lethal German spirit with herbs and spices. It was a digestive, meant to be drunk in small quantities.

This information was passed to me too late. So was my lunge for the plastic waste-bin. Arthur stuck his head out the window and puked onto the fancy canvas that stretched below our classroom in a canopy. I later heard that some of this made it as far as the ground two floors below. It eventually took two cleaners with long ladders, disinfectant and a mixture of cleaning materials and ingenuity to scrape the remains from the navy blue canvas. I put up a black mark (at least with the cleaners). Life is often unfair.

*

“Mum, you’re not gonna get stressy and do one, are you?”

“Do one?” I asked innocently, like I’d no idea what my daughter was talking about. Millie is eight years old, one of the younger kids in her Year Four class. Not a headstrong teenager with an attitude problem. So where does she get language like that?

I knew what the trouble was. Tom had been taken out for a friend’s party and she was stuck at the bus stop with me. The next bus wasn’t due for twenty minutes, and twenty minutes is a lifetime for kids when they’re bored and thinking about brothers doing more exciting stuff. She’d been sniping at me ever since I’d picked her up.

I ignored her insult and told her we could sit upstairs in the bus. It was meant to be a treat, but you’d think I’d suggested some form of medieval torture.

My car
still
wasn’t ready. I suppose it had slipped farther down the work docket in favour of newer, sexier cars that were easier to fix. I had no idea what was wrong with it, for the mechanic had gone into garage-speak and lost me at the first hurdle.

That was one of the things on my bucket list. A course in car maintenance for the beginner, so I could give Jemima her best chance of a stately old age and she wouldn’t end up discarded in some breaker’s yard. I don’t do lists (as you know) but I figure a bucket list is different.

I hadn’t told Millie about the trainers yet. She was behaving badly and I don’t believe in buying my kids’ good behaviour. The little savages will only use it as a weapon to beat you over the head with.

The house was cold when we got in, so I shoved the gas fire on immediately, ignoring the fact that the price of gas had gone up yet again, and I still hadn’t paid the bill.

Tea was hardly exotic, beans on toast. My daughter pulled a face and smothered the lot with ketchup. You try your best, but it seems everyone’s a critic. Still, the moral victory was mine, for it comes from my healthy choice menu list, and the beans were a BOGOF this week.

“Right. Bedtime,” I said, when the homework books had been packed away and Millie had watched her allotted telly slot. My daughter looked at me like I was a dictator from some small African nation.
I’m thinking of swapping my kids for somebody else’s.

“Don’t see why I have to go to bed before Tom.”

“Because it’s late and it’s a school night and because I said so.”
Because I said
so
? I couldn’t believe I’d resorted to that one. And I guess I could see her point. She was two years older than Tom, so to her the world probably seemed an unfair place. But I couldn’t weaken. Bedtime was bedtime, and just because Angelica Parker - mother of aforementioned child with birthday - allowed her children to stay up to some ungodly hour was hardly a reason for our household to fall apart.

“Bet he’s sleeping over at Charlie’s after the party,” said Millie, her tone accusing. Not only would her brother get a goody bag and a Kiddie Meal and whatever current boy-toy was on offer, but he would have the excitement of a sleepover.

“He’s not staying over, not on a school night,” I blurted out. “Mrs Parker’s dropping him back.”
But was that true
? I remember Charlie’s mother saying that, don’t I? Or had I made it up? I’d had a bad day and the small grey cells may have taken a short holiday. Maybe I was supposed to pick him up. Dear God. Was my poor kid the last one in the place, waiting patiently for an absentee mother?

In desperation, I shooed Millie to her room and went searching for the party invitation. I’d written the woman’s mobile number down, but the flimsy invite had been snowed under by bills and a load of advertising flyers that I hadn’t asked for and didn’t want.

I found it. Relief. Tom was being brought back. But I hadn’t read it properly (I’m often in a hurry). The invitation had a picture of a pirate on the front and asked everyone to wear fancy dress, pirates preferred. Shit.
Failed
again
.

Tom came home in a quiet mood. What was it with my family lately? Other than the obvious having no dad and no spare cash hanging around for the latest mobile phone to keep up with their friends. I’d told them that sort of thing didn’t always make you happy, but I wasn’t expecting praise for it.

