“Yeah, shame you turned out like you did,” adds Gus, and I absently reply, “Ha ha,” without moving my eyes from the screen. I’m captivated by the sight of my pristine Russian dolls, new out of the box. I’ve still got them—five hand-painted wooden Matryoshka dolls that stack inside one another, with lustrous painted eyes, rosy cheeks, and serene smiles. They’re knocked about now and stained with felt tip, but they’re the most precious souvenir I have of my childhood.
Where other children had a teddy, I had my dolls. I would take them apart, arrange them in rows, give them “conversations,” and talk to them. Sometimes they represented our family: two big parents and three smaller children, with me the tiniest doll of all. Sometimes they were different versions of me. Or else I gave them the names of friends from school and acted out the quarrels of the day. But more often they were just a form of worry beads. I would stack and unstack them, barely seeing them, letting the familiar ritual comfort me. In fact, I still do. They live by my bed to this day, and I sometimes reach for them when I’m stressed out.
“Look at your dress,” Bean is saying now, gazing at the screen. “I want one!”
“You could make one,” says Mimi. “I still have the pattern. There was an adult version too.”
“Really?” Bean’s face lights up. “I’m definitely making that.”
Yet again I marvel at how Bean has taken on Mimi’s creative mantle. They both sew and knit and bake. They can turn a space into a magical domain, with a velvet cushion here and a plate of oatmeal cookies there. Bean works at home in marketing, and even her office is beautiful, all hanging plants and art posters.
I buy cushions and oatmeal cookies. I’ve even tried a hanging plant. But it never looks the same. I don’t have that flair. However, I have other skills. At least, I think I do. （Is being “a stubborn pain in the arse” a skill? Because that’s what I’m best at, apparently.）
Our kitchen is the prime example of Mimi’s creativity, I think, my eyes drifting fondly over it. It’s not just a kitchen, it’s an institution. A work of art. Every cupboard is a panel of intricate forest, drawn in Sharpie, built up over the years. It all started with a tiny mouse that Mimi drew to cheer me up when I’d cut my knee, aged about three. She sketched the mouse in the corner of a cupboard, winked at me, and said, “Don’t tell Daddy.” I gazed at it, enchanted, unable to believe that she had drawn something so amazing, and on the furniture.
A few weeks later, Gus was upset over something and she drew him a comical frog. Then, over the years, she added drawing after drawing, creating elaborate forest scenes. Trees to mark birthdays; animals at Christmas. She let us add our own little contributions too. We would draw them, holding our breath, feeling momentous. A butterfly…a worm…a cloud.
The panels are pretty filled up with drawings now, but Mimi still squeezes in new touches now and again. Our kitchen is famous in the village, and it’s the first thing our friends want to see when they come over.
“No one else has a kitchen like this!” I remember Temi gasping when she first saw it, aged eleven, and I immediately replied, bursting with pride, “No one else has a Mimi.”
On the iPad screen now is a montage of Dad at various parties we’ve had over the years, and I feel waves of nostalgia as I watch Dad dressed up as Father Christmas when I was eight…Dad and Mimi in black tie, dancing at Bean’s eighteenth…So many happy family celebrations.
Happy Birthday, Tony Talbot! appears on the screen as a final frame, and we all applaud exuberantly.
“Really! Children!” Dad seems overcome as he smiles around the kitchen. He has a sentimental streak, Dad, and I can see his eyes are damp. “I don’t know what to say. That’s an incredible present. Bean, Gus, Effie…Thank you.”
“It’s not from me,” I say hastily. “That was Bean and Gus. I made you…this.”
Feeling suddenly shy, I present Dad with my present, wrapped in Bean’s paper. I hold my breath as he unwraps the large, flat book and reads out the title.
“A Boy from Layton-on-Sea.” He looks at me questioningly, then starts leafing through the pages. “Oh…my goodness.”
It’s a kind of scrapbook I’ve put together of Layton-on-Sea in the era of my dad’s childhood, sourcing old photos, postcards, maps, and newspaper cuttings. It became totally engrossing as I was making it—in fact, I could probably do a thesis on Layton-on-Sea now.