Free A Part of Me by Anouska Knight Page B

another approving sniff that I heard her at all. I closed down the stack of tabs where I’d wandered off task and had sporadically trawled the net for anyone else who had set a precedent for sabotaging their own adoption application this far in. Surprise, surprise, I hadn’t found anyone that self-destructive. Content that Mum wouldn’t stumble across my findings, I checked the time in the corner of my laptop.
    ‘Hey,’ I called through, ‘I wasn’t expecting you home until at least half nine.’ I began surveying the information that I was supposed to be concentrating on laid out on the screen in front of me.
Rohan Bywater
. Just reading his name was enough to make my neck bristle.
    ‘Hi, sweetheart. We finished early. Karen and Sue suggested we all get off early so we’re full of beans tomorrow evening.’ I saved my document and looked over my laptop at her in the dining-room doorway.
    ‘Why? What have the WI got on tomorrow? Fruity calendar shoot, is it?’
    Mum shook herself out of her chunky calf-length cardigan and slipped the silk scarf she’d nicked from my room from her neck. ‘I wish. I quite fancy myself wearing nothing but a pair of currant buns and a smile. Alas,’ she sighed dramatically, ‘we’re preparing our argument for this ruddy council meeting at the community centre. We’ve got less than a fortnight and Karen and Sue want to rally as many faces as possible to show the officials that there are people, like us, who really do value the place. The community ruddy values it.’ Mum stopped folding her cardigan, an expression of illumination warming her features. ‘You should come, sweetheart! We could do with someone there to suggest how to give the place a facelift on a budget. They do it all the time on the telly, everyone coming together and chipping in with a few pots of paint.’
    ‘Earleswicke community centre? Ma, the place doesn’t need a facelift, it needs an identity. Or a bulldozer.’
    Mum leant on the back of the dining-room chair opposite. ‘And where do you think the mother and toddler group is going to convene, young lady, once the council bulldozes it? Or the youth club kids, hmm? Where will they have to go? Or the Macmillan coffee mornings or flower-pressing night? Just because you don’t use the centre yourself any more, Amy, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be taking an interest in it.’
    ‘I am interested, Mum.’ I probably wasn’t that interested. ‘But the community needs to come together if they want to hang onto it. A handful of WI members aren’t going to cut it. Not unless you go smaller than a current bun.’ I swallowed my smile. She didn’t look impressed.
    ‘Just remember, Amy, you may have been off enjoying city living these last few years, but Earleswicke is still
your
community. There’ll be nothing for anyone here to do if they take the community centre. Well, they can go whistle. They’re not having it.’ I felt my eyes widen before falling back to the screen and that name again. The WI was supposed to keep Mum out of trouble. Give her some blue face paint and a kilt and she was about ripe to give Mel Gibson a run for his money.
    ‘If it’s not viable, Mum, it’s not viable. Buildings cost money to run,’ I said, reviewing the figures for Bywater’s building on screen. The numbers did look a little offensive, but that was the point. There was no way he was going to ask me to work on the mill, not at these fees.
Good
. It wasn’t like I didn’t have enough on my plate at work.
    Mum huffed wearily. ‘The council absolutely has the money to run the community centre, Amy.’
    ‘So? What’s their issue, then?’ I asked, copying Bywater’s email address from the papers on the table next to me.
    ‘What do you think? What is
always
the issue, the stingy swines?’ Vivian asked.
    I gave up concentrating on my task until Braveheart got through with her rabble-rousing. ‘They can get more money for it if they just get rid?’
    ‘Bingo.