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about ( with her black eyeliner on ).
    Me: I feel guilty about the cleaning.
    MK: Well, you don’t need to. Yes, it would have been nice if, occasionally, you’d tidied up just a bit. But you do all the important stuff—you idiot. And you feed Lucas.
    Me: You mean Jack.
    MK: Yes, Jack.
    So it’s OK and I can just be glad that, once a week, it’s going to smell of floor polish and the mouthpiece on the phone will have been wiped with a J cloth.
    Love, Nina
    *  *  *
    Dear Vic,
    Noticed a skip in the crescent today, up the posh end. Will and me like skips and Sam was interested to see his first ever skip. So we went to have a look at it. It was quite a big one. I thought it would be funny to put Sam in it (the skip), so I did. We were all laughing and Sam’s laugh was echoing around inside the skip.
    Sam: There’s a thing in here.
    Me: What is it?
    Sam: I don’t know.
    Him saying that made me think I’d better get him out, but it was difficult because when I tried to lift him out he seemed about ten times heavier than when I lifted him in. And it was deep, plus we were laughing a lot and that weakens you (as you know from the near drowning at St. Margaret’s). Will was helpful and offered to get into the skip himself and help from the inside, but I wanted at least one of them not in the skip. But in the end, Will had to.
    Will: Shall I get in?
    Me: No.
    Will: Shall I fetch Jonathan Miller? ( We were just along from his house. )
    Me: No!
    Will: Bennett?
    Me: No!
    Will: Nunney?
    Me: No, we’ve got to do this ourselves.
    Will: So, shall I get in then?
    Me: OK.
    Anyway, Will got in and they both got out and I said not to tell Mary-Kay. Later AB said he’d seen us “messing about with Ursula Vaughan Williams’ skip.”
    MK: Nicking stuff out of it?
    AB: Chucking stuff in, from what I could see.
    MK: Chucking what in?
    Sam & me: Nothing.
    Will: Rubbish from the street.
    Good old Will, he always knows what to say, which is amazing when you think he’s only nine.
    AB wouldn’t stop going on about the woman whose skip we’d been messing around in.
    AB: She’s the widow of Ralph Williams.
    Me: Who?
    AB: The composer.
    Me: A composer called Ralph?
    AB: Have you never heard of The Lark Ascending ( hums tune )?
    Sam: I know that one, it was on Bugs Bunny.
    I’m doing lots of cooking too, and beginning to get the hang. The worst thing is knowing when a thing is going to be done. How do you know? A chicken seems to take forever. I know the “juices have to run clear” when you stab the leg, but they never do (run clear). So my chickens can be a bit dried out, but at least they’re not going to kill anyone. The secret is to baste them with oil.
    Love, Nina
    *  *  *
    Dear Vic,
    Will is fed up with an overly strict teacher being a bit horrible. I suggested that whenever the teacher is being shouty, Will should imagine him naked on the toilet.
    MK: Why does he have to be naked? Couldn’t he just be on the toilet?
    Me: Oh, yes. I meant just on the toilet.
    MK: ( weary ).
    Me: I didn’t mean to say naked.
    Will: ( head in hands ) Aargh!
    MK: Now look what you’ve done.
    Me: ( to Will ) Sorry, forget him being naked, just imagine him on the toilet, but fully clothed.
    Sam: But with his trousers down.
    Will: Too late, I can’t get the picture out of my head.
    MK: ( shaking head ).
    Me: Is he the maths teacher?
    MK: Just leave it.
    AB is back and came over just for pudding because he’d had a late snack with Coral. Coral is a friend who AB likes a lot who seems to always be saying funny/clever things that make AB laugh. He says Coral’s as sharp as a tack. And it’s a bit “Coral said this” and “Coral said that” at the moment.
    This Coral is an actress but I’d never heard of an actress called Coral, so it occurred to me that AB was just saying it funny and it was actually Carol —I