I am too tall. Always have been. Not skinnymodel-tall, either, which appears to be the only way the world wants its tall women.
I don’t have the permanently bent neck of many lofty women, stooping to decrease myself. My mother wisely made me do ballet for three years as a child, but I was too tall for school, too tall for dating, felt too tall foreverything: until I met Dan.
At the age offorty-two, I am generally happy with myself, but sometimes, justsometimes, I wish I had been born tiny, with a retroussé nose, exquisite bones and size four shoes, instead of mycanal-boat size nines.
When you’re tall, you can never blend into the crowd.
The plus is that when you’re tall, you have an inbuilt desire to take care of people. I mean, look at the Amazons and Wonder Woman, right? Makes total sense. Plus, I love Wonder Woman, both versions.
An hour after we arrive at Kellinch House, I’m in the hall looking at the vast quantity of our possessions and wondering how exactly we have so much stuff and why I haven’t dumped half of it, when my younger sister, Scarlett, phones.
‘Can I bring the children round?’ she asks.
‘I’m not a child, Scarlett, I’m a teenager,’ says the deeply wounded voice of Lexi, our oldest daughter, fourteen and two months, who argued hotly to be allowed in as soon as we got the keys and the moving trucks rolled up.
‘Getting keys on moving day is a bit chaotic,’ I’d explained to her. ‘With Rowan Gardens, we only got the keys at five to five. We’d been waiting since one ...’
‘Sorry, Lexi,’ apologised Scarlett. ‘Can I drive over with two children and one fabulous teenager.’
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘It’s ninety per cent packing boxes all over the place. I’ll leave a trail of breadcrumbs in the hall so you can find me.’
I hear Lexi giggle.
‘Mum.’ Lexi has grabbed the phone. ‘Can you come and get me? Liam is playing with Uncle Jack’s computer and he says it’s cooler than ours and Teddy’s using Aunt Scarlett’smake-up. I don’t think they’ll move.’
Lexi, who is not tall but is petite and so darkly beautiful that she looks like a Disney princess, has a sweet, slightly husky voice that soars in the school choir.
Unlike me, before long shewillhave boys following her around like lovesick puppies, which both worries me and makes me happy for her. She will not need to lurk in the home economics room at lunchtime because the school canteen is a place of high anxiety to those kids who are different.
‘No, Lexi, honey,’ I say, with regret. ‘I can’t leave now. The moving guys need me and Dad here because they are moving stuff in at speed and have to be told where to put things. Get Scarlett to close up themake-up shop, switch off Jack’s computer and tell them I’ve double chocolate brownies heating in the oven.’
This is not true. Yet. But my superpower is cooking and if I can’t whisk up brownies in half an hour, then nobody can.
‘Love you, Mum.’
‘Love you, Lexi.’
Scarlett comes back on the line: ‘Message being delivered. We’ll be there as soon as Ide-sparkle Teddy and drag Liam away from the computer.’
‘Good luck with that,’ I say, laughing.
Liam, eleven and a gloriouslyeven-tempered boy, loves the computer but is wonderfully biddable.
Teddy, four and the empress of all she surveys, needs careful handling to make her do what you want her to do. Bribery, fibbing and serious manipulation are always involved. It doesn’t matter how often I readRaising Girls, I still can’t find a chapter which deals with a child with the iron will of Teddy. I bet she’ll turn up wearing most of Scarlett’smake-up and clutching all the bright, shiny lip glosses in her chubby little hands.
I abandon the hall and go into the kitchen which is large, pretty, the only updated part of the entire property and is the reason I managed to persuade Dan that we needed this house, despite having an upstairs main bathroom with an original, not retro, avocado suite.
‘Not that I’m MrElle Decorationor anything,’ said Dan slowly when he first saw the avocado explosion, ‘but I’m not that keen on the main bathroom.’
‘We can live with it,’ I said brightly. ‘Think of the garden for the children! And the kitchen for my show.’
I am a chef, which proves that all those years in the home economics classroom were not wasted. Eight years ago, I was plucked from obscurity by a TV producer who spotted me doing ahigh-speed food demo at a city food festival and thought I had ‘promise’. Since then, I’ve a new job as a chef with her own TV series and I’ve written fourbest-selling cookery books. Four books and five TV shows, to be precise.
I’ve even been named Sexiest Cook of the Year – once – which made me laugh and made Dan get me an apron with the logo printed on.
‘At least they agree with me,’ he said with a grin that wasX-rated.
‘And where do you think I can wear that?’ I asked.
