The Best of Friends Alex Day (best short novels .TXT) 📖

Susannah

Lying on the sofa with a blanket pulled up to his ears, Luke looks pitifully pale and wan. As I tuck him in even tighter, I bend to kiss him. He manages a little smile, and then a bigger one.

‘Can I have hot chocolate, Mum?’ he asks. ‘And watch telly?’

This indicates the extent to which Luke feels he should be rewarded for surviving his accident as the boys are not usually allowed to eat and drink in the living room. It also indicates that he’s already feeling rather better.

When the doorbell rang half an hour before, I assumed it was the boys coming back from Charlotte’s house earlier than expected. I opened the door to be confronted by Charlotte’s au pair carrying Luke like a baby in her muscular arms. Charlotte was right behind her, a look of such utter anguish on her face that I was momentarily more concerned about her than about my own son. And then it registered that Luke was injured and the panic that engulfed me rendered me speechless.

‘It’s all OK,’ said Charlotte, hastily, ‘he’s fine. Let’s get him inside and then I’ll tell you what happened. Where shall we put him?’

Helplessly, I gestured Hana into the sitting room and pointed at the sofa.

‘No broken,’ pronounced Hana, plonking Luke rather unceremoniously onto the pale blue cushions. ‘No head hurt and no leg broken.’

I crouched down beside Luke, my precious boy, kissing him, smothering him with love.

‘My poor baby,’ I spluttered, as I started to cry. ‘What’s happened to you?’

Charlotte explained all, telling me that the boys had been taking rather too many risks on the adventure playground. She was about to stop them but didn’t get there in time before Luke slipped. That was it, that was all that had happened. No great drama, nothing too terrible, just a simple childhood fall.

Now Charlotte and I are sitting in my dilapidated kitchen, sipping tea. Hana has gone home to get Toby and Sam their supper and Jamie’s keeping Luke company in front of the TV. I’ve put frozen pizzas in the oven for them; I’m too stressed to think about proper food, exhausted after so much intense emotion.

‘Thank you so much,’ I say, for about the fiftieth time. ‘I can’t thank you enough. Thank goodness you were there to help him, thank goodness you’re so vigilant.’

Charlotte waves her hand dismissively. ‘No, honestly, I didn’t do anything special. And I’m just so sorry it happened at my house. I mean, of course I have a policy that they don’t play unsupervised and I always make sure my au pairs are first aid trained, but …’

I rub my hands across my face, conscious that my mascara is probably streaked all over my cheeks from crying. ‘I mean it, Charlotte. You were there for Luke when he was in trouble and I’m honestly so grateful.’

I generally take a rather laissez faire attitude towards parenting, whereas I get the feeling that Charlotte is quite an anxious mum, always looking for danger. But when it comes to potentially serious accidents, all mothers are the same; nothing is more important than our children’s health and wellbeing.

The oven timer beeps and I pull the boys’ pizzas out, put them on plates and cut them up. I deliver them to the sitting room – another ban broken, as pizza is normally for Saturday nights only. Both of them beam delightedly and I can see Luke’s mind working overtime.

‘Don’t get any ideas,’ I say sternly, frowning in a mock-strict way. ‘This will not happen again so don’t even think about feigning future injuries in the hope of the treats you’ve had tonight.’

Luke smiles cheekily and I leave them to it, relief suffusing my body. He’s had a shock and a nasty fall but it seems that no serious harm has been done.

When I get back to the kitchen, I open a packet of almond slices and place them on the table. I’m feeling very strange still, detached, as if I’ve had an out-of-body experience, and I’m conscious of being a less than perfect hostess. This wasn’t the coffee morning I had hoped to invite Charlotte to, when I would have had fresh flowers on the table and homemade delicacies to proffer rather than Mr Kipling. I push the plate towards her anyway.

‘Please do help yourself.’

‘Not for me,’ Charlotte says, suppressing what seems to be a slight shudder. ‘I never eat anything sweet.’

Bemused, I take one of the cakes for myself. I need some sugar for the shock, plus I haven’t eaten since lunchtime. I’m just about sentient enough for it to cross my mind that it’s a good thing I didn’t spend hours baking seeing as Charlotte wouldn’t have eaten it anyway. But then I look at my almond slice and realise that I can hardly start scoffing it if she’s not having anything.

‘Can I get you something else?’ I ask. ‘Fruit?’

I leap out of my chair again and fumble in the fridge for some blueberries, hastily removing the film with the tell-tale half-price sticker before putting them on the table.

‘Lovely,’ says Charlotte unconvincingly. She pops a blueberry somewhat reluctantly into her mouth as I nibble at my cake, attempting to be as parsimonious with my food as she is.

‘You are good,’ I say, and then immediately wish I hadn’t. I hate the female thing of congratulating anyone who eats like a bird and flagellating those who have a healthy enjoyment of their food.

‘I try,’ sighs Charlotte, ‘but it gets more and more of an effort as one gets older, doesn’t it?’ Without giving me time to reply she continues. ‘I have to be so careful not to put on weight and Dan really doesn’t help. I mean, sometimes …’ she pauses as if to brace herself for the enormity of what she is about to say, ‘he wants potatoes for supper.’

There’s a silence.

‘Gosh,’ I say, eventually. ‘So what do you do then?’

‘Well,’ she responds, ‘obviously I ask Agnes to do some for him, if