DD's party was today at a big soft play place about 15 minutes drive away. When I chased party non-repliers one parent told me that she wasn't sure how to get there as her husband was working away and she didn't drive. So I said that we'd happily take her child "X" to the party in our car. Mother thanked me and we exchanged addresses and phone numbers.
When we picked X up today I said we would drop her back between 1.45 and 2.00pm. Mum said that was fine and she'd be sure to be in.
We arrived back at X's house at 1.55pm. We knocked on the door but got no answer. Waited and knocked louder. Still no answer. So we peered through the front window. Noticing the tv was on in the front room I went and banged on the front window. The door finally opened and a man stood there who said that X's mum had "just popped out" and he was there to fix the sink. He said he couldn't take responsibility for X which I thought was fair enough, so I asked him to pass on a message to X's mum to pick her up from our house (which was 5 minutes walk away). I wrote our address down again just to be sure she had it.
AT 2.25pm there is still no sign of X's mum. Stupidly I hadn't got her mobile number, only her house phone, but thought I ring it anyway to check if she was back. She answered the phone and in response to my asking if she could come and pick up X she replied that she would be round shortly, she was just waiting for the workman to finish. I asked if she could come straight away as we were expecting visitors (had various family members coming for DD's birthday) and it really wasn't convenient to have her DD at all. She said yes ok ...
25 minutes later she turns up. DH is somewhat short (though polite) with her. She said she was sorry but they'd had a problem with the sink and she'd had to pop out to get something for the workman to fix it, and she couldn't really leave it till later. She said she'd assumed we would leave X with the workman. She seemed a bit narked that we were narked iyswim. DH explained that the workman had refused to have X (and DH and I later said to each other we couldn't believe she was prepared to leave her DD with a total stranger anyway).
So were we wrong to be narked at her having a plumbing emergency? tbh if she'd rung up and explained in advance (she did have my mobile) and been a bit more apologetic we might have been a bit more understanding.