Chapter 22
Bangbangbangbangbang.
“Ruffruffruffruffruff.”
“Lucien, can you possibly get that? I’m in the middle of braising tofu.”
Bangbang.
“Ruffruffarooou.”
I’d had worse starts to my weekend. But not, admittedly, recently.
Bangbangbang.
Making my way apprehensively into the hall, I wondered who the hell was hammering on our door so aggressively at such a boring time on a Saturday evening.
After I opened the door and the noise abruptly stopped, I still wondered who the hell had been hammering on our door at such a boring time on a Saturday evening because it took me a few seconds to recognise the angry woman in the denim utility jacket and satin athleisure trousers glaring at me from the doorstep.
It was Next Door’s Kid’s Mum.
“Do you have any idea,” she began. It wasn’t a promising beginning. “What that…that chavvy termagant you’ve brought into our community did to my son?”
I didn’t. I probably should have. I probably should also have not been hoping it had been something painful and humiliating. “Whatever it was,” I said in my best conciliatory voice, “I’m sure”—he deserved it—“it won’t happen again.”
“She threw him in a wheelie bin.”
Doing my best conciliatory voice had drained so much of my energy that I was completely unable to maintain my best conciliatory face or say the best conciliatory words. “Oh, thank fuck,” I said.
Next Door’s Kid’s Mum stared at me like I’d just made a joke about the queen dying on the day of her official state funeral. “Excuse me?”
“Well, I was worried it was something serious.”
“She threw him,” Next Door’s Kid’s Mum repeated with a note of rage so finely tuned it could shatter wineglasses, “in a wheelie bin.”
I felt a totally inappropriate and annoyingly hard-to-suppress urge to giggle. “Which is bad,” I conceded at once, “but it’s also a bit…I mean…it’s a bit Dennis the Menace, isn’t it?”
“A bit what?”
Next Door’s Kid’s Mum was at least my age, so it wasn’t an obscurity-of-reference issue.
It was an acceptability-of-reference issue.
“I just… It’s more of a youthful hijinks kind of vibe than a”—I saw the look on her face and decided against finishing that sentence—“okay, it’s still bad. And we’ll still talk to her about it.”
“He could have been killed.”
I just about stopped myself saying, Could he, though? And for that matter from adding, He could have got sepsis. And to my immense relief, while I was stopping myself saying things, Oliver appeared behind me.
“Hello, Jacqueline.”
“Oliver.” Next Door’s Kid’s Mum inclined her head a fraction of an inch. “Your guest—”
“Foster child,” corrected Oliver.
“Threw my son into a wheelie bin.”
Oliver nodded once with barristerial gravitas and said, “Is Colin okay?” Thinking about it, I should probably have opened with that too.
Next Door’s Kid’s Mum didn’t look mollified exactly. But she gave an impression that moll could be an option in the future. “He’ll recover.”
“Well, that’s the most important thing.” Oliver sounded like he actually meant it and, worse, he probably did. “And you can be assured I’ll be having words with Jasmine about her behaviour and she’ll be suitably punished.”
Glad as I was that Oliver was handling this, he was definitely Handling This. And it hadn’t passed me by that he was doing the bad kind of I statements. The kind that you used when you should really be doing we statements.
“If this happens again…” Next Door’s Kid’s Mum warned.
And I was disproportionately proud of myself for not replying with If this happens again what?
“It won’t,” replied Oliver for both of us. And he said it with such certainty and such finality that Next Door’s Kid’s Mum actually took it as a valid answer.
She straightened her jacket and gave him another nod. An I’m-glad-we-understand-each-other nod. “Thank you, Oliver.”
“Not at all. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.”
And then she was gone, and Oliver was halfway up the stairs before I could remind him that Next Door’s Kid was the living incarnation of the devil’s arsecrack and had almost certainly deserved whatever happened to him.
Or, for that matter, ask whether this was perhaps the kind of parenting decision that we should maybe talk about.
“Jasmine,” Oliver was already saying through Jaz’s door.
There was the predictable no reply.
“Jasmine, you can come out or I can come in.”
There was still no reply, but we both heard a shuffling from inside and then the door edged open and Jaz edged around it. “What?”
“We’ve just been speaking to Jacqueline from next door,” Oliver said, in his best firm-but-fair voice, “and she told us that you’d thrown Colin into a wheelie bin. Is that true?”
Jaz said nothing.
“Is that true?” Oliver repeated.
Jaz folded her arms.
Oliver looked down at Jaz with the kind of compassion I really doubted she’d appreciate. “You’re not helping yourself. This is your opportunity to give your side of the story.”
