Page 27 of The Inn on Bluebell Lane
“No, you’re right, it wasn’t.” The last thing Ellie wanted to do was seem as if she were competing with her daughter for who’d had it toughest. “Tell me about your day,” she invited, gently touching Jess’s back again. This time, at least, her daughter didn’t flinch away. “Were your teachers nice?”
“No, they were horrible and mean and they shouted at me. Teachers in America don’t shout the way they do here. They’d probably get sued or something, if they did.”
“I’m sure some shout, sometimes,” Ellie replied, and Jess let out a harrumphing sound. “Anyway, what about the other kids? Did you meet anyone friendly?” Ellie asked, striving to keep a light, upbeat tone, even though she felt herself wilting inside with every word Jess said. Had it really been as awful as her daughter made it out to be? “In any of your classes?”
“No,” Jess replied, “everyone ignored me and acted like I didn’t exist. I didn’t speak to a single person all day.”
“What about lunch?” Ellie knew she was getting desperate now, but surely something had gone right, or at least not completely wrong. “Anything tasty in the cafeteria? Pizza? Pasta?”
Jess rolled over onto her back, and Ellie’s heart squeezed painfully at the sight of her daughter’s blotchy face, the way she was glaring at her. “I didn’t even get to eat lunch,” she spat at her, “because you can’t pay with regular money, you have to have some stupid account that you were meant to set up before school started, and the lunch lady yelled at me about it and I had to put everything back and it was really embarrassing. Plus, I was, like, literally starving.”
“Oh, Jess.” Ellie looked at her in dismay. Vaguely, she recalled Sarah mentioning something about a lunch account, but she hadn’t really taken it in. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize that. I’ll set it up tonight.” Did that mean Ben hadn’t had any lunch, either? Ellie wasn’t about to ask Jess and incur more wrath. “Have you eaten anything since you got home?”
“I had some toast,” Jess replied, grudgingly, before rolling back onto her side, her back to Ellie again.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” Ellie murmured, feeling wretched for her part in the misery of her daughter’s day. “That must have been really tough, on top of everything else.” As well as embarrassing, which would have been far worse in Jess’s eyes. “It will get better, though, I promise. I’ll set up the account tonight, make sure it’s all working.” She might have to call Sarah and ask her to help her.
“You can’t promise anything,” Jess replied, her voice muffled again as she buried her head in the pillow. “You don’t even get how bad it is. I hate it here. I hate it. I wish we’d never come.”
At this point, Ellie was wishing the same thing. She knew there was nothing she could say right now to help her daughter through this, although she hoped they could have a calmer conversation later. Time was the greatest healer, after all, wasn’t it? At least it could be… if she could figure out what to say to her daughter that would be helpful.
“Dinner will be ready in a few minutes,” she said quietly, with one last pat of Jess’s shoulder. “It will be good to eat something, at least, and maybe we can think about some… some strategies for tomorrow.”
She knew she was offering so little, just as she knew sometimes you had to wade through the sadness, step by soul-sucking step, even when it felt as if there was no end in sight.
CHAPTER 15
GWEN
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?”
Ellie seemed uncertain as she looked at Gwen. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, car keys in hand, while Gwen tackled the morning’s washing up. It was the morning after Matthew’s accident, and she was going back to the hospital to fetch him, and Gwen had already told her she’d stay here. In truth, she was looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet.
“Yes, I’m fine, and I don’t think you need me,” Gwen told her. “I’ll tidy up here, have a bit of quiet. You and Matthew will want some time on your own, I’m sure.”
Ellie looked around at the dirty breakfast dishes strewn across the table, cereal-encrusted bowls and crumb-scattered plates, biting her lip. “I’m sorry everything’s such a mess. You can leave it and I’ll clean it when—”
“It’s fine,” Gwen assured her. “It’s nice to have a busy household.”
Even if it was exhausting.
Gwen didn’t know if it was the stress of yesterday that had made her so tired, but the children’s noise at dinnertime last night had seemed louder than usual, a din of squabbles, teasing, laughter. Some of it had been cheerful enough, but it had been so noisy. Even Jess’s sulking had seemed loud, with deliberate, dramatic sighs punctuating the happy chatter every few minutes. And when she’d cleared the table, she’d put the plates in the sink with an almighty clatter and then muttered a rather snarky sorry when Ellie had asked her to be more careful, before sloping off to her room. She supposed Sarah had gone through a similar stage, although it seemed very faraway now… and Sarah hadn’t had to move across the world the way her granddaughter had had to.
After that there had been bath time to get through, and homework, and a load of laundry at nine o’clock at night because it turned out there was only one pair of school trousers that Ben thought were comfortable. Gwen remembered how it used to be with young children, at least she thought she did, and yet it still felt so unfamiliar. She wanted to help Ellie, since her daughter-in-law seemed to have her hands more than full, but it was hard. Harder than she’d ever expected.
At least now, after half an hour of mayhem as the four children had readied for school and eaten breakfast, leaving the house in a virtual whirlwind of slammed doors and shouts for missing shoes, Gwen could have some quiet. Enough quiet to sit down and make that phone call she’d been dreading since yesterday morning.
“Go on, now,” she urged Ellie. “I’ll be fine. I’ll have lunch ready for when you both get back. Soup and salad okay?”
“Sounds wonderful, thank you.” Ellie hesitated for another second and then, with a smile that seemed gratifyingly genuine, left the kitchen.
At least she and Ellie seemed to have found some points of sympathy, Gwen thought. It was something of a silver lining to the dark cloud of her son’s injury.
As the front door closed, she heaved a sigh of relief. Alone at last.
She needed to make that phone call, but she also knew she needed to be in the right frame of mind to do it, so first, dishes. Anything to postpone the inevitable.
Gwen filled the sink with warm, soapy water, enjoying the simple pleasure of a sunny day, the chickens pecking in the yard outside, the leaves on the trees just beginning to turn to russet and gold. The kitchen was quiet and peaceful, a haven after the chaos of the last twenty-four hours, and twenty minutes of work soon set it to rights.