It was Next Door’s Kid’s Mum.
“Do you have any idea,” she began. It wasn’t a promising beginning. “What that…that chavvy termagant you’ve brought into our community did to my son?”
I didn’t. I probably should have. I probably should also havenot been hoping it had been something painful and humiliating. “Whatever it was,” I said in my best conciliatory voice, “I’m sure”—he deserved it—“it won’t happen again.”
“She threw him in a wheelie bin.”
Doing my best conciliatory voice had drained so much of my energy that I was completely unable to maintain my best conciliatory face or say the best conciliatory words. “Oh, thank fuck,” I said.
Next Door’s Kid’s Mum stared at me like I’d just made a joke about the queen dying on the day of her official state funeral. “Excuseme?”
“Well, I was worried it was something serious.”
“Shethrew him,” Next Door’s Kid’s Mum repeated with a note of rage so finely tuned it could shatter wineglasses, “in awheelie bin.”
I felt a totally inappropriate and annoyingly hard-to-suppress urge to giggle. “Which is bad,” I conceded at once, “but it’s also a bit…I mean…it’s a bit Dennis the Menace, isn’t it?”
“A bitwhat?”
Next Door’s Kid’s Mum was at least my age, so it wasn’t an obscurity-of-reference issue. It was an acceptability-of-reference issue. “I just… It’s more of ayouthful hijinkskind of vibe than a”—I saw the look on her face and decided against finishing that sentence—“okay, it’s still bad. And we’ll still talk to her about it.”
“He could have beenkilled.”
I just about stopped myself saying,Could he, though?And for that matter from adding,He could have got sepsis. And to my immense relief, while I was stopping myself saying things, Oliver appeared behind me.
“Hello, Jacqueline.”
“Oliver.” Next Door’s Kid’s Mum inclined her head a fraction of an inch. “Yourguest—”
“Foster child,” corrected Oliver.
“Threwmy soninto awheelie bin.”
Oliver nodded once with barristerial gravitas and said, “Is Colin okay?” Thinking about it, I should probably have opened with that too.
Next Door’s Kid’s Mum didn’t look mollified exactly. But she gave an impression that moll could be an option in the future. “He’ll recover.”
“Well, that’s the most important thing.” Oliver sounded like he actually meant it and, worse, he probably did. “And you can be assured I’ll be having words with Jasmine about her behaviour and she’ll be suitably punished.”
Glad as I was that Oliver was handling this, he was definitely Handling This. And it hadn’t passed me by that he was doing the bad kind ofIstatements. The kind that you used when you should really be doingwestatements.
“If this happens again…” Next Door’s Kid’s Mum warned.
And I was disproportionately proud of myself for not replying withIf this happens again what?
“It won’t,” replied Oliver for both of us. And he said it with such certainty and such finality that Next Door’s Kid’s Mum actually took it as a valid answer.
She straightened her jacket and gave him another nod. An I’m-glad-we-understand-each-other nod. “Thank you, Oliver.”
“Not at all. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.”
And then she was gone, and Oliver was halfway up the stairs before I could remind him that Next Door’s Kid was the living incarnation of the devil’s arsecrack and had almost certainly deserved whatever happened to him. Or, for that matter, ask whether this was perhaps the kind of parenting decision that we should maybe talk about.
“Jasmine,” Oliver was already saying through Jaz’s door.
There was the predictable no reply.
“Jasmine, you can come out or I can come in.”
