Chapter 8 #2
‘She does sometimes,’ Toby pleads. He’s sitting nicely in his chair.
‘Probably on the weekends. Am I right, mate?’
He sighs, like I’ve just blown a hole right through his cunning strategy, and I allow myself a grin. Fucking kids. The hustling is constant. Exhausting.
‘Your mum told me specifically no TV on school mornings.’ She told me it distracts them too much and turns them into zombies (if they aren’t already, which Daisy definitely is) and makes it far harder to get them out of the house, because having their cartoons turned off is one more massive incentive to melt the fuck down.
I check my watch. Seven fifty. Where the hell has the past half an hour gone? It’s like we’re in some kind of time vortex. By my calculations, we need to be pulling out of the drive by eight-fifteen at the absolute latest.
I’ll allow a five-minute window to get them out the front door and strapped into the car, I decide. That should be plenty of time.
Check me, managing this leaving-the-house shit like a pro.
The actual eating process goes smoothly.
I was planning on making myself a coffee and enjoying it while the kids eat, but I don’t have a spare second to put Angus’ swanky coffee machine on.
I’m in a state of constant flux: putting round after round of toast on, buttering it, applying extra spreads of His Lordship and Her Ladyship’s choosing, cutting off crusts, fetching glasses of water, mopping up said water when Daisy upends hers all over the table, and making a fresh round of toast for her because the piece she had is now submerged and soggy.
I take a second to pop my head out of the kitchen doorway and am reassured by the view in the hall: two coats hanging on the end of the banister.
Two bags and two sets of shoes by the door.
I say a silent prayer of thanks to Molly for her organisational skills.
Clearly the success of the morning session is dependent on getting all our ducks in a row the night before.
There isn’t much margin for error in this schedule.
‘Right.’ I rake a hand through my hair and address Toby. I really need my fucking coffee. ‘Anything else before we go?’ Clean-up will have to happen when I get back here after drop-off.
‘You need to fill our water bottles.’ He points. ‘And Daisy doesn’t have her tights on.’
Oh yeah. Tights. Good point. Okay, so I just need to get tights and shoes on. And coats and hats. Fine.
I fill the water bottles and stuff them in their bags—it’s pretty easy to match Daisy’s pink bottle to the bag with all the fluffy pink key rings hanging off the zip. Back in the kitchen, I eye Daisy’s hair. It looks like a bird’s nest. I don’t recall any hair-related instructions from Mol.
‘Should I do something with her hair?’ I ask Toby. ‘Brush it, maybe?’
He shrugs. ‘Mummy uses the Tangle Teezer. There’s one in the dresser drawer.’
I have no fucking clue what a Tangle Teezer is, but it sounds appropriate. ‘Thanks, mate. You’re a great help, you know that? I’d be lost without you.’
He flushes with pleasure, and I give him a grin. He’s a sweet little guy, I’ll give him that.
I dig out a plastic mound with no handle. One side is covered in teeth. Gripping it in my hand, I approach Daisy like a zookeeper might approach an injured lion. ‘I’m going to brush your hair, all right?’
She ignores me. She’s eating her toast, carefully avoiding the edges, which makes literally no sense since I cut the fucking crusts off, but whatever. Her face is smeared with jam. I suppose I’ll have to do something about that before we head out. I sigh.
I put the brush to the crown of her head and pull downwards. It hits a clump of knots and stops dead in its tracks. She screams, cartoon tears springing from her eyes.
‘Ow! You hurt me!’
Fuck. ‘Sorry, sweetie. You have a lot of tangles.’
‘You start from the bottom,’ Toby tells me, ‘and you hold the top of the bit you’re brushing so it doesn’t pull.’
I stare. ‘You may be the smartest kid I’ve ever met.’
I’m rewarded with a huge grin this time, his eyes crinkling up behind those awful specs. ‘I pay attention.’
‘I bet you do. Okay, Daze. Let’s try it Toby’s way,’ I tell her, gingerly picking up a lock of hair and patting it ineffectually with the brush, but she twists out of my grasp, the tears still coming.
‘No! You’re mean!’
I put my hands up in surrender. ‘Okay, okay.’ Jesus. It’s not worth it. If her teachers don’t like her bed-head, they can sue me. Or brush it themselves.
‘Let’s just get on the road,’ I tell them wearily, slinging my coat on. ‘Daisy, I’m going to put your tights on now.’
I swivel her chair slightly so she’s at an angle to the table and I can access her feet. I put the crotch of the tights over her feet and pull. They don’t go anywhere. Her feet seem to be blocking the progress of the tights up her legs. I tug again, and she kicks a little.
‘That feels weird. Don’t like them.’
‘I know. Tights are weird,’ I agree, glancing at my watch. Eight-oh-five. Ten minutes till I turn that ignition on. I can do this. ‘But they’ll keep your legs warm. Let’s do it on the sofa, shall we?’
I pick her up, the tights dangling from her ankles, and set her down on the faded sofa at one end of the kitchen, under the large picture window.
Once she’s firmly in place, with far less chance of my inadvertently knocking her off her perch than she had on that chair, I resume my task.
Toby comes and stands right next to me, so close it gives me the heebie-jeebies, as I attempt to push them up her legs with zero success.
‘They’re on backwards,’ Toby remarks.
‘Huh? No they’re not.’ I glance down. Shit. They are. I can see a tag sticking out at the front.
Fuck. I tug them off and rotate them, gritting my teeth. I’m breaking a sweat here. I shouldn’t have put my jacket on yet.
‘Do one leg at a time,’ Toby advises, hopping from one foot to the other. ‘We’re going to be late. It’s eight-oh-nine.’
‘No we’re not,’ I say automatically, but given he’s the only one here who seems to know the score, I follow his advice. This is easier. I get one leg all the way up. It’s a bit wrinkly and twisted, but still. I follow the same procedure with the other leg.
‘Good advice, pal,’ I tell him. Daisy is still slumped on the sofa.
She’s now sucking her thumb and watching me distrustfully as she rubs a curl of her hair between her fingers.
I get my hands on the waistband of her tights and try to tug it up under her bum.
‘Stand up for me,’ I tell her, but she wriggles, kicking her legs.
‘It’s all twisted! Argh!’
‘Ma-a-ax. We’re going to be late. We’re going to be late.’ Toby’s jumping around now, almost as if he needs to pee again.
‘No it’s not. And we’re not. It’s fine.’ I glance at my watch.
Eight-twelve. I peer under the skirt of Daisy’s pinafore, unable to see much at all, and attempt to straighten up the seam on the crotch of the tights, but she’s getting more and more irate in front of me, and to be honest, I can’t blame her.
‘Hang on,’ I say through gritted teeth as I wrestle with the tights under her bloody pinafore, but she shouts.
‘No!’
And before I can react, one little navy leg lashes out and makes perfect contact with my nose.