Lacybourne Manor (5 page)

Jemma looked at Sibyl and Sibyl
returned her friend’s look. Both were at a loss.

Then Sibyl had an idea, it was
a lame idea but it was, at least, an idea.

“
I
love
that song!” she
exclaimed. “Who chose that song?”

“It was me!” Flower cried.

Even raised by a hippy,
Sibyl felt for the girl who had such a terrible name, a name she
knew (because she heard) other children used to make fun of her.
Flower’s mother was even flakier than Sibyl and had four children
by four different fathers and another one on the way. Flower’s
mother was always out partying and never home. The care of the
entire family rested on Flower’s ten year old shoulders, evidenced
by the fact that her three brothers were, at that very moment,
fighting in the back corner of the hall.

“Good call, Flower,” Sibyl
enthused, lying through her teeth.

Jemma turned to her friend, her
eyes round and her brows raised.

“
Though, I hear it all
the time on the radio.
All
the time,” Sibyl
continued.

“
I know, it’s
very
popular,” Katie, another of the girls announced, thinking
this was a selling point.

Sibyl particularly liked Katie,
a bright girl with a head on her shoulders. She had both parents at
home, her mother owned a small cleaning business and her father was
currently redundant, trying to find a job and was a recovering
gambler. Sibyl knew this because Katie’s father ran the local
Gambler’s Anonymous meetings on Tuesday nights in the Day Centre
(but, of course, Sibyl would never tell a soul this
information).

Sibyl went on, but gently, “By
the time of the Talent Show, do you think people might have heard
it a bit too much? Even you girls might be tired of it by
then.”

The girls looked at each
other, not at all convinced since it was their most favourite song
of all time. How could they
ever
be tired of it? Not in
a
million
years.

“I know!” Jemma exclaimed as if
a thought just occurred to her. “Why don’t you let Sibyl find a
song for you? Something American.”

This caught the girls’
attention and four pairs of enthusiastic eyes collectively swung to
Sibyl.

It was Sibyl’s turn to stare at
her friend, her eyes round, her eyebrows raised.

“
And,” Jemma dug Sibyl’s
hole deeper, “she’ll help you with outfits and dance steps
and
everything
.”

Sibyl made a choking noise but
swiftly hid it and smiled warmly at the girls. She was going to
kill Jem, or maim her for life, or, at least, never speak to her
again. Jemma was very artistic, knew all the latest songs and was a
natural at choreography. Sibyl loved music, loved to dance, but had
always done it to the beat of her own drummer and wouldn’t know how
to create a choreographed dance if someone was forcing her to do it
by shooting at her feet with pistols.

Nevertheless, the girls
excitedly agreed to this new development, happy to spend more time
with their American Goddess.

“What have you done to me?”
Sibyl hissed at her friend as the girls scattered and Jemma
motioned for the next act to come to the stage.

“Relax, I’ll pick the song,
I’ll choreograph the dance moves, you just have to teach them,” Jem
assured her then finished. “I’ll help, of course.”

“You better or I’ll make those
girls a laughingstock.”

“I’m already thinking of
something.” This, Sibyl could believe. Jemma was sharp as a tack
and nothing got by her.

As the next act prepared to
begin, Sibyl got up.

“Off for your afternoon chat
with Meg?” Jemma enquired, sorting through CDs to put the next
act’s in the player.

Sibyl spent Bingo Afternoon’s
with her favourite pensioner, Meg. Meg was her most favourite oldie
(an affectionate term everyone at the Centre had for the members of
the Pensioners Club of the Day Centre).

Meg had paper-thin, soft skin,
was diabetic but ate with gusto and was at least five stone
overweight. Her eyes, nose and mouth collapsed happily into each
other whenever she smiled, which was a lot.

Meg was the first oldie to give
Sibyl a welcoming, encouraging smile on her first day on the job.
Sibyl hadn’t even known she needed that smile but she’d been so
homesick Meg’s smile had touched her heart and Sibyl had never
forgotten it. She found herself often ensconced in corners with the
old lady after their luncheon was done, shooting the breeze in
happy companionship. Even though they’d get together often, Meg and
Sibyl always set aside Bingo Afternoon to have a chat before Meg
took the minibus’s second trip round the estate to her lonely home
at the end of the day.

