Mind you, who knows where it is. If I can barely find knickers, what odds are there of finding spiritual smudging things to ward off the evil of Adele Markham?
You need to dejunk or your elderly corpse will be found in a mound of old clothes, magazines and wine bottles, Mildred reminds me primly.
‘Latte, no sugar,’ I say, handing the coffee to Dan, who looks no more pleased than I am. ‘The Barista Baby is broken.’
3
It never gets easier: you just learn how to be stronger
At ten o’clock on Saturday night, I am comatose with exhaustion from unpacking boxes and everyone else is finally in bed. Except me.
I feel unsettled in our new house, partly because not all the windows have curtains. Outside, our slightly wild garden has transformed into a murky, dark place, full of unidentifiable shapes. But still, I reassure myself, we have a wall and a big gate. Right?
I’m sitting with a cup of valerian tea – I do try everything to sleep, nobody can say I don’t – in front of the TV in the tiny den off the kitchen, a room which does have curtains. Dan, who is techy but tetchy after a long time trying to fix his coffee machine, had connected the TV early in the day, mainly because Liam had actually thrown a mini tantrum at the thought of not being able to play Xbox.
‘But, but you said I could, you said, you said that, that I’d be able to and that it would be OK and ...’
For the mosteasy-going child in the world, these words were the equivalent of ascreaming-on-the-floor tantrum.
Afterwards, during which time Liam had said ‘sorry’ several times, he sat in front of it for his allotted hour before smiling and beaming.
He is such a good child. Lexi is less biddable. TheWi-Fi is only working periodically and discussions about how it was supposed to have been installed by the previous day and how theWi-Fi Gods are to be called out on Monday, are having no effect. She is on a slow simmer.
But still, she’d unpacked and made her bedroom as pretty as was humanly possible, with my help and someunasked-for assistance from Teddy, who felt that at least ten of her cuddly animals lined up on the bed would make anyone happy.
‘They are on their holidays,’ she said to her big sister with an adoring face. Teddy is Lexi’s little handmaiden and secretly, though she doesn’t really know it yet, wants to be like Lexi when she is older.
‘They are yours and I don’t want them in my room,’ said Lexi, crossly, reaching out an arm and pushing a few of the cuddly unicorns and baby seals off the bed.
Like I said,Wi-Fi failure can make the best of us miserable.
‘Lexi,’ I said, ‘don’t be mean to your little sister. She was only trying to help. Say sorry.’
Teddy, however, is made of stern stuff. No crying for her.
‘Gimme my unicorn seal,’ she hissed, grabbing a purple sparkly thing with a twirling horn. ‘You arehorrible!’
Grabbing up her offerings, and managing to kick over a few of Lexi’s books on the way out, she made a damn good attempt at slamming the door.
I’d covered up a very big grin because Teddy would make anyone laugh.
From the look on Lexi’s face it was clear she didn’t feel like laughing.
‘She idolises you,’ I told Lexi.
‘I wish she wouldn’t keep coming into my bedroom,’ said Lexi crossly. ‘It’s private.’
‘I know, darling.’
I hugged her for a full minute, feeling her lovelyballerina-style bones against mine and I marvelled at how quickly she’s growing up.
She has small breasts now, although they embarrass her. She gets regular periods: ‘Every month?’ she said when I explained menstruation when she was younger.
She wants privacy too, now. My eldest child is moving further away from me and it hurts so much.
‘Love you, Squirt,’ I said, using Dan’s pet name for her because she’s such a pixie of a thing.
‘You too, Mum,’ she says, as I leave, but her reply’s automatic. My anxiety impulse kicks in. What if she would like to see Adele Markham, who is genetically her grandmother? What if she wanted to see Elisa too? And what if they became more important to her than me?
