When she came back downstairs she went to find Violet. ‘You can be in charge while I run Polly to the church,’ she told her.
Violet crossed her arms. ‘I’m not clearing up if he’s sick.’
‘Fine,’ Juliet said, manhandling Polly out of her summer rain mac and into her winter coat – honestly, when would that child ever learn to dress for the appropriate season? ‘Then make sure he stays on the sofa and throws up in the bucket.’
Violet made a face and stomped off. Juliet grabbed the angel dress and her warmly wrapped-up child and headed for the car. She calculated she just about had time to drop Polly off, run back home to do her make-up – which would have to be a refreshing of what she already had on – brush her hair, find a pair of heels and then she could dash back to the church for the service, dragging Josh with her to give Violet some peace to look after Jake. And if he was looking perkier when she got back, maybe she’d pop into Mike and Sarah’s just to say Merry Christmas and drop off the nice bottle of wine she’d bought them. Surely one glass of mulled wine and twenty minutes of adult conversation wouldn’t be too much to ask?
She sat in the carol service, mentally rejigging her To Do list as children sang and recited poems and stumbled their way through Bible readings. She paused while Polly sang her solo, of course, but went straight back to thinking about Christmas cake and stocking fillers right afterwards, and all the while the tinny carols she’d heard in a thousand shops for the past month kept running round inside her head, so loud they threatened to drown out the Angel Gabriel on stage, announcing the birth of the Messiah in a manger made out of corrugated cardboard and hamster bedding.
She left the church feeling slightly, very slightly, less stressed about the rest of the evening. If she hadn’t been looking forward to being just Juliet for a while instead of a busy mum of four, she might have been tempted to climb into bed with a good book, but this was her one invite to do something this year where she wasn’t helping or serving – partly because of a packed timetable, but partly because invitations hadn’t been as forthcoming recently. Old friends weren’t quite sure what to do with her now she and Greg had split up.
Once Polly and Josh were back at home and brushing their teeth before bed, and Jake had been checked on and Violet mollified, Juliet ran upstairs to swipe some more lipstick across her drying lips and refresh her mascara. She let her hair out of her ponytail and brushed it quickly. She was just poking diamond studs into her ear holes when Violet knocked on her door.
‘What’s up?’ Juliet asked, squinting at her reflection in her dressing-table mirror. Had the lighting in here got worse, or was she starting to need glasses?
‘Abby’s invited me to a party and I want to know if I can go.’
Juliet pressed her lips together as she forced the stud through the soft flesh of her earlobe. She wasn’t keen on that girl. Abby had been caught bunking off school once and always seemed to have a crowd of boys hanging round her. ‘Will her parents be home?’
‘I think so.’
Juliet turned to look at her daughter. ‘Think so isn’t good enough. I need to know for certain. Get me her mother’s mobile number and I’ll talk to her about it.’
Violet reacted as if her mother had asked her to hold hands with her while walking down the high street. ‘You’re so embarrassing! No one else’s parents do that!’
Juliet decided not to fight that point now. ‘When is it?’
Violet played with the door handle and looked at her sock-clad feet. ‘Christmas Eve,’ she said quietly.
Juliet spun round, dropping the second stud on the carpet as she did so. ‘Christmas Eve! But you know that’s our special family night!’
Violet shrugged.
Juliet turned and crouched down, running her hand across the carpet in search of her lost earring. ‘We’ll talk about this later, Violet. Right now I haven’t got the time.’
There was a loud huff from the other side of the room. ‘That means no … you always say we’ll talk about it later when you’re going to say no! God, Mum …! I’m not a baby any more. I can go out with my friends if I want to. And I want to …’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘Much more than playing stupid games with Miss Know-It-All and the runts!’
‘Violet!’ Juliet’s reply was terse but not explosive; even so, she felt the rage beginning to boil inside her, making her stomach quiver and her fingertips itchy. ‘I do not have time for this now!’
Violet flounced from the room, and Juliet continued to hunt for her lost earring, all the while feeling like a pressure cooker just about to blow. Eventually she gave up searching, yanked the first earring out and threw it on her dressing table, then shoved her feet in the first pair of heels she found in her wardrobe and clomped downstairs to say goodnight to the kids.
She was met at the bottom of the stairs by Jake, trailing the blanket she’d covered him with, puffing his cheeks out and trying to keep his mouth closed. The way his eyes were popping was slightly alarming.
She kept her voice low, soothing. ‘Jake … where’s the bucket, sweetie?’
He just shook his head and she saw the panic in his eyes.
‘Jake,’ she screamed, forgetting all about low and soothing, ‘where’s the bucket?’
Half a second after that the bucket was a moot point and Juliet was trying not to look at her shoes.
Juliet tried to work out what to do first – comfort Jake, clean up the hall for a second time or shout ‘Ewww’ about the slightly warm and squishy stuff that was seeping into her left shoe. She opted for the former and hugged her snivelling six-year-old to her, never minding what else was transferring itself onto her best black trousers.
She guided him upstairs, stood him in the bath and washed him down, and she was just tucking him into bed when the phone rang. She ignored it.
But then the distant cry came from downstairs. ‘Mum! It’s for you!’
Not wanting to yell so close to her poorly son, Juliet stuck her head out of the twins’ bedroom door before she yelled back her answer. ‘Tell them to call back later! I’m busy with your brother.’
Violet’s clumping steps came closer and then Juliet could see her face as she rounded the corner in the staircase. Instead of looking mildly put-upon, as she usually did when required to answer the phone, she was wide-eyed. ‘It’s a policeman,’ she said quietly. ‘He says he needs to talk to you.’
Juliet motioned for her eldest to go and keep an eye on one of her youngest and took the handset from Violet as she passed her on the landing.
‘Hello …?’ she said, as she stared down over the banisters at the ugly-looking puddle in the middle of her otherwise pristine entrance hall. Twice in one day. That had to be some kind of record.
‘Mrs Taylor?’
Juliet’s stomach dropped. She knew that voice, and she was having a horrible sense of déjà vu. ‘What has she done this time?’
There was a weary sigh and then PC Graham asked if she could come and talk to her great-aunt. Apparently, she had installed herself on the back seat of a bus and wasn’t inclined to get off again. She’d got on earlier in the afternoon and had been riding the