The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

place while he does his degree.’ Though she was responding to her mother, Tara directed her words at Bruce, her tone unmistakably challenging, but if she had been hoping for any acknowledgement that he had misjudged John, she was disappointed. Bruce merely asked Katie to pass him the custard.

Next morning, Wendy decided to give the bedrooms a thorough clean. She was still wondering whether John had featured more in Tara’s weekend than her daughter had admitted, but she found nothing left lying about in Tara’s rooms to indicate that. Wendy was not normally given to snooping on her children, and by the conclusion of her unsuccessful operation she felt rather ashamed of herself, particularly as she did not even know what she had been expecting to find. Her mood was not improved by the discovery that not only was Katie’s room as untidy as usual, but her previous efforts at tidying when last instructed to do so had consisted of pushing everything out of sight under her bed, where it now lay like the detritus left behind by the retreat of a tidal wave.

On Katie’s return from school Wendy marched her upstairs and demanded that she lift the valance to reveal the mess.

‘I want all this stuff picked up and put away properly,’ Wendy said. ‘You’re to stay in here until it’s done, do you understand? And when you’ve finished, I will be coming up here to check that you’ve done it properly.’

Katie mumbled that she did understand and Wendy departed, closing the door behind her. In truth, she was less annoyed by the mess than by the way Katie had lied to her, assuring her that everything had been tidied satisfactorily, when it so clearly had not.

She half expected Katie to reappear after half an hour and claim the job was done, but the clock ticked towards five and there was no sign of her. At a quarter past, beginning to feel suspicious, she crept up the stairs, intending to check that tidying, as opposed to any other activity, was still in progress. When she reached Katie’s door, she heard crying within. For a moment she hesitated, hand an inch from the door handle. It was horrid to think of Katie, sitting inside, sobbing amid the mess, but then she remembered that the situation was entirely of her daughter’s own making, and that there had been lying involved too. Katie was learning a valuable lesson. She slipped quietly back down to the kitchen.

It was perhaps a quarter of an hour later when she heard Katie start screaming and pounding on the door with her fists – or possibly kicking it. Katie never threw tantrums – or not since she was a toddler anyway. Well … let her scream and shout. The room had to be tidied and throwing a wobbler was not going to make any difference. Tara had phoned to say she was calling at a friend’s on her way back from college, and Jamie was playing outside, so there was no one around to hear her.

Two minutes later, Bruce’s car pulled into the drive, rather earlier than his usual time.

‘Good grief!’ he exclaimed, as he walked in at the back door. ‘What on earth is happening up there?’ Without waiting for an answer, he raced up the hall and Wendy heard him taking the stairs two at a time.

She thought about following him or calling after him, but on second thoughts, she would let Katie explain for herself. When Bruce discovered that she was merely playing up, he would be just as annoyed by their daughter’s behaviour as she was herself. From the kitchen, Wendy heard the screaming and pounding stop abruptly. After a few minutes she heard Bruce’s approach and turned to face him as he entered the kitchen. His expression was oddly serious.

‘I’ve sent Katie to wash her face before she comes down.’

‘And got her to stop that caterwauling too,’ Wendy said approvingly.

‘Caterwauling? The child was terrified. What on earth were you thinking of, letting her get herself worked up into such a state?’

‘She worked herself up. It was nothing to do with me.’

‘She says you locked her in her bedroom.’

‘Don’t be silly, Bruce. I found a whole stack of stuff shoved under the bed from when she said she’d tidied up before, and I told her to stay in there until she had sorted it all out. How could I possibly have locked her in? There aren’t any keys. You can’t lock any of the bedroom doors. She was just having a tantrum, that’s all.’

Bruce hesitated. She could see that the point about the lack of keys had hit home.

‘Katie doesn’t have tantrums,’ he said.

‘Well, she had one today.’

‘She was frightened. She thought she was locked in.’

‘Oh, really? And did you have to break the door down to release her?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘There you are then.’

‘The door must have jammed. She was obviously terrified. You should have gone up to her to see what was the matter.’

‘I know what the matter was. She had been caught out fibbing and not doing what she was told and she didn’t like having to sort it out. And what’s more, you ought to be backing me up on this, not criticizing me. Whatever happened to showing a united front and not allowing the children to divide and rule?’

The conversation might have continued but for the arrival of Jamie, asking what was for tea, and then Katie herself appeared, red-eyed and crestfallen. In response to Wendy’s question about her bedroom, she said, without meeting her mother’s eye, that she had finished putting everything away and Wendy said briskly, ‘That’s good then.’

The episode was not quite over, however, for not long after they had settled into bed and Bruce had switched out the light, the quiet was disturbed by yet more screams from Katie’s room.

‘No, Mammy, no! Oh, don’t please, Mam, don’t!’

Both parents raced across the landing, as they had done once before, and Bruce was again the first