Free Grime and Punishment by Jill Churchill

at what pace the woman worked when she was unsupervised. The vacuum cleaner was sitting in the living room and the magazines were straightened up. She ran her finger over the coffee table and sighed. No dusting had been done. There was no sign of Edith.
    She went upstairs, hating herself for being so stealthy. No sign of her there, either, although the beds were made. She must be doing the family room in the basement. The last step creaked—it always did and Jane had forgotten—so she abandoned her sneaking. “Edith? Are you here?”
    From the small adjoining office, Edith answered. “You’re going to have a mildew problem down here if you don’t get some circulation. Spiders too.“ She emerged, carrying a feather duster, and frowned sourly at Jane.
    “I thought I told you I didn’t want anything done in there.“ Jane was irritated. The office was off limits to everyone, even the kids. Steve had worked there, and she’d taken it over last winter for bill-paying and just plain hiding out. She considered it her own ward of a sort of personal mental health institute. It was the one place she could go and be absolutely alone when the pressure built up. She resented any intrusion. She was sure she had told Edith not to do the room, but Edith must not have been listening. Neither did she appear chagrined at the mistake.
    “Those webs will get in the typewriter and make a mess of it,“ Edith said, clumping up the steps. It was clear that the discussion was over as far as she was concerned.
    Suddenly Jane felt unaccountably depressed. She’d come home so buoyant, and now, because of a trivial irritation, she was deflated. These spells had come over her frequently last winter and spring, but over the summer, with the kids around all the time they had become less of a problem. Now that school had started and the regular routine was beginning, would she be subject to them again? Shelley had told her she should see a shrink, something about grief therapy, but she had found therapy of her own.
    She closed the door, sat down in the butt-sprung chair, popped a tape of the 1812 Overture into the tiny cassette player she kept in the top drawer, and leaned back with her feet on the desk top. She closed her eyes and let the music take her away. Within a few minutes, she was smiling and directing the orchestra.

Seven

    Jane would have had a whole, precious hour of solitude if Shelley hadn’t phoned. “Jane, you are going to that PTA meeting at the junior high this afternoon, aren’t you?“ she asked briskly.
    “Are you crazy?“
    “Good. I’m so glad. Early planning for the spring fund-raising carnival is so important.“
    “You have gone mad. You can’t have forgotten the last one. The time I had to run the cotton candy machine and got that goo in my hair and vowed never to become involved again.“
    “I knew you’d feel that way. I’m looking forward to seeing you there. I’d give you a ride, but Paul is dropping me off.“
    “I see. Paul’s there and you can’t say what you mean.“
    “Wonderful. Yes, of course. See you then.”
    Jane gave some serious thought to the nature of friendship before dragging herself to the junior high. This seemed too high a price to pay. But, if Shelley was desperate enough to attend such a meeting, Jane’s curiosity alone was roused to the point of enduring the setting to find out what was up.
    She parked at the front of the big circle drive, the better to escape when the opportunity came. She had to sit quite still, getting her nerves under control, before she could enter the building. In Jane’s opinion, junior high schools were possibly the worst idea educators had ever come up with. At the age children most needed to have older teens to look up to and younger children to set examples for, the system pulled them out and isolated them to flounder around without guidance. No, not without guidance; they had nearly as many counselors as teachers assigned to the school, but those