A Bicycle Built for Sue Read online

  ‘Maybe we should get Humphrey a jumper. Stacy?’ Kath waved to their producer in the galley. ‘Can we get a picture of our dog up? He’d look good in the one with pom poms, don’t you think?’ She winked conspiratorially at the camera.

  Kev shook his head and gave one of those twinkly eyed wry smiles of his. The type that had won her over all of those years ago when he’d first held out a hand to her to dance. At the time she’d thought his cobalt-blue eyes held a hidden wisdom. An understanding of the depths of her soul. Now of course she knew that it was actually a finely honed ability to patronize without the recipient being vaguely aware of him being anything other than charming.

  ‘Just so long as you don’t try to put me in a matching one,’ Kev said in a way that implied he knew he’d end up in a matching one on tomorrow’s show. ‘I’m sure Humph is willing to go along with anything. What do you think viewers? Is our Kath mad enough to try and get me and Humph into the same threads?’

  ‘Listen to you!’ She gave his arm a play swat. ‘So down with the kids. You and your threads.’

  Kev’s smile brightened, which meant she’d annoyed him. ‘Are you trying to say I’m an old codger, Kath?’ He always ramped up the Liverpudlian twang when he was trying to endear himself to the audience.

  Kath feigned horror. ‘Never.’ She felt herself losing the invisible audience so she threw a wink to her husband. ‘You’ll always be my toyboy.’

  ‘Atta girl.’ Kev gave Kath’s knee a brisk pat and they both turned to the centre camera, expertly absorbing the next prompt on the autocue.

  KATH: LEAD UP TO TEASER FOR CHARITY RIDE – TWENTY SECONDS

  Kath’s heart tightened and her smile dropped away. ‘All of which brings us to a reminder about just how important it is to look after ourselves. Not just outside, but inside too.’ She tapped the side of her head, then her heart and folded her hands together on her lap so no one could see them shaking as she continued. ‘Some of you may remember I lost my brother, Ian, a couple of years back after he lost his battle with depression. Since then, I’ve become an ambassador for LifeTime – a mental health charity.’

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught Kevin nodding soberly then suddenly unleashing one of his bright smiles. ‘I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for today. Don’t forget to join us tomorrow when we do a special on luggage. I know we’ll be needing an upgrade before we head off on safari in South Africa. And by safari, I mean a Cape Town wine tour! Save some Chardonnay for our Kath. Rowr!’ He clawed a hand at the camera then gave it a warm smile. Warm, now that he was back in control. ‘From all of us here in the studio at Brand New Day … we wish you an epic one until the next one … which we hope will be even better. See you again at six. Bye for now!’

  Kath smiled, waved, ‘Bye all.’ Through gritted teeth she asked, ‘Why’d you cut me off?’

  Through his freshly whitened smile, Kev used his old ventriloquism skills, ‘It’s bloody depressing, that’s why. No one gives a toss.’ He gave the centre camera one of those hand opening and closing waves that looked a little bit like a salute.

  ‘Bye all,’ Kath leant into Kev to give him a kiss on the cheek, their signature ‘close of show’ move. His cologne stung her nostrils as she whispered, ‘I’m leading with it tomorrow,’ then turned back to the camera and waved, ‘Buh Bye!’

  Chapter Five

  Sue loved her niece and nephew, but some days, like today for example, she wasn’t one hundred per cent certain she liked them very much. Which did tend to make things awkward.

  This Thursday, much like any other Monday or Thursday afternoon, began with Sue’s phone pinging just as she’d turned off the security alarm inside the back door to Katie and Dean’s Tudor-style detached house in ‘one of the nicer villages’ outside of Bicester. She didn’t read it immediately because she didn’t need to. There would be a reminder of Jayden’s sensitivity to milk, wheat and a ‘suspicion’ about peanuts that they had not yet fully explored. (There was a doctor on Harley Street that had been recommended. He had such a long waiting list, but going to anyone else would really be a waste of time.) When she did glance at the text she saw there was an additional line. ‘Would you mind hanging on for a bit of a chat?’

