Something Old, Something New

I pop downstairs to check on Henry and Anabelle but they are immersed in competitive colouring with the dogs watching their every move. I hope that they remember to tidy up properly afterwards so that Dragon doesn’t eat their pencils again. As they are occupied, I seize the opportunity to creep back up the stairs to finish my bath. There is an ache in my chest that I blame on a pulled muscle and I’m hoping that the warm water will help to ease it away.

When I am immersed in the lukewarm water – the bubbles have long since disappeared – I surrender to my confusion. I do not like to argue with Evan; I never have. Splitting up was the right thing to do all those years ago because things just weren’t right between us, and we’ve managed to be very grown-up and civil for Janis’ sake.

But with Dex’s wedding on the horizon, I’m aware that for the first time in a long time, Evan and I will be forced to spend a considerable amount of time in the same room. And right now, that idea makes me feel rather uneasy.

Chapter Six (#ulink_2fb99b28-b399-5758-97f2-edf60b5a68e4)

In the Middle of the Night

I don’t know why I agreed to this, I really don’t, as my instincts are screaming out against it. Perhaps it was guilt over the New York trip, but whatever my reasons, I caved and there is no going back now. That’s the problem with denying the children an opportunity – even if it was an impractical and impossible one – I just feel guilty and as if I need to compensate in some other way.

Henry has been asking for months if he can get a bearded dragon like his friend Joshua. Apparently, Joshua’s two bearded dragons turned out to be male and female and within months of them cohabiting, the female laid eggs. The eggs hatched and the ‘baby beardies’ – as Henry calls them – need homes.

Joshua’s parents are quite laidback, so much so that their house is full of different types of animals. It kind of freaks me out whenever I go there to pick up Henry after a play date, but I think it’s just because of all the things you hear in the media about reptiles and unusual pets. I mean, they actually share their home with spiders and snakes. Joshua’s father, Ken, works in one of those out of town exotic pet shops, so he often brings work home, and his mother Julie is a social worker. I’ve known them for years because Joshua and Henry went to the same nursery.

I knock at the door of their terraced house and wait. Henry is beside me and he hops from one foot to the other. ‘At least with it being half-term, I can help him to settle in, eh Mum?’ he asks me, his eyes wide with excitement. I nod and smile but my stomach is in knots.

What if it escapes? What if it bites? What if it carries diseases and one day I don’t turn up for work and three weeks later we’re all discovered covered in boils and…

‘Hey Annie, Henry and Anabelle! Come on in.’ Julie stands aside and ushers us into her cosy three-bedroom house which is positively bursting at the seams with vivariums, children and animals. Yet it smells very pleasant, like apple pie and fresh linen. In spite of my fear of the spiders, I feel like I could sit on one of the large sofas in the lounge, tuck my feet under me and take a nap. Let someone take care of me for a change.

Henry disappears with Joshua almost immediately to see the baby beardies and I bite my tongue to avoid telling him to watch out for spiders and snakes.

‘Mumma, can I go and play in the garden?’ Anabelle asks when she spies one of those plastic sit-in cars through the French windows.

‘Of course you can,’ Julie replies and directs Anabelle through the kitchen and outside. I briefly wonder what pets they have living in the garden, then my attention is drawn to Julie’s t-shirt which appears to be moving. It’s like she has one boob that’s developed the ability to wriggle. ‘Oh!’ She pats her chest gently as she catches me staring. ‘I’m just keeping Bertie warm.’

‘Bertie?’ I ask, even though I don’t want to. I try to tear my gaze away from her chest. What kind of animal is Bertie? I’m terrified that it’s going to be a big hairy spider.

‘Yes,’ Julie tucks a hand down her neckline and extracts a ball of mink fluff, ‘he’s a baby chinchilla.’ She holds the creature out and I peer at it. It jerks in her hand and I jump back. ‘Oh, Annie. He won’t hurt. He’s just sleepy. Here, you hold him.’

I cautiously take the fluffy thing and cradle it in the crook of my arm where it settles immediately and falls back to sleep. She’s right. He is soft and warm and kind of cute.

‘So do you have everything ready for the baby dragon?’ Julie asks.

I nod. She sent me an email listing everything we’d need so I took it to the pet shop where Ken works. ‘I’ve set it all up according to the manual. The only thing is… I’m a bit worried about the feeding thing. I bought some of those dead bugs, you know, crickets in a jar.’

Julie grimaces. ‘I’ll be honest, Annie, the dragons aren’t fussy on those things. They much prefer the live ones.’ Funny, she repeated exactly what her husband told me yesterday. ‘Tell you what, keep the jar for emergencies and I’ll give you a pot of live ones. Only trouble is, they’re normal black crickets and not the silent ones.’

I smile and shrug. It makes no difference to me whether they’re noisy or not; bugs are bugs and they terrify me. I could never go on a TV show where I’d be sent to a desert island or into the jungle because the sheer amount of insects around would totally freak me out. Having bugs crawl all over me? No thank you! As for crunching on bugs when one day we run out of other food sources, as some experts are claiming we will… there’s no way I could ever put something like that in my mouth.

Julie leads me into the hallway and up the stairs. I keep a hand over the chinchilla and negotiate the steps carefully because every one seems to have a tower of paperbacks, a pile of ironing or a pair of shoes on it. With me being rather clumsy, I’d never manage to live here. I’d be sure to break a bone every day of the week.

At the top of the stairs, we turn right then head up another flight. Joshua’s room is up in the attic. It’s a fabulous conversion that Julie showed me two years ago after they had it done. With four boys, a husband and all their pets, they needed to make the most of what space they had. When we reach the top of that flight, we walk across a small landing and through an open doorway. Henry is sitting on the floor with Joshua and they are staring into a vivarium full of tiny bearded dragons.

