The Family String by Denise Picton

Author:Denise Picton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ultimo Press
Published: 2022-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

T

hings were pretty frosty in our house for the next couple of weeks.

Usually within a few days of a fight, Mum and Dad made up and it would be okay again for a while, but Mum wouldn’t thaw this time, and Dad seemed to have given up. We heard them speaking in clipped, urgent voices in their room at night, and that felt strangely better than when there were no words coming from their room at all. Dad didn’t say goodbye to Mum in the mornings as far as I could tell, and sometimes he forgot to say goodbye to us too. I took to standing by his car door when I’d had my breakfast so I could at least see him before he left, and although he always looked sad, he would at least mess up my hair and smile at me before telling me to go inside before my mother started to look for me.

Mum didn’t go to church for two whole weeks. In fact, she didn’t go anywhere much for two whole weeks and was rarely out of her nightdress. She said Caleb was too sick for her to leave the house. Dad said Caleb would be fine wrapped up warmly in the middle hall.

Mum said, ‘There you go – you don’t really care about us. You just want to make sure you get to your precious meetings with all your friends and that monster of a sister-in-law.’

Dad said, ‘That monster of a sister-in-law was like a mother to me.’

Mum said, ‘Well aren’t you lucky you have her around given my mother is thousands of miles across the sea and I’ll probably never see her again.’

Dad said, ‘I’m not sure I could deal with two of you anyway.’

Mum said, and this worried me the most, ‘Well I can fix it so you don’t have to deal with either of us if you like.’

Mum started to eat food. As I’ve already made clear, this was not usual for her at all. She made four pieces of toast for her breakfast with lots of butter and jam, when she usually only had one slice with nothing on it. She started to put sugar and milk in her tea and had a biscuit with each cuppa, which was unheard of. She made more puddings than usual, which of course was a good thing as far as I was concerned, but then she ate a lot of them too. When she made rice pudding, which was my absolute favourite, she put big dollops of cream on the top of hers and kept her eyes on Dad’s eyes as she did it. He watched, but he didn’t say a word, which I thought was quite wise of him.

Caleb couldn’t keep his mouth shut as usual though and said, ‘Mum, I thought you were watching your waistline?’

Mum said, ‘Well, it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?’

‘Why doesn’t it matter, Mum?’ Caleb asked.

Dad said, ‘Just eat your pudding, Caleb.’

Caleb didn’t go back to school for two weeks.

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