"Timmy! Come in, come in. What a lovely surprise! How wonderful to see you again." Gushing with enthusiasm Mrs. Griggs led me to her front room, a room she reserved exclusively for her extra special visitors, and then she bustled off to brew tea in the kitchen, leaving me on my own to explore. This was the one room in her house that I had hardly ever been in before, never before had I been accepted as a distinguished guest. I had known Mrs. Griggs all my life but the year before I went to Uni. her husband, Steven, had died suddenly and unexpectedly and she had simply fallen apart, gone utterly to pieces. Mum, a very old friend indeed, went round when she could to try and keep the place neat but she had bribed me into doing the shopping: it wasn't hard she simply allowed me use Dad's big car instead of lending me her old banger. Now I was all done at Uni. and Mrs. Griggs had long since pulled herself back together but I was home, I was struggling to find a job, I was under Mum's feet and she had suggested that Mrs. Griggs might still appreciate a hand with some of the bigger jobs around the house.
"Now Timmy... I can't really call you Timmy anymore can I? You're all grown up now. Quite the handsome young man too, so slim and so obviously athletic. Are you still my little tennis ace? But that's not good is it? Me saying that like that! You're not anyone's little anything any more, so I suppose it must be Tim or Timothy now?" When I'd been doing her shopping Mrs. Griggs had been merely existing rather than living, a damp dishrag that simply lay there on an old sofa in her back room, dressed in worn, creased, non too-clean, sad, drab clothes and, on those rare occasions that she could not possibly avoid responding at all, she'd answered with monosyllabic grunts. Now, once again, she was smartly dressed, neat as a new pin and she had a spring in her step. In fact she positively bustled, just as she had when her husband had been alive: when I was tiny she had actually scared me with the way she got on with everything all at once and still found the time to not only notice everything but comment upon it forthrightly, especially when I was up to something I ought not to have been up to. And she had also resumed her peculiar and disconcerting habit of constantly interrupting herself to half answer her own semi-rhetorical questions.
"Tim," I mumbled, looking down at the carpet, practically whispering; Mrs. Griggs had not merely recovered but was, once more, every bit as overbearing as she had been when I was tiny.
"And, I can't be Mrs. Griggs any more. And I'm most certainly not your 'tant Shirl, so I'll just have to be plain old Shirley. Anyway, what brings you here? You must be all done at College by now. I've no cake, you really did catch me by surprise, your Mum didn't even ring to warn me you were coming over. And I'm sure you've no time to spare for old ladies not even elderly aunties, well ex-aunties, so what brings you here?"
"Mum thought that you might appreciate a hand with some stuff round the house. Really I'm in her way the whole time so she sent me over to irritate you for a change." That at least elicited a smile from 'tant Shirl, or rather from Shirley; calling her that was going to take some getting used to.
"No Tim my helpless days are long gone," she chided, "I'm all sorted now. Pretty much my old self really. Though I do still miss Steve." She paused to reflect but whether she was remembering Steve or deciding what to say next was quite impossible to tell. "But thank you anyway. Thank you, both of you. It was a really sweet thought and I know you'd have wriggled out of it somehow if you really hadn't wanted to come. And now you're here there's lots of tea in the pot and my biscuits might not be cake but they are at least chocolate ones so you can tell me what you've been up to whilst you clear those too tempting biscuits out of my way," she patted her own rounded tummy, "and I'll keep you out of your Mum's way for a while."
Over the course of the next hour or so Shirley extracted a less than potted history of my adventures at Uni.. I'd done OK academically, gained a good degree, which pleased her but didn't seem to surprise her in the slightest. I, however, surprised myself by describing my succession of girl friends, a parade which had ended abruptly about six months before I graduated: Shirley really was a skilled interrogator she drew all kinds of information from me that I did not intend to share and then used that to pry out more. I told her about the food, mostly not very good, the bars, mostly not that cheap and the accommodation, either expensive or unsanitary. I did manage to miss out the sex and the clubs. So she didn't winkle everything from me, with grown-ups there are some lines you simply don't want to cross.
It was as we were starting the ritual of saying goodbye, Shirley pressing me to come again soon and next time she'd be sure to have baked a cake; me promising to do so, remembering how special her cakes had always been and telling her this; both of us knowing that this was polite make-believe that was not really going to happen: I'd done my duty, she had been sociable and gracious with it but that, well that would be that. Then Shirley gave me a thoughtful sideways appraisal, like a butcher sizing up a side of beef; intense enough to made me shudder a little. She began to say something but then choked herself off, uncertain of her words, which by itself would have been unusual, almost unsettling, but immediately after that lingering look it was positively unnerving. "Tim. There is maybe one little thing you might be willing to help me with, I'd decided it was too much to ask but I've had a sudden change of heart," I realised she was not looking at me but behind me.