On Friday I do a trial presentation of The House Is Going to Get You. I’ve spent ages on the pitch, I know it’s polished, but when I say it out loud, it feels flat, lacking the magic we all felt when we were brainstorming the idea. Trey’s 4D monsters look amazing, but my stilted words aren’t doing them justice. Michael tells me I need to be louder, consult my notes less, allow time to pause, but honestly, I’m worse than rusty, I’m completely green.
After the trial presentation, Dominique lingers, pulling me to one side.
‘Will you write me a reference, if we don’t win?’ She gives me a guilty grimace. ‘I can’t be out of work. I owe my tattooist money.’ She pulls up her sleeve to show me an intricate gold tattoo of a headless mermaid. ‘I have to get the head done, otherwise it’s just a fish with arms.’
‘Sure,’ I say, feeling utterly deflated.
Once the team have dispersed, Michael comes to find me in my office.
‘I’m not doing it justice, am I?’ I say.
He pinches his lips together, then says, ‘How’s the fog?’
‘Currently a dense smog,’ I say, then ask quietly, ‘Do you think memories make us who we are, Michael?’
‘No,’ he says firmly. ‘Who we are is our code of morals, the things we stand for, not our ability to recall the past.’
Michael has such a calm authority, I find myself saying, ‘Maybe you should be the one to deliver the pitch?’ I can’t believe I’m saying this because this is all I ever wanted – to pitch an idea myself, but there’s too much at stake for this to depend on me. I’m half expecting Michael to say, ‘No, you should do it, you’ll be great,’ but he doesn’t, he just nods. He must see my face fall because he adds, ‘It’s a team effort, Lucy. It was your idea.’
Though I know it’s probably the right call, that doesn’t stop me from feeling disappointed.
After work, I nip up to Selfridges with the vouchers I have thirty days to spend. I walk through the women’s clothing floor, go right past the shoes, then straight up to the toy department. Here, I find the perfect present for Felix’s birthday. In the tech department, I spend most of the vouchers on new speakers for Sam’s studio, arranging to have them delivered to the house. For Amy, I get some new giraffe pyjamas, then for Leonard, a shiny new watering can with a particularly long spout, perfect for hanging baskets.
On my way out, I nip down to the Food Hall, where I buy myself a croissant for the train home. Old habits and all that. As I’m paying, I see a mother struggling with both a baby and a toddler. The baby is screaming, the toddler is refusing to walk, and the woman’s eyes have the defeated expression of someone close to tears, desperately trying to hold it together. I’m about to leave the shop, but then I turn back.
‘Hey, I just wanted to tell you you’re doing a great job,’ I tell the woman.
‘She’s hungry, that’s why she’s crying,’ the woman says, as though I’d asked her for an explanation. ‘My boy won’t sit still long enough for me to feed her. I shouldn’t have come shopping with them both, but it’s my mum’s birthday and . . .’ She takes a breath, and I shake my head, she doesn’t need to explain.
‘I’m a mum, I get it. Look, I’m not in a rush. Why don’t you let me distract your son, give you a chance to feed your daughter?’
So that’s what we do. I usher the little family over to a booth, then I split my croissant with the boy while his mother breastfeeds his sister. The woman, who I discover is called Greta, starts weeping when I insist on buying her a pastry too.
‘I’m sorry. I get emotional when my milk lets down. Don’t let me keep you, if you’ve got somewhere to be,’ Greta says, wiping her tear-streaked cheek.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell her, ‘I don’t need to be anywhere else.’ And even though there are a hundred things I could be doing, even though there is never enough time, right now, it’s true.
On Saturday, Sam and I run around getting the house ready for Felix’s party. Sam buys balloons shaped like space aliens, and I attempt to bake a cake. There’s an online tutorial on how to make the perfect shark cake. It has an ‘Ace It’ rating of four, which means ‘not that hard’， but I don’t know who these people are, baking shark cakes, because they clearly don’t have toddlers pulling on their legs while they do it.
Cake iced, it looks more like a blue log with teeth, so I write ‘shark’ on the side in white icing, just to clarify what it’s supposed to be. Then I rush up to London to get Leonard. He’s waiting for me outside, holding a book-shaped package, wrapped in brown paper.
‘It’s a book on building your own smokehouse, so he can smoke his own ham,’ Leonard says, and he’s so pleased with himself, I don’t want to point out that an eight-year-old probably won’t be able to build his own smokehouse, but then, what do I know, he’s a pretty amazing kid. As we start driving, Leonard opens the glove box, and inspects the interior of my car.
‘Is this one of those cyborg cars?’ he asks.
‘Electric.’
‘You know the government can track all your movements in these?’
‘Right.’
‘You need to delete your satnav history and keep lemons on the dashboard – they disrupt the signals.’
By the time we get to Farnham, I’ve been educated on all the many conspiracy theories Leonard believes: that peanut butter is not made from peanuts, but a genetically modified substitute called Pleanuts, grown in underground labs in America. That JFK was not assassinated but lived to ninety-six in a Florida golfing community. That rather than building spaceships, NASA spends its time spying on the population. As I’m listening to all this, I start to question whether a seventy-something-year-old conspiracy theorist with a criminal record is the sort of person I should be encouraging my child to be friends with. I mean, it’s one thing to be neighbourly, but quite another to be a negligent parent.
‘Leonard, I know it’s not polite to ask, but since I’m inviting you to my child’s birthday party, will you tell me what you went to jail for? It wasn’t murder or anything, was it?’
‘Ha, no! Impersonating a police officer and fishing without a licence,’ he tells me.
‘At the same time or two separate incidents?’
Leonard shrugs. ‘It was a long time ago, you know; I actually don’t remember.’ And now I have to laugh, and Leonard laughs too.
At the house, Felix’s school friends Matt and Molly have arrived. Molly has two long black pigtails hanging down over her shoulders and she wears a T-shirt that says, ‘A girl designed you’。 I don’t really understand it as a slogan, but I instantly like her vibe.
In the garden I’ve made a complex assault course. The grass is lava and Hockey Banjo has been taken hostage by the Dread Pirate Lucy （me） and tied to a flagpole erected above Sam’s studio door. Felix and his friends must overcome a series of challenges to rescue him. There’s a river of sinking sand to cross （the paddling pool full of bubbles and bonus prizes）， arrows being fired by a rival pirate gang （my mum and dad firing Nerf guns from the upstairs window） and a terrifying troll bridge to navigate （the vegetable patch） where they must answer questions from a hideous troll before they can pass. Sam does an excellent turn as the troll, until Leonard asks if he can have a go and has us all in stitches with his Oscar-worthy imitation of Gandalf, yelling, ‘You shall not pass.’