Bertie’s parents had both died
before he left England. Mags’s parents had lived long enough to
meet and love their grandchildren but not long enough to see them
grow and mature into beautiful, young women. Meg was the closest
thing to a grandmother Sibyl had. Every time Meg looked at the
younger girl, Sibyl felt awash with her love and this wasn’t
surprising. When she was younger, Meg told Sibyl she used to take
in orphaned babies and children while they were being placed into
other homes, raising them from days to months and, on a few
occasions, years, before they found a permanent placement. Sibyl
had no problem believing this, Meg had a lot of love to go
around.

“I just wish, Sibyl my love,
that one of them would come to see me now that I’m in my old age.
Just one of them,” Meg had said to Sibyl some days before. “So I’ll
know they’re all right.”

Without anything to say to make
her feel better, Sibyl had just patted Meg’s hand and knew from
experience that the babies likely didn’t even know that Meg was a
part of their lives. The older ones, Sibyl had no excuses for.

Now, Sibyl smiled at Jemma.

“Yeah, Jem, can’t miss my dose
of Meg,” Sibyl told her friend. “See you later.”

Jemma nodded and shouted to the
group of boys on stage, “Ready?”

At their affirmative nods,
Jemma flipped a switch and rap music filled the air.

Sibyl opened the doors to hear
Marianne yelling, “Unlucky for some, number thirteen.”

She found Meg in her corner and
watched her older friend’s face collapse in a smile at the sight of
Sibyl. The smile stayed where it was as Sibyl recounted Flower,
Katie and their friends’ antics in the Hall.

The minibus came shortly after
and took the Bingo Club home. After they were all safely away,
Sibyl wandered the Hall and Centre, getting prepared to put it to
bed until Kyle, the Centre’s volunteer caretaker and resident
handyman (not to mention Jemma’s father), opened it up that evening
after supper for the recovering Gamblers.

Jemma met her in the Day
Centre. They were going to lock up together, as they usually did on
a Tuesday night. They were about to leave when Jemma stopped and
cocked her head, listening with mother’s ears, then rushed to the
restrooms at the back of the Centre.

Annie, another member of the
Pensioner’s Club, was locked in one of the stalls. She’d been stuck
there for hours and missed the minibus ride back to her home. For
some bizarre reason, Annie didn’t pull the emergency cord in the
bathroom and couldn’t explain to Sibyl or Jemma why she’d not done
so. This was likely because Annie, at the best of times, was a tad
bit confused.

Thanking all the goddesses that
Jemma had heard Annie (and cursing the minibus driver to perdition
for not checking his load, which he was supposed to do), rather
than leaving her locked in the bathroom for the night, Jem and
Sibyl located the keys to the door and released the old lady. Then
Sibyl drove her home. As Annie was blind, Sibyl helped her into her
council house. Once she opened the door to Annie’s house, though,
she was struck by a rancid smell and immobilised with shock when
she saw the utterly hideous state the old woman’s home was in.

“Oh Annie,” she whispered under
her breath for once happy that Annie was not only blind but mostly
deaf as well.

The house smelled terrible and
was absolutely filthy.

“
My children take care of
me,” Annie said defensively, obviously cottoning on to what Sibyl
was seeing (and
smelling
) and telling the lie
she’d been mouthing at the Day Centre for what appeared to be
months.

“I know, Annie, but it’s been a
bit since they’ve been around. Let me just tidy up. It won’t take a
minute.”

It had taken over an
hour
and
Sibyl had to call Jem.

Jemma had turned up on
Annie’s doorstep with her two children, her twelve year old boy,
Shazzie and fourteen year old girl, Zara. Jemma’s big, kind,
chocolate-brown eyes had rounded at the sight of the squalor that
was Annie’s abode and that was
after
Sibyl had already carried
three bags of rubbish out to the bins.

In Annie’s foul kitchen while
the children were watching television with the old woman, shouting
at her to tell her what was happening on a screen she could not
see, Jemma stared into the refrigerator.

“She hasn’t a bite of food in
here,” Jemma pulled out a carton of milk and gave it a cautious
sniff before yanking her head back in horror. “Oh my Lord.”

