"It's time for bed. Auntie Lauren is coming over tomorrow," Roisin called out in her carrying voice up the staircase as she received a phone call late on Saturday night.
"Oh, brilliant," Michael grunted with a scowl on his face as he shambled off upstairs to bed. Niamh shook her head in wonder at him as she reached for her library book and looked down the staircase. She couldn't make him out at all these days. One moment, he was this moody stranger who flew off the handle for no reason at all and other times, he was the happy go lucky kid that he used to be. A distant memory came back when mum was in prison and they were living with Aiden and grandma. She couldn't understand what was going on and she was acting like a spoilt brat over nothing in particular, Michael was pleading with her not to make so much noise. While she was grizzling away in the corner of the room, she could hear Michael on the phone to mum and pleading with her to come back home. Now Michael was becoming the childish one while she was the sensible one. If this was growing older, she wanted nothing to do with it but to stay as she was.
In the morning, she was up early while Michael was still in bed and she looked forward to the reassuring normality of family breakfast at the table.
"We'd love to see Lauren. We've not seen her for simply ages." Niamh started to chatter away while Michael pulled a face. Cassie pretended not to notice and poured out a cup of tea for herself and Roisin who was still in the kitchen.
"She's sorry that she's not come over earlier but she's been busy, Niamh"
"She's always busy like all grownups are"
"I wish I had the time for all my friends, Niamh. It's easier when you're a kid, living at home, everything looked after, long school holidays, no responsibilities"
"Except for exams and homework." Put in Niamh.
Cassie looked around, slightly discomforted. She had been one of those infuriating children who had blithely taken advantages of her many natural advantages. Unlike her sister, she could pig out on all the least nutritious foods without putting an ounce onto that slender frame of hers and had the infuriating knack of passing all her exams with the minimum amount of work and the maximum amount of partying. She had had to slightly refurbish her own past as relayed to the kids, emphasise her occasional spurts of hard work and draw a discreet veil over the rest. She had become a 'born again' advocate of diligence and application and had deftly concealed her history up to her rebirth.
"Yeah, well, I was forgetting all that," Came her glib rejoinder.
"I don't want to see her," Muttered Michael under his breath.
"You've not seen her for months?" protested Roisin whose sharp ears had just about picked out the words.
"So"
"So what's the problem, Michael?" Cassie asked in an easygoing fashion.
Just then, Roisin came through from the kitchen, and Michael clammed up and picked at his food in a desultory fashion. After a few minutes, he pushed the half eaten meal away from him.
"I'm not hungry," He muttered.
"It's your favourite breakfast. You always like it," Came Roisin's prompt intervention while Cassie studied the boy closely. His behaviour struck a long forgotten chord with her own past. This looked like an opening gambit in how to be a terrible teenager.
"You're not coming down with a stomach bug, Michael. If you are, I'll have to get the surefire medicine out of the first aid box. The nastier tasting the better it is, kill or cure, that's how my mother always described it," Cassie chipped in with a challenging grin.
Niamh hid her grin behind the nearby jumbo-sized Corn Flakes packet and looked away from the discomforted Michael.
"I'll try a little more, Cassie. I think I feel a bit better," He muttered sheepishly
"Just so long that you don't make yourself sick," Came the genial reply.
Breakfast continued as normal as Michael decided to keep a low profile. As they got down from the table, Michael went to grab his coat from the hook in the hall.
"Mum, I'm going out"
"Where to?" Roisin called.
"Just out"
"Oh no you don't, Michael." Roisin's determined voice intervened and she made a dive for the door. An ugly flashpoint situation was just about to develop when Cassie came in from behind her
"Oh, so this is what everything is about, Michael"
"Don't know what you mean," Came the sulky reply.
"Come on, Michael. When you're horrible to everyone, it's always when you're pressured by your friends. You love seeing Lauren like you always have but you've promised your friends you'll hang around with them so you make up some kind of a story," Roisin finished on a note of triumph.
"Come on, Michael. You don't have to be with them today," Pleaded Niamh.
