Garden Lodge

"How was your mum?" Monica asked Phoebe as they stood together at the hob, her stirring the gravy in a small saucepan.

"Proud to see me," He put the oven mittens on. "I stayed for a bit and we talked... she's always wondering how 'the little twins' are"

She giggled as she pulled a gravy boat out of the drawer, "Aww... you must take them to meet her one day"

"She has a dozen ornaments. I don't want them braking anything" he bent down and opened the oven door.

"Well there are a dozen ornaments here too," she said, carefully pouring the contents of the saucepan into the boat. "I think they'd be careful enough... if Freddie wouldn't mind them going"

"Wouldn't mind what?" A voice interrupted.

Monica turned around to find Freddie at the doorway wearing his smart black dinner jacket and tie, hair now dried and gelled back. It was no secret that he was still desperate to seek his father's approval.

"Well, look at you all scrubbed up! I was just talking to Phoebe about taking Johnny and Roshni to see his mother. She's fond of them apparently." She explained

"I see, well that's nice. Need me to put anything on the dining table?" He offered.

She shook her head, and her eyes glanced down to find that he was wearing a pair of trainers on his feet.

"Still a little boy inside of you somewhere" she shook her head and giggled, walking over to fix his tie.

He put his hands on her waist, "It is Mother's Day after all. My mum still calls me her boy"

"Are you going to play us all something tonight in the piano room after dinner?" She wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Perhaps... any special requests?" He grinned.

She shrugged, smoothing the corners of his moustache, "surprise us"

"Oh, that's quite a popular one. But it will do" he purred.

She leaned in and kissed his freshly shaven cheek, "Alright then, Peter Pan."

The alarm from the intercom suddenly went off on the wall.

"Granny and Grandad!" Johnny and Roshni's squeals and footsteps rang though the house from upstairs.

"I've got it!" Phoebe lifted his apron over his head, rushing to the front door before the twins could.

"God, I hope they do nothing to embarrass me," Freddie grumbled at the sound of the commotion, turning to head out of the kitchen. "It seems every time my family comes to visit, they always do something... like that time they ran out into the garden and played in the mud when Kash was over"

"They already embarrassed you this morning by filming you," she rubbed his shoulders, "that's enough humiliation for them to inflict on you in one day."

How wrong she was.

*****

"More mash?" Phoebe came into the dining room with a small amount of potato left in the saucepan just as everyone around the table was finishing their meal.

"Me!" Roshni shot her hand up into the air.

"What's the magic word, darling?" Freddie reached over and tucked her napkin underneath her shirt more securely.

"Please" she chirped, and Phoebe dumped the small spoonful left onto her plate as the rest of the adults chuckled.

"So, did you get anything nice?" Jer asked as leaned over to Monica's ear as she coaxed Johnny to finish the rest of his peas.

"Oh yes, a joint gift of a hand drawn card and Belgian chocolate seashells... which Freddie paid for and Phoebe went out and bought"

Jer chuckled, "Bomi was just the same when ours were little... every year I'd get a lovely letter from Freddie though"

"That's good... he's very thoughtful, your son" Monica put her knife and fork neatly next to one another across her empty plate.

"That ham was very good," Bomi pat the corners of his mouth. "How did you cook it?"

"It was slow-cooked," Monica stood up and took her empty plate. "I let it sit in a bottle of coke overnight"

Freddie's eyes widened, "You are telling me that I just ate a ham soaked in bloody-"

"Farrokh!" Jer began to reprimand him across the table.

His birth name was enough to make the man swallow and keep his mouth zipped.

Monica leaned down and kissed the side of his head, "You've eaten ham soaked in Coca Cola before. I just don't tell you how I make it"

Freddie shuddered at the thought of such a food combination, handing his plate up to her.

"Why don't you go in and show granny and granddad the piano tricks daddy showed you?" Monica ran her hand through Johnny's brown hair with her free hand.

He looked up, an eager twinkle in his eyes that he shared with this father, "Can I play Mary had a little lamb?"

She giggled, "Of course! Play what you like"

Freddie stood up, holding his hand out to his son, "Come on, little maestro."

Johnny leapt off his chair with glee as his father lead him out of the dining room, and Monica pulled Bomi's chair out as he slowly stood up.

"Would you like anything to drink?" She asked.

"No thank you, alcohol in the evening makes me... How is it the British say here? Nod off?" He picked up his stick.

"Understood" she took his plate, and watched as he followed his son and grandson out and into the piano room.

She thought she heard Roshni asking Phoebe about helping her carry the projector down the stairs, but her arms were too full with dinner plates and saucers at this point to stop and ask what her daughter was talking about.

"I'll get onto that right when I sort this all out" she told herself as she hobbled into the kitchen holding Freddie's most costly China ware.

