12
Madeleine sat at her desk in front of her laptop—she was working diligently through Mad Mum’s social media replies and messages while she waited for Jake and Clara and her in-laws’ kids to come home from school.
Earlier that morning, she’d slotted in a hairdressing appointment to get her roots done after the school run, had applied a luxurious Crème de la Mer face mask to give her skin a boost, and had stopped off at the café for a quick latte and chat with Lucy.
And after a couple of weeks sporting comfy leisurewear while tending to Clara, today she was wearing a wonderfully soft baby-blue cashmere top and her favorite skinny jeans. In short, Madeleine felt back to herself.
As she’d mentioned to Clara earlier, Tom’s sister Fiona was dropping Jake, Clara and her own two boys home in exchange for Madeleine keeping an eye on them until dinnertime while her sister-in-law went to a dentist appointment. While having multiple kids in the house was chaotic at the best of times, Fiona’s oldest, Cameron, was especially tricky to look after. Still, it was only for a couple of hours; she could manage them for that long, couldn’t she?
A direct-message notification pinged just then, and Madeleine flipped from one site to another. Yet another follower had left a thumbs-up and comment on her new piece about parents in the playground.
You’re so right! Sometimes my kids can’t get near the slides with all those blasted Helicopters (LOL) hovering around. Headwreckers...
Madeleine acknowledged the comment before turning her attention back to the task at hand.
She was so relieved to once again be back to a routine. Clara had returned to school, work was up-to-date—everything was back to normal.
Well, almost.
She couldn’t help but think of Kate O’Hara. Madeleine wondered if she should make another call to Rosie’s mum. She had never heard back that first time, back when Clara, too, was sick, and she knew from Lucy that Kate had her hands full tending to her daughter.
Of course, she’d sent flowers (and a dinosaur balloon) to the hospital and had even suggested a potential visit, which Lucy had very quickly shut down. “It’s really not the best idea at the moment, Maddie. Things are still delicate. Perhaps better wait till Rosie’s out of the hospital and in the clear?”
And even though nothing had been said out loud, she still felt dreadful about the possibility that their family could be responsible for passing the infection to little Rosie, though obviously nobody was to blame for how the poor thing reacted. Pneumonia—horrific...
Oh, blast it, she’d try her again. The last thing Madeleine wanted was for the woman to think she didn’t fully appreciate Clara’s part in what had happened or, worse, that she and Tom didn’t care. She reached for her phone and scrolled through her contacts. She had saved Kate’s number from before and, finding it, she pressed the button to connect the call.
Almost straightaway, as if the phone was out of coverage or switched off, she heard a voice-mail notification. Then briefly considering that perhaps you weren’t allowed to use mobile phones in the hospital area Rosie was in, she bit her lip and, taking a nervous deep breath, spoke into the handset.
“Hi, Kate, Madeleine Cooper here again. Hope you got my message from before, but again I just wanted to check in and see how everything is. Needless to say, I know what you are going through—so scary. I heard that Rosie is still unwell and...I just wanted to wish her—and you—all the best. I hope she liked her dinosaur balloon. Also...” Madeleine paused for a bit. “I also wanted to let you know that I really do feel terrible about all of this, we all do—Clara getting sick and then Rosie... Anyway, just to say that I’ve been thinking about you both every day. And if there is anything I can do—anything at all—please don’t hesitate to ask. Anyway, I’m rambling now... But really, Kate, do keep in touch if you can. Bye.”
Madeleine ended the call at the same moment that she heard a mess of children enter her house. Closing her eyes briefly, and sending good vibes in Kate and Rosie’s direction, she saved that day’s work on her computer and jumped to her feet.
“I’m running late, so I’ll just drop and go, OK?” Fiona, her sister-in-law, called out from the hallway downstairs. “Great to see Clara looking so well. Talk to you later.”
“No problem, Fi, they’re in safe hands!” Madeleine called back, heading down the stairs.
“I doubt that, but what choice do I have?” Tom’s sister joked, brown eyes sparkling with amusement as she rushed out the door. “Needs must.” Then she popped her head of dark curls back in the door. “You didn’t forget the cupcakes, did you?”
“I didn’t,” Madeleine reassured her, smiling. “Blue icing and chocolate sprinkles, I remember.”
“Great. I should be back before dinner, so the snack should keep them going till then. See ya!”
In the hallway, Jake and his six-year-old cousin, Brian, were already in the middle of a noisy dispute over what group of comic-book superheroes, Marvel’s Avengers or DC’s Suicide Squad, would prevail in a fight. The other brother, Cameron, who was a few months older than Jake, quietly stood watching the exchange, but, as always, her eight-year-old nephew was the quietest one of the bunch.
Except, Madeleine realized suddenly, he wasn’t—not today. Instead, Clara was the one who seemed withdrawn and sullen. She seemed unmistakably downcast as she took off her coat and dumped her schoolbag on a nearby chair.
Madeleine’s first thought was Oh shit, we sent her back to school too soon.
But, in all honesty, Madeleine was ready to get life back on course, and she knew Clara was, too. She’d been getting cabin fever from sitting at home bored out of her mind. There were only so many books your mum could read to you or episodes of Paw Patrol you could watch before the novelty started to wear off...
Though at least Madeleine had managed to get a good blog post out of it. Still, the response to that had been nothing compared to the stir her most recent column about parents in the playgrounds had caused.