Wrong move, kid, an inward voice told Cassie. That is only going to make Michael feel even more guilty, drive him in on himself and make him rattier.
"How long is Lauren stopping till? Perhaps if we know that, perhaps Michael could spend time with his friends and come back in time to see her later," Cassie quietly suggested.
Michael froze like a statue while his coat was half on, half off. There might be a way out of the hole he was landed in.
"I'll go and find out." Roisin volunteered very quickly." Michael, you stay right here until I find out how long she's staying till"
Inwardly, Michael was seething with tension. How long would he know the answer, which might let him off the hook? Grownups had a frustrating habit in talking all sorts of rubbish to each other on the phone with no idea of urgency. He had to run over to the other side of the park and not get ridiculed by the others about 'your mum not letting you out to play.' All his friends could come and go as they pleased so why were mum and Cassie so old fashioned and behind the times?
"We'll do a deal with you, Michael," Cassie's small frame with folded arms confronted Michael. "You go off now but mind you're back by three and no excuses. Lauren's coming at any minute and, for once, she's got plenty of time on her hands."
"I need to finish off my homework now," Niamh added helpfully. "I didn't think she was staying that late or I would have said so earlier"
The sulky look on Michael's face was wiped off his face in an instant. The dilemma that had plagued him from late evening up till now was suddenly solved in a flash. He felt so awkward and self conscious so easily, these days.
"I'm sorry I've been so horrible. I'll be back on time, promise. I really want to see Auntie Lauren"
"But you…" Roisin started to say when Cassie nudged her in the ribs.
A quick peck on two cheeks and a small whirlwind shot out of the door and was gone in a flurry of wind. Niamh reached for her homework books and went upstairs.
"I don't see why Michael has to be so difficult these days and can't talk not like Niamh. It's so obvious what he had to do," Roisin exclaimed in exasperation.
"Don't ever think that Niamh will never go exactly the same way in a few years time except that she'll have the gift of the gab as well. Girls always do"
"You're only talking that way because you were a right tearaway," Laughed Roisin. "I was always a model child"
"You made up for lost time since you first met me," Teased Cassie, her arm gently drawing Roisin to her in a brief embrace just before the doorbell rang.
A glowing Lauren appeared, center stage with outstretched arms, in the center frame of the open door. She looked so much healthier than when they had last seen the slightly strained, pale skinned woman who had had to make an effort to drop back into her old role. This health freak had taken full advantage of sunbathing in Yvonne's back garden and had slid eagerly back into her old regime as soon as possible. It was as if she couldn't wait to put that two black years of her life as far behind her as possible.
"No children today?" enquired Lauren.
"Niamh is upstairs doing her homework but she'll be down later. We've given Michael temporary licence to be out with his friends but he'll be back at three," joked Roisin, with a slight inner qualm at the prison reference.
"Teenagers, eh," laughed Lauren. "well, you were bound to hit it at some time or other"
Roisin gave a nervous smile. Some of the other mums who congregated outside school were vociferous on the subject and Roisin had inwardly hoped that it wouldn't happen to them. On the plus side, was the very loving and firm mothering they had been given but Roisin was naturally anxious even the support that she had got from Cassie that she had never had from Aiden. She had always secretly feared that those nightmare months she and Cassie had spent in prison would come back to haunt them.
"Look, I know what's bothering you. I came from a so-called normal family and I'm doing therapy right now, trying to undo the damage that my so called screwed up father did to me," Came Lauren's very bold and intense reply. The words came straight out of her unconscious without any filtering out as she was apt to do these days. "I've been thinking of the last time I was round here and it helps me to be around here with you and the kids"
"In what way?" Roisin asked with interest.
