You call this fate?

Chapter 23

Mr. Rodwell knocked about fifteen minutes after I hung up with Tasha. I opened the door to let him in.

"Your doorbell doesn't work," he offered as a greeting.

"Nice observation, sir. Have you been this observant your whole life?"

He had changed into a comfortable brown jumper and jeans. This was the first time I had seen Mr. Rodwell in jeans and the vision did nothing good with my already irrational heart. They were dark blue and looked to have been pressed.

I gulped.

He strode into the house as if coming here once before had made him master of it. "So, are you people ready?" he asked, looking around. "Where are the bags? Conrad will be here in a moment to get them."

"Conrad?" I asked.

"He's my... I don't know. He doesn't exactly have a designation. He's a help in everything, that is."

"Your nanny?"

He frowned at me. "Considering some of the things he does? I don't think so."

I snorted.

"Are you ready?" he asked again, sounding irritated. "We don't have all day."

"I see. Well, I am sure they are."

I went toward the room. After the chat with Tasha, I had been so exhausted that all I did was lie on the couch and look at the ceiling. I had no idea what it was that they were doing inside but the sounds they made were enough to keep me leagues away.

I opened the door.

Inside I found a war zone. There were clothes and shoes and toys littered on every horizontal surface. The bed was stripped, with the pillows lying on the ground like slaughtered animals. Not one thing was where it was supposed to be. It was like instead of packing things up, they had been ripping everything to shreds.

I knew I should have checked when the glass shattered.

Ella was sitting in the middle of the bed, beside an over-flowing yellow bag, a board of snake and ladder in her hands. When she saw me in the doorway, she sprang off and came towards me. "Mommy," she asked. "I can't decide if I should take this board or the monopoly. Which one do you think?"

"What have you been doing here?" I asked, not able to believe two little girls and an old woman could destroy so much in such a short time. What did they do, set a bomb off?

"We were packing Mommy, just like you said. Now, whi-"

"Where are Granny and Hannah?" I asked, a hand on the doorjamb to steady myself.

"Oh, Hannah's over there," she said impatiently, waving her hand at a mountain of clothes that was crawling over the ground. When did we buy so many clothes? "She dropped my red marble. She's searching for it. And Granny," she said, pointing towards the bathroom. "had to answer nature's call. She went to take the call in the bathroom. Where did nature get her number from, Mommy?"

Mr. Rodwell suddenly materialised beside me. It took him only one look inside to sum up the situation perfectly.

"We aren't going to be leaving very soon, are we?"

***

It took us two hours to finally get all the mess in order. At last, the reassuring sight of the two small suitcases standing side by side on the coffee table almost drove me to tears.

Mr. Rodwell's no-designation help had come along too, and, on discovering that the bags were still not packed, had tried to make a beeline for the door, only to be stopped by his boss and send back inside to help us in his stead. I did feel sorry for the tiny, nervous young man when Ella chewed some gum and stuck it in his carrot coloured hair. Not on purpose, of course, she swore. But as I rubbed oil into the spot and tried to comb the gum out, I say her exchange a glance with Hannah and Granny that I really did not like. All in all, Conrad's help, as reluctant as it might have been, was appreciated none the less.