My brain couldn’t quite help hearing that as You may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. I suspected that Jaz’s brain was similar.
“He had it coming,” said Jaz at last. And with a tremendous effort of will, I didn’t say, See?
Oliver gave an understanding nod, which only went down well if you thought he actually understood. “However you might have been provoked, we don’t solve our problems with violence.”
“You don’t,” Jaz replied, suddenly sounding almost passionate. “I’m traumatised, remember?”
Taking a deep, centring breath, Oliver got as far as “Jasmine, that’s—” before Jaz cut him off with “My shitty headcase mum didn’t bring me up right, so I have inappropriate strategies. I lash out and make bad decisions.”
I knew Oliver wasn’t immune to sarcasm. But he seemed to have developed a hell of a resistance to it where Jaz was concerned. “And what’s important,” he said fatally, “is that we help you change that.”
With an exasperated “Fuck off,” Jaz turned around and vanished into her room, slamming the door behind her.
“Jasmine?” Oliver called after her.
I put my hand on his arm and whispered, “We need to give her space, remember?” but he seemed to feel the giving-people-space rule was currently less important than the letting-people-know-they’ve-done-a-bad-thing rule.
“Jasmine,” he went on, “you will need to apologise to Jacqueline and Richard.”
Silence.
“You can do it in person, or you can write them a letter.”
Silence.
“Jasmine, you need to make a decision on this.”
“Fuck off.”
Oliver stood very still, his hand resting on the doorknob. “I’m going to come into your room now, because I’m going to need you to speak to me face to face.”
I wasn’t sure why he waited after that. Like he thought he was going to get an Okay, that seems reasonable, thank you for informing me in advance or something. Funnily enough, he didn’t get one.
He opened the door, and we went into Jaz’s room to find her lying on her bed radiating surliness and staring fixedly at her phone. “Jasmine,” Oliver said, “which is it going to be?”
Jaz didn’t even acknowledge our presence. Through the open door, Spud nosed his way in and hopped up beside her.
“Jasmine,” repeated Oliver. I got that he felt that using her full name helped maintain boundaries, but I thought he might have been overdoing it just the scoochiest of scooches. “I’m asking you a question. I want an answer.”
With a sense of timing I almost envied, Jaz let that hang for a moment, then just said, “No.”
“Pardon?” asked Oliver, incredulous.
“No. I’m not apologising.”
“I’m not giving you a choice.”
Jaz said nothing.
“You can take it as read that you’re already grounded,” Oliver went on, “but if you continue with this attitude, things will only get worse for you.”
Jaz’s eyes flicked up from her screen. “How?”
“For a start, you can hand over your phone.”
Jaz didn’t hand over anything.
“I mean it.”
Somehow, the fact that Oliver meant it didn’t make Jaz any more inclined to do what she was told.
Which was probably why Oliver reached over and plucked the phone out of her hand. Which was probably why she lost her shit so completely.
She sat bolt upright, her face even paler than usual. “That’s fucking mine.”
“Yes, and you’ll have it back when you’ve apologis—”
“That’s fucking stealing.”
“I assure you it’s no—”
“Give it back.”
“When you’ve—”
“What if my mum calls?”
“If your mother calls,” replied Oliver, “we will need to inform social services because she isn’t supposed to have unsupervised contact with you.”
“You fucking little—” She lunged for Oliver, and he stepped back sharply, tucking the phone into his pocket, well out of reach. Unless she wanted to try putting him in a wheelie bin, and I didn’t fancy her chances.
“Give it back,” she screamed. “It’s mine. You’ve no right.”
Oliver was projecting icy calm. Except I knew he only projected icy calm when he felt neither calm nor icy. “I have the right,” he said coldly, “and the responsibility. You know what you have to do, and I have faith that you know how to do it.”
Words had failed Jaz, and she was now glaring at Oliver like she believed she could give him brain cancer with her eyes and that he’d deserve it if she did.
Oliver had withdrawn tactically to the doorway. “Lucien and I will be downstairs once you’ve made your decision.”
I wasn’t keen on suddenly being included in the and I.
Because this had very much been an Oliver moment.
And while the Oliveryness of the moment had led to some good outcomes, like Next Door’s Kid’s Mum going away relatively quickly, it also seemed to have some…
some…disadvantages. He was probably right that we couldn’t let our foster kid get away with throwing other kids in wheelie bins, but I couldn’t help wondering if there was some magical middle ground between “get away with” and “immediately write a formal apology about.”