  Sue didn’t really fancy it, but, as Katie never asked her to stay once she’d whirled back into the house charged with another day’s high of recruitment successes, she thought she should make an exception. Perhaps Katie had realised she might owe Sue a bit of an apology for implying that taking time off for Gary’s funeral had put a spanner in their childcare plans. That, and Sue still had yet to begin to go through Gary’s things. The previous two nights she’d simply sat in the diner kitchen, too anxious to go anywhere else in the small house. She sat and stared blankly ahead of her until, when the clock finally made it to ten, she headed upstairs and went to bed.

  As she did each week (save the last three), she’d arrived thirty minutes before the children were dropped off so that there’d be time to make them a hot drink and a nutritious snack before they did their homework (Katie was very exacting about her children’s intake, insisting temperature played a vital factor in their digestive process).

  Now that they were both deep into primary school, Jayden (7) and Zack (9) had a proper ‘home from school’ routine. Return home, place shoes in the appropriate section of the shoe locker, hang coats up on the rustic, but decorative wall hooks, book bags into the ‘children’s recreation and study room’ and into the kitchen for a snack before homework. This, apparently, went like clockwork for Katie, her mother Mallory and, on the rare occasions her brother was home on childcare duty, Dean. Not so much on Sue’s watch.

  Door banged open, shoes kicked off, coats dropped where the child stood, book bags deposited wherever and straight into the kitchen for a noodle round to see if there was something good to eat (usually Katie’s hidden stash of chocolate for ‘afters’ which she claimed were solely for emergency, but, Sue had noticed, were regularly replenished. And then the demands began. Auntie Sue, this chocolate isn’t hot enough. It’s too hot. Mummy wouldn’t make us eat this. Mummy would make us something good. Mummy lets us watch television before we do our homework. Can you find my iPad/PlayStation/remote?

  When Sue had first agreed to look after the children quite a few years back now, she’d absolutely adored it. The cooking, the cleaning, the caring, the nurturing, that warm, sweet child scent when one or both of them would clamber up onto her lap to hear a story over and over and over again. She loved it all, convinced it was a precursor to the days when she and Gary would be able to do the same with children of their own. But, of course, things hadn’t panned out quite the way she’d thought. Their children never materialized, Sue poured her affections into her niece and nephew, and the leniency she had afforded them as a loving Auntie had turned into a presumption that they could behave however they liked and that she’d smooth over the edges so Mummy never had to know they had been little terrors moments before they morphed into little darlings when Katie blew in after work.

  She could’ve established her own rules, of course, but Katie was so specific. If Gary was here, she’d ring him up and tell him Katie had been making more rules and he’d say something to make her laugh or feel a bit braver as he had when she’d once admitted, after one too many glasses of Zinfandel, that she was a little bit afraid of Katie. The ‘sugar cereal incident’ was burned so vividly into her psyche she daren’t go off piste again. So, she muddled along the best she could, fixing, refixing, heating, cooling, finding, tidying, searching, wiping, unravelling, sweeping, wiping again and popping a smile on her face when Katie’s headlights filled the kitchen as she whipped her BMW into place next to the house.

  ‘Right! Good,’ Katie said once she’d kissed her angelic children who were diligently sitting at their desks finishing up some homework. ‘Are you alright for a little talk?’

  ‘Of course,’ Sue took off the pinny she sometimes wore when she was there and, like a domestic se
rvant, waited until Katie had seated herself before she, too, sat down at the long wooden kitchen table (Irish elm, the last of its kind apparently).

  ‘Right, Suey.’ Katie clapped her hands together and looked her straight in the eye. ‘We all know you’ve been through a tough time and now that you’ve had a few weeks to, you know, cry it out or whatever, I’ve taken it upon myself to rip the plaster off, as it were.’

  Sue quirked her head to the side. Plaster? What plaster?

  ‘We think it’s time you started looking at other income streams, considering …’

  Considering what? That her husband was dead? That the cash machine had eaten the last of her cards? That she hadn’t yet divined a solitary ounce of courage to enter Gary’s office and find out if there was something, anything, to explain why he’d done this.

  The idea of one more tea with the missus … sometimes they just don’t have it in them. Shame’s too high. Spirit’s too low. Whatever.

  That had been the other thing the tactless DCI had intoned to the other when they hadn’t seen Sue standing behind them.

