Payton: What flavour?
Me: Chocolate. Feel free not to eat it. I’m sure it’ll taste terrible.
Max: You’re just wanting it all for yourself. You need to watch it – your waistline’s growing.
Me: Nothing wrong with my waistline and as long as Georgia likes what she sees, that’s all that matters.
Payton: She did mention you’d become more cuddly.
Me: She did not.
Payton: No, she did. Seriously. She said you were getting a bit fleshy but she liked it because it gave her more to cuddle. You reminded her of a teddy bear.
Me: I’m not getting like a teddy bear.
Me: I’ll bring a salad to go with the pizza tonight. Health food.
Payton: Good call.
Me: Did Georgia seriously say that?
Payton: No. You just fall for it every time.
Max: Cal, you haven’t sent me the money.
Callum: Been sedating a lion at the zoo so I could clean his teeth. Will do it later. Has everyone given Mum their keys back? I can’t find my set.
Max: When’s the last time you used them?
Callum: Not for years. Which I guess says it all.
Me: It kind of does. I haven’t given mine back. I’ll do it tonight. I can’t believe it’s the last time we’ll be there.
Claire: You never know. We might end up knowing the family who’re moving in there.
Me: We kind of do. The man who’s buying it is the surgeon doing Rose’s procedure.
Jackson: You’ve kept that quiet.
Me: I kind of forgot about it. These last couple of weeks have been a blur.
Max: That’s putting it mildly. Vic wants to know if anyone’s staying at ours tonight. She says all she’s doing tomorrow is the sweet sum of fuck all, so if any of the kids want to stay at ours, she can ‘look after them’.
Jackson: Can she have Teddy and Isobel? Van’s got a meeting first thing Monday and I’m in court, so we were going to ask anyway.
There was some more organising, usual for a Sunday during the school holidays when childcare was often an issue. Some of the kids went to summer holiday clubs, such as Luke, who just lived at a soccer camp every week it was on, but most of them wanted to spend their time as freely as possible, and when they were with some of their cousins, they could be bored.
There was talk next year of three weeks at Mum’s family home on the West Coast of Ireland, which was near to the beach and unspoilt. Mum’d loved her summers there, although they weren’t full of sunshine, it was Ireland after all. Vic and Wren had already decided to spend the full three weeks there, and there was every chance me or Georgia or both would be there too.
This summer though was full of cobbled together last minute arrangements revolving around meetings that couldn’t be postponed and deadlines that came up all too quickly. Summers went too quickly. I remembered the summers from when I was a kid, usually spent in Oxford, running amok around the fields and into the village, swimming in the river and climbing trees until I was hungry. I remembered Mum shouting at me for looking likeI’d been rolling around like a dog in fox poo and actually hosing me down on one occasion.
Those summers were a long time ago now, so much had happened since, but I now understood that I’d never comprehend the speed of time or slow it down. I just needed to make the most of these summers where the kids were little and unburdened with heartbreak or work or souring friendships.
Leaving the house where we’d grown up in London today would be a milestone. A moment that we’d long recall, the memories made in those four walls savoured.
But we wouldn’t be making any more there after tonight.
Georgia made her cake and I listened to Evie and Maxwell read their books – one complaining about it more than the other. Rose was involved in some online conversation about books, because why do anything else? – and Luke was reading the latest transfer deals for the Premier League. Our two youngest weren’t bothered really about the house sale, and Luke was rarely bothered about anything that wasn’t football.