She heard music spill from the piano room and throughout the house, Johnny's Ivory key-slamming rendition of Mary had a little lamb, followed by all the other finger exercises his dad had taught him.

Freddie was taking time out of his days off to try and teach them both to play the piano, but so far Johnny was the only one out of the two showing any interest or passion for it. Even if it made the residents of Garden Lodge grit their teeth.

"I have more for you here" A familiar warm voice interrupted her.

Monica turned around, Jer was waddling in with arms full of ware.

"Oh, please! Let me help you!" Monica rushed over and stacked a few dishes out of her hand.

"Not at all, dear! I'm used to it! I used to run a household!" The stout older woman smiled. "I'll do the saucepans and trays"

"Oh please do! ... It must've been hard managing a household" she turned the taps on.

"Not at all, it was too boring and easy enough! I was young like you when we had Farrokh. I needed something to do on that island!" Jer began to put ware under the running tap.

"How so?" Monica opened the dishwasher and began to stack plates into the rack.

"Woman have so many opportunities available to them these days, especially in Britain... I became much more independent when I moved here." Jer started to scrub some of the tougher dishes. "Are you still working hard at that filmmaking job?"

"Oh yes," she shut the machine door and pressed the buttons to turn it on, "I don't get a lot of creative control in it, but I haven't done anything like it before."

"What was work like before?"

"I got a job at a cafe when I first moved here in 1977. I quit it when I went on maternity leave, but I had a nice boss and all that. Suffered some xenophobia there though" Monica took a tea towel and began to dry what Jer handed to her.

"What happened?" His mother stopped what she was doing.

Monica paused as well, "Well, there was an old lady who refused to be served by me because I was Irish... she said that I'd put a bomb in her tea cake. Laughable, really"

Jer chuckled, "Oh, the narrow-mindedness of people in this country"

"Freddie was pissed when I'd gotten home and told him," Monica continued drying the ware, "He said it reminded him of what you guys suffered from when you moved here, actually"

"Maybe so," Jer dried her hands on another tea towel. "But, the problem is so many people fear change in their lives... anything different makes them retreat"

Monica stopped to listen.

"When Freddie told Bomi and I that he wanted to be a rockstar, we didn't take his aspirations seriously," she explained. "Now, almost 20 years on and he's proved us wrong. All it takes is understanding in one form or another."

Monica stared at the fairy liquid suds floating on the surface of the water in the basin.

"Your head in the clouds, dear?" She felt Jer put a hand on her back.

"I'm just thinking about my job. Johnny and Roshni get excited when an advert that I worked on flashes onto the TV," she folded a tea towel into her hands. "but not as excited as they do when they hear daddy's songs on the radio... even the other mums in the school playground are unimpressed by my occupation. They're all hairdressers or receptionists and what not"

"Who cares what the other mothers think?" Jer took her hands in hers, "Like I said, all it takes is understanding."

"You think so?" She lifted her head.

"Moving to somewhere new all of a sudden, especially when you're still so young, is a big step," Jer squeezed her hand gently. "As an immigrant family, we understand how uncertain and scared you must've felt moving here so young."

"You had no choice though. I had a choice," Monica murmured. "You were unsafe, and had to flee Zanzibar"

"It's still a risk to take, my girl," she said. "You and Bomi and I made a decision out of love. We moved here for the sake of our children and their future, and you stayed for the love you had for my son, even if you didn't even know that you had it yet."

She blushed and looked away, remembering the Lenny incident only months before, "Everyone around me said it was silly. Sometimes I wished I'd listened."

Jer reached up and turned her face so that Monica was making eye contact with her. Jer's narrow brown eyes behind the large rimmed glasses were just like her son's.

"If you ever feel like that," she began. "just take a look back at the wonderful things that you have achieved. Look at the two beautiful children you have, your job..."

"...Sometimes I fear that it'll fall apart, like it did with Mary."

"You're not Mary... I noticed the day I met you that my son was different about you."

"In what way?" Monica whispered.

"Freddie was more attentive and caring towards you... unable to take his eyes off of you, opening doors for you-"

"Literally or figuratively?" She giggled.

"There's the smile that my boy fell in love with," Jer cooed, patting her cheek. "Think about what you've achieved, and it'll be alright again."

Monica nodded silently, and Jer lifted her left hand and started inspecting it. She could hear The Entertainer playing in the piano room.

"There's no way Johnny can play that at his level, that's got to be Freddie"

"What a beautiful ring," Jer cooed as her thumb grazed the Tiffany diamond on her ring finger. "You should take it off before doing anything around the house"

"I forget that it's even there," she blushed, "I forget that the engagement is even a thing, really"

"Do you two ever get to talk about the wedding at all?" Jer asked.

Before Monica could truthfully answer, Roshni came running in, "Mummy mummy!"

