I’d try to keep an eye on her, as far as I could, and I had shared my concerns. But I knew that, come tomorrow, I’d have three new demanding charges, all with problems needing interventions that would probably fill both my time and my head. ‘You want another orange juice, love?’ I asked her as I flicked the switch on the kettle. And when she didn’t answer, I immediately went over to the quiet corner, already knowing what I would probably find there.
And I did. I put my head round the bookcases to find her curled up on a bean bag, fast asleep again and gently snoring. I stepped away again, made my coffee, finished clearing my desk, and only when it got to five minutes before the bell was due to buzz for home time did I return to the quiet corner and shake her gently awake.
She woke up wide-eyed, disorientated, blinking.
I smiled, hands on hips, as she rubbed her eyes and stood up. ‘You are definitely burning too much midnight oil, young lady,’ I told her. ‘Early night for you tonight and that’s an order.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just sat down to do the labels on the bottom shelf and … well,’ she added sheepishly, ‘I must have drifted off.’
‘Tell me, Kiara,’ I said, driven by a sudden and very powerful instinct, ‘would you like to come back here tomorrow?’
It would prove to be the best instinct I’d had in a long time. A life-saver, almost. A childhood-saver, definitely.
‘Yes, please,’ she said. And thank God she did.
I slammed the car door with my usual gusto as I got out of it on our drive. Not because I wanted to make any sort of statement, but because it was the only way to be sure of it actually shutting. My poor little Fiesta was 12 years old now, but despite its little ‘idiosyncracies’ (well, that was how I liked to think of them) I was still resistant to Mike’s endless tutting and head-shaking, and banging on about how I should really look for something newer.
The noise brought Kieron to the door anyway. ‘Ah, Mum,’ he said, looking shifty, ‘just so you know, we got a half day today so I’ve brought Si home to work with me on some music. Which is important. Because it’s stuff we’re doing for college. So I don’t suppose you would put on some earmuffs or something, would you?’
‘Earmuffs?’ I asked him.
‘Yeah,’ he said, looking at me as if I was ridiculously slow on the uptake. ‘You know, so you can’t, like, hear us?’
Lovely, I thought, wondering quite why Kieron thought I’d be able to whip up a pair of earmuffs out of nothing. As far as I could remember, I had never owned a pair of earmuffs in my life – a lack that wasn’t lost on me given that I’d spent most of the day lightly chilled, like the ready-meals in the local branch of Tesco.
‘It’s that bad, is it?’ I asked him, dropping my satchel onto the hall floor for the moment, to sit among the small gathering of abandoned trainers. It was certainly odds-on that it might be. Kieron was taking a media studies course at college and had recently developed an obsession with ‘mixing beats’, whatever that was. All I knew was that it had involved Mike spending a ridiculous amount of money on some turntables and a mixing desk, and then lots of noise. That was definitely the only word to describe what was floating down the stairs to me right now. Well, to be fair, that one word was a bit of a generalisation. ‘Strangled cat mixed with several hundred fingers being scraped down a blackboard all at once’ was quite a good description too.
Si, aka Simon, was on the same course. He and Kieron had been friends since they’d both started high school, so I’d known him for years, but now I saw rather more of him than I ever did before; amazing how a pair of turntables (wash my mouth out – I must remember that they are ‘decks’) could totally take over a pair of teenage boys’ lives. Not to mention turning me into my mother. Much as I was horrified to realise it was happening, my new catch phrase seemed to be ‘Turn that down!’
I bit my lip to stop myself from saying it this time. ‘Not a chance, kiddo,’ I said instead as I slipped off my jacket. ‘Tell you what – how about you and Si put on your headphones and listen to your “tunes” through those. How’s that for an idea? I need to get dinner ready, don’t I?’
‘Mother,’ Keiron said, shaking his head in disdain. ‘You are so old school! Fine, then,’ he added, in a voice heavy with resignation. ‘We’ll try to be quiet, then.’ He then turned tail and began heading back up the stairs. But not before adding that, where dinner was concerned, just pizza for him and Si would be fine. ‘Upstairs, yeah? So we can crack on with our work,’ he explained, without so much as the tiniest pinch of irony.
What was it they said was a great leveller? Time? Death? Education? I wasn’t sure, but as I hung my jacket over the newel post, I decided ‘going home’ was probably right up there in the top ten of things that kept your feet on the ground, if not your chakras re-aligned. Evidence of recent occupation was strewn around my living room, where some living had evidently been done. My perfectly placed scatter cushions were now strewn across the sofa any old how, the TV, though muted, was playing some music station and as I looked through to my kitchen and dining area, I could see that I had the joy of a sink full of washing up that hadn’t been there when I’d left it.
What planet had I been on when I looked forward to the time when my kids were older, confident that the working day might just mean exactly that? That I wouldn’t then have to come home and start work all over again? As yet, there’d not only been no sign of that happening – it seemed to be getting even worse. Because not only was I expected to feed my own husband and offspring – these days there was more often than not someone else wanting feeding; or who just happened to be around when it was dinner time.
As a family, we’d swelled our ranks as well. Our daughter Riley was now going steady with her boyfriend David, so much so that they were currently saving up to buy a house. Which was wonderful, because he was a lovely lad, and a great foil for our feisty daughter, but with every bit of spare cash being directed towards their savings, their days of living the high life, gadding about, going out and eating in restaurants had been replaced with the more cost-effective and time-honoured tradition of either eating at our house or his parents’.
I didn’t mind all the extra work this entailed. I really didn’t. Well, I didn’t mind 99 per cent of the time, anyway; it didn’t go down well with my more rigorously twenty-first-century dwelling colleagues but I loved looking after my little family. But every day, for about five minutes, when I was feeling that enervating just-home-from-work tiredness, I wished I didn’t get home before Mike and Riley, so that it could be me walking in to the smell of something nice cooking, rather than them.
Sadly, I had no access to that universe currently, and as I wouldn’t be letting Kieron loose in the kitchen any time soon (pizza was nice, but not every day for all eternity) I rolled up my sleeves up and cracked on. And as I did so, I wondered about Kiara and what sort of home she’d be returning to tonight. I couldn’t seem to help it. I had so little to go on, and what I had was hardly earth-shattering, but there was something about that girl that had really got under my skin.
I’d not had a chance to catch up with Julia Styles after school the previous day so the following morning I set my alarm early and, having remembered to take a cardigan in case the radiators were still iffy, the first thing I did when I got into work was to pay her a visit.
‘You’ll