"Well, being round here makes me feel kind of normal"
Cassie and Roisin smiled gratefully at the beautiful simplicity of Lauren's statement and listened as she plunged ahead
"…….., you're among the closest, dearest friends I could have and I love your kids but there's something more. If I'm going to make sense of my own mixed up family, then it helps observing what a healthy family is like. I did a lot of thinking things over when I was here last time and talked about you all to Meg Richards, she's my therapist"
Lauren was still chattering away as Roisin led them into the comfortable sitting room and Lauren sank back with satisfaction into her favourite armchair. The house sounded curiously quiet to her though it meant that, instead of having to have four eyes, two minds and three arms to deal with the friendly onslaught of two lively children, she could sit back and take it easy.
"There's something else I wanted to talk about and that's about Babs," Continued Lauren, hardly stopping for breath.
A chill ran through them that wasn't the autumn weather. Even if Yvonne hadn't phoned them direct, that sort of terrible news would have reached them as quick as lightning. They really hadn't expected that one.
"Mum has been up to Larkhall to see her with George and she told me how she's getting on. On the bad side, she feels terrible at being separated from all she's known on the outside, her claustrophobia has come back and she's scared that she'll do time for this. The good thing is that she's got both Jo and George as briefs to defend her"
"Whew, the two of them will put the fear of god into any jumped up barrister who thinks he's special"
"I'd forgotten your time spent mixing with all the legal top nobs," teased Lauren.
"My couple of months of rehearsals in an orchestra made up almost entirely of solicitors, barristers, judges, opened my eyes. You get to see what they are really like. Some of them are like spoilt children who need some right minded individual to hurl a music score right in their face." Roisin spoke passionately. One of the interesting side effects of her part in "The Creation" was to finally kill stone dead any deference to authority no matter what august form it took. If the Prime Minister spoke out of turn in a conversation on a street corner, she wouldn't hesitate to give him a piece of her mind.
"Meaning George?" smiled Lauren. There could be no other.
"Exactly……but we're getting off the point"
Cassie had smiled at her fantasy of seeing two very strong women wipe the floor with the opposition but the more businesslike side of her forced her to get back to essentials.
"Her main problem is Bodybag." As Lauren resumed her story, the other women grimaced. They didn't need a picture drawn to imagine what satisfaction Sylvia would gain from rubbing Barbara's face in her troubles. "Mum has had a run in with her already the first time she's gone to visit after Barbara was taken in"
"The stupid cow always thinks that she can get the better of your mum. She's even more stupid to do it with Nikki and Karen around."
"True, but they're not round all the time. They can't run protection twenty four seven. Let's face it. You know what Larkhall can be like"
As her voice trailed off, the words came back to haunt Lauren in their resonance. It was ironical when she was appealing to their past memories of the place when her memories of Larkhall were the most recent of all of them and she was trying to forget them. This discussion, which she had chosen to launch into, was proof that the recent past couldn't be brushed aside any more than the distant past.
"She's going to need a lot of support," Lauren said flatly.
"Surely there's no reason to think that way?" queried Roisin.
"You can convict yourself in your own mind much worse than any brief can do to you. Take my word for it," Came Lauren's grim response.
"Isn't Barbara's defence going to cost a fortune?" Cassie's reflective voice dwelled on the practicalities.
"Mum's stumping up for Jo's bill. George has offered to help her out for nothing to get experience in criminal law. According to what mum told me, she's pretty well loaded from well paying civil cases"
"I'd say that she's doing it out of the goodness of her heart from when I remember her joining us at the pub during the trial and at the rehearsals." Roisin's slowly articulated meditative words sensed that strange mixture of shyness and theatrical expressiveness in her.
Half an hour later as her precipitate articulation of words as they fell out of her mouth, a dull headache set in at the back of her neck. It was a thought demanding admission to be heard, which she had dreaded coming but she knew in advance what the outcome would be. She felt as if she were suspended on the wheel of fate as it swung her in that inevitable curved progression of flight.
"It looks as if I'm going to have to visit Larkhall again, to see Denny or Barbara or both. I guess I have to"
This sounded really lame, Lauren scolded herself to hear her speak in the weariest most reluctant of tones, but the rest of them treated her as seriously as did Michael and Niamh when they finally put in an appearance.