Parcel for you ......Part 9

 

Vanessa was perched on the edge of her bed, rifling through the bedside drawer, parting a sea of notebooks, pens, nail polishes, bank statements and headache pills. She had just located the half-used tube of Norwegian Formula and was about to stand up when she froze, her eyes widening, her heart sinking. ‘Mum?’ she uttered, her voice weak.

 

She crossed the landing, hearing the sound of her own heart thumping as she held onto the balustrade and looked down with a sense of dread. The house was silent now and she couldn’t see anyone in the hallway. Taking a deep breath, she quickly tried to think up some lie to explain the presence of the peculiar, robotic man in her toilet but they all sounded so stupid in her head and she quickly resigned to somehow just tell the truth. It was finding the words that proved so difficult for the truth was more preposterous than the lies. 

 

She came down the stairs with a forced smile, the sort that said, everything’s fine. ‘Mother, are you down here? I need to speak to you,’

 

June was standing by the kitchen door, wringing her hands and looking blankly into the space in front of her, the lines on her face seemed deeper, her colour drained to a sort of bloodless, creamy grey. She made a few sighing sounds. ‘Did you hear me, did you hear me scream?’

 

‘Yes, yes I did hear you and now I just want to explain something to you..’

 

But June wasn’t listening and immediately began to speak over her daughter. ‘Look Vanessa, I know this is going to sound silly,’ she blurted out between gasps, almost as if she were gulping air, ‘but there was a disappearing man, right here, while you were upstairs!’

 

‘Disappearing?’

 

‘Yes! I was rinsing out my cup at the sink and I thought I heard a noise, the sound of somebody walking around behind me and so I started talking….to you, Vanessa because I thought it was you and then when you didn’t answer, I felt something was wrong so I turned around and I saw,’ she paused, ‘I saw….what looked like the back of a man going into your lounge. A tall man with dark hair.’

 

‘Oh,’ Vanessa took a few steps into the doorway of the lounge and tentatively looked in, expecting to see her new husband but there was no sign of Spencer. She breathed a sigh of relief and quickly made a decision to hold off on outing him for now since her mother was in no fit state to absorb such information. ‘So, where is this man now?’

 

‘That’s the thing Vanessa, I looked all around and I can’t see anyone in there but I swear, I swear I saw him! There was something about the way he moved, something….not quite normal. It made me think, perhaps I was dreaming. Oh I need to sit down. I’ve been doing far too much recently.’

 

‘Okay, okay mum,’ Vanessa held her mother around the waist and began walking her back towards the kitchen. ‘I think I’ll make you another cup of tea, a strong one then I’ll take you home. You know, maybe it’s the volunteering, all those pushy people, it might be stressing you out.’

 

‘Yes, maybe you’re right, love. Those people really drain my energy, they leave me emotionally exhausted, especially that new woman.’

 

Vanessa found to her surprise that she was slightly enjoying having a sense of power over her mother. She had fully expected to feel guilty about the lie, perhaps the guilt would come later. After settling her mother with the Tesco Clubcard magazine, strong tea and some more biscuits she left the room having made an excuse about work and shut her mother in the kitchen while she went to look for Spencer.

 

Sensing that he was still somewhere in the lounge, she went in, whispering his name and searching, behind the door, behind the curtain; there was a narrow gap at the back of the sofa, she knelt on the seat and peeped over the top. There was Spencer, lying like a Frankfurter, wedged between the wall and the sofa, the fringes of the ornate throw which adorned the backrest, partially scattered like shredded onion over the top of his navy fleece. His face staring upwards, looking more frightened than she’d seen him before.   

 

‘Spencer!’ she whispered, ‘Are you okay?’

 

He shook his head, ‘Has she gone? That woman, she’s the scariest person I’ve ever seen, has she gone?’

 

‘No, she’s my mother.’

 

‘Your mother! Oh no. You have to tell her to leave. All my internal threat indicators went off when I saw her. She chased me in here.’

 

‘Why did you leave the bathroom? I told you to stay put.’

 

‘I did but I was missing you and I wanted to be part of it.’

 

 

‘Part of what?’

 

‘Part of things, I’m designed to be part of things. You keep putting me on the low action settings, you’ve been doing it too much. That information goes back to headquarters and then they can set instructions at their end to make me more human.’

 

Vanessa was shocked, ‘So…they can override my settings?’ she said, raising her voice.

 

‘Are you alright, love?’ June shouted from the kitchen. Then the door opened and she stood there listening to what her daughter was doing.

 

Spencer nodded silently. ‘I need you to stay there until we’ve gone,’ Vanessa whispered, ‘otherwise I will send my mother to you again.’

 

His eyes widened and he lifted his hand up to his face. ‘No, don’t do that. I’ll stay here until you come back. I love you.’

 

Vanessa shut the lounge door. ‘Sorry Mum. I just had to tie up a loose end at work.’

 

‘That’s okay. I know you’re very busy. I shouldn’t be here really but I thought I’d pop in. I was worried about you, Vanessa, your sister said you’ve been a bit off lately.’

 

‘Off, what do you mean?’

 

‘Well, she said you seemed to be rushing her off the phone and that you weren’t very forthcoming when she asked how you were. She said that she felt that, oh what was the phrase she used…she felt that you were trying to bat away her questions, fob her off and that she was worried about you, that’s all.’

 

Vanessa bristled and shrugged. ‘I’m just busy. It’s not easy, I’m still paying a mortgage, we don’t all have well-paid jobs and rich husbands. Anyway, she’s not worried about me, she’s being nosy.’

 

‘She cares about you. Carol is a very caring person, she always has been.’

 

‘Caring or interfering,’ Vanessa muttered under her breath.

 

‘You what, love?’

 

‘Nothing Mum. I’m going to take you home now that you’ve got some colour back in your cheeks. And if you see any more strange men when you get home, you must ring me immediately.’