Here is chapter two, with a cameo appearence by our very own That Announcer, who once played the small part of the Psychic Limo Driver.
Chapter 2: A Run…
Miss Liza Eewopp Mingostone walked to the window, and pulled aside the thin net curtains. It was eight thirty, and Mother had not yet returned home. She turned, and stepped back to the cots where Vibs and Viq slept with their faces turned to the sunlight that trickled through the windowpanes.
Something bad had happened. She just knew it. It had been a phone call.
It always started with a phone call.
“Miss Mingostone? Thank goodness you are home. Come quick. You must look after the twins. I have to go after Father.” It had been Mother. Mingostone had hurried to the house, met her on the porch. Mother had rapidly shoved the house keys into Liza’s fingers, and disappeared in the family car.
Liza had watched her go, her thin eyebrows forming into a frown above her green eyes, then she headed inside to where the twins were rapidly destroying the playpen.
Now it was morning, and the parents were not home. For any other household it would have been strange, but to Liza it was far more worrying than that. Strange was normal.
She walked down the stairs, and passed Vic asleep on the sofa. “School, Vic. Come on!”
Vic snored, and turned over. “Don’ wanna go to school,” he murmured through sleep.
“Yes, you must. Come on.” She poked his shoulder.
“Where’s dad?”
“He’s...out.”
Vic opened one eye. “Where’s Mum?”
“She went after him.”
The Dog sat up, scratched his ear, and then fell back to sleep. Vic groaned, and then lay back to sleep as well. Mingostone left them.
She picked up the kitchen telephone to dial out. Mother’s cell-phone number was pinned to the wall on a piece of yellow sticky paper with peeling edges. Glancing outside, she saw a man. He was stood across the road, but watching the house. His eyes were hidden by dark glasses.
He turned away.
And Liza frowned. She saw something black on the floor by the door. Father’s wallet.
*****
Father dug into his pocket for loose change. He couldn’t’t find his wallet. He’d left it in his coat, which he’d left with Mother. Unless it fell out when the coat caught on the door. He paid with change, and stepped out of Café Diana into the cold air on the sidewalk.
He passed faces, and people, without direction.
There was no compass here for him. Where to go. What to do.
He’d visit Uncle Bob. That was it. His brother would take him in until this was sorted out. Father looked at the time on his watch. They’d be a train out of town.
He turned towards the train station.
*****
Miss Mingostone turned the wallet over in her hand. It was leather, with the letter “M” in a corner. M for Moppet. M for Mother.
M for Mingostone
. She flipped it open, and checked the contents. Several notes, and some lose change. A credit card with the name, “B. Moppet.”
Mingostone wondered for a moment what Father’s full name was. She realized how little she knew of this family. Again a frown appeared, forming a line between her eyebrows.
“Mum!” Viq’s voice suddenly screamed from upstairs. “Vibs made my quilt into spiders!”
“Did not!” Vibs called. “They are daddy-long-legs.”
“Hey Kewl!” Viq said. “And I thought those were Crane-Flies.”
Liza Mingostone raised an eyebrow, and reached for the phone. As she touched it, it rang. “Hello Moppet Residence, Miss Mingostone speaking. I’m the Nanny they called for.”
“Ah, Mangostone! Is Christy there?” A man’s voice. Mingo glanced at the window. The strange man was stood there again, but not on the phone. So it was not him.
“No, she…”
“Good. I’ll…” The rest was drowned in the sound of a train whistle at his end, and then the connection was broken. Mingostone licked her lip, and replaced the phone. She looked down at the wallet in her hand. Something was going on. She glanced behind her. There was no one there. She slipped the credit card from the wallet, dropping it into her pocket.
“What was that?”
She turned. It was Vibs, sitting on the floor playing with wooden blocks. She hadn’t been there a moment ago, surely. “Good Morning!” Miss Mingostone said brightly.
“What did you put in your pocket?” Vibs asked, smiling innocently.
Slowly, Mingostone reached into her pocket. She looked at Vibs. Then pulled out a lollipop. “For you. A lollipop that taste like paint.”
Viq appeared behind her, floating above the ground. “She gets all the love!” he shouted, and burst into tears.
Mingostone handed him a lollipop tasting of tissue, and frowned. Everything here was normal. But somehow, somewhere, something was defiantly wrong.
*****
Aunt Dan-Dan stuffed a twig up his nose. Something was defiantly wrong. He pulled it out, looked at it curiously, and then put it back in his stripy sock.
*****
Father leapt out the car, and ran up the drive towards the house. He looked behind him, and slammed into Aunt Dan-Dan who was standing on her head while fixing a mousetrap into his hair. Father tripped, and rolled on the driveway. Snap! The mousetrap closed on Dan-Dan’s toes. “Oh joy!” he cried. “That’ll hurt in the morning!”
Father crawled up to a stand, and walked on towards the porch. The door opened as he closed in, and he saw her standing there with her hands on her hips. Miss Mingostone stepped aside as he passed her. “I need money,” Father said.
Mingostone said nothing, but flipped the wallet over in her hand.
“Oh, there it is.” Father snatched it up, and shoved it into his pocket. He ran up the stairs. Looked around. And walked into the twins room. Pinned above their bed was a framed portrait of the family. Mother, smiling. Father, Vic, Vibs, Viq, Aunt Dan-Dan.
Father snapped the edge off the frame, and slid the photo out onto his palm. He folded it in half.
Miss Mingostone watched him from the doorway of the room. “Vic won’t go to school,” she said.
Father turned on her fiercely. “Let Mother deal with it.” He pushed past her, and hurried down the steps.
