‘I’ll get you another mug, Felix,’ I say, rolling my eyes.
‘You always take her side!’ Felix yells, watching Amy chew on his now empty mug.
‘I’m not taking anyone’s side. She’s slobbered all over it, do you really want it back?’ Wow, children fight over the most ridiculous things.
‘You always let her take my stuff!’ Felix wails. Maybe he’s right, it was his mug. I try to take it back from Amy, but she clings on to it like a freakishly powerful giant pink leech.
I try negotiating with her. ‘I’ll get you another mug, Amy, a better mug.’ Then there’s a sharp pain in my finger that forces me to let go. ‘She bit me!’ I cry indignantly, clutching my index finger.
‘Amy – don’t bite,’ Sam says, trying to intervene, but then Amy starts wailing at his stern tone and he picks her up, trying to comfort her with a shushing noise. Inspecting my finger, I can see actual tooth marks in the flesh.
‘Dad always takes her side,’ Felix says, patting my arm in an unexpected display of sympathy.
The sink is still full of pans, the floor is covered in smashed risotto balls and Amy won’t stop howling. How can one meal create so much drama and mess?
As I’m lamenting the failure of my first afternoon parenting, there’s a noise outside and Sam walks across the room to look out of the kitchen window.
‘Someone’s here,’ he says. ‘Shit, it’s your parents.’
‘Daddy!’ says Felix.
‘Sorry. I mean, shoot, it’s your parents. Lucy.’
‘My parents?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ he groans. ‘With everything going on, I forgot – they’re staying the night with us on their way from Scotland to some literary festival.’ He glances at the digital family planner on the wall where, beneath today’s date in large font, are the words, ‘M&D to stay’。
I’m going to see my parents. Sam stands beside me at the sink and we watch Dad emerge from the passenger side. He looks smaller, more stooped. He’s wearing a cap, so I can’t see his face.
‘Margot will be upset I haven’t called to tell her what’s happened,’ Sam says, biting his lip.
‘I called them a couple of days ago. I didn’t want to worry them.’
‘You know your mum will want to move in if she thinks you’re having a major life crisis.’
‘I am having a major life crisis,’ I say.
Mum gets out of the driver’s side. She’s got her anorak hood up, but she’s got the same gait, the same ramrod posture. My heart swells with gratitude that they are both still here, still healthy.
‘I know.’ Sam rubs his chin with the heel of his palm. ‘I just don’t think I can handle your parents staying with us for more than one night, not right now.’
‘Let’s not tell them, then. I don’t want them to cancel their trip. We’ll tell them when they get back – if I’m still . . . you know.’
Sam puts an arm around my shoulder and kisses me on the head. I feel a brief, heady rush at the firm clasp of his hand, then hear the familiar voice of my mother calling ‘Cooeee!’ through the letter box.
Mum marches into the kitchen and waves an arm in greeting before heading straight for the kettle. ‘Hello, hello, don’t mind me, you know I like to make tea my own way. Goodness, what a mess in here. Feeding time at the zoo, is it?’
Her hair is short, and I can’t stop looking at it. She always said she’d never cut her hair, that it was ‘terribly ageing’， that cutting it would ‘feel like giving up’。 Practically her entire life, she’s worn her hair long, salon-highlighted, set in curlers each night to retain the volume. Now it’s short and grey and sticking out in wild tufts. There is something so familiar about her new look, and then it dawns on me – she looks just like her mother, my gran.
‘You cut your hair,’ I can’t help saying as she takes off her anorak and greets me with a firm kiss to each cheek.
‘Have I? No, it’s a haystack. I haven’t been to the hairdresser’s in months,’ she says.
‘You cut it short, I mean.’ But she’s distracted by the children now, leaning down to greet Amy, and finding Felix hiding underneath the kitchen table.
Part of me is waiting for her to look at me, to notice the change and then scream. But she doesn’t, she doesn’t see me at all. Glancing out of the window, I see Dad showing Sam a scratch on his car bonnet. Sam nods in sympathy, then reaches out to give Dad a pat on the back.
‘Have we arrived at an inconvenient time?’ Mum asks. ‘I told your father we should have left earlier, we hit the M25 at the worst time. He’s impossible to get out of the house these days, we had to go back twice to check he’d turned off the car port.’
Dad comes through to the kitchen and takes off his cap. I allow myself a moment to absorb the changes in him. His hair has gone from salt and pepper to entirely white. His face looks ever more lived in, softened and worn. He looks like a grandad, and then I realise that of course, he is one now. Despite all the subtle changes to his physical appearance, his voice and smile are the same and he radiates a familiar, comforting sense of ‘Dadness’。
‘We brought you some tablet from Scotland,’ he says, handing me a brown paper packet.
‘I’ll get the kids into their pyjamas,’ says Sam, scooping up a child in each arm, making them squeal in delight as he spins them around on his way to the door. ‘Then maybe Granny and Grandad can read you a story.’
Now that they’re both here, I lunge across the room and wrap an arm around each of my parents. ‘It’s so good to see you. I’m so glad you’re here, I love you both so much.’
As a family, we’re not prone to overt displays of affection. My flurry of emotion causes Mum to pull away and eye me with suspicion.
‘What’s wrong? Are you sick?’ she asks.
‘I’m not sick. It’s just nice to see you both,’ I say, wiping an eye with the back of my hand.
‘Are the children sick?’ Mum asks, her voice now an urgent whisper. ‘You’re not getting divorced, are you?’ She clutches her chest, and I shake my head.
‘You sounded like you are about to tell us bad news. I’m not sure I can take any more bad news this week.’ She presses her fingertips together, making a spire with her hands, a gesture I must have seen her make a thousand times. ‘Yesterday, the gardener told us that the beech hedge is dead, the whole thing will have to come out. Then we found out the Grievesons are moving. “Downsizing” apparently, though I’m sure they wouldn’t need to if they went on fewer cruises. Such a disruption, moving at our age. If you’re going to downsize, you do it in your sixties, everyone knows that. Quite extraordinary behaviour.’
‘Extraordinary,’ Dad says, giving me a sly wink.
Dad excuses himself to use the bathroom, and as soon as he’s out of the room Mum starts talking in a whisper.
‘It’s blow after blow. I’m extremely worried about your father.’
‘Oh?’ I whisper back.
‘Memory issues,’ she says, tapping her head. ‘My side of the family were all sharp as tacks well into their eighties, but your father’s side has a history of early mental decline. He’s forgetting everything, Lucy – he left his car keys in the vegetable aisle of Tesco’s last week. It was lucky someone didn’t drive off with the Peugeot. They would have found a lovely topside of butcher’s beef in the boot. Then on Thursday I asked him where the book I was reading had gone – the twentieth Richard Osman, special edition, no less. Bert tells me he’s taken it back to the library. It wasn’t even a library book for goodness’ sake! What am I to do? You know how he is about doctors. There are things you can do these days, supplements, electroconvulsive therapy, but he won’t acknowledge he’s going doo-lally.’