“I’m not…pulling a Hugo. I just need to think it through a bit more.”
George nods sagely. “That’s the very definition of pulling a Hugo.”
“Listen,” Alfie says, standing up, “you should know I think this idea is completely mad….”
Hugo waits for him to continue. “And?”
“And nothing. That’s it. I think this idea is completely mad.” Alfie grins as he walks to the door. “Which is exactly why you should do it.”
When his brothers are gone, Hugo takes one last look at the post, letting his finger hover over the button that would send it out into the world. But he can’t bring himself to press it. What if nobody writes back? Or what if they do? What if he accidentally picks a serial killer? Or, worse, someone who talks a lot? What ifhisMargaret sees it? Or what if his parents find out?
Earlier, after they all scattered for the afternoon, Isla sent a message to their group text asking who should break the news about Margaret to Mum and Dad.Assuming Hugo doesn’t want to,she added, which was a fairly safe assumption. He’d been with Margaret long enough that she became a regular fixture around the Wilkinson house, and Hugo can’t imagine telling his parents, who adore her. In fact, they like her so much he half suspects they’ll be cross with him for letting the breakup happen at all.
Anyone but Alfie,he’d written back, half joking, and it had been Isla and George—the two most reliable ones—who did the job in the end. But now, when Hugo walks into the kitchen and is greeted by the smell of chicken curry—his favorite—and a sympathetic look from Mum, he wonders if he should’ve picked Alfie after all. If anyone could’ve figured out how to make this whole thing seem like a laugh, it would’ve been him, and then maybe they could’ve skipped straight over this part.
“How are you doing, darling?” Mum asks, standing on her tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek. She’s almost a foot shorter than any of her children, a diminutive woman with pale skin and flyaway hair who might seem a bit scatty if you didn’t notice the determination around the edges of her mouth. When his parents found out they were having sextuplets, she was the one who decided they needed to get creative, and from the moment the children were born, she started blogging about their lives. This eventually turned into a book on parenting, and then another, until there was a whole series about them. And though Hugo has always found the books entirely mortifying, they’ve also made it possible to keep a family of eight going on more than just his dad’s teacher salary.
But to Hugo’s alarm, his mum—who is usually in constant motion, sweeping through their lives like someone in fast-forward—is now looking at him with watery eyes and an intense stare. It occurs to him that she might try to have a talk about the breakup right here in the middle of the busy kitchen, so he gives her shoulder an awkward pat and sidesteps away as quickly as he can.
“I’m fine, Mum. Really.”
She looks like she wants to say more, but the oven dings, so she just gives him one last look of concern before hurrying over to take out a loaf of garlic bread, another of Hugo’s favorites.
When his dad walks in, he’s wearing his Tottenham Hotspurs shirt, which makes Hugo laugh, because Margaret is a huge Arsenal fan, and he knows this is for him. To his relief, Dad just winks at him as he grabs a stack of plates from the cupboard and begins to set the table.
When everything is ready, Hugo slides into his usual seat between his sisters. Isla gives him a friendly shoulder bump, and Poppy makes a funny face at him.
“So,” Dad says, running a hand over the top of his shiny black head. Hugo can’t remember what his father looked like before he was bald; it’s as much a part of him as his smile, which makes his whole face brighten and his dimples come out so that he seems like a kid again, like he could easily be just another Wilkinson brother. On the first day of primary school, Hugo watched all the other children fall under the spell of that smile like bowling pins dropping one by one, and it gave him such a burst of pride that he’d run up to hug his dad at the end of the day, the word pounding fiercely through his head:mine.
“Give me the headlines,” Dad says now, as he does every night, and Hugo is quick to lower his eyes. But he doesn’t have to worry. Alfie chimes in about his rugby match, and Poppy has a story about her summer job at the cinema; Oscar made some progress on the football app he’s been coding, and Isla went to the park with her boyfriend, Rakesh. George, whose obsession withThe Great British Baking Showled to a job at the local bakery, spent the day learning how to make a lemon meringue pie, and the biggest news is that he brought one home for dessert.
“You didn’t drop a penny in there again, did you?” Poppy asks, and George gives her a withering look.
“One time,” he says under his breath.
“As it turns out,” Poppy says, “that’s all it takes….”
Afterward, everyone automatically turns to Hugo. Then, just as quickly, they look away again, making a forced and not-altogether-believable effort to pretend it isn’t his turn, so that he’s spared reliving the newsiest thing of all.
“Actually, I’ve got something too,” he says, and they all turn to him in surprise. “Despite, uh, recent developments, I’ve decided I’m still going on holiday to America.”
To their credit, nobody asks for any particulars on the recent developments. Dad simply raises his eyebrows. Mum presses her lips together and sits forward in the chair. Alfie says, “Well done you!” and reaches across the table for a fist bump. Then, sensing the mood, he slowly pulls his arm back again.
“Margaret wanted me to have the tickets,” Hugo continues, deciding to leave out the part about how they might be worthless to him. “And I’d like to go.”
“With who?” Mum asks in a way that seems maybe a little too calm.
Hugo avoids looking at any of his siblings. “By myself.”
“That’s a big trip to do on your own,” Dad says, keeping his face neutral. “You’ve never even gone to London by yourself, much less to another country.”
“I’m eighteen now,” Hugo points out. “And if we didn’t—if we weren’t—well, I could just as easily be going off to uni a lot farther away. I don’t see how this is any different.”
“Honestly, it’s different because you can’t make it half a mile without losing your keys or your wallet,” Mum says, sounding both apologetic and exasperated. “I love you, Hugo, and you’re brilliant in a lot of ways, but you’ve also got your head in the clouds more often than not.”
Hugo opens his mouth to protest, but he knows she’s not wrong. When he was little, she used to call him Paddington because he was always getting lost from the rest of the group.
“I’m close to pinning a note to your jumper,” she’d say, her face still white with worry after finding him under a clothes rack at Marks & Spencer’s or in a completely different aisle at the local Tesco.“Please look after this bear.”
