‘Sorry’, Rob had said grudgingly later. ‘Bad day.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I’d replied. Because it didn’t by then. A decade earlier I’d have been anxious, tearful, mortified by his anger and my failings. Now, I was gloriously unbothered, probably trying to remember what was still in the tumble dryer and whether the cat had been wormed.
This evening, divorced and independent, in my own home, with no one to answer to, I kicked off the battered old mules I used for forays into the garden and added them to the pile.
Then I switched off the rest of the lights and went upstairs in the dark.
There would be no nightmares tonight.
There was a row of footwear down there that wasn’t mine.
I woke abruptly and sat bolt upright, heart banging.
The illuminated numbers on my radio alarm showed 5.32. I remembered my children were all here and everything was lovely and slumped back against the pillows in relief.
Then I heard it again. Someone was throwing up.
I got out of bed, wrapped my robe around me and followed the sound of retching to the downstairs loo off the utility room, expecting to see Ben suffering the consequences of more beers than I’d realised or the 2 a.m. munchies and a dodgy take-away.
But it was Oliver standing anxiously in the doorway. Beyond him I could see Sam kneeling on the tiles, head over the bowl. Beside her on the floor was a towel and a bottle of Dettox.
‘She’s really ill,’ said Oliver. ‘Both ends,’ he mouthed.
‘Oh, sweetie.’ Sam gave another gut-wrenching retch, although she clearly had nothing left to bring up.
‘She’s freezing.’ I said, feeling the cold skin on her arms. ‘Get something to put round her.
‘Sorry,’ Sam gasped. And heaved again.
‘She said she was hot,’ said Oliver behind me. ‘She was sweating earlier.’
I felt her clammy forehead. ‘There’s a cardigan on the chair in my bedroom.’
I wrapped the garment around Sam’s heaving shoulders and stroked her hair.
‘Get her some water,’ I told Oliver as Sam suddenly stiffened and scrambled to her feet. ‘I need to go to the loo,’ she said urgently, pushing me out. ‘Not again …’
I went back into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Oliver looked worried. ‘Have you got anything we can give her?’
‘I don’t think so. I had a massive clear-out when I moved. There’s only pain-killers.’ I looked out of the front window. There were lights on in the rectory. ‘I’ll go and ask Jinni.’
She opened the door immediately, wearing a long towelling dressing gown and looking pale without her usual dramatic eye make-up.
‘You’re early!’ she said. ‘Did you get one too?’
‘What?’
Jinni picked up a folded piece of paper from the small table in her hall and handed it to me. It was the article from the newspaper – with the large photo of her and the small unfortunate one of me. Someone had drawn a thick circle around her face and written in black marker pen: FUCK OFF BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM THEN.
‘Christ,’ I said. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘I thought I heard something just after I’d gone upstairs last night,’ Jinni said. ‘Found it on the mat this morning.’
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve come over because–’
‘But it could have been there all evening, cos I usually come in round the side. I expect he did it after he’d seen me going over to you …’
‘You don’t really think–’
‘Him or his mad mother. I’ll give them fuck off …’
I looked at her set face and decided this was not a time to debate it. I told her about Sam.
‘Ah!’ Jinni looked rueful. ‘I had the squits earlier too.’
‘Oh my God,’ I said, as the suspicion I’d been trying to banish took root. ‘It must have been my food. But you had turkey, and Sam had her own pie and the only stuff we all ate was the veg and surely that wouldn’t give you food poisoning. I’m okay and so is Oliver, and Tilly and Ben are all quiet. Cauliflower cheese?’ I said, worried. ‘Can that make you ill?’
Jinni shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t think so, but …’ she pulled another face. ‘I’m sorry to say it, but remember I had some of the fish pie too …’
‘Oh bloody hell.’ I clapped a hand to my mouth. ‘Suppose I’ve given you both salmonella or E. coli. Oh Christ, Jinni, I’m so sorry.’
My own gut had gone into an anxious spasm.
Jinni led the way into her kitchen. ‘Don’t worry about me. I feel fine now. I’ve got a stomach of iron.’
She looked at me as she filled the kettle. ‘But I only had a little bit.’
‘Did it taste funny? Sam was probably too polite to say.’
‘No, it was fantastic. How bad is she?’
‘She seems to have stopped throwing up, but she’s still got diarrhoea and looks terrible. Perhaps I should get a doctor.’
‘I wouldn’t panic just yet. I’ve got some marvellous stuff somewhere …’
Jinni was rooting in a cupboard next to the range. ‘Was given it in Mexico when I made the mistake of having the double-chilli devil burger and had to go on a bus for three hours.’
She produced a small brown bottle and thrust it at me. ‘Do you want tea?’
‘I’d better not stay.’ I peered at the faded label. ‘This is a bit out of date,’ I said dubiously. ‘Do you think it’s okay?’
Jinni snorted. ‘Course it is. They put use-by dates on bloody washing-up liquid these days. Get a couple of spoonfuls down her neck and she’ll be sorted in no time.’
But Oliver shared my misgivings. ‘I think we should get some proper medicine,’ he said, when I got back with Jinni’s potion. ‘We don’t know what this is. It might make her worse.’
Sam had progressed to lying on the sofa bed, under a mound of duvet, but was still a horrible shade of grey and looked as though she could be ill again any moment.
‘I’ll go down to the chemist and speak to the pharmacist,’ I told him. ‘Keep giving her water, if she can manage it.’
As I hurried along the road, head down against a biting wind, I ran through my ingredients. The white fish for the pie had been frozen cod – there’d be nothing wrong with that. The same with the prawns. I’d got the seafood cocktail – full of mussels and squid – from a small deli I loved in Soho. Maybe it was that. But the shop was spotless – I’d been using it for years.
And I’d put it in the office fridge, together with the ham and cheese, as soon as I got back from lunch with Caroline. But then it had been in my hessian bag on the tube and all the way home on the train. Perhaps it had got too warm. Guiltily, I remembered how thrilled I’d been to see Ben already there when I got back. I’d made tea – we’d sat talking. Now I thought about it, I hadn’t put the shopping away for ages. It had sat there in the bag, in