‘Look Mummy!’ Henry squeals. ‘Joshua has so many of them. He’s really lucky!’

I smile and take a step closer. The lively black and green creatures scuttle about inside the blue-lit tank, chasing after small crickets. They hop and jump in the pursuit of food, their instincts driving them to feed, to survive, to be on top. I think briefly about school but shake the thought away.

‘Which one do you want, Henry?’ Julie asks.

Henry stares hard at the viv. ‘Um. I don’t know. I wish I could take more than one home.’ He eyes me over his shoulder, chewing his lower lip, his childish attempts at manipulation being honed even at this early stage. I will myself to be strong, to take only one lizard home with me. Not every animal needs to be paired off like in some perfect children’s movie, surely?

‘Choose, please, Henry. We can’t keep Julie and Joshua waiting. And we have to get back for Janis.’ The latter comment isn’t strictly true, although having three children does give me an excuse if one of them is dallying somewhere.

‘Okay…’ He sighs, defeated, and points to one of the babies.

As Joshua places the dragon into a plastic tub, Julie hands me a smaller tub full of crickets and explains about feeding times. ‘It’ll be like having another baby,’ I say, though at least once the lights go off, these creatures apparently sleep through the night. I eye the plastic tub in my hand and shiver as the contents shuffle around; they remind me of currants with legs.

‘You’ll love him!’ Julie replies. ‘They’re such friendly creatures and he’ll have such fun roaming your house.’

I’m not so sure that’s a good idea as I think about Dragon and Fairy Princess and how they love chasing house spiders and woodlice. There was also that time when Janis was looking after the school hamster and it escaped. We only found it when Dragon refused to leave the fireplace in the living room because he could smell it under there. At the time, Dex had been with us and he’d had to remove the front of the fire to get at the chimney space. By then, the hamster was a little worse for wear and we’d had to nip out to the pet shop and get a new one while Janis went to Cassie’s for an hour. I just didn’t have the heart to tell her it had died. She was too young and being my first, I hadn’t gone through all that before. Henry is tougher though, more of a realist. For instance, when he had goldfish, I bought him a proper tank that we put in the kitchen on the Welsh dresser and for a few months it was his pride and joy. He’d feed the fish every morning and clean them out at weekends. Then one Saturday, we came down and the biggest fish, Bob, was gone. It had just disappeared. I thought that the other fish might have eaten it, but there was no evidence left in the tank. Henry had thought about it quietly for a few days in that way he does, then one day over pizza, he’d announced his conclusion. Bob had leapt from the water and fallen to the floor, where Dragon or Fairy Princess had consumed it. And just like that, without emotion or elaboration, my son had cleared up the mystery. To this day, I still don’t know if he was right, but we don’t have a cat, and as the dogs spent the weeks following the fish’s disappearance lurking in front of the tank, watching the remaining fish intently, I had to accept that perhaps my then six-year-old son was in fact correct. Bob had leapt to his death, a bit like my post when it falls through the letterbox and into Dragon’s mouth. I hope that this bearded dragon won’t suffer a similar fate.

At the door, I give the sleeping chinchilla back to Julie and Henry holds on tightly to the plastic tub containing his dragon. He and Joshua share a smile and Joshua solemnly tells Henry to take care of the beardy and to bring him back to play any time he likes. Just imagine! A reptile play date.

As I open the door, I realise that something is missing.

Anabelle!

‘Julie, is Anabelle still in the garden?’

Julie slaps a hand to her chest. ‘Oh my lord yes! She’s so quiet, I’d completely forgotten.’

We rush through the house to the kitchen and peer through the window. And sure enough, there she is, my beautiful little girl, driving around in the red plastic car talking away to herself. Then I look more closely and there, on the dashboard, I can just make out a green shell.

Julie rushes out into the garden and I follow.

‘Oh thank you, thank you!’ she gushes as she scoops the shell up. ‘You’ve found Larry!’

‘Larry?’ I ask as I help Anabelle out of the car and let her take the tub of crickets from my hand, hoping she doesn’t loosen the lid in the car.

‘Yes, our tortoise. Joshua let him out the other day for some exercise but he forgot about him and it was dark by the time he realised. We thought he’d escaped under the fence so it’s an enormous relief to see him again. Well done, Anabelle!’

My little girl smiles and nods, as if it’s an everyday occurrence to find a missing tortoise and take it for a drive, then she takes my hand and we head home.

****

Later that night, after I’ve tucked Henry into bed and checked on Anabelle, I pop my head into Janis’ room. ‘How’s it going, sweetheart?’

She glances up from her laptop. ‘Hey Mum!’ She removes her earphones and I realise that she probably didn’t hear me.

‘Everything okay?’ I sit on the edge of her bed and look around her room. I come in here all the time to drop ironing off and to speak to Evan on the laptop but I rarely actually register how it has changed. The little-girl pink was painted purple a few years ago then covered in posters. It makes me smile as I meet the eyes of long-haired rockers and smouldering movie stars, the beautiful people who grace our screens and make us dream of another life. The room could do with a fresh lick of paint but Janis would not be happy at all if she had to remove all her images of rock gods and stars of the silver screen, as well as her inspirational quotes and study notes. It seems that every spare inch of wall has a yellow sticky note bearing some literary quote or revision tip on it.

When did she grow up? When was it that her feet grew so much that she now wears a size and a half bigger than I do? I’m often struck by how quickly time passes. I take each day as it comes and work busily through it but at moments like this, when an evening stretches out before me, these niggling thoughts creep in and I feel sad that time has passed so quickly, that my babies are growing up and I’m hardly aware of it until another stage in their lives has passed.

But I can’t stop it can I?

It would just be nice if I had someone to share it all with, someone who understood.