Mum in the Middle: Feel good, funny and unforgettable. Jane Wenham-Jones

      ‘She led all the fuss when they cut the bus service,’ Fran said dismissively. ‘And she runs some blog called Fight from Within about how we should all lobby the local MP for change.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a bit busy for all that, frankly.’

      I looked at my old friend, tidying up the paperwork on the table as she searched for the elusive list, while her children shifted restlessly in my now-aching arms, remembering a time when she cared deeply about many issues. She’d banged the table and waved her wine glass at a bloke in a bar in Fulham, while rowing over international trading agreements, and then emptied the contents in his lap to illustrate her views on the falling pound.

      ‘So you don’t care about rising house prices and the DFLs taking over the town and pushing the youth off the property ladder?’ I enquired.

      Fran looked surprised. ‘Not given it much thought,’ she said, screwing up an envelope and making a pile of a few more. ‘I know it’s getting a lot more expensive to live here. Jonathan said house prices near the station have risen twenty-five per cent in the last year, but …’ she shrugged. ‘That’s happening all over the place. Who can afford London these days?’

      ‘But you haven’t seen any bad feeling – you know like that woman in the paper who had her tyres slashed?’

      ‘The people here are great,’ said Fran firmly. ‘You get a few moaning of course – and that Ingrid likes a demonstration. She was at the school handing out placards when the swimming pool closed – but nobody cares that much.’ She got a carton of almond milk out of the fridge and began pouring it into two lidded cups. ‘Theo – don’t mash it like that.’

      The small boy scrunched his hand into a fist. Mango pulp oozed out between his fingers.

      ‘Mainly we talk about our kids. When the twins are a bit older, I’ll help more with the PTA–’

      ‘So what have you been up to apart from the children?’ I asked. My opening gambit that I’d been feeling a tad isolated had been met with neither empathy nor any suggestion of a night out. ‘Lucky you,’ Fran had said dryly. Now she looked at me blankly.

      ‘Do you go to a book group or anything?’ I tried. ‘I did in the old house,’ I continued, recalling the complacent way I sometimes gave it a miss if it was cold out or there was something good on TV. ‘I was wondering if there was one here …’

      ‘Have you Googled?’ Fran said vaguely. Then as Georgia gave a piercing scream in my left ear, she held a piece of paper up in triumph. ‘Found the damn thing!’

      ‘Well no,’ I said. ‘I was wondering if we might–’

      ‘Wellingtons, that was it. I knew there was something major I had to buy. You wouldn’t believe how quickly her feet grow.’ Fran shook her head. ‘Small children cost a fortune.’

      I thought about the credit card bill I’d opened that morning. ‘So do big ones.’

      ‘And I haven’t got empty jars, they all go in the recycling. They ought to be taking plastic anyway – suppose they fall over and cut themselves. I’ll suggest freezer bags.’

      ‘Perhaps they’re going to collect insects,’ I offered. ‘You can’t put grasshoppers or earwigs in a bag. They’ll get squashed.’

      Fran looked alarmed. ‘I was imagining wild flowers … They’re only year one.’ She shuddered.

      I looked at the clock. ‘What time does Freya finish?’

      Fran swung round. ‘Oh God. Now! And then she’s got her modern dance. I’ve got to go!’ She grasped Georgia, who screamed again. Jac burst into noisy tears. ‘Theo! Shoes!’

      ‘Shall I fetch her? Or stay here with the others while you go?’

      Fran was now darting about the kitchen scooping up children and changing bags, plastic cups and keys, looking wild-eyed.

      ‘We’ve got tumble-tots while Frey’s in her class,’ she said breathlessly as she pushed Georgia’s arms into a padded jacket and I tried to do the same to Jac, who went rigid and cried even harder.

      ‘Sorry it’s been rushed, Tess,’ she said, when we were eventually strapping children into car seats. She came round to my side of the car and gave me a brief, hard hug. ‘I miss you, I really do – I want to talk to you and catch up.’ She looked at her watch and shot back towards the driver’s door. ‘Oh Christ, Frey’s teacher will give me that look again!’

      I blew the children a kiss. Theo, banging a shiny green alien figure hard against the rear glass, returned it straight-faced. ‘We’ll get together soon …’ Fran was calling through the open window, as she reversed out of their drive. ‘When we’ve got more time …’ She stopped the car for a moment, stuck her head out and gave me a crooked smile. ‘When I have, anyway …

       Chapter 7

      I was beginning to need a few more hours myself. I’d been up since six and so far had achieved nothing but a lot of cleaning – there was still a fine layer of dust over the whole house from experimenting with Jinni’s electric sander –the posting of a new office interior in Bromley that had only got three likes, and a chat with Meg and Jim next door I couldn’t quite follow, about their problems with the water board.

      I’d finally settled down to the latest job, when the bell rang. Jinni strode into my front room, a sheet of paper in one hand and her phone in the other.

      ‘That FUCKING woman,’ she yelled, by way of greeting. ‘I shall wring her scrawny neck.’

      I walked through to the kitchen and shut the lid of my laptop. Workstations for twenty in an office block in Cardiff would clearly have to wait. ‘Coffee?’

      ‘What’s she done now?’ I asked as the kettle boiled, pushing the latest missive from Ingrid – urging us to protest on the steps of the town hall about the state of the footpath through the allotments – out of sight before it inflamed Jinni further. Her hair was twisted up on top of her head and fixed with a turquoise scarf that matched her bright boiler suit. She undid it, shook her tresses about a bit, screwed them back up into a knot and retied it all.

      ‘Well HE will have done it, of course – it’s just the sort of sneaky, smarmy, underhand thing he would do. Anything to make life difficult for me.’ She thrust the piece of paper at me, opened the back door, stepped out and lit a cigarette. A gust of cold air came in. ‘Sorry!’ she shouted, shutting the door after her and standing the other side of the glass, puffing furiously. ‘I didn’t know you smoked!’ I called back, trying to make sense of the document I was looking at.

      ‘I don’t. Only when under duress.’ She abruptly dropped the cigarette and ground it out under her foot, before carrying the squashed end back in with her. ‘One of the plumbers left them behind. Bin?’

      ‘Under the sink. So someone has put a tree preservation order on your horse chestnut.’

      ‘Exactly! Now I’ve got to have this bloody “Mr Turner” looking at it. He’s bound to be a wanker too and if I can’t cut it down it’s going to block out half the light in the back bedrooms, fuck up my plans for the garden, not to mention probably crash through the roof in the next big storm and kill me in my bed!!’ Jinni glared. ‘All because that bitter old bag and her weedy son can’t stand to lose out to anyone else.’

      ‘Weedy?’ I asked, surprised, a fleeting image of the tall, masculine David popping into my mind. I cringed as I remembered my floppy hand extended into nothingness.

      ‘Tosser, then’, said Jinni, dismissively. ‘Smug bastard.’

      She picked up her phone, tapped at it and presented it to me with a flourish. ‘And guess what I found on my doorstep at the same time?’

      I