Chapter Text
Charlie gasps.
“Mum said a bad word!” he whispers to his sister. Tori nods.
Jane breathes slowly through her nose and looks at her watch. They still have a bit of time.
“Alright,” she says, “we’re taking the bus. Everybody out.”
It takes longer than she’d like to get them all out and unbuckle Olly’s car seat. She goes back inside and gets his pram while her other two children wait outside.
The clouds hang lower than she’d like over them as they wend their way through the neighbourhood to the bus stop. The forecast threatened rain, but not until the afternoon. Olly seems to enjoy the fresh air at least, making happy noises while they navigate the narrow pavement. The bust stop isn’t far, but they’d be cutting it close.
Oliver had turned quiet, and Jane was pretty sure that he’d fallen asleep. It was warm out, and the pavement was relatively smooth here, enough that there weren’t any bumps or rough patches that would jostle or jerk the pram. Or maybe Olly is just tired enough that he’d sleep through it. Jane’s mood begins to improve. They’re still making decent time despite all the interruptions.
“Mum,” Charlie says, “My foot hurts.”
She looks down and sees Charlie’s bare feet.
“I stepped on a rock, and the rock was sharp, and it hurts,” Charlie whines.
“Charlie,” Jane says with exasperation, “why don’t you have shoes on?”
“You said we had to go and we were late,” Tori explains as if it were obvious. There’s an attitude to her voice that Jane doesn’t like, but she’ll address that later.
“You still need to put shoes on,” Jane says. “Let me look.”
Charlie stands on one foot and she crouches down. His foot is red and angry, but it’s not bleeding.
“You’re fine,” she says, “You need something to put on your feet, though.”
She sets the nappy bag on the ground and paws through it, looking for something at the bottom. After a moment, she pulls out a pair of flip-flops.
“Put these on,” she instructs.
Charlie does so, and they continue walking.
“Mum, these are too small,” Charlie tells her.
“Well I don’t know what you want me to do,” she snaps, “we’re almost at the bus stop and it’s too late to turn around. You’re just going to have to deal with it until we get home.”
Speaking of public transportation…
The bus approaches the stop with them still a good ways behind.
Shit, she thinks to herself.
“Tori,” she says, “run ahead and tell the bus driver to wait. Quickly.”
Tori sprints off as quickly as she can. The bus is approaching the stop. She’s nearly there…
“Wait!” she calls. The bus stops. Up ahead Jane can see her daughter explaining the situation to the bus driver. Mercifully, the bus driver waits, and Jane, Charlie, and Olly catch up to Tori.
The hydraulics hiss as the bus kneels low enough that Jane can lug Olly’s pram onboard. She takes a seat towards the front. Charlie sits next to her, while Tori elects to stand. She crouches a bit in front of the pram and holds out a finger, which Olly, still asleep and burbling quietly in his dormant state, grabs hold of. Olly kicks in his sleep, little polyester-wrapped appendages pushing against Tori’s other hand as she catches them in her cupped palm. She watches with fascination as her baby brother’s chest rises and falls, and another bubble of drool pops in a corner of his mouth.
Charlie, meanwhile, is sat low down in his seat so that most of his back is on the seat itself, with only his head propped up against the back. His knees are bent all the way, and his feet hold him up at the very edge. His arms are crossed and he’s staring into the middle distance with a sullen pout.
Jane brushes a hand through his curls. “Charlie, I’m sorry this morning has been stressful,” she says, “This is all we have to do today, so when we get home maybe you and Tori can make a pillow fort in the lounge and watch a film, alright?”
He looks up at her. “We’ll get milk on the way home, right?”
She shushes that little irritated voice that doesn’t get why he won’t let go of the milk. “Yes, we’ll get milk on the way back.”
This seems to mollify her middle child, and he sits up and turns around in his seat, kneeling to see the landscape pass him by.
