Page 4 of Just for the Season

No, no, no, I’m coming home. Right now I HATE THEM ALL. Stupid football enthusiasts. Oh fuck. We’re back on. Gaaaah. See you later. I’ll be a shell of my former self. You might not recognise me. Thank God for cake.

I send her some cake and happy-dance emojis, which would make Jack really cringe, but which I know Ellie will like, because I’m sorry but a lot of women in their mid-thirties do like an emoji, and teenagers should not take that away from us. And then I take a lovely, much-needed slurp of tea.

Things have been feeling really nightmarish today, and realistically it’s going to be a while before I sort myself out, but there are some good things in life.

Basically, at just after eleven thirty this morning, I became homeless and jobless (and fiancé-less but that’s a good thing; what an arse) all at once, but at least I have this lovely haven in Milbury.

I tip the carrot cake out onto the plate and pick up my fork.

I’m finally about to take my first mouthful, when the door opens and a very large man steps forward and blocks almost the entire door aperture.

And then, just as I register that Queue Man has invaded Ellie’s kitchen, he has the incredible temerity to say to me, ‘What are you doing here?’

2

MARCUS

Who is this woman?

I’ve never in my life met anyone so obsessed with a cake. (Other than myself, obviously, about the same cake, but I had excellent reason for that.) If Simon hadn’t intervened, I think she’d genuinely have eaten it off the floor. Unhinged.

And now she’s sitting at my neighbour’s kitchen table with a fork in the remnants of her half of the squashed cake.

Given that she and Simon greeted each other like old friends, I’m guessing that she is not a cake-crazed intruder looking for a comfortable chair and some cutlery, but a friend of Ellie’s. A close friend, going by how much she’s made herself at home. Hard to imagine, because Ellie is extremely sane, but maybe the cake woman isn’t always as bad as this.

‘Sorry?’ she says, staring. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to give Maurice his antibiotics.’ I resent explaining myself in any way to the person who ruined my daughter’s birthday cake, but I’m not going to descend into a no-you-tell-me-first back-and-forth.

Frankie. That’s what Simon called her.

She nods, slowly. ‘Maurice is on antibiotics,’ she muses, as though I might be lying. How ridiculous: why would I lie about Ellie’s cat? And how would I know Maurice’s name if I were lying? ‘Oh, yes,’ she continues. ‘They have to be given at the same time every day.’

‘Yep.’ They do. 6 p.m. I’m here because Ellie and Jack both knew they’d be out at this time today. And, wow, she must know Ellie very well to know so much about her cat’s medication.

‘Well, thank you very much,’ Frankie says briskly. Dismissing me. ‘I can do the antibiotics.’

I would like nothing more than to walk straight back out, but I feel a responsibility to Maurice.

‘Do you know how to do them?’ I ask.

‘Yep.’

‘Could I confirm how exactly you plan to do them?’ I can’t just abandon Maurice to badly administered antibiotics. He got bitten by a fox and has a very nasty wound that risks turning septic.

Frankie raises one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows, like no-one other than me has ever not allowed her to have entirely her own way before. Often the way with very beautiful women, I think. Like my ex-wife. People will do anything for them just to receive one of their perfect smiles. (I am no longer one of those people.)

‘I know how to give a cat antibiotics,’ she says haughtily.

‘And I have a duty to Maurice,’ I reply, equally haughtily.

She glares at me and I smile blandly at her.

I am not ten years old, and therefore I should not immediately think Ha, you lose, when, after several seconds, she ends our unspoken contest.

‘Hold him by the neck and use a syringe,’ she says.

I have to fight to hold back a victorious smile, as I reply, ‘Great. So the antibiotics are in the fridge and it’s one five-millilitre syringeful.’