Parcel for you...Part 21

 

Annie was as much part of the modern world as Spencer, in that she was unsentimental about people’s weaknesses, unsympathetic to the experiences which form what some people refer to as unconscious bias. She maintained an almost robotic matter-of-factness especially when it came to communicating with members of her own family. 

 

Being young, she was untainted enough to be objective and had little understanding of the emotions which govern peoples’ sometimes out of date thinking. Vanessa had become a little intimidated by her daughter over the years, or rather by her daughter’s brand. Annie was building up an impressive profile. It started in secondary school, she joined debating clubs and it quickly became impossible to win an argument with her especially since she armed herself with the phrase, ‘educate yourself’.

 

The sympathy she withheld from family members was banked and handed out generously to complete strangers and high profile underdogs, human or otherwise. She once broke into a chicken farm, released some hens and threw the eggs around. After being let off with a caution she was interviewed by the local paper, she claimed the farm symbolised female subjection, male obliteration and contempt of the embryo. She dyed her blonde hair blue then shaved it and grew a generous fluffula of armpit hair and none of this was a fad. 

 

Since graduating from university she had taken part in various placements, all overseas because the needy on her doorstep held very little value in terms of her personal kudos credit system. These placements were building blocks in her quest for achieving the status of a modern saviour, a crusader of the new order. She could save people who didn’t even know they needed saving, both flora and fauna and the outer edges of our atmosphere; she pleaded for the sharing of clouds, even the distribution of rain needed her input. 

 

Her opinions could alter quickly and without warning. Vanessa tried to adapt between conversations so that her views and comments would become more acceptable. However she often found the goalposts had changed and not having kept up, she was scolded once more and branded unprogressive, uninformed and unqualified to speak on such matters. 

 

Some of her crusades were well founded on doing good, thoroughly researched by scientists and so-called intellectuals. Other causes which gained her attention were somewhat phantom, planted by governments in order to keep people blaming each other rather than focusing on the poor performance of politicians.

 

Vanessa meant well but her pure intentions were intertwined with a certain conceit which made her a rather irritating person. She knew best so therefore she was best qualified to save those who weren’t even asking.

 

Spencer was experiencing little sparks of anticipation every time Annie’s name was mentioned. He had observed the effect of her arrival on Vanessa’s state of mind and noted that Annie must be a very powerful person to put her mother in such a tizz.

 

Vanessa rushed around the house shoving copies of the daily mail into bin bags, checking food packaging for certain ingredients, palm oil, sodium nitrate and various other things which may or may not be very bad for the environment. 

 

She googled whether it was possible to admit Spencer into some sort of cyber spouse kennel, just temporarily but it seemed that no such place existed and she felt terribly guilty for looking. Glancing up at him she quickly cleared her search history and tapped her lips as she desperately tried to think of a story to introduce her new husband in a frictionless, perhaps green-washed way.

 

‘Spencer?’

 

‘Yes?’

 

‘Are you recycled?’

 

‘No I’m manufactured from virgin materials but I’m fully recyclable and considerably less environmentally damaging than the average human.’

 

‘Oh really?’

 

‘Yes. I don’t consume do I. Humans aren’t happy unless they’re consuming something.’

 

Vanessa picked up a plastic cactus from the window sill and grimaced. ‘Oh god. What shall we say to Annie?’

 

‘What shall we say to her? She’s your daughter so I presume you will have missed each other’s company and have plenty to catch up on. I will help with the practical things, cooking and cleaning, and you two can just enjoy spending time together.’

 

Vanessa winced. She so wanted to want to spend time with her daughter but in the pit of her stomach was a fear that it just wouldn’t go well, a dread that she would do something wrong. Using the back of her sleeve, she dusted off a photo of Annie sitting at the top of a slide, wearing a blue cap with a butterfly on it. ‘She knew everything…even back then,’

 

Spencer laughed. ‘No human knows everything. There’s a town in Virginia where the majority of the internet loiters, there’s a lot of information there, in the cables underground but people actually know very little and what they think they know changes over their lifetime.’

 

‘That’s true. I just want her to be happy, you know, to come home and feel like she can relax and have a holiday from being high minded but I must admit, I’m worried about what she’ll think of you Spencer.’

 

‘Well I don’t have any feelings on this matter.’

 

‘Good, that’s good. It means I don’t have to worry about her upsetting you but somehow it doesn’t make me feel that much more relaxed. Erm…we should go to the international supermarket, get some unusual vegetables and spices before she comes.’

 

‘Is that what she likes to eat?’

 

Vanessa gazed out of the window and felt a surge of shame at the banal face of middle-class suburbia which was her neighbourhood. She shrugged, ‘I don’t know but I want to make the kitchen look more…progressive and the bathroom too, we need to hide the liquid soap and get a bar of something natural. I remember last time there was a fuss about the sponge.’

 

‘The sponge?’

 

‘Yes something about it disintegrating into the water supply.’

 

‘They have little nets and filters for that type of thing. I can see this is very tiring for you, Vanessa, you look defeated and as your husband I feel I should step in and tell you to just leave everything as it is.’

 

‘I can’t. I need to go and throw away the cheese. Annie hates cheese, I’ve got some cranberry Wensleydale in the fridge.’

 

‘You could just eat it.’

 

‘No there’s too much. She’s arriving in the morning. If I eat all that, she’ll be able to smell it on me. She’s like that. Annie always says, in a room full of people, she can detect the vegans because they have a different scent. She says the animals know too, you know, the farm animals, cows and sheep, they know who they can trust apparently.’

 

‘What about the pigs?’

 

’Oh, she’ll talk to you all day about pigs.’