What She Wants (33 page)

horror. Not even apricots, more the colour of oranges. Or those neon vans that advertised plumbing services. Or Bobo the Clown’s outfits. Nicole started to cry. When her mother came home with her fireman friend for a coffee, Nicole was sitting glumly in the sitting room with her third huge whisky. Her hair, which she had been unable to comb due to its extreme dryness, was sticking out like an electrocuted bush and looked for all the world like orange hay. ‘Your hair!’ said Sandra, startled out of her usual apathy by the sight of her daughter’s strange coiffure. Nicole burst into tears again. ‘I know, it’s terrible,’ she sobbed. ‘I used your dye and it didn’t work. I think I left it on too long.’ ‘Reminds me of work,’ said the fireman with a grin. ‘It’s fiery…’ ‘Shut up,’ howled Nicole and Sandra simultaneously.

On Saturday evening, after a day when Nicole hadn’t so much as stepped outside the front door, Sandra’s friend, Charlene, arrived with a metal make-up box full of hair dyes and her scissors. Thankfully, she didn’t purse up her mouth like a prune and shake her head, which was what Gran had done. Gran was still muttering about the dangers of hair dye as Charlene checked the damage Nicole had done. ‘It might have been OK if you’d gone to a salon but home dying with out-of-date stuff is a no no,’ Charlene said. ‘With your type of hair, dying is incredibly difficult anyway.’ ‘Mum’s always dyed her hair,’ Nicole said weepily. ‘There’s a big difference between Asian hair and your mother’s hair,’ Charlene said simply. After a few minutes of examining Nicole’s head, she looked grim. ‘It’s ruined,’ she said sympathetically. ‘I’ll have to cut it off before I try and fix up the colour. You do know that if you’d had this done to you in a proper hairdresser’s you’d be made up for life with the compensation.’

Nicole blinked miserably. It didn’t make her feel any better to realize that she’d brought her misfortune on herself. ‘Just cut,’ she said between gritted teeth. Charlene cut. Long wafts of orange straw fell to the floor as she wielded her scissors expertly. ‘Charlene’s the best,’ Sandra promised, seeing the look on her daughter’s face. ‘You’ll love it.’ ‘I don’t even want to ever look at it again,’ Nicole said. ‘I’m buying a hat.’ ‘You won’t need a hat,’ Gran laughed. ‘It’s a wig you’ll be needing.’

CHAPTER TEN

Despite having been unable to sleep with excitement the night before because they were finally going to the Hunnybunnikins nursery, on the Monday morning in January in question, Millie threw a tantrum and decided she didn’t want to go. She petulantly stomped her tiny, pink-socked feet and refused to allow Hope to pull her purple dungarees on. ‘Don’t wanna go!!’ she roared at the top of her voice, flailing out her arms like an angry windmill. Toby, who was used to such tantrums, stood in the corner of the bedroom sucking his thumb and watching with interest. ‘Millie, behave!’ roared Hope. She knew this wasn’t the way to deal with toddler rages but she was tired herself and beyond calm reasoning. Ignoring Millie and showing her that her attention-seeking wouldn’t be tolerated was what all the child care books prescribed but it was easier said than done. None of those people could have ever been in the supermarket with a red-faced, sweet-obsessed toddler from the way they advised walking away and ignoring the child in question. Hope had tried this once and as soon as her back was turned, Millie had run off down the baking aisle, rampaging through the glace cherries like a tornado and getting them stuck in her fringe before screaming blue murder when a kind shop assistant tried to help her. ‘Not going to Bunny place!’ Millie roared. She stomped a bit more and Hope gave up. It was only a playgroup after all, the playgroup she’d been dreaming of for the last month

as a method of giving her a teeny bit of freedom. So what if they missed the first, longed-for day? She sat on Millie’s bed and looked out the window at the wilderness of the walled garden. The brambles were less demented in the icy January weather having had their plans for world domination thwarted by the frost. She really had to do something with the garden. The chicks were going to have to go outside soon. She couldn’t keep them in the scullery forever and they’d get lost in the wilderness as it was. Something moved in the garden. Hope’s eyes swivelled to the moving bit and narrowed. Something brown and small. Rabbits maybe, she wondered? Or a cute hedgehog baby snuffling adorably for food. It moved again. Fat and sleek with a long tail and cunning rodent eyes. A rat. ‘Aggh!’ shrieked Hope in horror. Rats in the garden! Plague, pestilence, horrible creepy things that would attack them all and converge on the house at night! Alarmed by her shriek, Millie’s lip wobbled. ‘Sorry Mummy,’ she said tearfully. They had a group hug while Hope looked fearfully over the children’s heads into the infested bit of the garden. Perhaps it was a one-off. Perhaps the rat was on its own and had mistakenly wandered into the Parker garden like Peter Rabbit but wouldn’t stay. The rat reappeared with a friend, both scuttling in the same direction, from the big rhododendron past a scrap of bare ground, over to a rusted old barrel. They were definitely scuttling with intent. A smaller one followed. For the next ten minutes, Hope watched the rat cabaret gloomily. She’d thought that rats were nocturnal animals, scared of humans. It was just her luck that her rats were brazen and had no problem running around by day as if they were eagerly auditioning for a nature programme. How had she missed them before? And what was she going to do to get rid of them? She phoned Matt, to be told he was out for a walk.

