Soup Day

Tuesday 2.12.09

It is bizarre how a single day can have a blot of dark, a pool of light, and a tin of soup, but so it was today.

H has needed to give a police statement as a witness. The thought of it, and of the friend to whom it relates has been at the forefront for a few days. In tawdry sitcom style, H went off to school as normal today, but fifteen minutes later, I got the call to say she was required. Nick rang the school which tracked her down, the teacher getting the wrong end of the stick and thinking that H had done something bad. That resolved, she was shown out of a secret gate known only to staff, and was on her way home again. Our anxiety increased as even as we were walking to the police station, we got another phone call asking where we were.

The CID officers were bright, and kind. I somehow hadn't been expecting a twenty-five year old woman in a good suit and spiky heels, but she was the sort of person who I would gladly take as a role model. The video taped interview was as gentle as possible, but harrowing. H cried, and this is an extremely uncommon thing. As she had lessons that she wouldn't have to catch up on in the afternoon, I kept her home. She made herself soup, and then slept the afternoon away in a rare display of teenage indolence. Sometimes, I think it has to be enough to be glad that it's not your own child that is suffering. I think of H's friend and her Mum though.

Late afternoon, we went out to H's interview at Henley College. This went extremely well, and H has another offer of a place to consider. We especially liked the lecturer. A clean shaven man in a long mud green coat. Pinned to the lapel of the coat was a floral broach, a bunch of cornflowers I think. It seemed incongruous in a pleasant way, and he was charming enough to make me consider asking him about it. I didn't though. He spent some time looking at the photographs on the wall with us, and telling us about them and the photographers who made them with some pride. H warmed to him and talked freely about her work. She'll have to pick between the newly built college with arrogance painted into the walls and on to the faces of some of the staff, and the scruffy old building with the warm personality. Or A'levels of course, but that seems less likely now. I'm glad she has her sights on something, and that she's clear headed about it.

What happened to One Hundred Days? I intended to take a photo on the way back from the police station, but it wasn't appropriate. As the light was fading, H and I walked around the back of Henley College and I got my camera out. Battery flat. That was that. As I was saying yesterday: it's just like a New Years resolution. They generally start on the 2nd. Don't they?