At the end of this project, Oliver Bonas are offering you all a 10 per cent discount – I will post the code later, as well as offering one lucky person a chance to win a £250 voucher to spend online or in store. I know!? I’ll reveal the winner later today. It’s a quickie competition so get your skates on. It’s a way for us both to say thank you for helping me decorate my room. It may look as though I know what I’m doing, but even I need a bit of help sometimes.
I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Mrs C X
#win #freebie #competition #mrsclean
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LucyBest65 she gets a whole room decorated and we get 10 per cent discount. That sucks ass.
31
Now
I arrived home from my appointment with Joe in the early afternoon with a restlessness within me that I couldn’t suppress with my usual behaviours. I lined up coins, opened and closed windows and doors, even washed my hands for thirty seconds but nothing would shift the maddening sensation growing within me. As I packed a rucksack with an apple and a couple of satsumas, water and a few other snacks, I began to think about the distance between the college and where lucybest65 lived. I had already looked on the map on my phone and I had seen the route. I tried to push away the thoughts and instead focus on the exhibition. I needed to finish my piece so I would be ready for the end of July.
I put a sweatshirt in my rucksack and then looked at my phone. It could do with a charge, but I could do it once I got to the art rooms. There was a train to the uni in a few minutes and if I hurried, I could catch it.
I performed a few hurried locks on the front door as I left, before stepping out into the street and straight into the path of my neighbour.
‘Ahh, it is you.’ She looked me up and down. ‘Are you going to ring social services again, tell them what a wicked mother I am?’ Her lips were turned down in disgust.
‘I… I—’
‘No, I thought not. You think you can just go around saying what you like about whoever you like? I am a good mother, I am a good mother.’ Her tone changed from antagonistic to desolate and she seemed to almost go weak at the knees and her body slouched to one side as she grabbed at the wall.
I instinctively reached out to catch her.
‘Get off me.’ She pushed me away. ‘You have no idea, do you? You think you can look over the wall or hear something and you make your mind up? Nothing is as it seems from a distance. You see a snippet of my life and you make your mind up. Always, people make up their mind without knowing.’
‘I’m sorry, I really am. I thought I was doing the right thing.’ I felt the panic surge through me. What had I done to this woman?
‘He is ill,’ she said eventually, leaning all her weight against the wall. She was wearing the long thick black jacket she had worn when I saw her at the shops, even though it was warm enough to go without. I could see her skin looked pale, she had make-up caked into the wrinkles around her eyes. She had on red lipstick, perhaps to compensate for her tired face, but it only accentuated her paleness.
‘I’m sorry.’ I reached out my hand to touch her, but she waved it away.
‘He cannot go outside, if he does, he could risk picking up germs, and I hate it, I hate that he cries, that he doesn’t understand, that he is curious, that I have to tell him no, no, no.’ She used her finger as though she were scolding a child.
She stood up straight, looked me in the eye once more before walking away in the opposite direction. I wondered if I should go after her, to try to explain to her my reasons for presuming her son was in danger. But I just watched her reach the end of the road and turn the corner.
Realising I would almost certainly be late, I began running towards the train station in the opposite direction.
I just caught the train as its doors were closing and as I took a seat, I couldn’t stop thinking about what my neighbour had said to me. I had been given an opportunity to be a good person. I could have rung on her doorbell, checked in on them, offered to make them a meal. Instead, I construed her child’s frustrated tears for abuse. I was overcome with regret for what I had done. And the familiar compulsion began growing within me. I needed to do something to rectify what I had done. If I didn’t, something terrible was sure to happen.
I thought about lucybest65. Perhaps she was confused, frustrated, lonely. Perhaps all the comments she put out about Mrs Clean were, in fact, mirroring her own thoughts and behaviours about herself. We live on a small overpopulated planet where we are more connected than ever before, yet we feel lonelier than ever. I had found great comfort from Instagram, and finding my way into Mrs Clean’s world.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that perhaps Lucy had given that information away about where she lived on purpose. And perhaps there was a reason. I had to find out and my mind would not let me rest until I had seen it through.
By the time I had arrived at my stop, I had already made up my mind. Although I had been looking forward to spending some more time preparing my
