I was just in the process of making myself a couple of slices of toast from the thick white bread that Oliver bought under sufferance and didn’t eat, and which I let go mouldy three times out of five, when I noticed a bowl in the drying rack. Ineverput things in the drying rack. I’d sometimes put them in the dishwasher if I wasfeeling extraordinarily virtuous.
I pointed the renegade bowl out to Oliver, who didn’t seem surprised.
“I assume Jasmine got up in the night and had some stew,” he said. “Which I think is a good sign.”
“It’s a good sign that she’s ‘Be Our Guesting’ us?”
Oliver gave me a quizzical look.
“Refusing to come to shared mealtimes and then feeding herself at midnight, possibly with the help of an animated candlestick.”
“It’s a good sign that she already feels comfortable treating the kitchen as her own.”
That was way glass-half-fuller than I was personally capable of, but that was probably the morning talking. And the fact I had to go to school. In my thirties.
I whacked two slices of bread in the toaster. And then, when they came up far too pale, whacked them immediately down again.
“You know,” Oliver told me, “youcouldjust turn the dial up.”
“Then they get burned.”
“Don’t they get burned this way as well?”
I slammed thecancelbutton, and two perfectly browned slices of toast popped up. “Not if I’m quick.”
“And you couldn’t be just as quick on a higher setting because…”
I gave Oliver a playfully grumpy look. “I’ve got a system and the system works.”
“I think those are, at best, each half true.”
Before I could defend my extremely sensible toast preparation scheme, we heard rapid footsteps coming downstairs and Jaz, wearing most of a school uniform, appeared in the kitchen, grabbed a slice of bread from the same packet I’d made my toast from, rolled it up, and started eating it butterless.
“Good morning,” said Oliver.
I followed up with a, “Hey, Jaz.”
“Ruff,” said Spud, who had just appeared in the kitchen, attracted by the combination of new human and food.
“We got you a tie,” said Oliver while I was measuring out Spud’s breakfast. “I’ll fetch it for you once I’m done.”
Another barely-a-shrug from Jaz. “All right.”
“We’ll need to sort you out a blazer as well,” he continued. “The tie only really comes in one size, but we didn’t want to get you a blazer that didn’t fit.”
Spud was happily working his way through his meal, and Jaz had largely finished hers. They were both equally silent.
“Lucien can take you in on Saturday perhaps,” Oliver pressed on. “Or after school one day this week.”
“Sure.”
Once Spud had finished his meal and we’d attended to his morning doggy needs—and those needs had been duly recorded in the Secret Diary of Spud’s Arse Aged Zero and Three Quarters, which we were mostly keeping out of habit these days—Oliver set out to catch the train and I set out to do my first-ever school run.
Or at least I tried to.
“I can walk,” Jaz told me, tying her new official school tie resentfully around her neck.
“It’s your first day.”
