The Good Part(53)
I’m woken by my phone. Did I fall asleep? What time is it? Shit, we’ve both been asleep for two hours! The ringing wakes Amy too, but she smiles up at me with sleepy, contented eyes. She looks so much better, even though she still has residual smears of blusher on her face.
‘Mrs Rutherford, it’s Yvonne from Farnham Primary,’ comes a nasal voice on the phone. ‘Felix doesn’t have his green football jersey. They’re wearing green this week because it’s an away game. We did remind everyone on the Skoolz app.’ There’s a pause on the line. ‘You’ll need to drop it off before two if he’s going to play in the match.’
I don’t want to be the reason he doesn’t play in the match. Handing Amy a bear that plays music when you press its ears, I run upstairs to look for this green football top. There’s nothing in his drawers or on the floor of his room, and after a full search of the house, I eventually find it in the laundry room at the bottom of a pile of washing – covered in mud. If I do a speed wash, maybe I can get it dry in time. The space-age washing machine won’t turn on without codes for energy efficiency and water usage, but after experimenting with a thousand random number combinations, I finally hear the merciful shooshing sound of water pouring into the drum.
Amy shouts, bored of her toy, and as I go to pick her up, there’s a high-pitched repetitive beeping sound from the laundry room. We go to investigate and find ERROR CODE 03 flashing on the washing machine.
‘What the bejeezus is Error Code Three?’ I ask Amy, and then notice she’s picked up a washing powder sheet and is about to put it in her mouth. When I whip it out of her hands, she yells in rage. I can’t open the machine, or turn it off, and the beeping noise, coupled with Amy’s crying, is torture. If I were a spy and the enemy were interrogating me, five minutes of this and I’d give up all my secrets.
Amy is chewing her fists. Maybe she’s hungry? It is lunchtime and she did vomit up most of her breakfast. ‘Do you want lunch?’
‘Blunch!’ she squeals.
Then the doorbell rings. Just what I need.
On the doorstep, I find a cheerful-looking man in a smart green boilersuit. ‘Mrs Rutherford?’ I still can’t get used to being called that. ‘I’m Trevor, I’m here to log your energy meter.’
‘This really isn’t a good time, I’m afraid,’ I say, jiggling Amy up and down on my hip.
‘Right.’ Trevor shifts his weight between his feet, his smile slipping ever so slightly. ‘It’s just, you’ll be charged a call-out fee if you choose to reschedule.’
‘Fine, come in. But I have amnesia, so I don’t remember booking this. Can you find what you need by yourself?’
‘Sure.’ Trevor eyes me warily. ‘Do you know where your meter is?’ I shake my head. ‘Have you got an appliance cupboard? There’s usually a panel.’
‘Blunch!’ squeals Amy, and I put her down for a minute because she’s pulling my hair and I need to show Trevor where the utility room is.
When I return, I find that in the thirty seconds I’ve been away, Amy has managed to take off her nappy and wee all over the hall carpet.
‘Amy! No!’
She wails.
‘Your panel’s not in there,’ Trevor calls, coming back and grimacing at the mess. ‘I’ll have a scout about for it, shall I? I can see you’ve got your hands full.’
Once I’ve cleared up the mess in the hall, I head to the kitchen and find a pouch of purée for Amy and a nut and seed energy bar for myself. Amy throws the pouch on the floor and snatches the bar out of my hand. The washing machine’s beeping feels like a woodpecker tapping at the inside of my skull. What if I can’t turn it off? What if we have to live with this sound for the rest of our lives? People will visit us and we’ll have to give them earplugs. It will come to define who we are as people.
Trevor’s grinning face appears around the kitchen door. ‘I found the panel,’ he says triumphantly.
Amy has demolished my nut bar and is now shouting, ‘NANA!’ at me.
‘Nana’s not here, sweetie,’ I tell her. But she holds out her fists and clenches them open and closed. ‘NANA!’
‘I think she’s trying to say banana,’ Trevor says. Right. Even Trevor understands my child better than I do. ‘Do you want me to turn that beeping off?’ he offers.
‘Yes please, Trevor! For the love of God, yes.’
Trevor looks scared. I find Amy a banana, and she grabs it in delight. Trevor fails to stop the beeping, though he does manage to open the washing machine so I can get Felix’s football jersey out.
Ten minutes later, Trevor is gone, and Amy and I are back in the car, with Felix’s damp jersey hanging out of my window
‘Baa sheep! Baa sheep!’ yells Amy once we’re driving.
‘Stan, play “Baa Sheep”,’ I try.
‘You want to drive to BAARLE-NASSAU in BELGIUM?’ Stanley offers.
‘No!’
My crush on Stanley Tucci is quickly evaporating. I’m starting to miss Trevor, short as our co-parenting relationship was.
‘Baa sheep!’ Amy wails insistently. I try singing ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ myself, but I can’t remember the words, and now I have a pounding headache from all the washing machine beeping and crying and singing and intense multitasking. We lose ten minutes driving in the wrong direction because I realise Stanley is trying to take us to Belgium. Eventually, we arrive at the school gates and I unbuckle Amy and run inside with her. My arms are aching from carrying her around all day. Is this why I have biceps now?