Monday 3 March
My bedroom, 6 p.m.
Julie wasn’t inschool today, so I still don’t know what she cooked up yesterday. V frustrating. Carmen and I rang her from Carmen’s mobile at break. We could hardly hear what she said, her throat was so bad. Tonsillitis, she thinks. She managed to whisper, ‘How’s the project?’ to me before her mother made her hang up.
Yikes. I thought I was off the hook. I suppose one cancelled date does not a relationship break. I’d better get to it. Bad-mouthing, I think. Bad-mouthing I can manage.
Back from a trip downstairs, 7
p.m.
Mother was making tea for Mr Spence, who was in the sitting room leaning against the shipwrecked fridge, wriggling his shoulders and rubbing his back in a ‘phew, I’ve been busy with the old manual work today’ sort of way (I’m sure it’s time he was getting home.)
I went to the bookshelf and said in a casual way, as if it was something that had been idly bothering me for a while, ‘How old would you say Bert is?’
Mother was holding the teabag and dipping it in and out of the hot water. ‘I couldn’t say,’ she said.
‘Well, what do you think? Thirty-eight? Forty? I know he acts like a teenager, but he can’t be much younger than Julie’s mum and she’s at least forty-five.’
‘Connie!’ She gave me a steely look and then smiled at Mr Spence as she handed him his mug. ‘I don’t know. It’s rude to comment like that.’
Marie, bless her little cotton socks, piped up from the plate of spaghetti hoops she was eating at the table, ‘I think he’s ugly’
‘Marie!’ Mother threw Mr Spence another smile.
‘And he smells.’
Mother said, ‘Really!’ and frowned, but I did a thumbs up to Marie. Completely unrehearsed! Marie may well be an untapped resource.
Rang Julie to tell her. Her mother says she’s too ill to come to the phone.