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‘No way,’ said Shay, feeling a flush of anger heat her cheeks. ‘Absolutely no way is that happening. What are they thinking of? How have they got the…’ She was going to say ‘balls’.
‘Shhh, now,’ said Dagmara, trying to calm her. ‘You know, Shay, the man who built Merriment Close, he vas greedy. There were only supposed to be nine, but he squash another house in. That’s why this and next door are link-detached, not proper detached like the rest. That’s why my house is 1 and Mr and Mrs Balls are 1A. I’m always getting their post when we have new postman.’ She gave a little laugh and leaned forward to impart a secret. ‘I’m not going to put anything I get through their letterbox any more. I’m going to burn it.’
‘Don’t get into trouble. I think that’s illegal.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Dagmara. ‘After all I’ve been through in my life, I’m not easily scared.’
Her history was testament to that. When she was a little girl, Dagmara lived a privileged life in a country house near Riga at the side of a lake with maids. But her anti-communist father refused to let the Russians take over the house in 1943 and was shot. Dagmara and her mother had to flee, eventually ending up in the UK where her mother cleaned floors for a living. Dagmara met her husband dancing. He was also a refugee, a once equally privileged boy from Yugoslavia who’d fled the communist takeover. Dagmara’s mother did not think this young man was good enough for her daughter to marry, So Dagmara got pregnantin order to force her mother to relent. She’d been a spirited minx then and still was now.
‘The noise yesterday was terrible,’ said Dagmara. ‘And cars and vans everywhere. So many of them.’
‘Well that can’t be right at all,’ said Shay. Surely you were supposed to tell neighbours when you were doing work that might affect them. ‘I’ll sort it.’
‘I will leave you now with your mother,’ said Dagmara. ‘She has kept asking when you are back. Paula is… different from you, isn’t she?’
Which was one way of putting it.
‘I hope so,’ replied Shay.
Dagmara smiled at her. ‘You are good girl. Your mama is lucky to have you.’ She sighed then. ‘It’s not easy when someone starts to lose bits of their mind. Your mama has been a little mixed up today. She thought I was her sister Stella. I wish.’ She chuckled. Stella was the reported stunner in the family, with her beautiful long legs and Italian film-star looks, yet Shay always thought her mother was the prettier of the two, with her strawberry blonde hair, killer smile and curvaceous figure.
‘Thank you, Dagmara, I’m so glad she has you,’ said Shay at the door.
‘She has all of us on the close,’ replied Dagmara. ‘Apart fromthem.We look out for each other.’
Shay went back into the kitchen to put out her mother’s tablets, trying to avoid looking out of the window and seeing the building work. Her mother had always loved this house, thought it was much cosier than the draughty Old Rectory they used to live in. Shay, however, had missed their previous house a lot when they moved here. She’d had the whole attic floor there, with its sloping ceiling and a reading nook.By comparison, her bedroom in the bungalow was square and characterless, although her father had done his best to make it a ‘girl-den’ for her. He’d painted it in cool pastels and built her a cosy corner with bookshelves that had secret drawers. Some of her old annuals remained on the shelves, the bed still had her Beastie Boys duvet cover on it, the dressing table that her dad had found in an antique shop and rag-rolled in cream paint for her stood in the window. She kept a few toiletries, brush, comb, a spare nightie and underwear in the drawers for whenever she needed to stay over, as she’d had to do quite a few times. There was a poster of Edward Scissorhands on the wall next to her wardrobe and another of Brad Pitt on the back of the door. The room was like a shrine to her teenage self. She’d wondered why her parents had never redecorated it or cleared it out. Then her own children left home and she realised it was harder than it looked to dismantle the end of the era.
The clock on the kitchen wall was stuck on ten o’clock so Shay replaced the battery then emptied the kitchen bin which was about to overflow. Paula wouldn’t have thought to do it, she’d have just seen to the basics.
‘Hello,’ called a voice croaky from sleep. ‘Shay? Is that you?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ she answered and went into the lounge.
‘Oh, it’s nice to have you back, Shay. I have missed you,’ said Roberta with feeling, as if Shay had been away for weeks.
‘Nice to be back.’
‘Have you seen what they’re doing next door?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ Shay replied and put on her best headmistress’s ‘no nonsense’ voice. ‘I’ll be on it first thing in the morning, so don’t you worry.’
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ said Roberta, physically sagging. That sag said everything: she could relax because Shay was on the case. ‘I’m going to give them a piece of my mind when I see—’
‘What have you eaten today, Mum?’ Shay said, diverting her attention away from the Balls duo. Even small problems tumbled in her head as if they were items in a washing machine, round and round on an eternal cycle.
‘I haven’t felt like anything to eat,’ Roberta replied. ‘Theyput me off any food.’
‘Well that’s not going to do you any good. What shall I make you?’
‘How can they do this, Shay? I’ve lived in this house since your father and I were first married without any trouble and then this.’
Paula would have corrected her, saidNo, you haven’t lived here all that time, Motherbut Shay didn’t.
‘Shepherd’s pie?’
‘They’re going to be spying on me when I’m in the garden through that window. I’ll have no privacy.’
‘What about chips, egg and beans, white bread and butter. Some comfort food, eh?’ Her mum used to make great chips, the real ones out of potatoes. Somehow, the world always seemed a bit brighter after one of her mum’s chips, egg and beans teas.