My son’s sad face and his meek acceptance of my ‘straight to bed’ order warned me something was wrong. At first I thought it was the usual post-party blues, where real life kicks in after the excitement, and kids get surly as they have to readjust. But my internal mummy-radar said it was more serious than that. Eventually got it out of him that some little oik at the party told him his dad left because he hated both Tom and his sister.

I spent an hour putting an emergency band aid on my poor little six-year-old’s self esteem. And then big, brave Tom - who so far hadn’t shed a tear for all the bad stuff that had happened to him - finally caved in and cried his heart out. Hallelujah! Maybe now he could be the normal, happy kid he used to be, and all that bottled up stuff wouldn’t come back to haunt him. And the nightmares would sort themselves out.

It was only when I’d finally found time for myself and relaxed with a mug of tea that my legs started up a tattoo of their own. Some sort of memory in my nervous system from the scary events of the day. So far I’d managed to ignore the weird note, and the crank that had followed me. Was it even the same man the waitress had described? And who was the note actually meant for?

I sipped my green tea, told myself that with perseverance, I might even come to like it. It was better for you than wine, though that had been my first choice. Luckily, I didn’t have any. My kids had enough problems and didn’t need a mother who might end up drinking Buckfast Tonic Wine - one step away from rocket fuel and fast becoming a favourite of the street alky.

I fell asleep in the chair and was jolted awake by my daughter’s piercing scream. Before I could get to the back bedroom, Millie came rushing at me. She threw her arms around me, her tiny body clinging on fiercely.

“It’s okay, love. You’re safe now. Just a nasty dream.”

“Mum, there’s a man outside my window. A huge man all in black, with a massive head and great big fangs.”

I tried not to smile (it was the fangs that did it) for it was serious to Millie and nightmares can be terrifying things that feel vividly real.

“He’s gone now.”

‘How’d you know?’ she asked, her eyes massive globes.

“You’ve woken up. Nightmares disappear when you wake up.”

“But he was real.”

How could I explain to my daughter that people in nightmares are only our fears taking on human form? I didn’t think she’d go for that - and it might make her feel worse.

“Well?” She put her hands on her hips in a feisty stance that I can only assume she’d copied from some soap opera.

“What?”

“Aren’t you even coming to look?” she demanded.

I suppose I had to. She wouldn’t go back to sleep until I’d declared her bedroom a vampire-free zone.

“
See
,” I said, with the confidence of someone who hasn’t been woken from a deep sleep by some huge, fang-ridden man dressed in black. “Nobody’s here, Mills.”

She pulled her hand from mine. She hated that pet name, said it made her sound like a kid. (Duh!)

“And there
was
somebody here,” she said, grudgingly allowing me to tuck the Peppa Pig duvet tightly around her. She’d complained she was now much too old and sophisticated to be clinging onto anything with a trace of Peppa Pig about it. But when I’d put it in the charity bag she pulled it out again when she thought no one was looking. Neither of us mentioned it, but the old duvet cover still did the odd turn, and hadn’t been totally ousted by the Disney Princesses.

I kissed her goodnight and smiled, sat on her bed till she fell asleep. The sleep of the innocent. A tear made its way down my face. It surprised me, for I hadn’t felt sad, but happy, looking at my daughter.

Then I realised what it meant. You want to protect your kids from bad things in life, but bad things happened no matter how much you tried to plan. And that was my problem. There was no plan. I was rolling from disaster to disaster in a way that felt as if someone else was in charge, someone above me pulling strings like some jeering puppet master who specialised in black humour.

I laughed out loud. Get a grip. I had two beautiful children. A roof over my head. The promise of a new job. Extra money to tackle the backlog of bills.

There’d be lots of people happy to swap places with me. And as for some demon, puppet master controlling my fate . . . That was the easy way out, to blame someone else for the results that came from your own decisions.

I gave the sleeping figure a final pat, moved across to Millie’s window to pull the curtains and a face appeared in the bottom pane. A large head with long, black, straggly hair. He opened his mouth wide in a smile and his teeth glared white in the surrounding darkness. But what I remember most were his large incisors. They looked like fangs.