The path to the front door of the house was a chaos of lashing rain, hurrying mothers, tangled children and tangled umbrellas. Muttering brief hallos to a few familiar faces, Naomi hurried through them, head bowed against the elements, and made it into the sanctuary of the building.
The hall walls were covered in children’s paintings, stuck up haphazardly, and a row of framed certificates. Squeezing past a bunch of mothers trying to get their children into coats, Naomi went through an open door into the main playroom. A tiny girl, wearing Walkman headphones, was bouncing up and down on the very beat-up-looking sofa. Another girl sat at one of the tables, engrossed with an assortment of plastic creepy-crawlies and prehistoric monsters. Two small boys, one in a green hard hat, the other in a baseball cap the wrong way round, were arranging vehicles in a multi-storey car park on the floor.
No sign of Luke or Phoebe.
As she squeezed her way back into the crowded hall, Naomi saw one of the mothers she had met before, who had been very friendly to her. She was busy wrestling her small boy, Nico, into a red coat.
‘Hi, Lucy!’ Naomi said. ‘Horrible weather – September is usually such a-’
The woman, in a plastic rain hat and drenched Barbour, gave her a cursory nod, then dragged her child out towards the front door. Before Naomi had time to react, Pat Barley, who ran the playgroup, a tubby, jolly-looking woman several inches shorter than herself, with a pudding-basin hairstyle, was standing in front of her.
‘Hallo, Mrs Klaesson,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if we have a quick chat?’
‘No – of course,’ Naomi said, a little surprised at her sombre and formal tone. ‘Where are Luke and Phoebe?’
Instantly, she detected awkwardness in the woman’s face. ‘Just in the small playroom, through there,’ she said, pointing through another doorway.
Naomi peered in. Luke and Phoebe were sitting side by side on a settee in total silence, staring blankly ahead.
‘Hallo, Luke, darling, hallo, Phoebe, darling,’ she said.
There was no hint of acknowledgement from either of them.
She exchanged a glance with Pat Barley, who signalled Naomi to follow her.
They went through into the kitchen, where there was a long table covered in paint-spattered paper, Styrofoam cups of paint, and dumpy little dough figures covered in paint and glitter. A helper was sponging vivid red and yellow streaks from the face of a small girl in a blue plastic apron.
‘Look, Mrs Klaesson, this is rather awkward for me,’ Pat Barley said. She was wringing her hands and staring evasively down at the floor. ‘I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, please. But I’m afraid there have been complaints.’
‘Complaints?’ All Naomi’s positive cheer suddenly evaporated.
‘I’m afraid so.’ Pat Barley seemed to be trying to wring water from her hands. ‘You see, my problem is that parents are so sensitive these days. This really isn’t anything personal-’ She hesitated. ‘Oh dear, I don’t know how to break this to you. I know you are newcomers to this part of the world and we really should be trying to do all we can to make you welcome. But the problem is that I’ve had – well – not just one or two complaints, you see – but about half a dozen, actually.’
‘About Luke and Phoebe?’
‘Yes.’
‘What sort of complaints?’
There was a long silence. The helper, a tall, reedy-looking woman with an inane smile, was evidently listening, which was fuelling Naomi’s discomfort.
‘Well, I suppose it’s the way Luke and Phoebe interact with the other children here. They are among the youngest in the group but they don’t look or behave that way. For their age they seem quite a bit older, physically – and the way they behave is really quite out of character for children this young. For want of a better word, they are – terrorizing – the others.’
‘Terrorizing? That’s ridiculous!’ Naomi said.
The playgroup coordinator nodded. ‘Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I’ve been watching them myself all the time today, and I have to say that their behaviour is rather antisocial. They went straight to the computer the moment they arrived here, and they wouldn’t let any of the other children near it. Whenever another child tried, either Luke or Phoebe snarled at them so fiercely it made most of the other children cry. I’m afraid it was the same last time. They simply won’t share, or seem to accept that other children have a right to play with everything, too.’
‘I’ll speak to them,’ Naomi said. ‘They’ve got to learn not to be selfish – I’m really sorry about this, I’ll-’
Pat Barley shook her head. ‘I’m sorry – the situation is that two mothers didn’t bring their children in today because Luke and Phoebe were going to be here. Several of the other mothers have said they will have to stop bringing their children.’ She looked very embarrassed, suddenly. ‘I’m really very upset about this, I know it’s a terrible thing to do, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to remove them from this playgroup. Perhaps you should try them in an older group – really, they’d fit in with five- or even six-year-olds. I’m awfully sorry, but they won’t be welcome here again.’
64
Naomi watched their faces in the mirror repeatedly as she drove home. Buckled into their child seats, Luke and Phoebe sat in silence. Every time she looked, two pairs of eyes were looking back at her. She was finding it hard to concentrate on the road.
‘Mummy’s not very pleased with you,’ she said, shaking inside with a whole mixture of emotions. ‘They said you weren’t nice to the other children. Is that true, Luke? Phoebe?’
Silence.
She eased past two cyclists in the lane. ‘Luke?’ she said, more sharply. ‘Phoebe? I’m talking to you to. I asked you a question. I expect an answer, yes or no?’
The silence in the back of the car continued. She turned into the drive and drove up to the house, braking sharply, angrily, by the front door. She got out of the car. ‘You want to play games? Right, you sodding well play them.’
She shut the car door, hit the central locking button and marched to the house. In the shelter of the porch she looked at the car. The rain was still lashing just as hard, and through the side window she could just make out the motionless figure of Phoebe.
Then she went into the house and slammed the door. You can bloody wait out there. See how you like it when it doesn’t go all your way for once. Going to have to knock some manners and decent behaviour into you two, before you start growing into a couple of extremely unpleasant little people.
She hung her wet Barbour on the coat stand, picked the parish magazine up off the doormat and walked slowly towards the kitchen, in too much of a mist from her thoughts to read it. She put water in the kettle, switched it on and spooned coffee into a mug, then sat down and cradled her head in her hands, wondering what to do.
Expelled from bloody playschool. Shit.
She rang John, and got his voice mail. ‘Call me,’ she said. ‘We have a problem, I need to talk to you.’
The kettle boiled and clicked off. She remained where she was, thinking, trying to figure out what to do. Take them back to the behavioural psychologist, Dr Talbot, who thought they were so smart? They had to find someone to help them, this was a situation that The phone started ringing. Hoping it was John, she stood up and grabbed the receiver off the wall. ‘Hallo?’ she said curtly, aware of the anger in her voice and not caring.
A pleasant, rather earnest-sounding male American voice said, ‘Is that the Klaesson household?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to speak to Mrs Klaesson.’
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘Mrs Naomi Klaesson?’
She felt the tiniest prick of unease. After a moment’s hesitation, she said, ‘Who is that, please?’