Jane takes this opportunity to pull out her phone and ring one of Julio’s friends. Erik is someone who Julio met through a book club he was once a part of before they had Tori, and so far as she can tell he seems to know a fair amount about cars. At the very least whenever they have trouble with the car Julio calls Erik first, and around 40% of the time Erik can fix whatever is wrong and they don’t have to take it to a garage. She has her fingers crossed the problem is something simple, like the battery running out, and not something expensive.
Erik picks up as soon as she calls. He’s delighted to hear from her, and asks after her husband, and makes all the right sympathetic noises when she tells him about her in-laws, and then after all the niceties are over says that he would be delighted to look over the car and see what’s the matter.
Jane allows herself to relax. They’re nearly out of the woods.
Over the sound of the engine she hears a crackle of thunder.
Big fat raindrops splatter against the windows of the bus. With no apparent transition between dry and wet, sheets of rain begin to fall.
Jane feels around the nappy bag for the big umbrella. The one that can cover all three of them. Her fingers close around an umbrella.
It's the small one, the one that doesn’t like to stay open. The big one is nowhere to be found.
Shit, she thinks, shit fuck bugger godmothercocksuckingfuckdammit.
Olly’s pram has a plastic cover that will keep him dry. She can’t in good conscience allow her children to get soaked. So that leaves just her, who can’t hurry across the car park like she’d like to because she has a four-month-old to worry about. Hoo-fucking-ray.
The bus reaches their stop and she struggles with the umbrella a bit, then hands it off to Tori, who she trusts slightly more than she does Charlie, if she’s going to be completely honest, and she crosses the car park as briskly as the infant in the pram will allow. The rain comes down in sheets as they cross the asphalt, and even in the ten minutes it’s been raining puddles have started to form in low patches of the surface. Behind her Charlie and Tori have both got a hold of the umbrella, holding it low so that it’s almost touching their heads. A defeated voice at the back of her head reminds her that one of them - she doesn't know which - will somehow manage to find every puddle they can and end up soaked despite the umbrella by the time they get to the door.
Passing through the double doors into the medical practise is a mercy. She crouches down and opens the plastic cover of Oliver’s pram, finding him kicking and gurgling and giggling. It’s enough for her to flash him a tired smile, even in spite of the circumstances. With her hair plastered to her forehead and her clothes soaked through, she steps up to the reception desk and tells the nurse that she’s here for Oliver Spring’s four month well baby appointment. The nurse hands her a few forms and they take a seat in the waiting room.
The waiting room is mostly empty when they arrive. The colours are soft pastels, and above a row of plastic chairs the walls are lined with faded pictures of Winnie the Pooh characters that haven’t changed since she took Tori to her first well baby appointment. The only other occupants are a woman reading a magazine beneath Kanga and Roo and a chubby blonde-haired boy about Charlie and Tori's age sat at one of the low tables colouring, presumably her son. His tongue is sticking out as he concentrates on adding red to a picture of Spider-man.
Relieved, she sits down, opening the nappy bag. Charlie (who managed to get both legs of his dungarees soaked, the apparent winner of that contest) pulls out a pack of crayons and a colouring book of Greek myths they got from the gift shop when they took Charlie to the British Museum for his birthday, while Tori pulls out a dogeared copy of the Magic Treehouse. Charlie sits down at the table next to the other boy, while Tori reads next to Olly's pram.
The blonde boy looks up. “Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” Charlie responds nervously. He’s always been a rather anxious boy, and it’s only gotten worse since he went to primary school. Neither Charlie nor his school have reported any bullying, but Jane has her suspicions.
“I’m Nick,” the other boy says. His voice is a bit hoarse, and low by the standards of a small child.
“I’m Charlie.”
They sit together in companionable silence for a minute or two while they colour, before Nick speaks again.
“What’s that supposed to be a picture of?” he asks. He points to the picture, which depicts an angry woman pointing at another, who seems to be sprouting extra legs.
Charlie blushes and stammers a bit before answering.