“
Give it to me,” Sibyl
told her friend and poured (or, more to the point,
shook
) the
offending milk in the food-encrusted sink. Sibyl watched as Jemma
twisted her long, dark brown hair and fastened it more firmly in
her ever-present, huge hair clip, ready to engage in war against
the vile kitchen. “We’ve got to keep a closer eye on Annie. Do you
know if she even has children?” Sibyl asked.

Jemma was pulling on yellow,
plastic gloves. “No idea, I’ll call Dad.”

Jemma’s Dad and Mum knew
everything about everyone on the council estate. Both of Jemma’s
parents worked at the Community Centre with Sibyl. Jemma, her
parents and her brothers and sisters all lived on or around the
council estate where the Community Centre was located. Jemma’s
parents were both young but Kyle had arthritis and her Mum, Tina,
endured terrible troubles with her feet, thus they couldn’t work
“normal” jobs so they volunteered at the Centre. This caused them
to do more than full-time jobs anyway but they could do them in
their time, at their pace.

Jem phoned Kyle and then she
and Sibyl cleaned, then scrubbed, then vacuumed Annie’s little
house while the children entertained the old woman. They left,
politely declining Annie’s offer of a chocolate from a box since
thrown out. While they were leaving, Kyle shouldered his burly body
through the door, his hands filled with bags of groceries.

“Get the kids home,” he ordered
his daughter gruffly, as only a father would do to a daughter who
spent her afternoon cleaning the home of an old lady she barely
knew. “Sibyl, luv, you go home too. Tina and I have this covered,”
Sibyl turned her head and caught Tina waving from the passenger
seat of Kyle’s beat-up Ford Fiesta.

Sibyl waved back as the kids
ran to greet their grandmother.

“Thanks, Jem,” Sibyl said to
her friend, not knowing how to express her gratitude at sharing
their awful task.

“We must take care of our own,”
Jemma muttered, clearly disturbed by what she had seen. She called
her kids, blew a kiss to her Mum, gave Sibyl a wave and they walked
off in the opposite direction while Sibyl stood for a moment to
watch the clouds forming.

Another storm was coming. It
was late February and spring rains had come to Somerset.

Mentally making plans to talk
to Social Services the next day about Annie and give a piece of her
mind to the minibus driver, Sibyl drove to Brightrose to let
Mallory out for his comfort break. She’d wanted to change out of
her work clothes to something more comfortable, but she no longer
had time. She could wear jeans to the Centre but she took her work
seriously and wanted her oldies and the kids to know that she did.
Therefore, she dressed for work, not in a suit but well enough that
they knew she gave her job her respect.

She was wearing a long,
cocoa-coloured corduroy skirt, a pair of red cowboy boots, a long
sleeved, fitted, v-necked, red t-shirt and a deep magenta, twill,
tailored jacket. She had a strap of brown leather tied as a choker
around her throat and from it hung a small silver disc with the
tiny word “Peace” placed subtly and artfully on it in bits of
battered bronze (this, a beloved gift from her mother). And she had
heavy, dangling, ornate earrings of garnets and silver dripping
from her ears. Her long, heavy hair hung in a mess about her
shoulders.

She only had time to pull a
brush through her hair and spray herself with a perfume of her own
styling scented with bergamot, musk and lilies of the valley.

She allowed Mallory into the
garden when Bran, unusually, darted out the front door.

She had a cat door in the
bottom half of the split farm door that led from the kitchen to the
back garden where Bran liked to hang about and spend his hours in
the sun. Bran rarely ventured out front, for some bizarre cat
reason, always keeping close to the house in the back. Off he went
through the front, though, quickly becoming a shadow in the dark
night.

There was nothing for it, she
was already late. Bran would have to brave the unknown wilds of the
front garden and wood until she came home and Sibyl had to trust
that her clever cat would survive (though she had little doubt he
would). Sibyl trudged back to the car, Mallory, as ever, loping hot
on her heels. She opened the car door to retrieve Mallory’s treats
that she’d bought that morning (he always received a treat if he
did well on his comfort breaks and got himself a little exercise,
or, because of her soft heart, even when he didn’t which was far
more often). But, upon opening the door to the car, Mallory shifted
his enormous bulk into the passenger seat and sat, staring forward,
obviously thinking it was time to take a joyride.