Chapter 9 #2
‘Yeah, she’ll remember you for sure,’ Tom said. ‘Putting aside everything else, she remembers all the kids from back then.’
Putting aside everything else . I had an icy jolt of fear as we climbed out of the car. Would his mum want to talk to me about my sister and everything that happened back then? Oh well, it was too late to do a runner now. I followed Tom as he let himself in through the front door.
‘Mum, it’s me! And I’ve got a surprise visitor for you!’
He led me through to the living room, where his mum was sitting in what looked to be a relatively high-end adjustable armchair next to a small Christmas tree – undecorated with the exception of some multicoloured fairy lights that were switched off.
She was leaning over a jigsaw puzzle, a pair of glasses on the tip of her nose.
I absolutely recognised her from back then; she must’ve worked at the playschool for quite some time as she’d still been on the roster when Livvie had started going there.
Her face lit up when she saw us, and I immediately felt safe.
‘Amelia Allister, well I never!’
‘See, I told you! Mum, Mally had some car trouble over at the Big Tesco so I said I’d run her back to where she’s staying for the week. Then we had a slight turkey incident so we decided to swing by here on our way. Speaking of which, I’d better get the stuff in from the car.’
Tom headed outside while his mum kept chatting to me. She gestured for me to sit down on the sofa next to an old-looking suitcase.
‘Oh, I’m so happy to see one of my little playgroup kiddies all grown up. You look marvellous. And it’s Mally now, did I hear?’
‘That’s right, Mrs B. It’s so nice to see you.’
‘I don’t think anyone’s called me Mrs B for about thirty years, sweetheart. Please call me Jo.’
‘Ha ha, thanks. I really don’t want to put you out so I won’t stay long. I’ve been benefiting from a lot of Brinton kindness today.’
‘That’s my boy. Could you be a sweetheart and pass me my walking frame?’
‘Oh, of course, but please don’t get up on my account…’
‘Don’t worry, I just really need a wee. I’ll be back in a jiffy – make yourself at home. Thomas! Make our Mally a cuppa, would you? Then we can all sit down and have a nice little natter.’
Thomas! This was turning into a fun evening.
I looked around the room while shopping-unpacking and kettle-boiling sounds emanated from the kitchen.
Every single wall had floor-to-ceiling Billy bookcases from IKEA packed with all manner of objects ranging from Puzzler magazines to thimbles, Lilliput Lane ornaments to jigsaw puzzles.
It would’ve been easy for it to have felt oppressive, but somehow it felt warm and fun.
Everything seemed to be meticulously organised and I couldn’t spot a speck of dust, unlike the permanent air swirls of the stuff back at my own flat in London.
All of a sudden, the cushion next to me moved, and a sleepy pair of eyes looked up at me with curiosity. It wasn’t a cushion, after all – it was a little sausage dog. I instinctively scratched behind one of his ears.
‘I see you’ve met Chippie, then?’ Tom said, as he re-appeared.
I clocked he was wearing a well-worn pair of cosy slippers in lieu of his shoes. He set down a tray on the coffee table with three mugs of tea and a plate of chocolate Hobnobs. Ah, the king of dunkers.
‘I think I’ve woken him up. Sorry, Chippie.’
‘Ah, don’t worry, he sleeps most of the time these days. He was born a sausage dog, but pretty much identifies as a cat.’
‘That’s my kind of dog,’ I said, as Tom moved the old suitcase onto the floor and took its place beside me.
‘Wow, your mum really loves… stuff, doesn’t she?’ I continued, looking around the cosy room, stroking Chippie as I did so.
‘Yeah, she’s an avid collector, that’s for sure. Can’t rest until she’s completed every collection before moving on to the next fad. Recently it was those M&S Little Shop miniature things.’
He pointed to a shelf on the opposite wall of the room where, lo and behold, all the scaled-down groceries were proudly displayed in a branded collectors’ case.
‘Right now, it’s…’
He leant over me – I had to actively restrain myself from confirming the softness of his cardigan – pulled out a canvas box from the shelf adjacent to his mum’s chair and peered inside.
‘Ha! Oh yeah. Pokémon cards. She’s even set up a swap group on Facebook, keeps doing deals with all the local primary-school parents.’
‘Seems perfectly reasonable.’
‘Yeah. It makes her happy, so…’ He stretched and scratched the back of his head.
Jo made her way back into the room and sat back down in her chair. ‘Ooh, that’s better. Hope Chippo’s giving you enough space on there?’
‘I thought his name was Chippie?’ I asked, not sure if I was directing the question to Jo or Tom. Jo answered.
