She worked like a bloody trooper first thing; washed and dressed before the others were even awake, and she’d had the house cleaned and breakfast on the table before the first of them had made it downstairs. Normally she liked to be up first, to make the most of the quiet before the usual domestic storm, but today there were things she needed to think through. What exactly had happened at that man’s house yesterday? Why was it always Scott?
Once the kids were downstairs she was distracted. She refereed a couple of minor skirmishes between the girls, helped George with his porridge, and kept all three of them out of Scott’s way. It was a delicate balancing act. She thought she deserved a bloody medal but her efforts went unnoticed as usual. All they had to think about was themselves, she was the one who kept it all together. She stared out of the kitchen window, eating a piece of toast she didn’t want but thought she’d better have, watching birds turn impossible angles in the grey sky. She envied their freedom, their manoeuvrability.
She dropped Scott at work then took the girls to school. Then, with the three of them out of the way for the day, she turned around and looked at George strapped in his travel seat behind her. ‘So what do you reckon, sunshine? Shall we go see if there’s anything for a big man like you to do in Thussock?’
Chores first. She had a list of them. This was the last one.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t remember my postcode,’ she said to the woman behind the counter. ‘I’ve not been there a week yet.’
‘Well without your postcode, madam, we can’t register you and your family as patients here. I’m a receptionist, not an address look-up service.’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. People call it the grey house, you know it?’
‘Oh, I know it all right, Willy was a patient here.’
‘Can’t you check his old records then? Get the postcode from there?’
‘That’d be a breach of customer confidentiality, I couldn’t possibly do that.’
‘He’s dead, isn’t he? I don’t reckon he’d be too bothered.’
‘Hardly the point now, is it?’ The sour-faced woman just smiled, the knowing smile of someone sitting behind safety glass who couldn’t be throttled or punched. ‘Why not take the forms with you and bring them back when we’re less busy.’
Michelle looked over her shoulder. The spacious waiting room was empty but for two patients, one reading a dog-eared magazine, the other coughing and wheezing constantly. She turned back and eyed-up the ice maiden behind the counter again, knowing this was a battle she wasn’t going to win. More to the point, it was a silly, trivial fight she didn’t need. She picked up the five forms. ‘Thanks for nothing. I’ll be back.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ the receptionist said. Michelle was on her way out when the woman called her back. She was holding up five plastic phials. ‘Oh, and the doctor’ll need urine samples with each form, and he’ll need to see all of you in person before he agrees to take any of you on as patients. That all clear?’
‘As crystal. Thanks again for all your help.’
Michelle took the phials and walked away. With the forms, the phials, the car keys, her handbag and George, she was struggling. Unsighted, she crashed into a man coming the other way and managed to drop everything but her son. The man, late fifties, short with grey hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a close trimmed beard, quickly picked everything up for her. ‘New patient?’ he asked.
‘Hopefully. How can you tell?’
‘The forms and the piss-pots,’ he said, grinning. He folded the papers and dropped the phials into her open bag. ‘I’m Doctor Kerr. Nice to meet you.’
‘Nice to meet you, too,’ she replied, trying to juggle everything so she could shake his hand.
‘Alice give you a warm welcome, did she?’
‘Alice?’
‘My charming receptionist.’
‘No, not really.’
‘True to form,’ he sighed, then he leant a little closer. ‘She’s very efficient and remarkably thorough, but her interpersonal skills are bloody awful.’
‘I’d noticed.’
‘I inherited her from my predecessor. She’s been here longer than this building. I think they built it around her.’
Michelle laughed. ‘I can believe that.’
The doctor tapped her arm, ruffled George’s hair, then walked on. ‘Be seeing you soon, then.’
‘I’m sure you will.’
‘Alice, the light of my life, how are you this morning?’ she heard him say at the top of his voice. She didn’t hear Alice’s response.
‘See, George,’ she said as she carried him back out to the car, ‘they’re not all complete aliens here. Most, maybe, but not all of them.’
The Thussock Community Hall was a one-storey rectangular wooden building with a flat roof, situated on the outermost edge of a grassy recreation area close to the main housing estate. Probably the only park in Thussock, the recreation area itself was little more than a large, odd-shaped field with a rectangle of tarmac dropped right in the middle, upon which sat a slide, a roundabout, and a row of three swings. One of the swings didn’t have a seat, and the graffiti-covered slide had seen better days.
Michelle had spotted the play area from the road first and she’d figured that if she hoped to meet like-minded parents with kids of a similar age to George at this time of the day, this place was as good as any to find them. She’d felt like a weirdo, loitering and looking for kids. Fortunately she discovered that a parent and toddler group was in session in the hall next door. Going into the timber-clad building felt unexpectedly daunting, like she was stepping into the lion’s den, but she was getting used to it. If she was honest with herself, she hadn’t felt completely comfortable since she’d left Redditch.
A wide entrance corridor ran from the front door into the main hall. Off it were several more doors: a half-empty storeroom, a small kitchen, and male and female toilets. A particularly gruff-looking woman headed Michelle off before she could get through. Michelle tried to make conversation but received only the most cursory of replies. The woman’s responses were little more than a bullet-point list of dos and don’ts: the times, the rules, the cost. She wasn’t as bad as the doctor’s receptionist, Michelle thought, but she wasn’t far off.
Michelle paused and took a deep breath before going into the hall. She felt self-conscious… on edge. There were chairs around the edge of the room and in the centre a group of between fifteen and twenty children (they didn’t stay still long enough to count) were playing with, and occasionally fighting over, a mass of well-worn toys. She let go of George’s hand and gave him a gentle nudge. Unsure at first, he gravitated towards a sit-in car similar to one he had at home and climbed inside. Within minutes he was settled – already playing with several other kids. Michelle sat by herself on a wooden bench at the side of the room and watched him. She almost envied him. Nothing matters to kids, she thought. Who you are, the things you’ve done, what you’ve been through… none of it counts for anything much. They see someone roughly the same shape and size as them and they play, simple as that.