Pandora’s Box

I am resisting the temptation to ask when Shelley suddenly wheels herself in the kitchen. She wants to back out straight away, I can tell by the look on her face, but she’s been spotted so she can’t.

‘Aunt Annie-Jo! Hi. How’s Mickey?’

‘Michelle is…she’s doing great, Shelley.’ Annie-Jo averts her eyes. She sounds embarrassed. ‘She said to say “Hi” and she’ll come over and see you very soon.’

‘It’s been a while.’ Shelley’s eyes narrow. She hasn’t missed that Annie-Jo is practically squirming and neither have I. ‘Did she get my birthday card?’

‘I’m sure she did.’ Annie-Jo is looking vague again. ‘Thank you so much for that, dear.’

‘Did they have a good time?’ Shelley wheels over to the fridge to pour herself some milk. ‘At Mickey’s birth day meal, I mean. I heard they went to some lovely restaurant?’

‘Oh, yes, thank you, dear!’ Annie-Jo clears her throat. ‘She had a lovely time, thank you. She thought you…maybe wouldn’t…with the wheelchair, I mean, as you can’t dance…’ She takes a great gulp of her tea and uncrosses her legs. ‘I suppose I really should be making a move, though. I’ll tell Michelle you asked after her.’

I’ve got the strangest feeling, like I’ve gone pink right up to my ears. The girls had been going to each other’s parties since they were one. I have whole albums full of their party pictures. They spent years doing horse-riding and ballet together and then, later, when Shelley got ill and became too weak for all that they used to go round each other’s homes and do things that Shelley could do, playing board games and sewing, listening to music. I know they haven’t been as close for some time, like Annie-Jo and me they’ve drifted apart, but I didn’t realise things had got this bad. Why hadn’t Michelle asked Shelley to her party this year? Annie-Jo is clearly embarrassed about it. I want to ask but something stops me…they will have their reasons. There will be some excuse. It is too late now, whatever the reason is.

‘Look, I’ll give you a ring about lunch next week, okay?’ Annie-Jo has picked up her keys and is rapping on the kitchen window to draw Josh’s attention.

Sod lunch. She can stuff it.

‘I’ve got a feeling we might have some work for you if you do come. Do you still do that calligraphy? It’s a shame, really. What with your qualifications in the fine arts and so forth. You even got a diploma, didn’t you?’

I shove both our teacups into the sink. A degree, actually! I got a degree. But I am so steaming that I don’t even want to answer her.

‘You always said you’d like to use that professionally didn’t you? I remember that. And calligraphy was something you always wanted to do.’

No I bloody didn’t! Whatever makes you say that? I think. I never wanted to do calligraphy professionally. It calls for a degree of perfectionism and skill that, yes, I can muster, but it nearly kills me. I’d far sooner be slapping paint randomly over a huge canvas. In fact, what I really wanted to do, the only thing I ever really wanted, was to design and make my own jewellery. I haven’t told many people in my life about that particular ambition—even Shelley doesn’t know—but I know for a fact that I shared it with A-J. Even now I can see us, sprawled in front of the kids on the swings in the park, and scheming, the way mums do, about what we were going to do with our lives once we’d regained some measure of freedom again. I was going to design this fashion jewellery line, and A-J was going to be my model and dazzle everybody showing off my pieces on the catwalk.

It was a pipe dream. We never did anything about it, of course. We never got the chance. But she knew damn well that I never wanted to be a calligrapher!

‘Yes, Mum does the most beautiful calligraphy.’ Shelley jumps in and answers for me and I am so surprised that I say nothing. ‘What’s the work?’

‘Invitations. We’ve got a big “Domestic Goddess” do coming up in the summer and we want someone who can do the invites professionally. The woman who used to do it has just moved and we usually use one of our own for any little jobs.’ Annie-Jo looks at me encouragingly. ‘So you see, it might be worth your while joining us. There is quite a bit of this kind of work over the course of a year.’

‘She’ll think about it,’ Shelley puts in for me again. ‘Thanks for the offer, Aunt Annie-Jo.’

‘Thanks for the tea, Rachel. It’s been so nice to talk to you again. We’ll have to organise to get together just you and me sometime. We’ll do it next week, when you come to lunch.’

‘Sure.’ I keep washing up the cups and I don’t see her to the door. I feel stung to the core about Shelley not getting a birthday invite, even if it is stupid of me.

