‘Thank you,’ I say and I feel utterly appalling. Another lie. Worse than before. What’s wrong with me?
Dan hugs me lovingly in the morning in bed before we get up.
His early morning beard growth nuzzles my neck and despite everything, I arch towards him, responding.
‘We’ve got a few minutes,’ he says softly, and his body covers mine, allowing me to feel exactly how ready he was for me, as he maps kisses along my neck and down my breastbone.
‘Mummy!’ roars a small voice. ‘Ambulance!’
Teddy.
Dan rolls off so quickly he nearly falls off the bed, and we both giggle hysterically, so that when Teddy comes in, uncharacteristically up early on just the wrong day, she stares at us.
‘Wendi the Dolphin has run away,’ says Teddy in a cross voice. ‘It is not funny!’
‘Wendi was there last night,’ I say, getting up, because I know Dan can’t at that exact moment. ‘We only say ambulance when we’re hurt. Wendi is just missing.’
Teddy stops and puts a dramatic hand just above her stomach, which is where she has always figured her heart is. ‘It hurts here!’ she yells.
Dan tries to smother a laugh.
‘Daddy!’ she growls at him.
‘A hurt in your heart. That’s different,’ I say, figuring that at least the other two would be woken up by the Wendi incident. Teddy sure can scream.
Wendi turns out to be under Teddy’s bed and will require medicine to get better, Teddy announces.
Out of the mouths of babes.
I’d slept my full six hours last night thanks to a Zimovane but I tell Dan, when he asks, that I’d been restless because I was cutting back.
‘I’m so proud of you, Freya,’ he says before he goes and I feel about as low as I could get. ‘But there’ll be other side effects, I looked them up.’
I blink. Lying takes practise. ‘I’m doing it slowly,’ I say, hating myself.
That morning, Lorraine is over as we test and cook recipes for a corporate food gig the following day where I’m doing two different demos at a conference.
Lorraine is speedily making a tarte tatin for tomorrow and at the same time, packing away all the ingredients for the one we’ll begin to make at the conference. She’s better at tarte tatins than I am: she has the patience for the fiddly placing of caramelised apple slices.
I have asked her why she sticks at what she does and doesn’t try to get her own TV/cookbook thing going.
‘I can’t stand up in front of the camera,’ she says. ‘You either can or you can’t.’
‘But you could,’ I always say back.
‘That’s why I like you, Abalone,’ she shoots back. ‘You genuinely think that what you do is nothing and that anyone can do it. You’ll never get a swelled head.’
‘Not with you around,’ I laugh.
Finally, we’ve finished, the catering fridge is full and bags are packed with all our goodies. We’ll travel together, as we always do. Lorraine’s insured on my car so that we can share driving on long trips. I have an hour before I have to pick up Teddy and on a whim, I decide that a few moments with other people is a good idea.
So you don’t have silence and have to think about all the lies?
Yes, Mildred. Precisely.
I wish she wasn’t always right.
‘I want company,’ I say out loud. To be among people. Apart from the fabulous walls that Kellinch House provided, I’d figured moving to Bellavista would be good for all of us because it was a beautiful village within a city.