"Oh hello, love," she bent down to her level. "What are you excited about"

She reached up and took her grandmother's hand, tugging her arm, "We're watching movies"

"Are you sure that you and Bomi want to watch television?" Monica turned to Jer, watching as she got dragged out of the kitchen by her little granddaughter.

"I shouldn't, television makes Bomi sleepy at this time of night" Jer said.

"It's not on television!" Roshni gushed. "It's on the wall!"

"On the wall? Whatever do you mean, child?" Jer patted her head.

"We're watching our own movies taken on mummy's camera!" The little girl said, jumping up and down.

The woman's heart almost stopped.

"The film! The film that they took of Freddie singing in the shower this morning!"

It made sense now that Roshni was talking about the projector to Phoebe not five minutes before because, innocently enough, she wanted to show her grandparents the movies that were captured on mummy's marvellous new contraption.

Monica took some money from her savings to buy a cinerex sound projector shortly after Christmas to play her movies taken on her new camera, and had picked a regulated blank spot on the wall in the piano room that didn't have any of Freddie's auctioned artworks obstructing for screening her super 8 footage on.

Bomi and Jer had been seated by the time Monica snapped herself out of a panic and got to the room, Johnny and Roshni sitting cross legged on the carpet as Phoebe set the projector up.

As for Freddie, he was now off the piano and sitting on an arm chair, staring helplessly back at Monica in worry.

She rushed over to Phoebe and stopped him in time , "Allow me... have you got the camera bag?"

"Down there" he pointed to it sitting at his feet, and indeed the other canister was sitting at the bottom of it.

She and Freddie both breathed a momentary sigh of relief, and the dread had mellowed out.

Knowing it was safe and free from a naked and angry Freddie Mercury, she lifted it out and carefully fed it into the projector reel as Phoebe went to switch the lights off.

"Oh, how exciting!" She heard Jer utter in the dark.

"How about some popcorn?" Phoebe whispered.

"I'm on it, you sit down and stop the projector if anything goes wrong" she answered quietly before disappearing into the kitchen.

Anything to save and distract her from watching her own home movies.

She put a bag of salted cinema popcorn into the microwave before getting a large plastic bowl from the overhead cupboard, still annoyed that she never got to answer Jer's question.

"Maybe Jer is right, I ought to take care of this ring until the time comes to start looking for matching wedding bands... even though when that'll ever be is a mystery" she twisted and turned her hand to let the diamond glisten under the ceiling lights, trying to find any chips in its cut.

Thankfully there weren't any dents in the silver band it was sitting on either. The smoothness of the metal's surface and shine had faded slightly since the time of proposal.

"Just like our aspirations to get married" she thought sadly, then looked into her reflection in the window about the sink.

It was dark outside, but she could just about see her figure. The orange-brown frock with white spots that she was wearing, the outline of her hair pinned back above her ears.

Her left hand instinctively moved up to her face so that the ring on her finger was level with her eyes, popping noises sound from the microwave.

She was surprised Freddie didn't pick gold, and that the band wasn't extravagantly lined with smaller gems. Not that she minded of course, it was a beautiful ring either way. But it did make her wonder why she even had it, especially when they hadn't even gotten hitched yet. Was Freddie just keeping her around?

The microwave alarm went off before she even had time to ponder further. The opened the bag and shakily poured the bag of popcorn into the plastic bowl, the warm, salty smell filling her nostrils.

She was full after that Sunday roast. Nonetheless she popped a few into her mouth as she came back into the dark room and looked up at the wall.

"HEY!" She heard Freddie's voice shout in the projector speaker, followed by the giggles of her children.

She covered her mouth, almost dropping the bowl as she realised in that morning that Johnny and Roshni had swapped the original reel of film just in time before she got her camera back from them. She was so busy in the morning she'd forgotten to take the spare film reel in her camera bag and check to if see if they'd captured Freddie after all.

His blurry naked figure stared back into the camera with piercing eyes as he stood in the shower, unaligned in the frame, whilst the real Freddie was sitting on the sofa, mortified facial expression under the low light and not daring make a scene in front of his mum and dad.

The frame shook as the camera backed away as he pushed the shower door aside and awkwardly stepped out, hands over his crotch. Suddenly he slipped, and he went off frame and the camerawork rapidly unsteady as the twin's laughter in the background became louder.

Freddie looked at his parents on the sofa as his cheeks burned: his mum was chuckling as his dad looked on emotionless.

"Alright, that'll-that'll do..." Monica threw the bowl onto the seat left empty got her and rushed to the projector.

She immediately stopped the reel, and it paused at an off-entered and badly angled frame of Freddie looking through the crack of the bathroom window, lying on his belly on the bathroom floor, a look of both fury and frustration on his face.

