Free The Importance of Being Ernestine by Dorothy Cannell Page B

Freddy?”
    â€œNot much. He was in a state trying to get the poached egg out of the saucepan. To hear him shouting, you’d have thought it was a fish that kept leaping back into the water. I told him to calm down, and he said that if I couldn’t stop making silly suggestions I could hang up. The thing is, Mum doesn’t know how to cook, but she knows how to send out for a curry. So I imagine he was taking her absence harder than he was prepared to admit. All I got out of him was the name of the pub.”
    â€œAnd what was it?” I was wiping Rose’s face and hands.
    â€œThat’s just it!” Freddy thumped his forehead with a fist, sending his skull-and-crossbones earring into a wild spiral. “I can’t remember. For some reason I keep thinking Long-fellows . . . but that’s not it.”
    â€œPhone again and ask your father.”
    â€œI did this morning, risking getting an earful about my lack of fiscal responsibility—two of his favorite words—in making back-to-back calls. But there was no answer.”
    â€œTry his office.”
    â€œHe told me he was taking a few days off to get his shirts washed and ironed. Mum always pinches a couple of new ones for him each week. So it’s understandable that he’s at sixes and sevens without her.”
    â€œI expect she got tired of spoiling him and has gone somewhere to relax.” It was a logical explanation, and I reminded myself that Aunt Lulu had proved well able to take care of herself in the past.
    â€œMummy we’re going to be late for school.” Tam eyed me sternly.
    â€œOh, my goodness!” I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece above the kitchen fireplace. “So you are! And I’m not even dressed. But I promise you no one goes to hell for arriving two minutes after the bell rings.”
    â€œI’ll take them if you’ll let me use your car,” offered Freddy, whose only vehicle was a motorbike.
    â€œAre you sure you don’t mind, with this business . . .”
    â€œOf the missing Mum?” He grinned at me. “She’ll turn up. Come to think of it this isn’t the first time she’s done a bunk. A spirited lass, my mother. Dad isn’t easy to live with. Remember how I was forced to run away when he stopped my pocket money after finding me playing ‘doctor’ with that girl next door?”
    â€œFreddy you were twenty five at the time. And she was married.”
    â€œPicky! Picky! Come on gang!” He marshaled the children toward the alcove, where their coats and schoolbags hung, and had them out the door before I had completed my second round of hugs. “Back in half an hour, Ellie.”
    Usually I enjoyed a little time on my own, but the house seemed too quiet after they had gone. Almost as though it had taken Ben’s side and was giving me the silent treatment. Tobias, who usually came slinking out of hiding when it was just the two of us, was conspicuous by his absence. Even the twin suits of armor appeared to avoid my gaze as I headed for the stairs. Telling myself that I had to snap out of this silly mood, I took a quick hot shower, washed my hair and after blowing it dry got dressed in a pair of brown corduroy slacks and an olive green sweater. There, that was better! Rather than waste time pinning my hair into a chignon I tied it back with a rubber band. A dash of lipstick, a brush of mascara, and I would be ready to march down to the vicarage and beard Kathleen Ambleforth in her den.
    Freddy wasn’t back with the car when I left the house, but I didn’t mind walking even though it was pouring down rain. My umbrella sprang a leak before I reached the end of our drive. All to the good. It couldn’t hurt my cause to arrive looking pathetically drenched. Kathleen, I reminded myself as I rang the bell, had a kind heart under her forthright manner. She took a few moments to answer the door and usher me into the