Blowing It by Judy Astley Page A

only mildly sympathetic. She waved distractedly across the playground in the direction of her daughter Polly, who, trailed by Clover’s adoring Sophia, was plodding with dramatic misery at a snail’s pace towards her classroom but was absolutely
not
to be allowed to get away with yet another day off for a sore throat.
    ‘So … it was just a spur-of-the-moment idea, maybe.’ Mary-Jane looked thoughtful and then said, ‘But are you sure they haven’t been planning a trip for ages? I mean, selling a house they’ve lived in for over thirty years to fund a serious amount of world travel is a pretty crazy idea to come up with, just on a whim. Imagine how much stuff they’ll have to clear out – how brave is that!’
    Unaware she was making things worse and that this wasn’t the role Clover had planned for her, Mary-Jane continued, ‘Perhaps that was the whole idea behind the big lunch – to get you all together to tell you they were cashing in the family chips. Good on them – my parents never went further than the Lake District. They moved into a bungalow the year I went to university in preparation for old age and the time when they couldn’t climb stairs. They weren’t even out of their forties!’
    The Lake District. Wouldn’t that suit Mac and Lottie? Why weren’t they the sort who took up gentle hill-walking if they wanted a challenge? This wasn’t even remotely reassuring. Clover had only told Mary-Jane because she thought she could count on her saying the right thing, something along the lines of, ‘Oh how sad, your parents selling up the family home. End of an era.’ A hug would have been nice. Except that obviously it
wasn’t
sad – well, not the kind of sad you could expect anyone who wasn’t a family member (and who already had her own to-die-for dream-home in France) to understand.
    ‘No, really I don’t think so. It came out a bit too spontaneously for that, as a sort of follow-up to something else. And besides, planning isn’t my parents’ strong point,’ Clover told her. This was true: the existence of Sorrel was surely proof of that. Sorrel was a brilliant little sister – at a safe distance – but what on earth had they been thinking of, producing another baby when their first two were practically finished with school?
    ‘I mean, on the one hand why shouldn’t they go travelling while they’ve still got their health and strength? Fine, go for it. Take a holiday. But just getting rid of the family home,
our
home, our
base
, well , that’s a shock to the system, really kind of final and drastic. They could have run the idea past us a bit more gently. They didn’t give us any consideration at all, as if the place was just, like
nothing
, like any old anonymous semi. Holbrook House is so incredibly special, full of all our memories and still quite a lot of our stuff. I felt as if they thought it didn’t count for anything, that they could casually chuck it all away.’ She felt ridiculously close to tears. ‘
And
…’ she added, summoning up a bit of fury, ‘Sorrel still lives there! When she goes off travelling, where’s she going to come back
to
?’
    The terrifying word ‘You?’ hovered unsaid between the two women. Imagine, Clover thought, Sean’s reaction to the news that they were to give house-room to a moody teenager and all her chaotic possessions. She daren’t so much as put that possibility into words, not even to Mary-Jane.
    A dawn chorus trilled out from Mary-Jane’s soft, buttery and so envy-provoking Mulberry bag and she delved in to find her phone. She checked the caller ID and switched off, slinging the phone impatiently back in her bag. ‘It’s Polly, no surprise,’ she said. ‘Bugger. I wish Lance had never given her that stupid little phone. What does a seven year old need one for?’
    Clover rather thought it was for what Polly was almost certainly doing now – calling to insist that, in spite of what every harassed early-morning mother promised,