‘She’s safe for now, but to get her home, we need to defeat the evil octopus king’ – I wave the leggings in the air – ‘ascend the waterfall’ – I point to the stairs – ‘then take on the Bathtub of Many Questions, before reaching the safety of Castle Cot.’ I pause for dramatic effect. ‘Are you with me, Captain?’
Felix looks around, embarrassed, perhaps checking to see if anyone is watching us. His eyes flicker with indecision. Amy claps in anticipation, completely invested in whatever this is. ‘Please, Captain Rutherford, I can’t do this without you.’
Time stands still, then the urge to play wins. Looking around the room, I grab a pillow from the sofa and throw it to Felix. ‘Your octopus shield, man.’ He bangs the pillow to his chest, launches himself at my legging-clad hand, and a fight to the death ensues. Amy stands up in her boat, applauding our performance. Now that Felix is involved, the game notches up a level in complexity. He tells me that before getting up the waterfall of seven fishes, we must take out the octopus’s lair in the playroom. He grabs a dressing-gown cord from the laundry pile and ties it onto Amy’s boat so we can pull her along as we leap across the furniture. Felix commits to the game with a ferocity I couldn’t have predicted. When we’re both safe on the living-room rug, with Princess Amy moored up in her boat, Felix points to the toy basket at the other side of the room.
‘That’s the secret lair,’ he whispers. ‘Neckie’s in there. He’s the leader. To get up the waterfall we’ve got to get him and his goons out of there, distract them so we can get to the button.’
‘What does the button do?’ I ask, genuinely keen to know.
‘Anti-gravity button. It reverses the flow of the water.’
‘Genius! How do we take out the toys?’
‘The goons,’ he corrects me. ‘I’ll paddle around the back, you distract them at the entrance to the cave. I’ll climb in the secret entrance and detonate the’ – he looks around, throws a cushion across the floor, then leaps to it so he can reach for a wooden jack-in-the-box from the lower toy shelf – ‘the bomb.’
‘Be careful of that. You know how sensitive those are,’ I say, in hushed reverence.
‘This isn’t my first rodeo, Lieutenant,’ he tells me with a cheeky grin, and in that grin, I see a flash of his father, and of this boy at sixteen, at twenty, as a man, and feel a pang of something in my chest, as though my heart has shed some outer shell and now lies open to the elements.
Felix paddles off on the sofa cushion with the bomb tucked carefully beneath his arm.
On my phone, I find ‘Bad Romance’ by Lady Gaga. It starts playing through the speakers in the ceiling and I turn up the volume. For Zoya’s sixteenth birthday, we worked out a dance routine for this song and recorded a music video in her parents’ living room. It’s the only dance routine I know. Felix watches in confusion as I start singing and throwing wild shapes on the rug, Amy squeals in delight and starts rocking her laundry basket boat back and forth. Felix gives a nod of approval and now he’s near the toy basket he starts tossing soft toys around the room.
‘It’s working! They’re leaving the cave undefended! Don’t stop.’
I dance like my life depends on it, like my relationship with my son depends on it, like my whole horrible day of failure might be undone by one successful dance routine. Maybe I’m not going to win this little boy’s respect by pretending to be the mother he knows, but maybe I’ll win it by dancing like a maniac long enough to give him a shot at the anti-gravity button.
‘I can see the button!’ Felix roars, diving for the toy basket, and I feel a rush of adrenaline, as though something huge is about to happen.
An hour later, Felix and I lie on the upstairs hallway completely spent.
‘We did it,’ he says, reaching out to high-five me.
‘We did,’ I say, glancing into Amy’s room, where she’s now in her cot ready for bed. Our mission to get to the castle took a detour via the kitchen for hero fuel （fishfingers and chips） and boat fuel （milk）， which Amy drank on behalf of the boat. Then we made it up the waterfall to the Bathtub of Many Questions, where Felix had to correctly spell five words to turn on the Taps of Destiny. Amy was delightfully compliant throughout the whole game and was exhausted by the time we finally deposited her in her castle （cot）。
‘That was one hell of a mission,’ I say, offering Felix a hand to pull him up to standing. We walk downstairs and through the living room, now scattered with cushions and toys. The laundry pile is halfway across the hall, from when Felix was digging to find a tow rope for the boat. The kitchen is still a disaster zone from Amy’s tea . . . and lunch . . . and breakfast. Yet despite the housepocalypse, a new calm confidence has taken hold of me. Maybe I can do this parenting thing. I’ll put the house to rights, prep all the things I need for tomorrow, get Felix to bed, then lock myself away in the office and email Michael all my show ideas. Then I will try to do it all again tomorrow, only better.
‘That was fun,’ Felix says quietly as I begin to load the dishwasher. ‘Mummy doesn’t do that stuff much any more. She doesn’t play with us, she’s always too busy.’
‘Is she?’ I ask, then feel a loyalty towards my future self. ‘She has a lot on her plate. I’m sure she’d want to play with you more if she could.’
‘I know. She’s a great mummy.’ He looks up at me, and I sense he wants to tell me he’s not being disloyal either. ‘She does the best birthday parties. Last year she made me this dinosaur cake. All my friends said it was the best cake ever, it had all these teeth made of M&Ms.’
I hum, biting my lip, feeling a sudden swell of emotion behind my eyes.
‘We didn’t cook the broccoli,’ Felix says, pointing to a broccoli head, sitting forgotten on the chopping board.
‘Do you want broccoli for dessert?’
‘I guess,’ he says, shrugging.
I put a pan of water on the stove, and Felix picks up a knife to start chopping.
‘Wait, can you use a knife?’
‘You trust me with a grenade but not with a kitchen knife?’ I laugh out loud, and there’s that smile again, the one he tries to hide, but he can’t disguise his pleasure in making me laugh.
‘Hey?’ comes a voice from the doorway and Felix and I both turn to see Sam looking around at the chaos in bemusement.
‘Hey, Dad,’ Felix says, running over to hug his father. He’s home early? I was going to tidy up before he got back, I was going to do better tomorrow.
Sam looks exhausted, and I have the urge to hug him too, but I’m wary. He’s got that ‘disappointed teacher’ look as he surveys the chaos.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ I tell him. ‘We were playing a game in here. I’ll tidy it all up.’
‘It’s fine,’ Sam says, walking through to the living room, picking up sofa cushions and putting them back where they belong. ‘You should be in bed, buddy,’ he tells Felix. ‘It’s a school day tomorrow. How about you go brush your teeth and I’ll come up and say goodnight.’