Chapter 52
It turned out that restoration would be almost impos- sible. Both the local tradesman whom Barry found and the decorator who came up from Dorset had shaken their heads and said that if a different kind of paint had been used, the mural might have been saved. This stuff, however, dried almost immediately.
Doug, a nice steady man who asked Gemma to pass his best on to Nancy, spent some time observing the damage and said he’d put his thinking cap on.
Meanwhile, Gemma and her team had to reassure the horrified parents and Puddleducks who were met by the red mess when they came in on Monday morning.
‘Shocking, Miss Merryfield. Absolutely shocking.’
‘Mrs Merryfield, can Father Christmas order another muriel?’
‘Mrs Merryfield? Why are walls hard?’ Good question, Sienna.
‘Just as well I took some pictures of your mural, Gemma. We can always send them in as they are. I’m sure they won’t notice we were in the process of adding the finishing touches,’ said Annie.
Gemma and Joe, who had come down from Reception to help her with the inevitable questions, stared at each other. Of course!
‘I took pictures right up until Friday morning,’ Annie announced proudly, handing over her memory stick. ‘Feel free to use them as you like. Don’t forget to credit me, though. It might help.’ She smiled shyly. ‘I’ve decided to set up as a part-time photographer. I’ve been looking for something to do and now I think I’ve found it.’
Good for her! Meanwhile, something else was troubling Gemma as she set about sorting out costumes for the rear half of a cow and front half of a sheep, not to mention finding a wise man’s missing staff and a shepherd’s robe.
Danny’s temperature was still up. ‘It might mean,’ Nancy had said in a trembling voice during a message she’d left earlier on Gemma’s voicemail, ‘that he’s rejecting the bone marrow.’
The local paper picked up the news of the vandalism first, and then the nationals. Gemma hadn’t thought it was the kind of story that would attract such wide attention, but she was wrong. At this time of the year, Joe informed her, newspapers were keen to plug anything with a heart-tug factor.
It might seem calculated, he went on, but he had a friend on the Sunday Telegraph (for someone who was a Colin Firth with attitude crossed with Mr Grumpy, that man seemed to have influential friends) who had written a piece which had been picked up by other papers. The results were mixed.
THUGS DESTROY PRIZE-WINNING MURAL AT DILLY DALUNG SCANDAL PLAYGROUP!
OK, so it hadn’t won a prize yet, but it caught the eye.
RED PAINT PUTS PAID TO PLAYGROUP’S BID FOR TOP AWARD
That was more like it.
PUDDLEDUCKS LAND IN HOT WATER WITH RED PAINT VANDALS
Another eye-catcher. It would be good publicity, Joe assured her, and, judging from the sympathy letters and donations for new equipment, it seemed to be working. Meanwhile, Joe had sent in his own entry for the Reception year, which apparently he’d been working on with Brian. Gemma hadn’t known about that until Di at the big school had let it slip. ‘Oh yes, the two of them get on like a house on fire,’ she’d assured Gemma importantly. ‘Joe visits him regularly, he does. In fact, he’s a much nicer man than we gave him credit for. Such a shame he’s leaving.’
Talk about hypocrisy! Di had always been one of Joe’s biggest critics, constantly dissing him to Beryl. Mind you, hadn’t she, Gemma, thought he’d been difficult at times, until she’d found out about the tragedy in his past? Even so, that only went some way towards condoning the head of Reception’s critical attitudes, which, it had to be said, weren’t nearly so critical nowadays. It was so confusing!
Still, perhaps she should try to push her mixed feelings to the back of her mind. There was too much else to concentrate on. For a start, Lily had been taken into care. The staff at Puddleducks had been asked to write reports on whether, in their view, she had been properly looked after at home, which hadn’t after all been the Dilly Dalung mansion, but a canal boat without hot water or heating.
Gemma and Bella had no hesitation in writing glowing reports. Lily had always come into playgroup looking immaculate and had perfect manners, which said a lot for her upbringing. She was also extremely bright, and should be allowed to stay in an environment in which she’d clearly thrived and made friends.
There was another thing that Gemma mentioned in her report, and that was Lily’s feverish excitement at being a twinkling star in the nativity play. And now it wasn’t going to happen. Gemma’s heart lurched at the thought of Lily being in a foster family somewhere while her mother was still in custody.
Honey, who had been the front end of the third cow, was now going to replace Lily, while Edward the Second, as distinct from Edward the First (there were two Edwards in the playgroup), was going to replace Honey.
As Gemma checked her cast list while Bella sorted out the Pyjama Drama session that morning, she knew that despite everything, hers was the only job in the world that could ever make her happy. This time of the year in pre-school was manic, and yet she loved it.
The chaos also helped to take her mind off the legal documents that had arrived that week, which she had duly signed with a slight pang, it had to be said, and sent off to the lawyer. With any luck, Sam would have managed to sign his bit too without Nancy knowing. ‘Rather ironic that you’ve finally found each other,’ the lawyer had said crisply, after her talk with Sam, as though it was her fault. ‘If you had done so earlier, you could have had a divorce in two years, instead of waiting five.’
But if they had, she thought, they might not have tied up the loose ends during the last extraordinary three months.
Yet had those loose ends really all been tied up?
She wasn’t sure.