Pete gawped at the Morphy Richards blender on the kitchen side. ‘What happened to the new one?’
Claire grimaced. ‘Err… slight accident,’ she mumbled. It wasn’t unusual of her to breaking things. ‘Clumsy Claire’ as Pete called her. But this wasn’t a broken plate or chipped mug. This was a potential divorce!
Rewind back to the start of the week, when Pete’s mother came to visit. Cindy couldn’t help interfering, especially when it came to how Claire bought up the kids. It was always an ear-full of don’t do that, you shouldn’t do this – to a level where Claire had banned her from the house. That was before Pete’s dad suddenly up and died. She couldn’t send her away now, although the repetitive, oh, how will I cope, hand across the forehead, was getting beyond tedious.
On this particular occasion, Cindy was waiting impatiently at the front door clutching a ceramic pot of some sort, a large suitcase beside designer cerise heels. Pete appeared, only to be embraced into Cindy’s bosom and handed the pot.
‘It’s his ashes, I couldn’t bear to look at them any longer,’ she said, pushing past Claire to enter the house. ‘I thought you could place him in the kitchen. He loved to cook, you know. And I’ve had a wonderful photo of him framed to sit beside his urn! Oh, and Claire darling, hurry up with my suitcase before it starts raining.’
‘Be nice!’ Pete hissed at Claire’s exasperated expression, before following his mum inside.
Skipping forward a day; and after Cindy had spent the morning running her finger along dusty shelves and skirting boards, offering unapproving tuts, she finally joined Claire and the kids in the kitchen for smoothies.
‘Oh darling, you really do need to get a housekeeper, all this dust is bound to set of poor Pete’s allergies. And I dread to think what it is doing to Seb and Zara?
Claire ignored the comment. She’d heard it all before.
‘What is this?’ Cindy looked at her glass of light brown slop in distaste, while the kids necked theirs.
‘Is there more mummy?’ Seb asked, licking his lips.
Cindy lifted the glass and took a small mouthful, before screwing up her face in disgust. ‘Here, darling, have mine.’ She pushed the glass towards Seb. A moment later, Cindy’s face reminded her of a cat coughing up a furball.
After Claire’s poor attempt at the Heimlich manoeuvre, Cindy spat a lump of mango across the table. She sat down, hauling in deep breaths. ‘I thought that was going to be the end of me,’ she rasped, ‘Imagine if one of your kids had chocked on that.’
‘They haven’t so far,’ Claire growled back.
‘Well, you need a more powerful blender if you insist on feeding them these health drinks, although why you can’t feed them proper food is beyond me.’
Over supper, Cindy happily sensationalised the near-death chocking episode, and Pete agreed to buy a new blender to pacify her.
Cindy climbed into her Toyota Yaris the next morning and steamed out of the driveway, narrowly missing the courier turning in. His face was still white as he handed Claire the large Amazon delivery. Excited to have the house to herself, she carried the box to the kitchen table. After ripping off the outer packaging and polystyrene protective sheath, Claire admired the sexy metallic 900-Watt Nutribullet, like it was a trophy.
‘Wow, Mummy! What is it?’ Seb asked.
‘It’s our new smoothie maker,’ she replied, carrying it over to the side, and carefully squidging the four suction pads onto the kitchen surface.
The kids filled the cup with their favourite fruit and a scoop of ice-cream, seeing as it was a special occasion, before Claire added some nuts and seeds and protein powder to the mix. Following the instructions, she pressed the container down onto the base and twisted. When the machine whirred into action, they all jumped backwards and covered their ears in surprise, while Zara burst into tears. It was deafening!
Bearing the noise for a second, she turned it off at the plug and breathed a sigh of relief, her heart still pumping like a war-drum in her chest. ‘Bloody hell’ she whispered under her breath. I know how to discard of Cindy’s body if it ever came to it! she thought, although chopping her up into little bits to fit in the container didn’t exactly appeal.
The kids sat at the table with wide eyes and chubby smiles, eagerly watching Claire fill two glasses with smoothie. There were definitely no lumps in it this time. Followed by ‘more Mummy!’ and two greedy little faces peering up at her as she chopped the vegetables for supper.
‘Okay, hang on a sec.’ This time, she threw in a banana, oat milk, a handful of grapes and the other half of the mango. The blender screamed into life, but a moment later, a grey splurge of liquid oozed out of the side of the container, coating the base in a sticky sheen that spread onto the tabletop.
‘Balls!’ Claire shouted, flicking the switch and watching the now half full liquid slide back down the container to a halt. Smoothie was everywhere. Claire rolled her eyes, realising that in her hurry, she hadn’t tightened the lid.
‘Mummy!’ Seb called over, pointing and laughing at the sticky mess on the side, ‘It’s a volcano.’
Claire emptied what was left into Seb and Zara’s glass, before wiping up the side, cursing at the photo of Pete’s father smirking back at her from the ledge behind.
The next morning, Claire kissed Pete goodbye and set about preparing a soup for lunch. By ten-thirty, the kids were running figure of eights around her legs, yoyoing from screams to tears.
‘Who’s wants a peanut butter smoothie?’ Claire called out, almost tripping over Seb for the third time. Peanut butter smoothies were classed as the gold star of smoothies.
To a unanimous squeal of delight, she shooed them into the other room, chucked in the ingredients and set the blender into action. After an initial groan and lurch, the machine roared to life. Except, little did Claire realise, the suckers had become slippery from yesterday’s disaster, and as she pressed down on the cup, the whole Nutribullet took off like a rocket across the kitchen worktop.
Claire watched open-mouthed as the blender crashed straight through the photo frame of Pete’s father and into the urn, sending it flying. Being cylindrical, the urn proceeded to roll off the ledge and across the kitchen top, while Claire stood glued to the spot in horror. A final lunge and arm scrabble wasn’t enough to save it tumbling through the air and crashing onto the kitchen floor; showering grey ashes across the tiles, a mushroom cloud of dust in its wake.
Closing her mouth, she gulped, realising that the urn, now in a thousand fragments, was unsalvageable, but at least the ashes were retrievable, even if she had to sweep every single grain by hand. But as that thought settled her nerves, Seb skidded into the room carrying a glass of water. What they both didn’t expect, was for Seb to continue sliding across through his grandfather’s ashes, landing on his bum at his mum’s feet. Nor that Seb’s glass of water would fly from his hand, and spray across the floor like a garden sprinkler.
Claire screwed up her face, unsure whether to laugh or cry. Below her, Seb started crying, half soaked by water, the other half in shock. While all around him lay puddles of murky grey water. There was no salvaging this, but she had to try.
After drying Seb off, she set to work scooping up clumps of wet ash and pouring them into a tub before placing it the airing cupboard to dry out.
Pete arrived home an hour later.
‘What kind of accident are we talking about?’ His eyes scanned the room, pausing on the now empty spot where his father’s picture frame and ashes once sat. ‘Where…?’
Claire didn’t let him finish; instead, she guided him over to a chair. After a large gulp of air, wishing it was a large whiskey, she told him the story.
Pete was belly laughing before she had even finished. ‘Oh, thank God,’ he said, hands raised to the sky.
Claire stared at him with furrowed brows. ‘You mean you don’t want a divorce?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Pete chuckled, gripping her hand in his. ‘I’ve been thinking of ways to remove that hideous photo of him and his ashes for days.’ He leant forward and kissed her lips. ‘You’re a bloody genius.’
The prompt was to write a short story about an everyday object in the house. I chose my NutriBullet – which genuinely terrifies me it is so powerful
Copyright © 2019 Lottie McKnight. All rights reserved.