Jer laughed and clapped as Phoebe silently switched the lights back on, the twins sitting rigid in their spots on the carpet. They wanted to join their grandmother but feared the consequences, and could feel their father's glare boring into the back of their heads.

"Well," their grandmothers stood up, wiping tears of laughter off of her cheeks. "My boy's mischief certainly has rubbed off on them!"

"Your son is a creature to handle, I swear" Monica replied, trying to lighten the mood.

But still, Freddie's jaw was locked, hands tensing on his thighs.

"We shall be going." Jer rubbed their heads, and they both managed to stand up out of politeness.

"Alright. Freddie, would you get their coats?" Monica ordered, switching the projector off at the wall.

He got up on his feet and swiftly walked into the corridor, burning cheeks and flat expression, and that was the twins' cue to run away and hide.

"Thank you so much for having us, dear. That was a lovely meal you prepared" Jer hugged her before stepping into her open coat.

"It's our pleasure," Monica kissed her cheek and forced a smile. "We are glad you came and had a good time"

"Bye bye, you two!" She cheered and waved at Johnny and Roshni, blowing kisses at them as they stood frozen on the stairwell. "Be good this time!"

Freddie's mouth twitched and eyes narrowed as he turned and looked at them.

"He's going to give them 'a rightful bollocking'" Monica thought, shuddering at the sight of his chilling eyes.

"Bye bye, granny" they squeaked in unison before they flashed up the stairwell and out of his sight.

He never took his glare off them as they disappeared up the stairwell, until a hand on his shoulder caught his attention, and he turned away.

"Take care, my son." Bomi patted his back. "Thank you for having your mother and I this evening."

Freddie could tell he was not impressed by the video, but he nodded back and shook his father's hand.

"You need to discipline those two better." Bomi finally added before turning around and making his way out the door.

"Oh, Bomi!" Jer lightly scolded him. "They were only having fun."

"Safe travel." Freddie called as they made their way down the path, muttering to one another in Gujarati, and they waved back.

He shut the door and turned around, only to find that his girl had vanished as well, leaving him standing alone in the hall.

"Monica?!" He called.

No response. Just the sound of Phoebe clearing up in the kitchen.

He groaned and stomped up the stairs, making his footsteps heard and obvious.

"I'm coming for you all!" He shouted. "If you don't all fucking make yourselves seen on the count of ten..."

He trailed off to find that their bedroom was empty. He growled and went to look in his bedroom. Three lumps were under the duvet of the Queen size bed, one lump slightly larger than the other.

He swore he could see them move slightly and hear them giggle.

"Oh, I can't" his heart melted, his father's words forgotten.

He smirked and rolled his sleeves up, then charged towards the bed.

He pounced on the three of them as they screamed.

"NOBODY WILL BE SPARED!" He boomed, jumping under the blankets and joining them.

He grabbed them all and rolled around on the mattress with them as they squealed with laughter. Monica giggled as she managed to wriggle out and escape his grip, and clapped as he held them both in a lock in his arms.

"Mummy! Save us!" They struggled and squealed.

"Oh no no, not after you two stole my camera things," She stood back up, hands on her hips. "What are you going to do to them, Freddie?"

"If I didn't love them so much then I wouldn't decide to... TICKLE THEM!!" He roared, and Johnny and Roshni screamed as he leapt upon them and tickled them ferociously.

"Well, that wasn't very severe" she thought, watching them squirm on the mattress, their faces a hysterical shade of crimson as Freddie wore a malicious smirk.

He eventually let up, climbing off of the mattress and straightening up his tie as the toddlers lay exhausted on the covers. Johnny's nearly combed bangs were askew and Roshni's pink party ribbon was now undone and falling out of her hair.

"Seriously though, they need a punishment for documenting my arse" he said, joining Monica's side.

Johnny and Roshni sat up flustered, "No! No no! Not a punishment!"

Monica nodded, and turned to them, "Alright, you two. If you take my camera things without permission again, no after school biscuits for a week!"

Freddie opened his mouth to protest, and they wailed in unison, "That's unfair!"

"Ask before you use my camera things then!" She crossed her arms.

They pouted, and gave in, "Alright."

"That's it? A warning? Why didn't you punish them on the spot?!" He hissed in her ear as she went to pick them up.

Monica smirked, opening her arms for them as they crawled over, "You have to admit, it was pretty funny... and your bare arse looks really good on camera-"

"RIGHT!" He made a grab for her with them in her arms. But, just like them, she got away to their bedroom just in time without managing to trip over anything.

"You coming?" She called him. "It's a school night!"

He grumbled and followed them out, giving in and helping them get ready for bed, taking Monica's word for how good his posterior was on screen.

"I'll definitely deal with that one later" he promised himself, and he wore a look of grimace for the rest of that night...