‘You tell her you have to eat because you’re having a panic attack,’ retorted Brooke.
‘Tell her Logan is hungry,’ said Troy. ‘She won’t want Logan to be hungry.’
‘I told her I was hungry an hour ago,’ said Logan.
Steffi came out from under the coffee table and put her head on Amy’s lap.
‘What’s the latest with Claire?’ Amy asked Troy as she stroked Steffi’s soft ears. Troy’s ex-wife had been back in Australia trying to get pregnant with their frozen embryos and so far she’d been through one round with no luck.
‘She’s having a break, trying again in the new year,’ said Troy. ‘There are four more left.’
‘Do you hope that she does get pregnant?’ asked Amy. ‘Or that she doesn’t?’
‘I want it for her. I don’t want it for me. I don’t want that guy bringing up my biological child. I really, really don’t want that.’ He paused. ‘Did I tell you I met him?’
‘The cardiologist?’ asked Brooke. ‘What’s he like?’
They all looked at Troy, waiting for his answer, staunchly on his side in spite of their sniping, in spite of his past mistakes, suddenly, mysteriously, as close as siblings could be. Amy remembered that awful day when their father got out of the car on the highway. One moment they’d all been fighting, hating each other as hard as you can possibly hate a sibling, and then suddenly, the car was silent and Troy was holding Brooke’s hand and they were looking at each other, waiting for their mother’s response, united in their horror.
‘He’s an arrogant twat,’ said Troy.
‘That’s surgeons for you,’ said Brooke.
‘He’s not right for her,’ said Troy. ‘He calls Claire baby. She’s trying to have a baby and he calls her baby.’
Brooke said, ‘I mean, I guess that’s a common term of –’
The kitchen fire alarm began to beep. An acrid smell filled the house and their father limped heavily into the room, radiating grumpiness. One of the grinning snowmen toppled from the shelf and onto the carpet.
‘What’s going on?’ demanded Stan. He looked at them all as if they were children.
‘It’s fine!’ Joy shrieked from the kitchen. ‘Everything is fine! Just relax! Everybody stay right where you are!’
*
Joy threw a tea towel up at the smoke detector on her kitchen ceiling to try to make it stop beeping. She wished Logan had never installed the damned thing. It was so sensitive. So judgemental of her cooking.
‘It’s not an actual fire,’ she told the smoke detector. She caught the tea towel and tossed it up again. It was a bad throw. It landed splat on her face. She twisted it into a ball and threw it again. ‘It’s just a bit of smoke, you stupid thing! Stop overreacting.’
She’d been doing walnuts in butter and brown sugar like Savannah had done on Father’s Day （she’d told Joy that salad was a ‘cinch’！） and then she’d been distracted trying to stir the stupid lumps out of the gravy and next thing the walnuts were black smoking chunks of nuclear waste. No warning, no middle ground!
Lunch kept slipping further and further away. Her children wouldn’t stop interrupting to ask if they could help, and she didn’t want their help, because then they’d all get involved and start making annoying suggestions and ordering her around: Don’t bother with the walnuts, Mum, isn’t it time to put the potatoes on?
It felt like she was stuck in one of those recurring nightmares she still had where she was trying to get one of her children to a match on time but her car was moving in slow motion. She’d wake with her foot still desperately pressing an imaginary accelerator.
She threw the saucepan straight in the bin. It was ruined forever. Everything was ruined forever. What in the world was she trying to prove with this elaborate lunch and all these fancy, fiddly side dishes? No-one in her family even liked turkey. Or walnuts. She’d created a picture in her head of a glittering red, gold and green Christmas Day that would somehow magically make them a family again.
‘Are we ever going to eat today?’
Stan was in the kitchen, glowering at her. It was the first time he’d spoken directly to her in weeks, and this was what he chose to say.
‘Well, that’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Not “Can I do anything to help?” but “Are we ever going to eat today?”’
‘Everyone has been offering to help and you refuse to accept,’ said Stan.