Everything and Nothing by Araminta Hall Page B

new life. But surely you couldn’t have a daughter like Ruth and not worry about her, and surely, if the errant grandmother met Agatha, she would be reassured that life was as it should be. Yes, it is quite worrying, Agatha would say to the woman as she mended another broken toy or plumped cushions which were fatally sagged, but I’m coping fine, you stay where you are. Don’t be silly, it’s nothing, I want to help.
    She had decided on a menu of egg or ham sandwiches, biscuits, little sausages on sticks, chocolate crispy cakes and, of course, the all-important birthday cake. Everything was going to be home made. She couldn’t decide if she should put a bit of orange into the biscuits or make one of those lemon drizzle cakes that Betty liked. But, it was Hal’s birthday and shouldn’t you always make children a chocolate cake? She was trying to find the perfect icing because everything like butter or vanilla seemed too boring.
    The food was only a small part of the whole thing. She wanted a theme, but it was difficult with Hal because he was only interested in his plastic house and Thomas the Tank Engine. And every boy of his age liked Thomas, so what would be the big wow about theming a party along those lines? In her mind she was going to amaze all the guests, make Ruth never want to let her go and the children love her forever. The idea must be there in her mind, but for now it was still out of focus and she couldn’t make out all the details.
    She had been trying to get a guest list out of Ruth for days now, but she was always too busy and there were only twelve days to go and you had to give people some notice. Don’t worry about invitations, Ruth had said, I’ll just telephone everyone. Which annoyed Agatha, who had spent three whole nights in her room making twenty invitations which shimmered and sparkled like proper works of art. But how many people do you think will come? Agatha had tried. Ruth had frowned in that way she had when she was trying to remember something: wrinkling up her forehead and contracting her eyebrows so she almost looked ugly. Agatha had once had a job in the bowels of some massive medical school in central London in which she’d had to spend eight hours a day filing endless pieces of paper in the dark. There were whole rows for each letter, and whole trolleys of papers for each row. Agatha had started diligently, but by the end she had begun haphazardly stuffing the paper anywhere she fancied, revelling in the mess that would probably never be undone. As she stood talking to Ruth now she was reminded of that room.
    ‘God,’ said Ruth, which, Agatha had noticed, was how she began most sentences, as if appealing to a saviour for help. ‘Well . . . Toby, as he’s Hal’s godfather, and I guess I’ll invite Sally . . . and it’s a good excuse to get some friends round who’ve got kids because we never have parties and then we can kill about five birds with one stone. And of course I’ll ring my parents. Christian’s are away, so don’t worry about them. I’ll write you a list, but I guess it’ll end up about twenty grown-ups and twenty kids. Is that all right? Can you manage that many, Aggie?’
    It was no surprise that a list had never been forthcoming, but Agatha had worked on the assumption that there would be more rather than fewer guests and had added smoked salmon to her list of sandwiches. She’d been woken in the middle of the night by the thought that maybe she should get some wine, but when she’d mentioned this to Ruth she’d been told that Christian would deal with that. There was just one other thing, something she’d had to steel herself to ask Ruth: could she invite the little boy from the toddler group she’d been taking Hal to, as they seemed to get along so well. Of course, Ruth had chimed as she’d been rushing out the door, the more the merrier.
    The toddler group was on a Tuesday in a draughty church hall across the park from where Agatha dropped