Hope’s eyes narrowed some more. It was only half nine in the morning. What the hell was Matt doing walking around when he was supposed to be working? If this was how he spent his time in the bloody centre, no wonder he was monosyllabic when asked about how the great novel was getting on. ‘Mummy, are we going to the Bunny place?’ asked Millie innocently. She’d put on her dungarees herself although the fasteners had defied her so she’d stuck the straps into the neck of her pansy-printed jersey. ‘In a moment, poppet,’ Hope replied, leafing through the local phone directory. The pest-control man was very reassuring. ‘Don’t worry, the place is full of rats. It’s just a matter of keeping them in check. We’ll handle it. I’ll be out at midday,’ he said. ‘How many of them have you seen?’ ‘Definitely three,’ Hope replied, the phone jammed under her chin as she fixed Millie’s dungarees properly, ‘but there could be more. They all look the same to me and there could be loads of them but you only ever see three of them at a time.’ ‘Do you have children or domesticated animals?’ he asked. ‘Children and hens.’ Cue sharp intake of breath. ‘Hens,’ he intoned gravely. ‘This could be more serious.’

The lady in charge of Hunnybunnikins was a softly-spoken German woman named Giselle who could have come straight from central casting as a fairy godmother. She had golden curls, kind eyes and a warm motherly expression that made Hope wish that she was going to spend time at Hunnybunnikins as well as the kids. When Hope had met her in December to get the feel of the playgroup, she’d been charming. She was just as nice now that Hope was an hour late, flustered and anxious about the invasion of the killer rats.

‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ Hope began. ‘I know when we spoke on the phone I said I’d have them here by half nine but…’ Giselle stopped her. ‘That’s perfectly fine,’ she said in her faultless English. ‘First days can be difficult. Let’s get Millie and Toby settled in and then you must try some of our homemade cookies.’ When Hope finally drove off an hour later, she was comfortably full of ginger nut cookies and confident that Hunnybunnikins was going to be great for the children. They were going twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays for the moment with the possibility of more days should Hope get a part-time job. ‘I don’t know what work I could get,’ Hope had told Giselle. ‘I’ve always worked in a bank or building society and since the village doesn’t have one, that’s a problem.’ ‘The summer is better,’ Giselle replied. ‘The tourists bring lots of jobs but now, it’s not so good. Still, you never know what will turn up. Don’t worry about the rats. This is the country with lots of little beasts. Good thing we don’t know what else is out there!’ Rats were bad enough, Hope thought darkly, not in the least cheered up by the notion that there could be other scuttling things in the undergrowth, eyeing up her hens and her ankles.

The pest-control man surveyed the area around the old rusted barrel and said ‘mm’ a lot, particularly when he saw the two old beech trees in the corner. He shuffled around in the beech nuts and looked glum. ‘What do you think?’ asked Hope, who was wearing her jeans tucked tightly into her Wellingtons to prevent rats leaping up her trouser legs. She was also carrying a big stick to beat them off. Naturally, there wasn’t a rat to be seen. ‘There are signs of a lot of rodent activity,’ he said gravely. ‘You’ve got all the major things rats need: a water supply in that small stream behind the garden, food in the form of

