Maxwell's Retirement Read Online Free PDF Page A

change the subject. ‘Is it all right that Nole is sleeping like this? He hasn’t got concussion or anything, has he?’
    ‘No, he’s fine. They gave him a paediatric painkiller in A&E, just to get him over the first few hours. He’ll be right as rain in the morning, but I think I’ll sleep in his room on the futon, just to be in range if he needs someone in the night. So,’ she made flitting motions with her free hand, ‘off you go and make my tea and then we’ll talk phones.’
    ‘Ah!’ He raised his finger in badly disguised glee. ‘My phone is at school.’
    ‘Ah!’ She was equally gleeful but with more reason. ‘Our phones are the same and mine is here and juiced up and ready to go.’
    ‘Ah!’
    ‘Yes?’ She smiled the smile of a woman who has won.
    He sighed. ‘Nothing. Just “Ah!”’ And he went into the kitchen and began to gather the makings of tea together. Then, like a peal from heaven, the doorbell rang. He stuck his head round the sitting room door, stifling a grin. ‘I’ll get that, shall I?’ he said, and positively skipped down the stairs.
    Closing her eyes in resignation, Jacquie settled herself more comfortably under her sleeping sonand rested her free hand on her cat-by-marriage. With luck it would just be someone from Kleeneze, a nosy Mrs Troubridge or, at worst, a Jehovah’s Witness. Maxwell was particularly effective in dealing with all three – ‘Not today, thank you’, ‘I was just about to have a shower – join me?’ and … but luck was not on her side. Above her son’s soft breathing and the cat’s reluctant purr, she could definitely hear sobbing, and whilst it was not uncommon for Jehovah’s Witnesses to sob as they left the doorstep of 38, Columbine, it usually took longer than the few minutes Maxwell had been at the front door. Using the wriggling technique that all mothers subliminally learn as they give birth, she extricated herself from beneath Nolan and left him sleeping in the chair. Metternich, with the speed and cunning native to all cats everywhere, was in the warm space left like a rat up a pipe, although that was not necessarily the analogy he would have personally chosen, given the option.
    She went to the head of the stairs and stood back in the shadows. Maxwell was filling the doorway from her vantage point but the voice told her that their visitor was a girl, Sixth Form no doubt. She tuned her ears to maximum Woman Policeman mode and didn’t think she recognised it. So, not one of the elect babysitting brigade, then. But even so, she sounded quiet and not argumentative, so it wasn’t one of the dropouts who littered their doorstep briefly halfway through every year, arguing the toss as to why nail extension technology should be an AS subject. Leaving school had seemed such a Utopian dream at the end of Year Eleven. Six months filling shelves at Morrisons killed all that. Jacquie hesitated, not knowing whether to go down and defuse a situation which might not exist. In her line of work, she was fully aware of how unwise it was to allow a male teacher to be alone with a distressed adolescent girl, although ‘alone’ was probably not the way to describe their front step, with Mrs Troubridge just a hedge width away. But, on balance, Mrs Troubridge was probably not a witness to rely on, as she had long ago decided that Maxwell, although handy for putting up pictures and carrying out heavy rubbish, was, underneath a pervert, no better than he should be. She decided to go down.
    At the sound of her step, he turned. ‘Darling, we were just talking about you. Is Nolan awake?’
    ‘No, no, he’s still sleeping. I tucked him up on the chair. Metternich is watching him for me.’ She smiled at the girl, standing there on the path with tear stripes down her cheeks. ‘Who’s this?’
    ‘How rude of me,’ Maxwell muttered. ‘Julie,’ he gestured to Jacquie, ‘this is my wife. Mrs Maxwell,’ he added, perhaps a tad redundantly. ‘Darling, this is