  Didn’t have it in him to what? Wait for her to get ketchup so he could have his tea the way he liked it? Bear the relentless rain of February? Book one more Sunday lunch with her increasingly exhausting family? They were wearing, she knew, but was that any reason to end it all? Love her? Was that it? Did he not have it in him to love her anymore?

  Katie glanced towards the children’s recreation room where the television was now on (Katie had okayed some Disney Channel until bath time), then redirected her considerable focus back on Sue. ‘Your father mentioned about the debit card situation.’ She whispered the words ‘debit cards’ in the way one might whisper ‘prostitution.’

  Sue’s flush went every bit as hot as if she had been found turning tricks out on the Bicester gyratory. She looked at her hands. ‘I thought I’d look into things this weekend,’ she said, cringing at her own lie. ‘I’m sure it was just some sort of mistake.’ Where were all of these hangnails appearing from?

  Katie tapped her on the knee and drew Sue’s eyes back up to hers. The gesture made her feel like a child who’d been caught stealing from mummy’s handbag. ‘It’s time to reset the tracks, Sue. What we were thinking, your parents, Dean and I, was that perhaps you could pick up the slack for my Mum.’

  What?

  Katie put on her ‘explaining’ voice. ‘Mum’s getting on, as you know and with the children being so active, we thought perhaps you might like to come along every weekday from three until six. We give Mum a bit of money—’

  They did?

  ‘… so we were thinking we could do the same for you.’

  A strange lightheadedness overtook Sue. They’d been paying Katie’s mum for her afternoons with the children? Sue had been doing this for three years. Longer, actually. Ever since that lovely Swedish girl they’d had had run off with a young lad from the nearby BP garage.

  ‘How much?’ Sue heard herself ask, a little pleased to see Katie look appalled. ‘How much do you pay your mother?’

  ‘A hundred pounds a week. It’s the going rate,’ she hastily added.

  ‘Other than free,’ Sue said, wondering where this rather bolshy woman living inside of her had come from. Had she been there all along? Or had circumstances brought her to Sue like a tiny, lippy, post-trauma fairy godmother.

  ‘Free? Well. Oh dear, Suey!’ Katie’s laugh was more high pitched than normal. It was strangely satisfying. ‘Suey, we thought you enjoyed your time with the little ones so much we didn’t think you wanted paying. Not with you and Gaz not having any of your own. We thought you thought it was a privilege. Having so much time with your niece and nephew.’

  She had. For a bit.

  ‘Paying you would’ve felt … well …’ Katie looked up to her artful display of glass Kilner jars decorously filled with pulses and grains Sue didn’t even begin to know the names of. ‘Oh, Sue, darling. Paying you would’ve felt gauche. Given the circumstances. Now, though …’

  Her insides churned with indignation. Katie and Dean’s children were little terrors! Bi-weekly (thrice if you counted Sunday lunch) reminders that she would never have little ones of her own to marvel at. To spoil. To teach proper manners to.

  The indignation turned to that fearsome rage she’d felt at Gazza’s wake. The money she would give to be able to whip an invoice out of her pocket and present it to her sister-in-law demanding back pay for the last three years … Everything she had. Which, at last count, was zero. ‘Of course, Katie. They’re a delight.’

  ‘Good! Well. A hundred pounds can go quite far these days so long as you’re careful.’

  A hundred? Wait. Wasn’t Katie’s mother getting that for three afternoons?

  ‘Would you like a day or two to think about it?’ Katie stood up, conversation clearly over. ‘Let your manager or whoever at the call centre know you’ll be needing to be on those split shifts or the very early morning shifts from now on?’

  Sue blinked at her. What?

  If Gary had been there, she would’ve been resisting the urge to throw him a look. He would’ve laughed and told Katie Sue would be doing no such thing, she’d be carrying on as normal – in fact, minus the childcare, because they were quite happy as they were thank you very much.