last year’s beech nuts. They love beech nuts,’ he added, ‘and you’ve got chicken feed in the shed.’ ‘But they can’t get to that,’ Hope protested. ‘No, but they can smell it and they love it. Rats are omnivores - they’ll eat anything.’ ‘Even hens?’ she squawked. ‘No, not hens but they’ll eat any food you put out it the hens and if they soil it, the hens can pick up infections which could then get passed into the eggs.’ ‘Oh dear.’ ‘Don’t worry. I’ll put down poison in our special tamper proof bait boxes which are only big enough for rats and that should control them for now, but unless you get this area cleared of all this junk, overgrown briars and beech trees, you’re always going to have a problem. Particularly if you have your hens out.’ ‘That was the plan,’ Hope sighed. She wrote him a huge cheque before he started putting down poison boxes. Feeling doubly queasy at the thought of both the state of the bank balance as well as the rat invasion, Hope went inside, washed her hands as feverishly as if she’d been cuddling the rats, and phoned Mary-Kate. ‘Have the children settled into the playgroup?’ Mary-Kate asked. ‘Yes, but that’s the least of my worries,’ Hope groaned. ‘We’ve got rats and I’ve got to get the garden cleared before we can get completely rid of them, otherwise I’ll never be able to let the hens out. Do you know anyone who could do a job like that? I can only afford to pay around fifty pence, that’s the problem.’ She could feel Mary-Kate grinning at the other end of the phone. ‘I don’t think that’ll be enough,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll do anything to get this sorted out,’ Hope said. ‘I hate rats.’ ‘I know a man with a machine-hire business who has a baby JCB that would clear all the briars and junk in no time

but he’d want some kind of payment and believe me, Hope, you wouldn’t be so quick to say you’d do anything to get this sorted out once you see him.’ For the first time all morning, Hope laughed. ‘Unless he needs some payment in kind like his finances sorting out or money changed from dollars into euros, I’m no good to him.’ ‘Something will turn up,’ consoled Mary-Kate. ‘I better go. I’ve a list of prescriptions as long as your arm to fill out. The whole town is sick. Talk to you soon.’ When the phone rang fifteen minutes later, Hope didn’t expect it to be Mary-Kate again. ‘You won’t believe it but I just had the most amazing idea,’ she said. ‘You know Erwin, your man with the machine-hire business I mentioned to you, well, his wife handles the office business and he was in just now with a prescription for shingles for her, God love her. She’s in bits and she won’t be working for at least a month. Erwin says he’ll be lost without her. I’ve told him about you. How would you like to fill in for her?’ Hope just gaped at the phone. ‘I… I…’ she floundered. ‘I’ve never done anything like that,’ she said. ‘You could keep the office ticking over until she gets better and he’d pay you and probably do your back garden for free into the bargain. It’d be a couple of mornings a week and it’d be a start wouldn’t it?’ Erwin had sounded pleased, if monosyllabic, when he’d phoned to ask her about Mary-Kate Donlan’s suggestion. ‘It’ll only be for the month,’ he’d pointed out. ‘Nothing long term, mind. The wife will be better soon.’ ‘That suits me fine,’ Hope said. ‘I’ll come on Thursday.’ By half six, Hope felt as if she’d survived a maelstrom: the children starting playgroup, hiring the pest-control man and getting a new job. Matt had only been gone since nine that morning and it felt like a month. So much had happened and she couldn’t wait to tell him. The children were worn out after their time at Hunnybunnikins and Millie was already asleep on the couch,

clutching a book she insisted she’d only ‘borrowed’ from the playgroup library. Toby, who normally ate everything his mother put in front of him, was too tired to eat his dinner and his long eyelashes kept drooping onto his cheeks as he held his plastic fork tightly. ‘Come on darlings, up to bed,’ said Hope happily. A succulent pork casserole was simmering on the range, scenting the air deliciously, and in honour of her new job she had a bottle of wine in the fridge. Just a quiet night in for her and Matt to celebrate new beginnings. He’d be so proud of her; Hope smiled as she ran the children’s bath. He was always worried about money these days and her wages would pay for the playgroup. Yes, some people might think she was mad working purely to pay for playgroup, but Hope knew that she needed to get out a couple of days a week. And even though she wasn’t going to have much left over from Erwin’s wages, if he did the garden for free, that would be a huge advantage. For once, she got away with reading the shortest of bedtime stories. Both children were sleeping soundly before she’d reached the final page. Kissing them softly on their foreheads, she slipped out of their room and into hers. She quickly swapped her usual uniform of jeans and sweatshirt for an olive cobwebby knitted skirt and a matching tunic top. She let her hair fall around her shoulders and sprayed herself with scent. A crunch of brakes told her Matt had arrived but instead of him getting a lift with Ciaran Headley-Ryan, it was Finula herself who dropped Matt off, clearly determined to invite herself in. ‘Just popped in for a minute to say hello,’ she said gaily, settling herself down on the most comfy chair as if she was there for the night. As usual, she was dressed for a fancy dress party in flowing florals with a huge knobbly crimson cardigan over the whole rig out. It was jumble sale chic as opposed to bohemian chic.