The Bedroom Assignment

CHAPTER FOUR

DEBORAH BROWN came back on Sunday afternoon. She walked out into the garden, where Artemis and Ed were playing a deeply dishonest game of croquet and Zoe was swinging in a hammock, and it was as if the sun had gone in.

‘What are you doing?’ said Deborah, in a high, anxious, scolding voice. ‘Harry should be studying. Zoe, you know how important it is. It’s his whole life. How could you let all this noise—?’

Harry unfolded himself from the corner, where he was reading, and slipped indoors. Artemis put down her croquet mallet, stuck her chin in the air and announced that she was moving in with Ed completely. It had the effect Zoe would have predicted.

‘You are punishing me,’ said their mother tensely. ‘This is because your father walked out on us.’

Artemis looked mutinous. Zoe flung herself out of the hammock and into the breach. As she always did.

‘This is because Art’s hormones are on full alert and Ed’s cute,’ she said patiently. ‘Nothing personal.’

‘Thanks, Zo,’ said Ed, grinning.

Deborah Brown looked round distractedly. ‘Where are my tablets?’

‘Look, Ma,’ said Artemis, stepping in between her and the pill packets in the house behind her, ‘everyone lives with their boyfriend these days.’

Deborah seized the cue eagerly. ‘Zoe doesn’t.’

‘Only because Zoe’s got men coming out of her ears. She can’t make up her mind,’ said Artemis, quite convinced she was telling the truth.

Deborah didn’t care. Ever since her husband had walked out she had had a pathological fear of change of any sort.

‘I never interfere. You girls have your own flat up at the top of the house. Why can’t things stay as they are?’ Deborah’s voice rose frantically.

‘Because I want to grow up,’ yelled Artemis, losing it.

So Zoe had to wade in and try to calm them both down. Artemis raged. Deborah gabbled maniacally, refusing to listen to anything either daughter said in case it sounded reasonable. It took the whole afternoon.

Then Artemis stamped out with a couple of cases and a sobered Ed beside her. Deborah took to her room and closed the curtains. And Zoe had time at last to finish her washing and get her clothes ready for the next day.

She was ironing a neat business shirt when Harry wandered in, back from wherever he had bolted to for sanctuary. She heard the front door and then he clattered down to the kitchen and stuck his head round the door.

‘Bring out your dead. The place feels like a morgue. Where’s Ma?’

‘In her room.’

‘Ah,’ he said, understanding. ‘A maternal moment?’

Zoe looked up and grinned. ‘Horrible boy. Artemis has moved out. Ma’s taken to her bed.’

Harry took the news with equanimity. ‘Predictable.’ He investigated the fridge. ‘Is there anything to eat? I’m starving.’

‘You can make yourself toast now, or I’ll do scrambled eggs later.’

‘I’m a growing boy. I can’t live on scrambled eggs.’

Zoe sighed. ‘Okay. Order in.’ It was an extravagance, and money was tight. But her mother’s housekeeping was erratic and Zoe’s back-up food planning had gone awry this weekend.

Harry was gleeful. ‘Great. Indian? Chinese? Italian?’

‘Anything but pizza,’ said Zoe, knowing that meant he would get crispy fried duck and plum sauce. ‘And ask Ma if she wants some before you make the call.’

She finished ironing her shirt and hung it on a hanger before starting another one. Nothing of Harry’s needed ironing, fortunately. As for Deborah, it was getting more and more difficult to get her to change her clothes at all. She would certainly not appreciate having her faded tee shirts pressed.

Zoe finished the ironing, folded the rest of the washing, threw away a pair of socks with holes in the toe and closed up the ironing board.

Harry came back from their mother’s room, announced that Deborah was watching a video on her small television, and called in his order.

‘One fried seaweed. One sesame prawn toast. Two egg fried rice. Crispy duck twice.’

Zoe bit back a smile.

He came off the phone and raised an eyebrow at the shirt on its hanger. ‘Trying to impress?’