The phone rang last night and Chris answered.

“Oh Chris!” Mum whimpered, “I was about to go to bed when I realised I’d lost my hearing aid.”

“When did you last have it?” Chris asked.

“Pardon? I can’t hear very well because I’ve lost my hearing aid. I don’t know when it came out but I’ve searched everywhere… and that’s hard when you’re registered blind. Oh Chris, I just had to tell someone, I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not, now don’t worry, it’s bound to be there… or somewhere,” Chris assured her very loudly.

“No need to shout,” said Mum, “anyway, I’ve looked everywhere and I’m so frustrated… I want to pull my hair out! What am I to do?” Mum cried.

“Well there’s nothing much you can do now; why don’t you go to bed and I’ll come down first thing in the morning?”

So that is how it was left.

This morning Chris drew back the bedroom curtains to greet another grey, drizzly day – our promised Indian summer – not cold but miserable and so dark that we had to put the kitchen lights on when we went upstairs for breakfast.

By the way, (just out of interest), the scrambled eggs managed to curdle even though I cooked them in a porringer – Nero Wolfe (the television gourmand detective played by Canadian actor Maury Chaykin) was right about the perfect scrambled eggs requiring 40 minutes on the lowest of heat. I gave the curdled ones to Chris and started again. Don’t bother to use a porringer – boiling water is too hot – the second lot curdled too. It happened on my plate, before my very eyes. And eggs are awful without toast – but I’m going to be good today.

My resolution to be good also meant that I intended to take the correct amount of exercise regardless of the atrocious weather outside.

“I’ll walk down with you to Mum’s,” I told Chris over our curdled scrambled eggs, “then we can carry on walking afterwards, perhaps through the little forest past the school and home by way of the Leisure Centre.”

“You want to walk in the rain?” Chris queried.

“It’s only drizzle.”

 

Mum was eating her porridge (I wonder if she used a porringer for cooking her porridge?) when we arrived. She looked pale and wan, as you do when you’re upset, perhaps after the tempest and hair-pulling, when you’ve resigned yourself to the fact there is nothing more that can be done and only a miracle could make a difference. The miserable grey day could not have helped her downcast mood.

“You won’t find it,” she began in an unusually small and forlorn voice, “I’ve hunted high and low, on my hands and knees; I’ve been through every drawer and cupboard, every corner, every recess in the house; at the back of the settee and the sides of every chair…”

Mum held her head in her hands and wept.

Chris and I set to and checked every likely spot and every unlikely spot. We went off in different directions but covered the same area TWICE; hence, when I felt down the sides and back of the sofa (for the second time myself) Chris was a little annoyed.

“I’ve just checked that!” Chris said a bit shirty.

“Keep your hair on!” I retorted.

“I told you both it wasn’t anywhere,” said Mum, even more shirtily, “Why doesn’t anyone believe me?”

Feeling slightly panicked by this time, I phoned Mary, my sister, to ask her to search her car because she had taken them out yesterday. Then I resumed my search in the bathroom again.

“It’s not there,” Mum said assertively, as one who had searched with a magnifying glass several times already.

“We’ll have to phone the hospital to see if Mum can get a replacement,” I suggested, feeling beaten and resigned. The prospect of our walk was rapidly diminishing under the need for action to be taken.

Chris began to dial the hospital number when I had another idea… I opened the kitchen bin, which was full, and had a ferret around in the top.

“Oh Sally,” said Mum, rather appalled that I had my hand in her bin.

My hand was amongst the potato peelings when I heard a little sound.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

No-one answered. Mum is quite deaf and Chris is a tad deaf himself, but they both believed me when I said it again, and Chris helped me retrieve the hearing aid.

All’s well that ends well: Mary had torn out everything in her car but it probably needed a good clear out anyway; Mum has her hearing aid back and Chris did her the favour of taking out her rubbish; and we had a shorter walk than intended but it was too vile to be out walking in any case. As for my diet, well, I always try to be good but I’ve gone off scrambled eggs for the time being.