Jo cursed under her breath, which earned her a nudge from her sister.
‘I heard that bad word,’ Clara said defiantly.
Jo should’ve predicted this would happen. In Clara's own room, they had blackout curtains very much designed to fool Clara into thinking it was still night-time when it wasn’t. They were a must as the brighter mornings came to pass. However, the curtains in Jo’s own room did little to stop the sunlight pouring in.
‘It’s a wee bit early, darling. You could go back to sleep, or read one of your books for another wee half-hour or so,’ Jo tried. Sometimes it worked. More often than not, it didn’t. Clara was a person who liked company and most certainly was not fond of entertaining herself so she responded to Jo’s plea by pulling the duvet onto the floor.
Jo knew she could have called her mum to come and take over, but she thought of how upset she had looked the night before, and she couldn’t bring herself to be that cruel.
She pulled herself up to sitting and stretched. Her eyes were tired and dry from staring at her Kindle all night and her body screamed to be allowed to rest, but Clara and her desire for waffles with strawberries and maple syrup for breakfast screamed louder.
‘Would you not just have a bowl of porridge? It will set you up for the day?’ Jo asked her little sister, who gave her a ‘are you serious’ glare in return.
‘Mammy always makes me waffles and syrup on a Monday before all week at school,’ she said, her brow furrowed in determination.
‘Okay, so waffles it is, with extra strawberries,’ Jo said.
She knew there was little point in arguing with Clara, so Jo pulled on her kimono and slippers, tied her hair into a messy topknot and yawned her way down the stairs. The first thing she did was put on a very large pot of coffee. As she was up, she might as well let her mum enjoy a proper lie-in and take care of the school run too. And, she supposed, she could nip to the supermarket and stock up on some essentials. The kind of essentials that Harry didn’t have in his shop because he had taken against them for some reason. Energy drinks weren’t the only things on his blacklist. He didn’t sell dishwasher tablets (‘only shirkers have dishwashers, nothing wrong with a bottle of Fairy Liquid’), kitchen roll (‘whatever happened to people just using dishcloths to clean up after themselves. What a waste’) and wholemeal bread (‘I’ve never had a slice of brown bread in my life and I’m here and grand, aren’t I?’). She wondered how he would react if someone asked for avocado or quinoa, or if he would even know what they were.
While she was at it, she might as well walk past The Ivy Inn and take Paddy out for his morning walk. It would help her reach her blasted 10,000 steps for the day, which was a struggle on the days she didn’t work in the pub. Without setting a target she knew she’d happily spend the day slumped on the sofa.
Maybe she’d get a nap later. If she was lucky.
‘You’re going to burn the waffles!’ she heard Clara shout, and she realised she had been half-asleep standing up. She definitely needed coffee, and quickly.
Once caffeinated, she set about getting Clara ready, but it was clear something was still off with her little sister. As Jo ironed her school uniform, helped her brush her teeth and put her shoes on, she was asked a hundred questions about orphans and mums and babies with no mums and what would happen if her birth mum decided she wanted her back and what if she had to leave and go back to her old home and how could Jo be sure that would never happen.
By the time Jo was trying to put Clara’s packed lunch into her school bag, Clara herself was sitting on the kitchen floor, hugging Buttercup, borderline hysterical.
‘I don’t want to go back to my old house,’ she wailed. ‘But is my other mammy all alone?’
She looked up and Jo saw her little face was twisted with pain and worry. Tears were cascading down her cheeks, which had turned a fairly dark shade of red. The pain that Clara was in felt as real to Jo as if it were her own. She’d have given everything in the world to be able to take it away.
She sat down on the floor and opened her arms wide, pulling Clara into a tight, squeezy hug as she rocked her on the floor. ‘I promise you, wee dote, you will always be here with us. We are your family. Lots of very important people all got together to talk about what would make you the very happiest in the world. And Mammy and Daddy went and spoke to them and told them how they love you to the moon and back and you were their wee girl and everyone decided that you belonged here, so they wrote it down in a big book in ink that can’t be rubbed out.’
‘And my other mammy? Did she not love me to the moon and back?’
Jo’s heart cracked and she had to steady herself before she spoke again. ‘Of course she loves you very, very much and she will always love you very, very much. She just couldn’t look after you the same way as Mammy and Daddy and she wanted you to be happy and safe too. Sometimes, no matter how much people love someone, and how hard they try, they can’t manage to look after them the very best.’
Clara blinked, her big eyes extra vibrant for her tears. Her bottom lip wobbled. How on earth was a child supposed to try and understand the reality of what had happened while also being protected from the truth? Clara’s mum wasn’t a bad person, but she was an addict who had more than her fair share of woes. It was too much for Clara to wrap her head around.
Jo took Clara’s hand and continued. ‘And sometimes the best way to show someone how much you love them is to make sure they’re okay by living with someone else who makes them very happy, even if it makes you a little sad. And your other mammy loved you very, very much.’
Underneath it all, Jo was sure that Clara’s birth mother did love her daughter in her own way. The little girl was much too young to learn all the details of how she came to live with the Campbells, but Jo was determined she’d never doubt that she was loved.
‘What if Mammy and Daddy can’t look after me the very best? Will I have to get another new mammy and daddy?’ Clara’s eyes were wide.
‘Oh goodness no. Sure you have me, and Noah, and Libby, and Auntie Mags. And Erin too. And even Paddy. We’re all just here to look after you for ever and ever and ever.’
That seemed to be enough to quiet Clara’s sobs and she sat in Jo’s arms, hiccupping as she tried to regulate her breathing to normal. She rested her head against Jo’s chest and Jo just sat there, and rocked her, and told her she was loved until finally – one school shoe on and one school shoe off – Clara drifted into a nap.
That was how her mum found them when she came downstairs fifteen minutes later.
Her eyes widened at the sight of her two girls on the floor. ‘What on earth happened?’ she asked.
‘A lot of questions and a lot of worry about us and having a mammy and being loved. She got very upset. I figure just let her have a quick nap to sleep off the storm, and I’ll take her in to school later,’ Jo said.
‘Maybe she’d be better off at home today? We can shower her with a little extra love and let her ask all the questions she needs to,’ her mother said and Jo had to agree that was probably the best idea. Maybe she’d do something really fun with Clara while her mum spoke with Noah and with their social worker for some advice on how best to handle this.