Bertie’s parents had both died before he left England. Mags’s parents had lived long enough to meet and love their grandchildren but not long enough to see them grow and mature into beautiful, young women. Meg was the closest thing to a grandmother Sibyl had. Every time Meg looked at the younger girl, Sibyl felt awash with her love and this wasn’t surprising. When she was younger, Meg told Sibyl she used to take in orphaned babies and children while they were being placed into other homes, raising them from days to months and, on a few occasions, years, before they found a permanent placement. Sibyl had no problem believing this, Meg had a lot of love to go around.
“I just wish, Sibyl my love, that one of them would come to see me now that I’m in my old age. Just one of them,” Meg had said to Sibyl some days before. “So I’ll know they’re all right.”
Without anything to say to make her feel better, Sibyl had just patted Meg’s hand and knew from experience that the babies likely didn’t even know that Meg was a part of their lives. The older ones, Sibyl had no excuses for.
Now, Sibyl smiled at Jemma.
“Yeah, Jem, can’t miss my dose of Meg,” Sibyl told her friend. “See you later.”
Jemma nodded and shouted to the group of boys on stage, “Ready?”
At their affirmative nods, Jemma flipped a switch and rap music filled the air.
Sibyl opened the doors to hear Marianne yelling, “Unlucky for some, number thirteen.”
She found Meg in her corner and watched her older friend’s face collapse in a smile at the sight of Sibyl. The smile stayed where it was as Sibyl recounted Flower, Katie and their friends’ antics in the Hall.
The minibus came shortly after and took the Bingo Club home. After they were all safely away, Sibyl wandered the Hall and Centre, getting prepared to put it to bed until Kyle, the Centre’s volunteer caretaker and resident handyman (not to mention Jemma’s father), opened it up that evening after supper for the recovering Gamblers.
Jemma met her in the Day Centre. They were going to lock up together, as they usually did on a Tuesday night. They were about to leave when Jemma stopped and cocked her head, listening with mother’s ears, then rushed to the restrooms at the back of the Centre.
Annie, another member of the Pensioner’s Club, was locked in one of the stalls. She’d been stuck there for hours and missed the minibus ride back to her home. For some bizarre reason, Annie didn’t pull the emergency cord in the bathroom and couldn’t explain to Sibyl or Jemma why she’d not done so. This was likely because Annie, at the best of times, was a tad bit confused.
Thanking all the goddesses that Jemma had heard Annie (and cursing the minibus driver to perdition for not checking his load, which he was supposed to do), rather than leaving her locked in the bathroom for the night, Jem and Sibyl located the keys to the door and released the old lady. Then Sibyl drove her home. As Annie was blind, Sibyl helped her into her council house. Once she opened the door to Annie’s house, though, she was struck by a rancid smell and immobilised with shock when she saw the utterly hideous state the old woman’s home was in.
“Oh Annie,” she whispered under her breath for once happy that Annie was not only blind but mostly deaf as well.
The house smelled terrible and was absolutely filthy.
“My children take care of me,” Annie said defensively, obviously cottoning on to what Sibyl was seeing (and smelling) and telling the lie she’d been mouthing at the Day Centre for what appeared to be months.
“I know, Annie, but it’s been a bit since they’ve been around. Let me just tidy up. It won’t take a minute.”
It had taken over an hour and Sibyl had to call Jem.
Jemma had turned up on Annie’s doorstep with her two children, her twelve year old boy, Shazzie and fourteen year old girl, Zara. Jemma’s big, kind, chocolate-brown eyes had rounded at the sight of the squalor that was Annie’s abode and that was after Sibyl had already carried three bags of rubbish out to the bins.
In Annie’s foul kitchen while the children were watching television with the old woman, shouting at her to tell her what was happening on a screen she could not see, Jemma stared into the refrigerator.
“She hasn’t a bite of food in here,” Jemma pulled out a carton of milk and gave it a cautious sniff before yanking her head back in horror. “Oh my Lord.”
“Give it to me,” Sibyl told her friend and poured (or, more to the point, shook) the offending milk in the food-encrusted sink. Sibyl watched as Jemma twisted her long, dark brown hair and fastened it more firmly in her ever-present, huge hair clip, ready to engage in war against the vile kitchen. “We’ve got to keep a closer eye on Annie. Do you know if she even has children?” Sibyl asked.
Jemma was pulling on yellow, plastic gloves. “No idea, I’ll call Dad.”
Jemma’s Dad and Mum knew everything about everyone on the council estate. Both of Jemma’s parents worked at the Community Centre with Sibyl. Jemma, her parents and her brothers and sisters all lived on or around the council estate where the Community Centre was located. Jemma’s parents were both young but Kyle had arthritis and her Mum, Tina, endured terrible troubles with her feet, thus they couldn’t work “normal” jobs so they volunteered at the Centre. This caused them to do more than full-time jobs anyway but they could do them in their time, at their pace.
Jem phoned Kyle and then she and Sibyl cleaned, then scrubbed, then vacuumed Annie’s little house while the children entertained the old woman. They left, politely declining Annie’s offer of a chocolate from a box since thrown out. While they were leaving, Kyle shouldered his burly body through the door, his hands filled with bags of groceries.
“Get the kids home,” he ordered his daughter gruffly, as only a father would do to a daughter who spent her afternoon cleaning the home of an old lady she barely knew. “Sibyl, luv, you go home too. Tina and I have this covered,” Sibyl turned her head and caught Tina waving from the passenger seat of Kyle’s beat-up Ford Fiesta.
Sibyl waved back as the kids ran to greet their grandmother.
“Thanks, Jem,” Sibyl said to her friend, not knowing how to express her gratitude at sharing their awful task.
“We must take care of our own,” Jemma muttered, clearly disturbed by what she had seen. She called her kids, blew a kiss to her Mum, gave Sibyl a wave and they walked off in the opposite direction while Sibyl stood for a moment to watch the clouds forming.