Dan arrives home just before seven, by which time Lexi is watching an animated Japanese show on the television, Liam is drawing, and Teddy is bathed and is sitting in bed, talking to her cuddlies and awaiting a story from Daddy.
She likes a story every night. But she has a sort ofI’m not sure who I’ll choose tonightthing going, so that generally the person she chooses is the person who isn’t there. Tonight I am not suitable for storytelling duties, even though it’s now late and she needs to get to sleep.
Although I have been keeping anI am a normal motherroutine going for the evening, I have been on 440 centigrade. Truly, no lamb shank would survive that heat. Every time I’m on my own, I catch myself having mental conversations with Elisa.
Why don’t you just leave her alone? You’ve left her alone for a long time and now you are getting your mother to try and see her, and you want to see her and what is this all about? Do you have any idea the damage you could do with picking her up and then just dropping her?
Worse, I begin to think about life if Elisaisin our lives.
‘Hello, all,’ says Dan as he comes in, slamming the door behind him. He can tell there’s something wrong as soon as he sees me. Because normally I hug him and we have a little kiss and I say, ‘How was your day, big man?’ and he says, ‘Ah, pretty good. How was your day, baby?’
It’s a joke going back to our early days when we were first living together. I’d had a very 1950s-style apron I’d put on for cooking and one day he said I looked like an adorable 1950s housewife with my blonde hair all looped up on top of my head (I wasn’t plaiting it then) and that pinny.
‘That’s me,’ I used to say, ‘I’m just a cute 1950s housewife, waiting for her big strong man to come home.’
Today there is no ‘big man’ pleasantry as he leans close.
I hiss: ‘Bloody Elisa has been in touch with Lexi and she wants to see her. What’s more, she’s going to be in Ireland and, and—’
‘Daddy,’ shouts Lexi, swinging into the room and launching herself at him.
‘Hello, darling,’ he says, hugging her and giving me a slightly anguished/slightly guilty gaze. At that point I realise that Elisa has already been in touch with him. I don’t know how I know. But I know. It’s not so much female intuition as some sort of female SherlockHolmes-iness that all women possess. If humans lost their sixth sense somewhere along the way, there is still an ability in most women to detect when their husbands have something they want to hide.
Maura says she has worked very hard on honing this ability. To be frank, I don’t see why, because Pip wouldn’t dream of hiding anything from her. Scarlett and Jack are so much in tune that they are almost the one person; there is no need for any intuitive lying or a session with a polygraph machine for them.
And as for Con – Con is never with a woman long enough to need to know if she’s lying or not.He’sthe one who lies.
I rarely use my detective abilities, as Dan’s a hopeless liar.
But then I used to consider myself a hopeless liar too and now look at me: lying about going to a group therapy session for my mugging.
‘I have so much to tell you, Dad,’ says Lexi excitedly.
‘Yeah,’ I say with a hint of saccharine, which leaks out. ‘Lots, and Dad has things to tell us too and I’m sure of it!’
‘Ah no, nothing, just the normal day at work,’ he says, looking a bit green about the gills.
It seemed to take ages to get Liam and Lexi to bed. Dan was definitely delaying the moment. Liam wanted to watch his favourite programme where people fall over stuff and the camera catches them and it is, I have to admit, absolutely hysterical. I have a juvenile sense of humour somewhere, except when it comes to small children: that’s the bit I don’t understand. Your very small child is about toface-plant themselves on the ground and what do you do? Rescue them? No, you reach for your camera. I can’t look at the small children being hurt. But some of the other stuff, like holidaymakers thinking it was wise to kiss a camel, cracks me up every time.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Liam, bed.’
Liam goes to bed, a full twenty minutes before Lexi. She’s insisted upon that twenty minutes for quite a while and it’s vitally important.
‘I mean, I’m fourteen now, Mum,’ she says every time I mention bed as if being fourteen is on a par with beingforty-five and she should have her own credit card, electric car and apartment.
‘I know,’ I agree gravely. ‘You are fourteen, but teenagers still need a lot of sleep.’
She loves being called a teenager. I remember I loved being called a teenager too. It spoke of being nearlygrown-up and boyfriends. Mind you, I was hopeless with boyfriends.
I was taller than almost all of them. Boys do not like this, it turns out. My nicknames in school were Big Bird or Skyscraper.
How I longed to be one of the tiny girls who fitted neatly into the school uniform, the utter picture of femininity. Scarlett was tall too, but notastall and the boys swarmed around her. Sex appeal, you see.
As for me, the only boy who came close to dating me was the captain of the football team (a major coup) and he and I had absolutely zero in common apart from height. Nevertheless we ended up together at a school disco on one memorable occasion. Even now, many, many years later, this date makes me shudder with horrified embarrassment. There was a bit of hands wrapping around each other and we tried to figure out where to put our mouths for the kissing. He had a big nose which got in the way. There were no explanations for that sort of thing in any of the romantic books I read. People just kissed – nobody ever mentioned anything about where you put your nose. Myself and Football Dude attempted a sort of sideways attack on each other’s faces and there was some sticking in of tongues. Yuck.
But I was not to be deterred. I had a boyfriend, sort of. I could do this.
Except for the tongue thing. Seriously gross. I was waiting for the chorus of joyous angels and pure happiness flittering down from on high and it felt as if he was trying to examine how many fillings I had.
