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I hear the soft hiss, followed by the click of her seatbelt releasing, and the clusterfuck of tonight comes crashing back. The guilt sits heavy in my chest. Especially now that I know more about her situation. How she’s living only makes it worse. The doctor said she’s out of action for at least the next seven days, so I need to find a way to help her without making her feel like a charity case.
If my side hustle has taught me anything, it’s that struggling doesn’t mean broken. The people who have the least are often the ones with the most pride, resilience, and determination to stand on their own two feet.
I catch the faint hint of Daisy’s perfume as she leans forward in her seat and looks through the front windscreen. “Oh my god,” she murmurs. “Is that smoke coming out of my window?”
I squint, trying to see what she does. “Where?”
“There,” she says, extending her arm into the front of the cab. Her heavily bandaged hand looks comically oversized, like a puffy white marshmallow, as she points towards the faded baby-shit-brown van with a thick white GT stripe running down the centre.
At first, I don’t see anything, but a few seconds later, a cloud of white smoke billows from the window. “Yes … yes, it is.”
The Uber is still creeping along at a snail’s pace, but that doesn’t stop Daisy from opening her back door.
“Wait here,” I instruct the driver.
He slams on the brakes, bringing the car to an abrupt stop. Before I can even remove my seatbelt, Daisy’s already out, racing towards the van. “Fuck,” I mumble as I follow.
Daisy screeches to a halt when she reaches the window. “Are you friggin’ kidding me, Mabel? Are you smoking in my van?”
I hear a panicked, “Oh shit,” before a glowing red cigarette tip flies out of the window and lands on the ground by our feet. “I wasn’t expecting you home so early.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Daisy grumbles as she marches towards the flimsy metal door of the annex attached to the van. By the time she gets there, an older woman with curlers in her silver hair appears in the doorway. I can only assume she’s Mabel.
“There’s a baby in there!” Daisy shrieks. A baby? My head snaps towards the van. “I can’t believe you were smoking inside!”
“Calm down, Daisy. I was blowing the smoke out the window.”
“You should’ve been outside? How didn’t I know you were a smoker?”
Mabel lets out a frustrated breath. “Stan thinks I gave it up years ago. So when I knew I’d be over here for hours looking after Jonah, I snuck a few ciggies into my bra.”
“Who’s Stan?” I find myself asking. Daisy and Mabel’s heads snap to me. “And who’s Jonah?”
Daisy covers her face with her marshmallow hands and sighs as Mabel answers my questions. “Stan is my big baboon of a husband. I live over there,” she says, jutting her chin towards the relocatable home across the road. “And Jonah is Daisy’s son.”
“You have a son?”
Daisy doesn’t answer; instead, she drops her tense shoulders and refocuses her attention on Mable.
“What happened to your hands?” Mabel asks.
“I fell and cut them on some glass, but that’s irrelevant right now. Do you realise how bad second-hand smoke can be for babies?”
“Oh, hodgepodge,” Mabel counters with a flick of her hand. “You Millennial babies and your labels.”
When she rolls her eyes, Daisy lets out a tiny growl in frustration. “I’m actually Gen Z, thank you very much. And that’s beside the point. It’s a scientific fact that second-hand smoke is bad for you.”
Mabel’s hands move to her hips. “I smoked through all eight of my pregnancies, and my kids came out fine. Well, except for my oldest, Ricky. That boy’s a lost cause. Been in and out of prison most of his life. Oh, and Graham … Graham’s got the common sense of a teaspoon. Lovely heart, but absolutely no idea what day it is half the time.”
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from laughing as she ticks them off on her fingers.
“Then there’s Cheryl. Still thinks she can sing. She can’t, by the way. Those high notes …” She shudders at the thought. “They’re more of a wail. Sounds like someone’s standing on a cat’s tail if I’m being honest. When she was a kid, the neighbours were always threatening to call the police because of the noise. And Michael? Well, Michael’s a mirror image of his father, which is explanation enough. The rest are perfectly fine, though.”
I can’t help it; my shoulders shake with silent laughter. “Four out of eight aren’t bad odds,” I murmur, and Daisy immediately rewards me by stomping on my foot.
“Excuse me,” she says, shooting me a death glare before squeezing past Mabel and entering the annex. Of course, I follow, because I’m a nosy bastard, and curiosity has always been my downfall.
I can’t believe she has a kid. And where is the father? Did I commit adultery tonight when I kissed her? That thought doesn’t sit well with me at all. I’m a lot of things, but a homewrecker isn’t one of them.
