Waiting Room – Jenny 18
Only the occasional bleep of a message received, notification or news item broke the silence in the front room. Jenny, hands wrapped round a mug of tea looked across nervously at Izzy as she checked her phone. Izzy’s reaction told her there was’t anything significant to report.
“I mean, he can’t be that bad, can he?” asked Helen hesitantly.
“They’re not sure,” replied Jenny. “I mean who knows with this... thing?”
“But where did he get it from?” ventured Izzy. “If he was’t out for long and was mainly in the street – in the open air. And wearing a mask – he was wearing a mask.”
“He says he was wearing it, but you know Peter,” said Jenny. “He once told me he’d gone to school wearing a tie and it was his headmaster who pointed out he was wearing it around his waist.”
Helen coughed. Her parents looked daggers at her.
“It’s OK, I’m OK,” she said. “Just laughed a bit. I didn’t know he’d done that. That’s quite…. something.”
“It was a two-day suspension,” noted Jenny.
“What about Jude?” Asked Izzy. “Or more importantly Jude’s dad?”
“I don’t really see there’s anything new we can do…” said Jenny. “We’re keeping in touch and everything. We’ll let them know how he progresses and I’m sure eventually her dad will see some kind of sense.”
“He won’t have any choice,” said Helen.
Izzy’s phone bleeped. She looked at it and sighed.
“What is it?” said Jenny, concerned.
“Country’s in recession,” said Izzy.
Jenny stared at her. “Is that the most important thing right now?”
“One of them,” said Izzy, defensively.
“We’ve told Jude we’ll help her out, no matter what,” asserted Jenny, returning to the subject.
“Any idea what that might mean?” asked Izzy.
Jenny stared at Izzy again. She felt the question was unnecessary or at least went bit too far. But then they were playing a game of speculation and going too far was in the nature of the game. They weren’t entirely singing from the same hymn sheet and inevitably someone would say something the other didn’t agree with. It was just a question of working out where each other’s boundaries lay and where shared ground ended.
“Are you two alright?” asked Helen. “I know I’ve not been…”
“Helpful?” put in Jenny.
“I was going to say preoccupied… but…”
“I think we’re OK,” said Izzy, stepping over a boundary again.
“Glad someone does,” said Jenny, pushing her back. Again.
“We’re talking, we’re getting on,” pointed out Izzy, “Don’t you think?”
“Don’t you think there should be something more to us than that?” snapped Jenny. Then she glanced up at Helen and back to Izzy. “Sorry. It’s not your business Helen. You don’t need to hear this. We need to work a few more things out.”
“Well, it is sort of my business,” said Helen. “You are my mums and stuff. Be nice to know if that’s going to continue.”
“We’ll always be your mums, won’t we?” said Jenny, almost grumpily.
Izzy’s phone chimed again she dealt with it before Jenny could even ask. “Hottest stretch in London since the 1960s apparently.”
“That’s news?”
“According to the BBC… Sorry, thought it was him.”
She tailed off.
“Quiet without him, isn’t it?” noted Helen.
“He wasn’t particularly noisy when he was around,” said Jenny.
“There’s more bread,” smiled Izzy. “You can tell his appetite isn’t here. Toast whenever you want.”
The trio looked at each other and around the room.
“Well,” said Helen. “I don’t think he’d like to think of us all moping around here doing nothing.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” started Jenny, ‘It’s what he did.”
“I think he’d like us to enjoy ourselves as well,” persevered Helen.
“He’s not dead,” pointed out Izzy and then to them both “– and don’t either of you say ‘yet’.”
“All I’m saying is why I don't we fire up the xbox and play that driving game he likes so much.”
Jenny and Izzy looked at each other. Jenny was the first to smile. “Yeah, you’re on. I reckon I can beat both of you round the Singapore Grand Prix track during a rain storm.”
“That’s fighting talk…”
“What?” said Helen, “you’ve both done this in wet weather? I thought you hated the thing?”
“Some nights we get bored of Netflix.”
Jenny plugged in the console, Helen found the controllers and Izzy’s phone rang. They stopped dead as she answered it with a series of “Yes?”, “U-huh”s, worried grunts and nods. She hung up and turned to the others.
“Well?” asked Jenny.
“He says he wants toast, we can only play the xbox if we don’t overwrite his game and he can hear us perfectly well from the loft.”
Jenny headed for the kitchen with a smile. “Maybe we should close the loft hatch,” she said.
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