  ‘Suey,’ Katie was chock full of compassionate looks today. ‘I know it’s tough, but Dean and I did a bit of maths last night on your behalf and it does look like you’re going to need all of the hours you can get. Of course we’d love to offer you more, but—’

  Sue stopped her, her lightheadedness shifting to nausea. She had to get out before she crumbled into a weeping pile of disbelief right here on Katie’s freshly sanded and polished oak floor. Could her family not have waited a few days for this? A week maybe, before ripping off the plaster and giving her a new course to ‘relay her tracks?’ She knew they’d never approved of Gary, but this was a dose of disrespect she didn’t need.

  A coolness she’d never felt before came over her. ‘Yes, Katie. I think I would like a few days to think it over. I’ll let you know which direction I’m planning on taking … now that I’m relaying my tracks.’

  When she walked out the door and sat down in her car without so much as inhaling or exhaling, Sue realised with a startling clarity that, for the first time since she’d met Gary all of those years ago, she was well and truly alone in the world.

  Chapter Six

  Incident No – 38928901

  Time of Call: 08:43

  Call Handler: SUE YOUNG

  Call Handler: You’re through to the NHS 111 service, my name’s Sue and I’m a health advisor. Are you calling about yourself or someone else?

  Caller: Someone else. Oh, god. Ugh. Hang on. [Vomiting sounds] Sorry. A little bit me, too. [Coughing] No, it’s cool, Angie. I’ve got your hair. Hi. Hi, I’m back.

  Call Handler: Hello? Can you tell me your name and the name of the person you’re calling about please?

  Caller: Hello. Yeah, sorry. I’m Jools and the one I’m also calling about is my flatmate, Angie. She’s right unwell. Not from booze or anything. I think we might have food poisoning but we didn’t know if we needed an ambulance.

  Call Handler: Have you tried contacting your local GP?

  Caller: They’re closed for some mad reason. Anyway, Angie’s only just moved in so she’s not registered and I don’t like my GP. He’s dead judgey. [Retching noise] Sorry. Sorry. I made a welcome supper last night as a thank you. Some dodgy prawn thing I’ll never make again. But I owed her. I were running right low on cash and she got me out of a tight one. Boyfriend just upped and moved out without paying the rent, didn’t he? Oh, wait. Hang on. No, no, Ange – why don’t you sit on the toilet and I’ll get the bin? Hey. Hi. I’m back, so … it’s coming out both ends now. Should I be bringing her to hospital or anything?

  Call Handler: How long have you been unwell?

  Caller: About an hour now, but it’s dead gross. I’m not too bad, but Angie�
��s actually, literally, green.

  Call Handler: Our advice is to stay hydrated and get plenty of rest and the symptoms should pass. Do you or Angie have a fever?

  Caller: I don’t know. Sorry, Ange – do you mind if I touch your fore— I know. I know. Just your forehead, babe. [Vomit sounds] It is disgusting, but … [Laughter] This is a pretty intense way to get to know one another, am I right? Happy Valentine’s Day to the single girls! [Weak laughter followed by retching noises] I totally promise an alcohol-only girls’ night out after this. [Giggling and coughing]

  Call Handler: Jools, if you and Angie can do your best to stay hydrated that would really help. Take paracetamol if either of you are in discomfort.

  Caller: That’s it? There’s no, like, magic pill or anything we can take to make it stop?

  Call Handler: No, I’m afraid not. Umm … let’s see … they do advise avoiding fruit juice or fizzy drinks as they can make symptoms worse.

  Caller: Blimey. Yeah, okay. Sorry, just leaving the bathroom for a second, babes. Ohmigawd. Worse? I just gave her a Coke. Ang! Put the Coke down. Bums. I’d feel like such a wanker if it got worse. Do you think she’ll move out? I mean – she’s just moved in and now sploosh! Food poisoning. Mind you, she might lose a couple. I might lose a couple! Everyone loves losing weight even if it’s utterly foul, am I right?

  Call Handler: Oh, I’m not sure we can say. Sorry. I’m sure it’ll work out. If you or Angie have any new symptoms or either of your conditions get worse, changes or you have any other concerns do call us back.

  Caller: Okay. Absolutely. She’s bloody brilliant, you know. [Crying noises] I’ve only known her for one night, but it’s so good to have someone here. Someone who understands.

  Call Handler: That is important, Jools. Call us right back if you need to because, umm … we’re here, too. For you. For both of you.