I kissed them each on the cheek. ‘Remember, it’s Thursday, so Uncle Jonah and Auntie Sadie will pick you up so you can stay the night with them.’
‘Yay!’ Georgia said. ‘Thursdays are my favourite!’
‘Uncle Jonah makes the best dinners in the whole world,’ Rosie said.
My offended face was not entirely faked. Intellectually, I understood the novelty for them of spending one night a week with my brother and his wife. The regular presence of Jonah in their lives at all was still a novelty, really – he and Sadie had only moved to Hobart eight months ago. Emotionally, though, it was still difficultto hear that the twins preferred their Thursdays with them to every other night of the week with me. ‘And what am I, chopped liver?’
They both giggled. It was one of my favourite sounds in the world, that identical laugh of theirs, and I couldn’t resist hugging them again. ‘Be good, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you.’
‘Look, Georgia, there’s Madison!’ Rosie said.
The twins scrambled free of my embrace and ran after their friend, the backpacks they still hadn’t quite grown into bouncing around on their backs.
Just like they had too often over the past year, tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. Watching them run away from me always made me conscious of the fact that my heart lived outside my body.
‘Mum?’
I blinked the tears back. ‘Yes, sweetheart?’
‘Do you want me to come with you today?’
Lex had a serious expression on their face. They were twelve now and approaching the end of Year 6, so they were usually out of the car at school drop-off the second I turned off the engine, too cool to be seen with their mother or little sisters. Today, though, they’d lingered, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. ‘I didn’t want to say anything in front of the twins, but I heard you on the phone to Uncle Elias the other night. I know you’re seeing Dad today. I thought maybe it would be good – maybe it would be helpful – if I went with you.’
‘Oh, Lex.’
I pressed my tongue hard to the roof of my mouth. I was not going to burst into tears at school drop-off.I was not. There were several other mums and dads watching us curiously, and I was already the laughing-stock of the Parents and Friends Association. If I started crying now, I would never hear the end of it.
‘That’s so lovely of you to offer,’ I said, ‘but you don’t need to worry. Your dad and I are going to figure things out like grown-ups. It’s going to be fine.’
‘You don’t have to lie to me.’
‘Sweetheart, I’m—’
‘You don’t,’ Lex insisted. ‘You don’t have to say it’s fine. I know it’s not. I know Dad hasn’t paid you any child support. I know you had to ask Grandpa for money.’
I scribbledpatricideon my mental to-do list. I’d tried to keep the worst of the brutal realities of the split from Lex and the girls, but when my parents had come to Hobart a few months ago to visit Jonah and me, my father had bellowed,So when exactly is that chump going to pay up so you can stop bleeding me for money?at the top of his lungs over the dinner table. The girls hadn’t understood, but Lex had, and the ugliness of that realisation written all over their face had made me want to vomit up all my internal organs.
‘That’s true,’ I said, tasting bile in the back of my throat, ‘but that’s what today’s meeting is about. We’re going to get that sorted. And your dad—’
‘Don’t say he loves me.’
Of course he loves you, I wanted to say, but I didn’t like lying to my children. I had to press my tongue to the roof of my mouth again.
‘I just thought it might be helpful to have me there,’ Lex said stubbornly. ‘So if Dad really doesn’t want to have anything to do with us anymore, he has to say it to my face – and everyone has to hear him do it.’
‘Sweetheart, can I give you a hug?’
Lex paused for a moment – they weren’t much of a hugger, preferring fist-bumps to most other forms of physical contact – then nodded. I wrapped my arms around them, jaw aching from how tight I was clenching it, my eyes feeling like someone was inside my skull scrubbing them from behind with steel wool.
‘You,’ I said into their shoulder, keeping my voice low so no one around us would hear, ‘are the best, bravest kid in the entire world, okay? And I love you so much.’
They tolerated the hug for a few moments before they drew back, the flag pins on their collar catching briefly on my hair. ‘So can I come?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s going to be very long, very boring, and very, very sensible. And I’ll have my lawyer and Auntie Chess with me, making sure everything goes smoothly.’
Lex studied me. I had to resist the urge to hold my breath.
‘Okay,’ they said at last. ‘But Mum… don’t be nice to him.’
