Cath Staincliffe - Crying Out Loud

‘She bit me!’ He didn’t know whether to be cross or delighted but I could tell he wasn’t hurt. ‘It’s sharp.’

Maddie went off to the living room and Tom peered at his finger for a moment, then ran after her.

‘Stop following me,’ I heard her snap.

‘I’m not. I just want to watch telly.’

‘Well, you can’t. You always talk,’ she said.

‘I do not!’ Tom protested.

‘Liar!’

Maddie wasn’t getting enough attention and behaving badly was a sure-fire way of attracting lots of it. Before it could get any heavier I intervened and they settled down in front of the box. But ten minutes later, while I was feeding Jamie, there was an almighty crash from the living room. I pulled the bottle out of her mouth and hurried to see what was going on.

The television was face down on the floor. Maddie looked flushed and guilty. Tom was crying.

‘He was in the way,’ Maddie said sulkily. ‘I told him to move.’

‘I was not,’ Tom shouted, furious with passion and his face dark, snot bubbling out of his nose. ‘She kept getting closer.’

Jamie began to cry.

‘She kept pushing me. She pushed me into the telly and-’

‘He pulled it down,’ Maddie said quickly.

‘It fell down!’ Tom screamed.

‘All right.’ I plonked the baby on the sofa and held up both my hands.

‘He’s trying to blame it on me,’ Maddie insisted.

‘Shush,’ I told her as I knelt and unplugged the television.

‘You always take his side,’ Maddie shouted now and ran upstairs. Tom was sobbing and Jamie was howling.

I moved and gave Tom a hug. He usually came off worse when the kids fell out. Maddie was more calculating, devious even, and Tom couldn’t bear the injustice. She’d engineer an argument or a fight and then try to seize the moral high ground. Being a year older, and a girl, also made her more articulate and she’d confuse him and trip him up with the way she put a spin on things. It wasn’t a trait I liked in my daughter and I guess, like many parents, there were times when I wondered whether I’d done anything to encourage it.

‘We’ll talk about it properly when you’ve both calmed down,’ I told Tom.

‘Is it broken?’ He took his arms from round my neck; his dark eyes were wide and soft and shiny with tears. He winced as Jamie’s cries reached glass-shattering pitch.

‘I don’t know. I’d better finish feeding Jamie and then I’ll have a look.’

He swiped at his face with both hands.

‘You go blow your nose,’ I said, ‘and stay away from Maddie for a bit.’

The crying had given Jamie hiccups and it took twice as long to feed her. She filled her nappy, again, and the contents were particularly virulent, probably to do with her teething. She didn’t show any signs of going to sleep once I’d wrested her into clean clothes, so I peeled a piece of carrot for her, large enough so she couldn’t choke on it, and gave her it to gnaw on. If the tooth was hurting her at all maybe it would help. She took to it straight away, making little droney sounds.

The telly was dead. When I plugged it in the stinky smell of burning plastic filled the room. Tom was in the playroom bashing together a pair of action men – probably imagining dispatching Maddie in various gruesome ways.

‘Now tell me what happened,’ I said, clearing a pile of wooden bricks and bits of plastic from the floor so I could sit down.

He clutched the dolls as he talked only making eye contact with me at crucial points. ‘We were watching Basil Brush and Maddie said I was in the way but I wasn’t. I moved a bit and then she sat in front of me and I couldn’t see anything and I sat closer and she tried to push me out of the way and I pushed her then I got up and she pushed me again. And I fell on the telly and then it fell down. I’m sorry, Sal.’

‘OK.’

Maddie was in her bed, hidden by the covers.

‘Maddie, sit up.’

She made me wait but did eventually emerge from the duvet, looking as defiant as she could.

‘Tell me what happened?’

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘Tom was in the way and he wouldn’t move. I couldn’t see. He kept doing it and then he knocked the telly off.’ She looked miserable but her jaw was set and her chin lowered so she was glowering at me.

‘And what did you do?’

‘Nothing,’ she said brusquely. She ground her teeth mutinously.

‘Maddie, tell me the truth.’

‘I am!’ she cried.

‘All of it.’

‘That is all of it.’

I worked very hard at not losing my temper with her. ‘I don’t think Tom got up and pulled the telly over on purpose; I think something happened between you first. Did you push Tom?’

‘He pushed me, too.’

‘So that’s a yes.’

She gave a little sigh and her shoulders slumped.

‘It’s important to tell the truth, Maddie. If Tom got told off, or you did, for something you hadn’t done, that wouldn’t be fair, would it?’

‘No.’ Her voice couldn’t get any smaller.

‘If Tom was in the way, what else could you have done?’

‘Got you.’

‘Yes. Because getting into a pushing competition means that the telly is broken and neither of you will be able to watch anything until we can afford to buy a new one. And that might be quite a while,’ I added, wanting her to understand that she’d suffer as a result.

Maddie’s face had gone blank now, as if she was trying to absent herself from the situation.

From downstairs Jamie gave a cry and Maddie groaned. ‘When’s she going home?’

‘I don’t know when Jamie’s going home,’ I answered her. ‘I know it’s not very easy having a baby here, is it?’ She didn’t say anything, so I carried on. ‘But the telly is broken and I think you should say sorry.’

‘Sorry,’ she said ungraciously and fell back flat on the bed. ‘Can you go now?’

And that was as good as it got.

Ray was furious about the telly but I persuaded him not to talk to the kids until he’d calmed down a bit. Yelling at them wouldn’t achieve much. ‘I think Maddie’s jealous of the baby,’ I said. ‘I think that’s why she was winding Tom up. And he was really upset – don’t be too hard on him.’

‘They can’t just get away with murder,’ he said. ‘What’s that going to cost? Two hundred quid? Three?’

I shrugged. ‘We don’t have to replace it immediately.’

‘Are we covered by accidental damage?’

‘Maybe, but the excess will be a couple of hundred to start with.’

He sighed. ‘So, I’ll have to watch the match at the pub,’ he complained.

I hadn’t given any thought to football – nothing new there. ‘When’s it start?’

‘Seven forty-five.’

‘We need formula,’ I said. ‘Can you hang on until I get back? She’s asleep now,’ I said, moving to pick up my purse, trying to get out of there before he started on again about Jamie and what I should or shouldn’t do.

‘Sal, it’s been four days-’

‘I can count.’ I pulled on my coat and left.

There’s a mini-market on the main road and I thought it was big enough to carry different brands of baby milk. People were still commuting home from work; it was dark already and foggy now. The mist diffused the street lights into fuzzy globes and car headlights picked out skeins of fog, like soft grey netting. The air was ripe with exhaust fumes and the smell of fat-frying from the chippie.

As I pushed the heavy shop door open, I met a woman coming out. She looked familiar from school, though I didn’t know her well. Her son had been in Tom’s class but had changed schools the previous year. She remembered me, though, and stepped back into the shop. ‘Sal? Jenny. How are you? Tom OK?’