For goodness’ sake!” exclaimed Sally as she stumbled over a pair of trainers dumped squarely in the middle of the hall. She kicked the door shut behind her and staggered into the kitchen with the groceries.
“Harry! What have I told you about leaving shoes in the middle of the floor?” she yelled upstairs as she passed.
But when she entered the kitchen, she froze.
The scene before her was nothing short of catastrophic. A teenage-sized bomb had clearly gone off—again. With nowhere else clear, she balanced the grocery bags on a stool and stared open-mouthed at the carnage.
“Well, my boy, you’ve really outdone yourself this time,” she muttered, peeling off her coat and tying on the apron that hung behind the door.
“Harry, care to explain this?” she called, not expecting an answer.
Rolling up her sleeves, she began stacking dirty pots into the dishwasher. “One, two… no, five mugs. For one person! Remarkable. But then again, it is a whole twenty steps from the kettle to the sink. Can’t really expect anyone to rinse and reuse, can I?”
As she worked, her eye caught on something that made her stomach lurch. Her bone china tea set—the one her late mother had given her—was scattered across the worktop, smeared with what looked suspiciously like gravy. She examined each piece with trembling fingers. Thankfully intact, but her annoyance sharpened into something harder.
She scrubbed. She muttered. She filled bucket after bucket. The oven top was streaked with something dark. Sally leaned in cautiously.
“Blood?” she whispered—then snorted. “Oh no, of course not. Just ketchup. Because it’s so hard to aim a squeezy bottle.” She shoved a strand of hair from her sweaty forehead and sighed.
Surely, it couldn’t get worse.
Then she opened the fridge. Milk had leaked over the bottom drawer, seeping into her vegetables.
By the time she was done—four hours later—the kitchen shone, lemon-scented and sparkling. She had thrown out three pizza boxes, four milk cartons, and three black bags of rancid rubbish. It had taken five sinks of soapy water, two buckets of disinfectant, and one furious scrubbing of two muddy footprints on the ceiling.
Hands on hips, flushed and triumphant, Sally surveyed her spotless domain.
Just then, Harry shuffled in from his room, yawning, hair sticking up like a bird’s nest.
“Hi, Mum. What’s for lunch? I’m starving.”
Sally’s eye twitched.
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