Business As Usual - Betty Chatterjee (novels in english txt) 📗

It was business as usual.Mrs. Elizabeth Friar, otherwise known in the family as Simon’s Granny, collected Simon from kindergarten; it was what she always did without fail, every single Wednesday afternoon.

When she arrived that afternoon he was playing in the sandpit with Garry. They had just finished building a flyover and their play was getting wilder and wilder, as they made their toy cars leap higher and higher and land further and further away. Elizabeth came through the gate just as the game was reaching a noisy climax.

When Simon caught sight of her the look that came into his eyes clearly said:
‘No, not now Granny, we’re having fun!'
She shook her head gently but decisively and with a faint smile she said:
‘Yes, Simon, we’ve got to go home now.’
‘NO!’
She took hold of him firmly, pulled him out of the sandpit and brushed him down, saying:
‘The sand will still be here tomorrow, Simon.’
Then kicking her shin he screeched:
‘I wanted Daddy to come!’
Granny winced, rubbed her shin and sighed:
‘Simon, we’ve got a bus to catch.’

Bus was the magic word! Grabbing her hand they set off. Granny understood dawdling and simple pleasures like snails, bottle tops and puddles. It had rained heavily that day and there were puddles galore. Forgetting the bus she let him wade and splash through each and every one of them:
‘What else are Wellingtons for? Enjoy!’
So he enjoyed. Then damp but happy they drove home. After helping him change his togs they sat down together on the sofa sipping hot chocolate and eating the buns that she had brought with her. Afterwards they sang nursery rhymes and she read him ‘Jack and the beanstalk’. Then when Jeremy his father walked in she looked at her watch and said:
‘Well that’s that Simon, you’re a good boy. Now I’m going to love you and leave you.'

She went out in the hall, put on her coat, picked up her bag, went out of the front door and hurried down the street.

The following Wednesday Garry and Simon spent the whole afternoon playing in the sandpit until Gary’s mother collected him. By this time the six other children left in the playground were intent on colonizing Mars. Simon offered to join their crew, but there was no room for a seventh astronaut. That peeved him no end, so grabbing the nearest tricycle he set off to sabotage their project.

Brenda, who was on duty that afternoon, was just about to tear him off a strip when the phone rang:
‘No, he’s still here.’
‘No, we haven’t heard anything from your mother. We assumed it was business as usual.’
‘Oh, dear that’s odd! No answer?’
‘You’ll be along to collect him then?’
‘A few minutes after 5 will be ok.’

For the first time ever he was the last child to be collected. Brenda kept him amused with a video and an ice-lolly, until well after 5, when his mother finally arrived. She was out of breath, sweating and flustered.
‘I’m so sorry! I can’t imagine what’s happened! She’s never let us down before. I’ve rung her number no end of times this afternoon.’
‘When did you last speak to her?’
‘She rang me last Wednesday morning.’
‘Not since?’
‘No, I’ve been so busy.’
‘Weren’t you worried not hearing from her?’
‘Not really, I could see she was on Messenger, so…no.’
‘Well, don’t worry! There must be a reasonable explanation’. Brenda said, as she ushered them out of the door.

She could just as easily have said that Granny had scored the last seat on the space shuttle to Mars.

Simon’s Granny was gone.

Over now to Simon’s father Jeremy who can relate the next episode of this story!

'Susan was out of her friggin mind when I came home from work that evening; red eyes, running mascara and the whole caboodle. Honest to God I’d never seen her like that before! When I finally got the story out of her I was gob smashed. Until then I’d thought the old girl was every bit as reliable as Big Ben. So after grabbing a bite to eat I went round to her flat to see if she was lying in a pool of blood or something equally revolting.

The only snag was we didn’t have her key.

When I got there it was dark. I rang the bell, pounded the door and shouted through the letter-box; no reply. In desperation I finally resorted to asking the neighbors whether they had her key or had seen her recently. Nobody remembered seeing her for a long time and nobody had a key. So I called a locksmith who promised to come immediately.

Settling myself down on the steps outside her flat I chewed my finger nails until he arrived an hour afterwards. Ten minutes and an exorbitant bill for his services later I entered the flat.

I had expected the worst, but what awaited me was beyond my comprehension. Apart from the heavy, amber-colored, velvet curtains the flat was totally empty. I went from one room to the other and there was not the slightest relic of human habitation. The kitchen cupboards were bare and the fridge door stood ajar.

So I relocked the door and went home with load of unanswered questions:
Why had she debunked and when?
What had she done with all her junk?
Why hadn’t she told us that she was going to move?
Where was she?
What the hell was the old hag up to?
How’s Susan going to take all this?