‘Ah, Chippie, Chippo, to-may-to, to-mah-to. His proper name’s Chipolata, y’see, since he’s a…’
‘…sausage dog!’ I finished her sentence and cackled. I liked it here.
‘Exactly! So where are you staying, Mally?’
‘Oh, just a little holiday rental in the centre of the village for a few days.’
‘And have you got anyone special waiting for you back there?’
Let’s be honest, if there was ‘anyone special’ in my life, I wouldn’t have ended up stumbling about, car-less, in Scarnbrook ten days before Christmas.
‘Nah, I’m here solo, just for a quick work trip.’
‘Well, I’ve never heard of anyone coming to Scarnbrook on business before, have you, Thomas?’
‘I reckon it’s a first. But Mally’s been asked to write an article about childhood Christmases for a news website.’
‘You’re a writer! How wonderful. Thomas harboured dreams of writing when he was younger, didn’t you, love?’
‘Mum, I don’t think Mally needs to know about this…’
‘I most certainly do. Tell me more, Jo.’
‘Oh yes, he used to have stories and poems coming out of his ears at one point. Pages and pages just scattered all over his room. I’ve still got it all somewhere…’
‘ No! Mum, that stuff is old and kind of… private. Let’s change the subject. Please.’
‘All right, all right, I’ll shut up about it.’ Jo’s eyes twinkled at me conspiratorially, as if she’d known me for thirty-five years, rather than thirty-five years ago . ‘But I tell you what I do have to hand. Let me see, let me see…’
Jo ran her thumb over a few book spines on the shelf above her burgeoning Pokémon card collection before pulling out the one she had in mind.
It was a sun-faded scrapbook bearing a photo of the basic, prefabricated structure that had once served as Scarnbrook Village Playschool on the front.
Jo flicked through its well-worn pages for a few seconds.
‘Ah, here we go!’
She handed me the album and there it was – our 1990 class photo.
I was sitting at the front, eyes scrunched up in the sunlight, wearing a miniature white tracksuit and sporting the world’s worst haircut.
My blunt, uneven fringe would remain my trademark look for at least another few years thanks to Mum’s insistence that she cut mine and Josh’s hair herself to save money.
It was only after Livvie was born with a mass of untameable curls that she finally admitted defeat and called upon the services of Snippy Snips on the High Street.
‘Ah, wow. I haven’t seen this picture for, well, decades.
’ I was well out of the habit of casually looking at old family photos.
With the exception of a few precious images of me and Livvie back at my flat, all my old childhood photo albums were still at a storage unit that Auntie Sandra had hastily rented for us back in the noughties as a stopgap.
The gap in question was still well and truly sealed.
I dismissed the thought, and instead scanned the other squinting faces in the photo, trying to place Tom on the back row among all the other taller kids.
‘You’re going to have to help me out here, Tom,’ I said, handing him the scrapbook.
‘I thought this might happen,’ he said, pointing to the smallest child in the class on the front row.
‘That’s you?! Right next to me?’
‘Oi, I was a summer-born baby, okay? And I had a pretty epic growth spurt just before secondary school.’
I peered closely at the tiny child next to mini Mally in the photo.
His wavy hair had been slicked into a side parting and it looked like he was on the verge of crying, his thumb jammed firmly into his mouth, as if to stem the wails.
With the other hand, he was clutching a bright orange soft toy of some kind to his chest, protectively.
‘You don’t exactly look happy to be there.’
‘Our Thomas was always a sensitive soul, weren’t you, love? Hated being left anywhere, which is partly why I ended up working there, so I could stop his little heart from breaking every day. And thank goodness for Marmalade, eh?’
‘Marmalade?’ I asked, baffled.
‘She means the toy I’m holding in the photo,’ said Tom, pointing at the out-of-focus bundle of orange fluff in the image. ‘Me and Marmalade were best buds back then.’
‘Oh, Thomas!’ Jo’s exclamation made me jump, but evidently she’d just remembered something. ‘Speaking of Marmalade…!’ She pointed at the suitcase on the floor next to Tom and bobbed up and down lightly in her chair.
‘About that, Mum. I’ll pop round later this week and we can finish off the tree then, yeah?’
Jo settled back into her seat, smiled and nodded, but her eyes looked disappointed. And suddenly it dawned on me why.
‘Oh! You were meant to decorate your Christmas tree tonight? Gosh, I’m so sorry, I’ve really messed up your evening, haven’t I?’
‘Not at all, sweetheart. It’s just something silly we usually do the second Sunday of December, isn’t it, Thomas?’
‘It’s not silly, Mum! It’s nice. But, yeah, it can wait for a couple more days this year.’
I glanced down at the suitcase. ‘Wait. Is Marmalade in there?’ I ventured, tilting my head towards the vintage-looking luggage.