“Dad?” Vibs said, crawling out of the kitchen. “Viq is lying. I didn’t put a spell on him to make him take a bath in the sink. He did it all by himself.”
Father brushed by without a word. Vibs shut her mouth, and stared. “Dad…?”
He got in the car, and drove away.
*****
Mother woke up with the sun in her eyes. She squinted and pulled the cover closer around her. A sleeve of the coat fell across her lap, she sat up quickly, and it slithered off her lap onto the floor by her feet. Father was gone.
She had to find him, had to explain. She should have spoken yesterday, but to break the silence would have killed her. Now it was too late. What if he did something rash? Who knew what Father could do...
Mother stood, and heard a small creak in her spine from sitting too long. She lifted the coat from where it had fallen, and held it open in front of her. Father had covered her in her sleep. He’d warmed her. Warmed her like he had that first time, with the quilt in the storm. She bit her lip, and pulled the coat to her, burying her head in the material.
Then her fists tightened, and she crushed the coat into a ball between her fingers. She’d find him. She’d tell him...but what would she tell him? What would she tell herself?
Christy Moppet sighed.
It had happened so long ago, and for it all to come back so fast, so soon, and to take everything away again was too much. It was all too much.
Father, Moppet. She had hated him so much, so long ago on that ship. And now she loved him, more than anything else in the world. But the past never escapes you. It always comes back. It was here. It had come. And she didn’t know quite what to do with it.
She reached behind her for the bench, and slumped onto the seat.
*****
Miss Mingostone picked up the phone. She looked at the number for Mother’s cell-phone, then dialled another from her head. She remembered another time, ringing another number, their solicitor. Then it had been Jack in trouble, deep trouble. Now it was another family that needed her help. At the other end of the line, a phone was picked up. “What?”
“Jack?” Mingostone said. “Hi! It’s Liza.”
“Liza? Man, do you now what time it is?”
“Tell me you weren’t sleeping.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
Liza half smiled. “You were.”
“I know, but you said not to tell you. What can I do for you, sis?”
Mingostone pulled Father’s credit card out of her pocket. “How is Don Canolli these days?”
“Huh?”
“I have something for you,” Miss Mingostone said matter-of-factly. “I need you to come over to the Moppet’s house right away.”
*****
Mother parked the car in the drive, and opened the door. Cool, and collected, she walked up the steps to the porch, and pushed open the front door. “Good morning, Miss Mingostone,” she said, opening her purse.
Mingostone nodded, and accepted the money for her night's babysitting. “Thank you,” Mother said. “You can go now if you want.”
Miss Mingostone watched the way Mother looked around the rooms, stepping from one to the next. “I got Vic to school,” she said. “He took Dog.”
Mother turned to her. “Where are the twins?”
“Upstairs.”
“Have you seen…is Father home?”
Miss Mingostone narrowed her eyes. “He came and went,” she said.
“What?!” Mother said. She clenched a fist, and started pacing. “Where did he go? Did he say?”
Mingostone shook her head quickly, her hair bouncing off her shoulders. “When he called he was at a train station.”
“What!” Mother exclaimed again. “Look, can you...would you mind…”
“I’ll look after the twins,” Miss Mingostone said.
“Thank you!” And Mother left again.
Miss Mingostone heard the car start, and drive away. She wondered if Father was in trouble.
*****
The ticket-officer sipped iced tea, and watched the people on the station running for trains. He had left behind a career in the Psychic Limousine Service, and decided to take a rest on his poor Psychic mind by doing a simple job such as selling train-tickets. A tingle of electricity tickled his brain as the man with brown hair and blue eyes approached the ticket desk. Before the man could speak, the ticket-officer pulled a ticket from the reel behind him, pinged in the amount on the computer, and slid the receipt and ticket across the counter to Mr Moppet.
“Have a safe trip,” he said. “Oh, and, I agree with you. Running is probably a good thing. Judging from pervious experiences you’ve had, Christy Moppet may not be in the mood for a conversation. Oh, don’t worry about your kids, I get a feeling Miss Mingostone, the Nanny you didn’t call for, will be looking after them fine until you get things patched up and sorted. You may want to give Uncle Bob a call before you leave on the train. Oh! Another customer, excuse me. Good morning Madam, here’s the ticket to your destination, oh, and I really think you should see a priest about that problem you are worrying over.”
The ticket-officer sighed. He was thinking of getting another job.
*****
Mother ran into the station. Father was here somewhere, and he was running. If he walked out on this life...he might never return to it.
Christy fought against the crowds and noise of the station, elbowing past old men and plump women that got in her path. She ran forward towards a single ticket-box. “Hey, you, excuse me. I’m looking for a man.” She pushed out of the crowd, and stopped, panting in front of the ticket-box. “My husband. He’s tall, dark hair, blue eyes. Travelling alone. Have you seen him?”
The man scrunched up his face. “I only just set down here, ma’am. The other freak guy quit.”
Christy stepped back, covered her face with her hands. Right. Don’t panic. She’d find him, she would. She just had to...
The world slowed before her, as the crowd parted. A woman in a long brown coat stepped aside, and a cat ran across the platform, and for a second Mother glimpsed the familiar red shirt of her husband, far ahead, stepping into a train. “Bo!” she yelled, starting forward. “Wait!”
He didn’t turn. He must not have heard her over the squeal of breaks as the train started forward. She heard a voice in her head. “Sis, you ok?”
Her brother. Mr Cole. “Not now,” she echoed back at him, but his voice had given her an idea. The train whistle screamed, blocking her thoughts, and the train pulled away, racing down the track. And Mother disappeared.
To be continued...
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