Page 4 of A Wish For Wilma
‘Jeez, have you ever seen anything like it?’ Cans of tomatoes, kidney beans, chickpeas and tuna, lined up with military precision, labels facing outwards. And somanytins of tomatoes, at least twenty. Did they bathe in the bloody stuff?
Wilma shuddered as she recalled watching a movie many moons ago, about a psycho husband with an unhealthy obsession for tidiness.Sleeping with The Enemy,starring that actress who’d bagged herself Richard Gere. Not in real life, but playing a prostitute in another film.
‘I’m pretty sure Sam disnae have psycho tendencies,’ she mused. ‘Although the bathroom towels look like they’ve been hung with a measuring tape.’
As no effort was required in the kitchen, Wilma moved to the hallway. Discreet cupboards and shelving units lined the entire area under the stairs. The tallest housed coats, jackets and shoes. The next held a selection of jigsaw puzzles, board games and DVDs, which Wilma noted were in alphabetical order.
So much for using tidying as a distraction. Perhaps she’d bake a wee cake to welcome Jinnie home. About to shuffle back to the kitchen, Wilma paused. One cupboard had a lock on it. A large, silver padlock which she’d never noticed before. Why padlock a cupboard door, unless it housed a porn collection or valuable jewellery? But who would keep those in the hallway? Anyway, that padlock was a magnet for a wannabe burglar. Keep your outerwear and Trivial Pursuit, here’s where the good stuff lives!
Not one for carrying bolt cutters or lock picks — a pack of Polo mints, tissues and her vape for emergencies inhabited her handbag — Wilma waggled the lock. Definitely secure and no key in sight. Not that Jinnie or Sam would be daft enough to leave a key in the lock. But hadn’t she spied a bunch of keys in the kitchen?
As she’d thought, they were tucked in the corner of the cabinet housing tea, coffee and miscellaneous biscuits. Sniffing at the box of teabags (an abomination in her eyes), Wilma unhooked the keys and jiggled them in her palm.
You are absolutely not going to open that cupboard!Wilma’s conscience gave her a nudge and she closed her fingers around the keys. Ach, she’d put them back and crack on with a nice Victoria sponge. If they had any jam or Victorians.
Chortling at her own weak joke, Wilma reached up to replace the keys. Then she paused. What harm would it do to have a wee peek? Sam had told her to make herself at home.
Wilma returned to the hallway with the keys. Only two possible contenders: a brass number that looked more like a suitcase key and a silver one that seemed a better match. She inserted the silver key into the lock, and … voilà!
Ignoring the screaming of her conscience, Wilma carefully removed the padlock. She prayed that she wouldn’t learn something unsavoury about Sam, something that once seen could never be unseen.Leather outfits, masks, dusters that had bugger all to do with dusting…
As if Sam would keep his fetish gear in a hall cupboard.Wilma needed to rein in her Twitter obsession. Too many dodgy, fetish-obsessed types on there. One had messaged her the other day saying he had a thing about grannies. Did she fancy being tied up and smeared in Deep Heat? Bloody cheek! She knew she should have kept her Charlize Theron profile pic. And so what if some joints ached? Even lassies much younger than Wilma complained of creaky bits.
And speaking of creaky… The cupboard door squeaked open with a sound befitting a Hammer horror movie. Perhaps it contained a dead body? After all, Sam wrote gritty thriller novels with their fair share of corpses.
Wilma tutted. Her imagination wasn’t so much running riot as heading for the stratosphere.Get a grip, woman!
Torn between shame at her nosiness and rampant curiosity, she nudged the door fully open. Wilma gawped in disbelief at the contents. Two old oil lamps nestled on a ruby-red velvet cushion.
Whatever she’d expected to find, this wasn’t it. Why, in the name of the wee man, would Sam and Jinnie keep two lamps locked in a cupboard? A quick scan revealed nothing more than a liberal coating of dust. That she could remedy easily enough.
Locating cleaning equipment under the sink, Wilma returned to the hallway armed with a cloth duster and a tin of metal polish. She tutted again. If she gave the cupboard and lamps a good clean-up, she might as well hang a sign on the door saying:Nosy old bat alert.Do not allow her to darken the doorstep again.
Still, she didn’t need to polish the lamps. They looked in reasonable nick, though they didn’t strike her as particularly valuable. In fact, hadn’t she seen them somewhere before?
Wilma removed one lamp and blew on it, then coughed at the cloud of dust and gave it a perfunctory going-over with the duster. She repeated the process with the second lamp, her mind searching for clues to where she might have come across them.
Jo’s café! Although her brain cells might be diminishing daily, Wilma prided herself on a good memory. She’d bet her pensioner bus pass that these lamps had graced a shelf in A Bit of Crumpet. So how had they ended up in an under-stairs cupboard? More importantly, why?
The pinging of her phone interrupted Wilma’s thoughts. She hurried back to the kitchen and looked at the screen. Sam.
All OK. Seems this can happen but it doesn’t mean anything bad. Scan shows baby totally fine. Jinnie currently inhaling a chocolate muffin and demanding to come home ASAP. Maybe tomorrow. There’s a homemade lasagne in the fridge if you fancy it and a decent bottle of red on the wine rack. I’ll be back in an hour or so.
Jeez Louise! Panic gripped Wilma and she rushed back to the hallway. To calm down, she gave the lamps another buff. She doubted either Jinnie or Sam would notice her prying as she replaced the lamps on the cushion. Manoeuvring the padlock into place, Wilma inserted the key and turned it firmly.
So firmly that it snapped, leaving her holding the end. The remainder was wedged in the padlock, a testament to her crime.
‘Hell’s bells and buckets of blood!’ Wilma’s panic level rose another notch. Sorely tempted to call a taxi and disappear, she eyed the padlock with disgust. Her stubby fingers had no chance of wrenching it free; the only possibility was using tweezers. Not that she had any on her. Wilma let her eyebrows do their own thing. More Denis Healey than Cindy Crawford, but at her age hair took on its own momentum. Thinning on top, sprouting from the chin, and she hadn’t checked ‘downstairs’ in a long time.
Rifling through Jinnie’s stuff for tweezers wasn’t an option: she’d already crossed the privacy line. A disgraced gran who couldn’t resist poking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted.
There was only one thing to do. Well, two. Uncork that vino, bung the lasagne in the oven, and sip a wee glass outside while she had a quick vape. Desperate times called for desperate measures. That made three things, but arithmetic was never Wilma’s thing.
In the garden — more of a courtyard, with a few plant pots and wilting herbs — Wilma vaped with a vengeance and glugged a not-so-wee glass of Rioja. Downing the entire bottle was tempting, but she needed to keep her wits about her. She’d already turned on the oven and fixed a side salad.
‘Oh Gus, I’ve really made a dog’s dinner of it, haven’t I?’ Wilma contemplated ringing him so that he could whisk her off in his rickety van. Less Bonnie and Clyde, more Darby and Joan, stuttering along the high street with an irate Sam in pursuit. Not an option. Wilma needed to confess her sins and pray that Sam allowed for her advanced years and good intentions. Those were slightly undermined by breaking and entering a locked cupboard, but she’d come up with a plausible excuse.
Fifteen minutes and another glass of Rioja later, Wilma had zero excuses. She hoped wine and dinner would smooth any ruffled feathers. The lasagne bubbled away nicely, although she eyed the balsamic vinegar and olive oil Sam had left out for the salad with disdain. Who needed that foreign stuff when a good slather of salad cream more than tickled the taste buds?