In the mean time Susan had pulled herself together. She had rung round all the hospitals, reasoning that if her mum had had a stroke or gone stark, raving mad in the street, the hospital might not know whom to get in touch with. She might not have had our telephone number and address in her handbag. By the time I came home, Susan had already eliminated that possibility. She had even packed Simon off to bed.

When I told her about the state of the flat she went berserk again.
'I don’t understand, I don’t understand what’s got into her.
How can she do this to me?
Where’s her sense of duty?
Doesn’t she understand what she’s doing to Simon? Wednesday afternoons are tops for him; he loves his Wednesday bus rides and buns.
She’s got no sense of responsibility - She knows how we rely on her.
What the hell am I saying? She wouldn’t do it! She’s been abducted and murdered. They ransacked the flat. Anything could have happened!
Jerry go and report this to the police immediately!’

So I went round to the police station. The policeman on duty took down all the details and promised to get in touch with me immediately they had any news. They never did, even though we rang them every day, for weeks and weeks and weeks.

In the end I went down to the police station again and demanded to speak to the chief constable.
I was ushered into her office.

The chief constable was a stately, gray haired, bespectacled woman probably in her mid-sixties. Ensconced behind a mahogany desk she was studying a thick file, presumably including information about my mother-in-law.
‘Am I right in thinking that you are less than satisfied with the way we are handling this case?’
‘Yes, something like that!’
‘She’s missing, but we have no evidence of foul play. Was she senile?'
‘No.’
‘Have you got in touch with her friends, her social network?’
‘Friends? Network? She believed in keeping herself to herself.’
‘Lonely?’
‘No idea.’
‘How often did you see her?’
‘Every Wednesday, when she picked our little boy up from kindergarten.’
‘What about the other six and a half days of the week? Where did she go? Whom did she see? What was she interested in?’
‘No idea! We didn’t really talk very much. Not that we were at loggerheads, but not on the same wavelength.’
‘ Did she have a man-friend?’
‘Do me a favor! The good lady’s 63 and she’s got a face like the back of a bus. Do you honestly think that any man…?’
‘Not exactly a mine of information, are you?’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Safer to keep your mother-in-law at arms length isn’t it? I never stuck my nose into her business and she returned the compliment.’
‘That’s what she’s probably doing now; happily minding her own business. A disappearing act like this is not a crime. Quite a few of our so-called missing persons just want to get away from their loving families so they can make a fresh start. One of these days she might find the time to send you a card saying that she’s minding her own business in peace and quiet. If we hear anything we’ll let you know. Really we’ll

let you know.
We’ll

call you.’

After weeks of humming and hawing about confidentiality the housing association, pensions department and the bank confirmed that:
She had given up the tenancy of her flat.
Her pension was still being paid into the bank and that their client Mrs. Elizabeth Friar had been withdrawing money at regular intervals.
When I asked where she was living, they clammed up; confidentiality is confidentiality.

Well at least we knew that she was in the land of the living and that for whims and fancies beyond any sane person’s comprehension she did not want anything to do with us.

Did I care? Well apart from feeling thoroughly pissed off on Susan’s behalf, it was a relief not having to look at her ugly mug every friggin Wednesday afternoon!'


Susan and Jeremy soon found a solution to their Wednesday problem; an expensive solution, but a solution.

Esmeralda was a chronically out of pocket teenager who never looked a gift horse in the mouth. Seen from Simon’s point of view she was a mixed blessing. She did not do dawdling, puddles, snails, buns or nursery rhymes. Neither did she take it too kindly if he kicked her shins. On the other hand Esmeralda allowed him to watch as many cartoons as he wanted and she always brought him a bag of gobstoppers. So when they got home Esmeralda would first put on a video and then clutching her cell phone she would plop down beside him on the sofa. Thus mesmerized by the video and with his mouth fully occupied, she would spend the afternoon keeping tags on her friends. As soon as she heard Jeremy’s key in the lock Esmeralda was always rearing to go. All she needed was to grab her coat, pocket her pay and skedaddle!

Life was waiting to be lived and on Wednesday evenings she had the where withal to live it.


Leading busy but well regulated lives Susan and Jeremy soon got over the shock of Granny’s departure. With the Wednesday problem out of the way the only thing that niggled them was that unsolvable enigma: what had she been getting up to?

The following year they went on holiday to St. Tropez. They booked a luxury flat overlooking the harbor on one side and well-tended gardens on the other. Simon was delighted by the children’s pool in the grounds. Susan and Jeremy were even more delighted when they discovered