The door shuts behind her at last. The atmosphere in the kitchen is thick with my unspoken resentment. It isn’t me that she’s hurt, I could cope with that. I just can’t bear that she did that to Shelley, my Shelley, who has such little time, so few parties left to go to. Why had they done that?

‘It’s all right, Mum.’ My daughter has seen my guest out and chivvied Daniel up the stairs to get out of his scout uniform. ‘I don’t mind. I really don’t. You don’t have to be so hurt on my behalf. Michelle and I haven’t been close for months.’

‘That’s not the point, though, is it?’ My throat is tight. I’m not really sure what the point is, but this feeling of rejection has cut me to the quick so I go back to the sink to wash up all the bits and bobs of cups and teaspoons and plates that gather during the course of the day. Outside it has grown dark all of a sudden. There is a wind stirring up the leaves in the garden and I have a feeling that tomorrow it will be quite cold.

‘If she can get you some calligraphy work then you should go to the lunch. She might prove a useful contact for you.’

If Shelley feels rejected at all then she really isn’t showing it. And maybe she is right. Maybe I should think of Annie-Jo as a contact if I can’t think of her as a friend any more.

‘She’s still your friend,’ my daughter reads my thoughts in that uncanny way that she has, ‘she’s just a different kind of friend than you are.’

‘A disloyal one, you mean?’

‘Mum,’ Shelley laughs, ‘compared to you the whole world is traitorous and harsh!’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ I look at Shelley in astonishment. Daniel has just bounded into the kitchen and he’s ravenous as usual. His look of disappointment that there is nothing cooking on the hob is a picture.

‘I mean that there is no one on this planet who is as good and true a person as you. You are the best mum in the world.’

Disloyalty, I think. That’s what this is all about, really. I feel let down. I feel trampled over. Disregarded.

‘I always thought of her as a friend.’ I give Shelley a lopsided attempt at a grin. ‘There we go. No sooner do I open Pandora’s box than all the Miseries start flying out at me.’

If there is one person I would have laid money on remaining loyal to us, it would have been Annie-Jo.

‘Not, of course, that there is any connection whatsoever between Annie-Jo becoming a turncoat and Pandora’s box of old junk arriving at our door…’ Shelley reminds me.

‘No. None at all,’ I concede.

‘What’s a turncoat?’ Danny looks from one of us to the other and his face seems worried. ‘And what do you mean, Pandora’s box makes miseries shoot out at you, Mum? Is there something inside Granny’s box? Like—like germs, you mean?’

‘Mum was making a joke, dunderhead. No germs in there. No miseries. Nothing. It’s just that Mum’s a bit sad because A-J, well, she doesn’t appreciate that our mum’s the best.’

‘Mum’s the best,’ Daniel echoes his sister, and I pull a face and go to rummage in the fridge. If I am quick enough maybe I can pretend that these tears welling in my eyes are just the onions?

‘Did you get to speak to Dad yet?’ Shelley speaks softly to me, peeling the garlic in the corner. ‘About the trip?’

‘I’ve left a couple of messages. I’ll get on to him tomorrow, definitely.’ I don’t add that he’s already got back to me this morning with a resounding ‘No!’

‘What if he says no?’

‘I won’t take no for an answer,’ I tell her. ‘How did you find out about Michelle’s party?’

She shrugs. ‘The girls were all talking about it on the Internet last night. Bryan hired out the whole of the top floor at Maxime’s for her, apparently. It was formal attire. Not really my scene, though, you’ll agree?’ I look at her closely, searching for any hint of regret at having been left out, but I can find none. Shelley accepts it; it is me who can’t accept it.

‘You’ll go to Summer Bay,’ I tell her. ‘No matter what happens, you’ll have your wish, I promise you that.’

‘Okay, Fairy Godmother,’ Shelley grins, dropping the peeled garlic cloves onto the chopping board. ‘I’ll leave it in your capable hands.’

If I know Bill, though, it is going to take more than a wave of a magic wand before he will let her go.

It is going to take something more akin to a miracle.

6 Rachel (#ulink_974c8179-6d11-5f6a-bb05-55414be5c816)

I feel so…so pathetic and stupid and helpless now that Annie-Jo has gone. I’ve got all those I-should-have-saids twirling round in my brain like a snowstorm in a bottle and to what end? For what?

I’ve just pulled the tray out of the bottom of the toaster to get to all the crumbs. This is a job I never do, not ever. It is one of the least necessary things in my life and yet I am doing it now because…if I don’t do something constructive with all this energy I fear I may pick a chair up and hurl it through the window.