“That’s the story of Arachne,” he explains, “It’s where the Greeks thought spiders came from. There was this lady who was really good at weaving, so good she challenged Athena, who’s the goddess of art, to a contest. When hers turned out better, Athena got really mad, and she turned Arachne into the first spider.”
“That wasn’t very nice of her,” Nick observes, “Arachne won the contest fair and square.”
Charlie shrugs. “The Greeks thought their gods did a lot of not nice stuff.” He scrunches his nose. “Though I guess they also thought their gods caused earthquakes and floods and stuff, and that’s not very nice either.”
“You know a lot about this stuff,” Nick points out.
“It’s just interesting,” Charlie says, looking down.
“Well, you sound really clever,” Nick says, “do you do good in school? Like at maths and stuff?”
“I guess so,” Charlie says. “I start Year 4 next week.”
“I start Year 5,” Nick says, “But I think I’m just sort of okay in school, and I’m never any good at maths.”
“My sister Tori’s starting Year 5,” Charlie remarks. At the mention of her name she perks her head up and moves to sit with her brother.
“This is Nick,” Charlie tells her. Nick gives a short wave.
Over the course of the conversation they’d grown closer together, Charlie leaning into the other boy as he became more comfortable. Charlie asks Nick about his own coluring book, and Nick starts to enthusiastically talk about Spiderman and the various villains in his rogue’s gallery. Charlie watches him with bright, attentive eyes. Jane keeps half an eye on Charlie and Tori while she waits for it to be Oliver’s turn, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Nick’s mother do the same with her own son.
“My birthday’s next week,” Nick says brightly, “I’m turning ten. Then I’ll be in double digits!”
“I’m eight and a half,” Charlie offers, “Tori’s nine and a half.”
“You should come to my birthday party,” Nick says, “My dad’s coming this year. He lives in France,” he explains, “and my parents are divorced, but he promised he’d come this year.”
Jane observes Nick’s mum shuffle her magazine with pursed lips but remain silent, and comes to the logical conclusion.
Nick turns to his mother. “Mummy, can Charlie and Tori come to my birthday party?” he asks. Jane suppresses a pang of jealousy at the fact that Nick still refers to his mother as “mummy.”
His mother puts down her magazine. “You’ll have to make sure it’s okay with their mum first, Nicky,” she says.
Charlie looks up at her with cerulean saucer eyes.
“Mum, can Tori and me go to Nick’s birthday party please?”
Before she can say anything, Nick chimes in. “We’re having it at my house next Saturday. I live at 34 River Crescent Drive, Maidstone, Kent.”
“That’s not far from where we live,” Tori observes.
Jane ponders it for a moment. Julio is coming back tomorrow, and having just Olly in the house would be a welcome respite.
“If both of you behave the next few days, then you can go to Nick’s birthday party,” she concedes.
“Yes!” Nick pumps his fist and high-fives a reluctant Charlie. Tori lets him hang for a few moments before offering her own perfunctory reply. Then he runs up to his mother and hugs her. “Thank you, Mummy!”
The woman smiles. “You’re welcome, Nicky.” She turns to Jane. “I’m Sarah Nelson, by the way.”
Jane introduces herself as well. Then a nurse comes out and says that they’re ready for Oliver.
“Charlie, Tori, let’s go,” she says.
Charlie looks at her with saucer eyes. “Please can I stay out here and play with Nick?” he asks.
“I’d be happy to watch them while you took Oliver to his appointment,” Sarah interjects.
Charlie continues to plead with her with his eyes.
“If it’s no trouble,” she concedes.
“It’s none at all,” Sarah reassures her, “My other son, David, told me he’s too old to have his mum with him at the doctor’s. It won’t kill him to wait a bit longer”
Jane turns to Charlie and Tori. “I want you both on your best behaviour while Mrs. Nelson watches you,” she admonishes.
Charlie and Tori very piously promise that they’ll behave. With that small assurance, Jane picks up Oliver and follows the nurse into the examination room.