"Oh," she said, still looking suspicious.
"She's got the same expression as you anyway," he said, looking at me in a way I couldn't fathom. "Can I give you a hand upstairs?"
Ended up with me carrying the baby and holding Constance's hand and Mark bringing the pushchair and holding Harry's hand. For some reason neither of us could speak, except to the children. But then I was aware of voices on the stairs. Rounded the corner and there were two policemen emptying the hall cupboard. They'd had a complaint from next door about the smell.
"You take the children upstairs, I'll deal with this," said Mark quietly. Felt like Maria in The Sound of Music when they've been singing in the concert and she has to get the children into the car while Captain Von Trapp confronts the Gestapo.
Talking in a cheery, fraudulently confident whisper, I put the Pingu video back on, gave them all some sugar-free Ribena in their bottles and sat on the floor between them, which they seemed more than contented about.
Then policeman appeared clutching a holdall I recognized as mine. He pulled a polythene bag of stinking blood-smeared flesh accusingly from the zip pocket with his gloved hand and said, "Is this yours, miss? It was in the hall cupboard. Could we ask you a few questions?"
I got up, leaving the children staring rapt at Pingu as Mark appeared in the doorway.
"As I said, I'm a lawyer," he said pleasantly to the young policemen, with just the merest steely hint of "so you'd better watch what you're doing" in his voice.
Just then the phone rang.
"Shall I get that for you, miss?" said one, of the officers suspiciously, as if it might be my bits-of-dead-person supplier. I just couldn't work out how blood-stained flesh had got in my bag. The policeman put the phone to his ear, looked completely terrified for a moment, then shoved the phone at me.
"Oh, hello, darling, who's that? Have you got a man in the house?"
Suddenly the penny dropped. The last time I used that bag was when I went to Mum and Dad's for lunch. "Mother," I said, "when I came down for lunch, did you put anything in my bag?"
"Yes, in actual fact I did, come to mention it. Two pieces of fillet steak. And you never said thank you. In the zip pocket. I mean as I was saying to Una, it's not cheap isn't fillet steak."
"Why didn't you tell me?" I hissed.
Finally managed to get a totally un-penitent mother to confess to the policemen. Even then they started saying they wanted to take the fillet steak off for analysis and maybe hold me for questioning at which Constance started crying, I picked her up, and she put her arm round my neck, holding on to my jumper as if I were about to be wrested from her and thrown in a pit with bears.
Mark just laughed, put his hand on one of the policemen's shoulder and said, "Come on, boys. It's a couple of pieces of fillet steak from her mother. I'm sure there's better things you could be doing with your time."
The policemen looked at each other, and nodded, then they started closing their notebooks and picking their helmets up. Then the main one said, "OK, Miss Jones, just keep an eye on what your mother puts in your bag in future. Thanks for your help, sir. Have a good evening. Have a good evening, miss."
There was a second's pause when Mark stared at the hole in the wall, looking unsure what to do, then he suddenly said, "Enjoy Pingu," and bolted off down the stairs after the policemen.
Wednesday 21 May
9st 1, alcohol units 3 (v.g.), cigarettes 12 (excellent), calories
3,425 (off food), progress of hole in wall by Gary 0, positive thoughts about furnishing fabric as special-occasion-wear look 0.
Jude has gone completely mad. Just went round to her house to find entire place strewn with bridal magazines, lace swatches, gold-sprayed raspberries, tureen and grapefruit-knife brochures, terracotta pots with weeds in and bits of straw.
"I want a gurd," she was saying. "Or is it a yurd? Instead of a marquee. It's like a nomad's tent in Afghanistan with rugs on the floor, and I want long-stemmed patinated oilburners."
"What are you wearing"" I said, leafing through pictures of embroidered stick-thin models with flower arrangements on their heads and wondering whether to call an ambulance.
"I'm having it made. Abe Hamilton! Lace and lots of cleavage."
"What cleavage?" muttered Shaz murderously.
"That's what they should call Loaded magazie."
"I'm sorry?" said Jude coldly.
"'What Cleavage?'" I explained. "Like What Car?"
"It's not What Car? It's Which Car?" said Shaz.