Thanks to that, she was once again scheduled not only for a slot on tomorrow’s Morning Coffee, but also had multiple requests for radio and newspaper interviews wanting her to expand further on the post.
So the timing seemed great: her daughter had gotten the all clear from Dr. Barrett the week previous, the school principal was satisfied she was no longer infectious and Clara herself was desperate to reunite with her school pals.
But looking at her daughter now, Madeleine wondered if she’d once again misjudged things.
Mumbling a brief greeting at the boys, she went over and put a protective hand on Clara’s forehead, tentatively anticipating a fever. But no, her daughter was cool as the proverbial cucumber. Madeleine furrowed her brow. What was going on, then?
“Hey, honey. You OK?”
Clara looked up at her mother solemnly and shrugged. “I’m a bit tired. I want to go up to my room for a while.” With that, she pushed past the rest of the group and trudged upstairs.
Madeleine watched, feeling confused. It was as if a completely different child had returned home from the one she had dropped off at school that morning. That little girl had been eager and excited to go back to school; she had been full of beans. Whereas this version of Clara resembled a deflated balloon.
She shook her head and returned her attention to the three boys. Jake and Brian were gradually getting louder and louder in their banter, and she noted that Cameron had started to wear an agitated look.
She moved quickly to head things off at the pass. “All right, you two, settle down. You all have homework to do, so get cracking on that and I’ll go get you a drink and some snacks. Cameron, come and help me?”
The older boy dutifully followed his aunt into the kitchen while the others continued to loiter.
“So how was your day, sweetheart?” she asked him as she prepared drinks for the kids. Saying nothing, Cameron shrugged and kept his gaze focused on the kitchen cabinets as she continued chattering. “I’ve been busy today. With Clara going back to school, I was able to get some work done, and I just finished editing something new before you all came home.” Madeleine knew that, much like her kids, her nephew didn’t really know anything—or care—about her work but, regardless, she kept talking. “I put a nice picture of Clara up online now that she’s better. It’s great that she’s well again, isn’t it?”
She pulled out a box of cupcakes she’d picked up at the café earlier and put them on the counter next to where Cameron sat, then turned toward the coffeemaker, where she inserted a pod and pressed the start button for a cup for herself.
“Here you go—blue with chocolate sprinkles.” Winking, she turned around and leaned against the counter, crossing her arms and enjoying the sight of her nephew happily engaged with his cake. Luckily, she and her sister-in-law were of the same mind when it came to sugar: a treat now and then never did anyone any harm. In fact, some studies suggested that the more parents tried to restrict them, the more kids wanted them.
Which, when you thought about it, was true of just about everything.
“Nice, isn’t it? I bought a blue one for Clara, too. I’m hoping it’ll cheer her up. She seemed a bit down in the dumps just now.”
Madeleine wasn’t expecting any feedback on that particular comment or indeed any of her ramblings, but suddenly her nephew spoke.
“She is sad,” Cameron said simply and she was surprised, because he really wasn’t one for chatter, and also because he didn’t usually have much to do with his cousin by way of the fact that they attended different schools.
“Do you know why?”
There was a long pause as Cameron seemed to be contemplating his aunt’s words. His eyes flickered to her face briefly before once again looking away.
“A mean kid. At school. She told Jake in the car that he said you might be going to jail.”
Madeleine furrowed her brow. Cameron was difficult to make sense of at the best of times but... “What kid? And what do you mean? Why would I go to jail?”
“You and Uncle Tom, Jake said. For getting kids sick.”
Now she understood. Madeleine turned back to the counter to collect her coffee but mostly to ensure that Cameron didn’t see the sharp change in her facial expression.
She felt her blood pressure rising—he had given her just the right amount of information for her to get the gist of exactly what had been said to Clara.
And, if she was a betting woman, Madeleine would put money on who had said it.
Christine bloody Campbell’s kid Kevin.
Turning back to Cameron, she fixed a smile on her face and then walked over to where he sat. “OK, sweetheart, when you’re finished, wash your hands and then go on into the dining room. It sounds like Brian and Jake are already in there, and you all need to do your homework. I am just going to check on Clara for a second and then I’ll be back down to help you. OK?”
Climbing the stairs in search of Clara, she thought of her newly recovered daughter being taunted by a loudmouth brat on the poor thing’s first day back at school. Now that she knew what was wrong, she needed to quell her daughter’s fears. She and Tom had done their utmost to teach the kids to always stand up for themselves, but her daughter having to listen to such crap while she was still vulnerable from her illness was not acceptable.
On entering her room, she found Clara lying quietly on her bed.
“Hey, Cam told me that you had a bit of a tough time today. Why don’t you tell me about it?” Clara snuggled up to her the moment she sat down on her bed. “Did someone say something mean to you?”
She nodded and buried her face in her mother’s chest. Then Madeleine heard her stifle a sob and it broke her heart. “Are you and Daddy going to go to jail because Rosie and me got sick?” she mumbled, turning her head to once again look up at her mother.
Madeleine worked her hardest to keep her expression composed.
“No, honey, we’re not. That’s absolute nonsense. Now, why don’t you tell me exactly what happened and I’ll do my best to make it all better, I promise.”
Even if it meant calling up Christine Campbell to give her a piece of her mind, Madeleine decided, gritting her teeth resolutely. Though she knew that the woman would only relish the drama.
In any case, she thought, softly caressing her daughter’s hair, this nonsense needed to stop.