The Day Inez Snapped

Nobody expected it to be Inez.

It was a Wednesday, and the back room was noisy. Pella was telling a long story about her cousin’s wedding. Bramley had brought crisps. Orrin was trying to tidy the corkboard while everyone kept moving his cards.

Then Inez came in late, dropped her bag on the table and said, much too loudly, “Can everyone just be QUIET for once?”

The room went silent. Pella stopped mid-sentence. Bramley stopped mid-crisp.

“And Orrin, nobody cares about the stupid cards.”

Orrin went pink and sat down. Then Inez walked out and shut the door behind her, not quite a slam, but almost.

For a long moment nobody spoke.

“Well,” said Pella eventually. “That was rude.”

Ressa looked at her. “That’s a judgment word.”

“She told Orrin nobody cares about his cards!”

“I know,” said Ressa. “It wasn’t okay. But Inez is the one who taught us all this. A behavior is a clue.”

They looked at each other. It felt strange, turning the club’s questions on the person who had invented them. Sefton was the first to say what everyone was thinking.

“She’s never like that. Never. So it has to be something big.”

They didn’t follow her straight away. Imogen said that when someone has just snapped, the kindest thing is often to give them a few minutes. So they waited, and while they waited, they thought.

They knew some of the clues already, without even trying. Inez had been tired for weeks. She’d stopped bringing her lunch. She’d mentioned, once, that her grandmother was in hospital, and then changed the subject. And she was the one who stayed late every Wednesday, solving everyone else’s clues, listening to everyone else’s problems.

“She’s been carrying all of us,” said Sefton slowly. “And nobody’s been carrying her.”

“Not rude, then,” said Ressa. “Overloaded.”

Imogen found Inez on the bench outside the library, staring at her shoes.

“Can I sit here?”

Inez shrugged. Imogen sat. She didn’t say anything for a while. She just held out half of her sandwich, and after a moment, Inez took it.

“I’m sorry,” Inez said at last. “I shouldn’t have said that to Orrin.”

“Probably not,” Imogen agreed. “But what’s going on?”

It all came out. Her grandmother had been in hospital for three weeks, and things weren’t going well. Her mum was at the hospital every evening, so Inez was looking after Tomás, cooking tea, doing his reading with him, and then doing her own homework late at night. She hadn’t told anyone because she was the one who helped other people. She didn’t know how to be the one who needed help.

The others had come out by then and were standing at a polite distance. Hamish heard the part about the hospital and the cooking and the late nights, and he thought about heavy boxes.

“Inez,” he said gently, “that’s too much for one kid. Does your tutor know?”

Inez shook her head. “It’s not their business.”

“It’s not a secret you have to keep,” said Hamish. “It’s a load. Grown-ups can help carry some of it. That’s their job.”

Lessing had been quiet, but now he spoke up. “We can’t take every rock out. Your nan, that’s not something anyone can change. But maybe something can come out of the bag.” He thought. “What if you didn’t have to run the Clue Club every week? We could take turns.”

Inez opened her mouth to say no, and then closed it again.

“Actually,” she said. “That would help a lot.”

So that’s what they did. Ressa ran the next Wednesday, and Orrin the one after, and the corkboard had never been so tidy. Imogen started bringing a spare sandwich on Wednesdays, just in case. And Inez, with Hamish waiting outside the door, went to see her tutor. Her tutor talked to her mum, and her aunt started coming round on weeknights to help with Tomás.

Her grandmother came home just before the holidays.

On the first Wednesday back, Inez came in early. She took the old card down from the corkboard, the one that said A behavior is a clue, not a verdict, and she added a line underneath.

Even mine.

“I forgot that the rules are for helpers too,” she told them. “Thanks for finding my clue.”

Orrin, who had long since forgiven her, pinned the card back up in the very middle of the board, perfectly straight.