At the farm, she jumped down and ran into the barn, gathering up all the heavy-duty cleaning materials she’d bought for cleaning the van, and a host of thick black garbage bags for good measure. As she was loading them into the back, Lennox strode across the farmyard, Parsley at his heels. He stopped when he saw her, went slightly pink, then cleared his throat.
“Hey,” he said, drawing closer. “What’s all that for? Have you run someone over and are trying to get rid of the evidence?”
Nina flushed too, and told herself not to look at those long, strong, hardworking fingers. Not to think about them and wonder what they could do. No. She wouldn’t. Nor his blue eyes, drilling into her.
“No,” she said. She didn’t want to explain.
“Is that Ben Clark?” he said, nodding at the front of the van. “Hey, Ben, how’s your mum? Hang on . . .”
He disappeared into the farmhouse and reappeared with a bowl of eggs. “Want to take these to her?”
“You knew about his mum?” said Nina, suddenly enraged.
“What, Mrs. Clark? I heard she’d been a bit poorly, but it’s nothing too serious, is it?”
“She’s completely bedridden!” said Nina. “Ainslee and Ben have been covering for her for months . . . maybe years. Ainslee’s a child caregiver. Didn’t you know?”
Lennox looked at her. “I try and keep out of people’s business,” he said. “Hoped they’d keep out of mine.”
“Hmm,” said Nina.
“Are you do-gooding?”
“Well, you appear to be do-nothing, so I might as well.”
Lennox sniffed suddenly and marched off. Nina watched him go, wishing she hadn’t flown off the handle with him. She didn’t understand what on earth seemed to get her all riled up every time she saw him.
Ainslee complained bitterly, even when Nina took out her second bag and revealed two packets of chocolate cookies, bananas, tea, ice cream, and a large bottle of Irn-Bru.
“The harder you work, the more treats you get,” she said, smiling.
“I’m not four.”
“I know,” said Nina. “But I’ll pay you your wage for this if you like.”
Ainslee immediately perked up a little, and they rolled their sleeves up and got to it.
Ainslee lifted her mum out of bed while Nina stripped the sheets and hurled everything she could find into the washing machine. Many of the clothes were badly mildewed, and she took away what couldn’t be salvaged, or cut it up for rags. She’d find them other clothes somehow.
Once all the garbage was removed, the house looked much better already, and they washed, polished, and scrubbed, filling garbage bag after garbage bag that Nina would then take to the dump. Little Ben, grubbier than ever, helped pick up and put away, and was even persuaded to put his broken bits of toys into a box when Nina promised him she would get him new ones. She wasn’t entirely sure how she’d be able to afford that, but she’d think of something. She got him vacuuming and washing windows, where a few streaks here and there weren’t really going to matter.
Then she set about, with Ainslee, opening the exhausting forms and official letters that had been dumped and piled up haphazardly on the kitchen table.
“Oh, Ainslee,” she said. “No wonder things are so hard. Look! They’re asking for proof of all sorts of things, and they’re going to cut off your money.”
She picked up one letter asking Janine Clark to attend a fitness-to-work assessment.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she said. “This is nuts.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” said Ainslee. “I couldn’t get her up, and it’s two buses away, the assessment center. I mean, you can’t get there for ten o’clock in the morning even if you could walk, and she can’t walk. I didn’t know . . .”
“Why on earth aren’t social services more on to you?” wondered Nina. “You guys have just fallen down a crack. You don’t bother anyone and they don’t bother you.”
“That’s how we like it,” grunted Ainslee.
“But it isn’t, though, is it? It hasn’t been for a long time.”
Ainslee shook her head.
“It’s going to get better,” vowed Nina.
“Don’t . . .” Ainslee was furiously pink. “I know you’ve helped us and all that, and we are grateful and everything. But don’t go telling people in the village. I don’t want charity. I don’t want clothes from the charity shop and a school uniform from the leftovers box.”
Nina shook her head. “I understand. Okay.”
“I don’t want handouts. Please.”
“Okay,” said Nina. “I’ll see what I can do. But, Ainslee, you have to take your exams. You’re such a bright girl and you could do really well. If we manage to get you all set up here, you could go far. And make a much better life for your mum.”
“Without me?”
Nina had to admit she had a point.
“Well,” she said, “let’s just take it as it comes.”
“It’s all right for you to say. You just turned up from out of nowhere. You’ll probably move on again as well, won’t you?”
Nina didn’t have an answer to that.
The emergency social workers were tremendous; they breezed in and assessed the situation instantly, making a special point of congratulating Ainslee on the wonderful job she’d made of being a caregiver—and telling her repeatedly that that was what she was—as well as somehow conjuring up a large box of new Legos for Ben. He sat on his mum’s bed, happily putting it together with a skill and concentration Nina would not have expected of him.
She avoided Lennox when she got home, utterly exhausted, grubby to the bone but with a feeling of pleasant exhaustion, of deserving her hot bath. She wasn’t going to consider him a bit, she decided. The man had been so wrapped up in his own problems, he hadn’t even noticed those on his doorstep.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The summer stretched on. There were great heaving stormy days, when the clouds lay on the very top of the van, and the rain poured down, leaving the meadow grass bent low under its weight. But equally there were glorious, bursting days, when the sun rose golden and pink ahead, and the wind blew soft and warm, tiny clouds scudding across the sky, rabbits everywhere, and the vast scent of hay rising from the fields and perfuming the air made the whole world feel fresh and washed clean. Most important, there wasn’t a day when Nina could imagine being anywhere else.