The Reject's Club

Chapter 3

Caroline parted from her friends later that afternoon. She let herself into her house via the back door, just as the sky was darkening into twilight. She turned her key in the lock and couldn't help but notice that the inside of the house seemed much colder than outdoors. She shivered involuntarily, pulled her thick black ski jacket tighter around her body and thought ominously: abandon hope all ye who enter here!

She moved stealthily through the house, walking on tiptoes so as to avoid clip-clopping in her stiletto heels. The kitchen was in darkness, although she could see the remains of the cold buffet tea her mother usually laid out every Sunday. The room smelled of boiled sprouts, roasted fat and cleaning fluids.

So her mother had bothered to do the washing up then, thought Caroline, most probably not leaving it in case she took it upon herself to clear up. Her way. We can't have that now, can we? Caroline said to herself with not a little sarcasm. Her mother didn't like anyone interfering with her household management.

She passed the living room, where she could hear the television, the voices of her parents and the sounds of her siblings playing. As she slithered past the bubbly glass door, she heard a lull in her mother and father's conversation. They'd seen her come in then. She moved to the next room, the front room, (her ineloquent mother always pronounced it funt room) which now served as her bedroom.

There was something about this house that always felt terribly wrong and oppressive, and to Caroline misery seeped from every wall.

For all of the hard front she represented to the world, Caroline Vallely was, deep down,a sensitive soul, finely tuned to others emotions although not always careful enough to respect those feelings. She possessed an overactive imagination and developed stories in her intellectual mind about every possible scenario.

As she'd grown older,Caroline began to understand what was wrong with the home in which she lived. Firstly, it was north facing, the only places that ever caught any sunlight being the back bedroom- a real sun trap- and the back garden. Also, despite her mother's efforts, this house was virtually impossible to keep spik-and-span as it was an old, turn of the century home, and dust re-formed everywhere within hours of brushing it off. Also Caroline's parents had a tendency towards hoarding and untidiness which offended the pristine Caroline, who liked things to be neat and uniform. Caroline's father, John Vallely, ran an industrial cleaning business with her uncle and seemingly did not take his work home with him. Her mother Mary was,Caroline had long ago acknowledged, plain slovenly. She only ever made half-hearted attempts to tidy and so consequently every room was bordering on disarray, with junk everywhere. Bad karma,thought Caroline.

In this respect Caroline was being a bit unfair as Mary Vallely, mother of five, did try to keep the muck to a minimum but found this impossible, what with the daily constraints of having such a large family. Unlike many mothers, who roped in their children to do their bit, Mary liked to tackle everything herself: to do otherwise would seem confirmation that she could not cope. Also, Mary had always been seethingly jealous of her dynamic eldest child Caroline, who was everything she was not. From an early age, when asked to do something, Caroline would ignore her parents' instructions and do it her way,which always turned out to be the more efficient way, and so she consequently managed to make both parents look and feel like dirt,inferior. She also had a natural winning way with her brothers, four and six years younger than herself, and her sisters, eleven and thirteen years younger. Mary did not have this relaxed charm that Caroline owned in abundance, and so was therefore in envious awe of her daughter, and guarded her younger children and her house covetously. They were hers- not her daughter's.

Whilst Caroline's relationship with her mother had begun to deteriorate from birth, her father had not really started on her until a couple of years ago,generally speaking being too tied up with his business partnership. Although VIC (Vallely Industrial Cleaning)- not a very imaginative name thought Caroline- was a success, there was a fair bit of competition in the area. What with the responsibilities of having a mortgage and a big, growing family, John Vallely always kept an eye on the pennies to the point of parsimony. Nowadays, whenever Caroline was having a snack or listening to her music the cry would ring out, 'What do you think you're doing eating my food?'or, 'What do you think you are doing using my electricity?' Miserable, mean git, thought Caroline. It was not her fault that he had so many children or that times were hard. She did her bit.