Free Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva by Sarah May Page B

left Flo.

Chapter 10
    By the time they finally got back to Prendergast Road, it was after two and Kate couldn’t get the door open because Margery had put the chain across.
    ‘Margery!’ she yelled.
    Further down the street, the Down’s syndrome boy at No. 8Davidwas in his front garden, smiling happily as he hugged the loquat tree growing there. The next minute, he started to singa series of loud, prolonged wails that started to make Kate panic.
    ‘Margery,’ she yelled again.
    ‘Who is it?’
    ‘Kate. Margerycome on, it’s starting to rain again.’
    The chain was taken off and the front door opened to reveal Margery standing in the hallway with Robert’s old hockey stick raised above her head.
    Findlay ran past her without comment.
    ‘I heard someone at the doorwasn’t sure who it was,’ Margery said, without lowering the stick.
    ‘It’s us.’ Kate stared at her. ‘I work half-days ThursdaysI told you.’
    Tripping over the same recycling bag in the hallway thatshe’d tripped over earlier, she navigated the unmoving Margery and reached the kitchen, where she was confronted with a row of pies.
    ‘Once I got started, I couldn’t stop,’ Margery said behind her, the hockey stick still in her hands. ‘He’s got corned beef and onion, cheese and onion and potato to choose from,’ she carried on more to herself than Kate. She’d been keeping up a steady patter of conversation with herself most of the morning since Martina left.
    ‘Potato pie?’
    Margery nodded.
    Her eyes bouncing off the mound of carbohydrates, Kate said, ‘Can you keep an eye on Flo for me while I go up and change?’
    ‘Off out again?’
    ‘I thought I might go up to the allotments.’ She paused, and with an effort added, ‘Why don’t you come with us?’
    ‘It’s raining.’
    Kate glanced out through the kitchen window but didn’t say anything.
    ‘You don’t want to take them up there in this weather. Findlay won’t want to go,’ Margery insisted, raising her voice so that Findlay who was playing in the lounge would hear.
    ‘What are you talking about me?’ he called out. ‘Where won’t I want to go?’
    ‘The allotments,’ Margery shouted back.
    ‘I don’t want to go to the allotments,’ Findlay moaned.
    Margery’s eyes skittered triumphantly over Kate as Findlay appeared in the kitchen doorway, his shoulders pushed forward and his arms hanging loosea posture he often assumed to denote despair.
    ‘Half an hour, that’s allI need you to help me dig.’
    ‘Digging stinks.’
    ‘Findlay…’
    ‘I don’t want to gomy suit’ll get wet like it did last time then it won’t fit.’
    ‘He can stay here with me,’ Margery put in.
    ‘Yes, yes,’ Findlay started to shout, gripping onto the doorframe and using it to jump up and down.
    ‘Findlay, calm downif you stay here there won’t be any TV.’
    The last time she’d left Findlay with Margery for an afternoon they had watched a documentary on the Milwaukee cannibal.
    Findlay stopped jumping.
    ‘He can help me with my Tom Jones jigsaw.’
    Findlay remained silent, considering this, as Flo started to cry.
    ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Margery said, irritably.
    ‘Hungry. Could you heat her up a bottle?’
    Margery grunted something Kate chose to ignore as she made her way upstairs, running the rest of the day’s schedule through her head. She couldn’t stay up at the allotments for more than an hourshe had to leave herself time to pick Arthur up from nursery, take him and Findlay swimming then get back to make the tortilla. Pausing at the top of the stairs, she made another mental note to phone Robert and remind him to pick the boys up, before disappearing into the bathroom and swallowing 400 mg of Nurofen.
    She took a quick shower in the Philippe Starck shower room they’d remortgaged the house foralong with the Philippe Starck en-suitebefore it finally dawned on her that nobody they knew would know the fixtures and fittings were Philippe