‘Wake up,’ I yell at Dan from the door of our bedroom. ‘You’ve overslept.’
‘Oh, no,’ he says, turning around in the bed and looking at his watch. ‘Seven, no! I’m supposed to be in town for eight.’
‘Unless you have a helicopter on speed dial, I don’t see that happening.’
He shoots me a sleepy grin as he throws back the duvet and rips off hisT-shirt.
I race into Lexi’s bedroom to wake her up next. As the oldest, she needs the most wakening. It’s an age thing: the older you are, the longer it takes to wake up. Liam is next, although he’s not too keen on getting out of bed either and Teddy is last. On weekends Teddy can quite happily be up at half five. On days when she goes to Montessori, she is inevitably still asleep when I go in and requires much wheedling to extract her from the duvet nest.
‘Come on, lovie,’ I say, nuzzling into her ear, ‘wakey, wakey.’
The response is Teddy burrowing further into her bed in the manner of something cute on a David Attenborough documentary. David Attenborough never has to haul said cute things out of their burrows while they are whimpering, though.
It takes twenty minutes to get everyone dressed and downstairs, including Teddy, who has afull-scale argument with me about what colour sandals she’s going to wear. She wants to wear her purple ones with the sparkles and no matter how many times I tell her that we threw them out because they were old and no longer fit her, she continues insisting.
‘We’ll buy you new ones,’ said Dan, suddenly sweeping into the room to plant a kiss on her and my foreheads. He’s fully dressed and ready to go. Today’s a suit day and nobody fills a suit like Dan.
Hot husband.
Is that suitable for a gratitude list? Damn straight it is.
‘That was quick,’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘got to rush, bye, darling. Talk to you later.’ And he’s gone.
Even though I’ve been earning more money than I used to in the past few years, the job of getting the children out of the house and to their various schools is up to me, always has been unless I am away filming.
Maura, when we have feminist discussions, says Dan should do it.
I counter this by saying that I am better at it and like our morning routine.
‘That’s not the point.’
‘Feminism is nothigher-level maths,’ I say. ‘The rules are fluid. If the children need to be picked up from school when they are sick, Dan does it more than I do because I’m often somewhere doing a cookery demo. But he’s crap in the morning with the children because his mind has already gone off to work mode, which means Teddy can totally twist him round her little finger, getting her dressed takes half an hour and everyone ends up late for school/work. Plus, he vacuums, which I hate, and he always fills and empties the dishwasher. And takes it apart regularly to remove all the gunk that builds up in it.’
‘You iron.’
‘Yes, oh wise sister. I am treated like dirt, you’re so right. We definitely need aneighteenth-century scullery maid.’
‘Sculleryman!’
‘The point is, we work it out between us,’ I say wearily.
I remove the spiders in the house because Dan is arachnaphobic; he does all car andgarden-related things, cleans the bath and is currently working on getting Liam to pee with more direct aim. I brush Lexi’s hair, cook and make sure everyone cleans their teeth. It works, without a manifesto.
Maura teaches women’s studies in university and likes manifestos. Pip is entirely happy to bow to heralpha-ness. He thinks it was the best day in his life when he met her, God help him.
Liam is a chatterbox and he and Teddy have entirely unrelated conversations as they eat breakfast. Since going to secondary school, Lexi doesn’t do a lot of talking in the morning. My beloved girl no longer lets me hug her anywhere near the school. In fact I have to turn the music in the car down when we drive into the parking area.
‘Somebody might hear,’ she hisses at me for the millionth time.
I have given up trying to explain that, if we can’t hear into their cars, they can’t hear into our car.
We are working to Teenager Rules which have no basis in reality.
‘Bye,’ she mutters as she climbs out of the front passenger seat, then slams the car door shut in a way that makes the entire vehicle shake.
‘Bad Lexi,’ shrieks Teddy from the comfort of her child seat in the back. ‘Bad Lexi.’
