Chapter 18
Max at home:
Favourite pirate T-shirt
Denim dungarees
Slipper socks with bunny ears
‘Oh my God… that was tragic. So, what did you do then?’ Ed, home from school early, was delighted to find his wife at home without the twins, who had been picked up by Auntie Dinah at a loose end so she could feed them wholesome cake for an hour or two.
Except Annie wasn’t alone, it turned out that Lauren was at home and was still asleep upstairs, a full six hours since she’d arrived.
‘I think you’d be proud of me, babes,’ Annie told him.
‘I took a deep, deep breath. I told her that I loved her no matter what she thought about fashion. Then I said she must be exhausted and hungry. So, I treated her very gently, just like an overwrought toddler. I made her a little bit of scrambled eggs on toast and I sent her to bed. And that’s where she’s been ever since. ’
‘Poor Lauren,’ Ed sympathised. ‘Major life crisis… and an eight-hour transatlantic flight. And then having to have a big debate about fashion with you at the end of it.
‘Not to mention going to sleep in a room that’s full of… badly underused exercise equipment and the fallout from your fashion habit.’ They laughed a little at this and exchanged a look. ‘Hello, Annie.’
‘Hello, babes.’
‘Never, ever a dull moment around here is there.’
‘No, never. And believe me I would love one. Even just one dull moment a day would be absolutely fine.’
‘So, anything else happen today? You know, apart from Lauren jetting in unexpectedly from NYC?’
‘Svetlana came round… which was another surprise appearance at the door, I can tell you.’
‘Svetlana? She doesn’t usually deign to visit mere mortals, does she? Are you not usually summoned to her palace in Mayfair?’
‘Usually, but she wanted to tell me about the new venue she has found for the show and, even more out of the blue, she wanted to apologise.’
‘That sounds… very unusual…’
Ed straightened up from the emptying of the kitchen dishwasher, which he was doing even though he wasn’t long in from school, and probably hadn’t had one moment to himself. Commuting home through busy London traffic on his bike wasn’t exactly ‘me time’.
‘She gave me a beautiful ring and said we should have a housekeeper,’ Annie told him. ‘At least one day per week. And that was before she had come across the sight of both sofas disguised as forts in the sitting room… and had to hurdle over an exploded juice box.’
‘Oh dear,’ was Ed’s smiling response. ‘But I quite like the idea of a housekeeper.’
‘Oh, do you now? Are you wondering if she can be young, and a little bit foxy and wear a uniform?’ Annie asked cheekily.
‘No!’ Ed insisted. ‘I’m thinking a clean, tidy house, a calmer, more relaxed wife; less stacking the dishwasher time, and more together time.’
He looked over at her and she remembered how much she liked that look on his face.
‘Oh, more together time. Are you sure that’s what you want?’ Annie moved round the countertop and reached for him. ‘That’s might just mean more time listening to me complaining about one thing after the next.’
‘No… less complaining, more kissing,’ she said as they leaned into one another, held each other close and looked into each other’s eyes in a way that they hadn’t done for a while.
And maybe there would have been kissing and some re-kindling, but the doorbell interrupted with a loud trill, so they broke apart reluctantly with Annie telling Ed, ‘Hold that thought for later.’
‘I will hold you to that.’
‘I promise.’ And then into the house came Max and Minette, trailing bags, jackets, crumpled paintings they had done that day, twigs, glitter paint and some post-ice-cream stickiness as she hugged them both tight.
Auntie Dinah was on their heels but told Annie after a quick hello hug, ‘I’m just dropping and dashing.
We’ve had a lovely time and now I’ve got to get home and make sure Billie does homework and food before dance class. ’
‘Thank you and love you,’ Annie told her sister, who was already turning to hurry down the path. So now the twins were charging around the hall, depositing shoes and things everywhere, despite her instructions to ‘hang that up’, and ‘you know where your shoes go’.
Max was practically shouting with happiness about how much fun he’d had at nursery as she herded them into the kitchen.
‘And we did make pizzas and it was delicious and my one was definitely the best,’ he told her, followed with, ‘Hey, Daddy, can we make pizza for supper too?’
Meanwhile it was now Min who was grizzling. ‘I don’t like nursery. It’s boring and it’s not fair that Max got to stay at home all day with Mummy. I want to stay at home with Mummy too.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Max assured her. ‘Because it is so boring.’
Well, Annie couldn’t help thinking, I did what I was supposed to do, but still, not very flattering, Max.
‘All she does all day long,’ he added, ‘is sit on her computer looking at handbags and worrying about what to get Daddy for their…’ he paused and gave a look that suggested he was concentrating, ‘anni… ver… sary,’ he managed carefully.
Ed looked up at her. ‘I thought we weren’t doing gifts, Annie. I thought we had agreed.’
‘Yes, but when we said no gifts, I was lying. Were you not lying?’
‘No! Agreeing no gifts means agreeing no gifts… not pretending to agree no gifts,’ Ed replied, sounding a little exasperated.
‘OK… understood,’ she said and before she even had time to think about whether that meant they were now doing gifts or not, she had to tell her son.
‘And, Max, I did not look at handbags on the computer when you were with me. Not even once! So don’t say that.
I am a busy lady with a busy job.’ Seeing the look of surprise on his face at her slightly harsh tone, she added, much more kindly, ‘I’m so happy you enjoyed nursery today,’ and earned herself a dazzling Max smile and her son’s little sticky paw slipping momentarily into hers.
Annie thought, above the noise in the kitchen that she could her a door opening upstairs, so she shushed the twins and told them that she had a big surprise for them.
‘What, Mummy?’ Minette couldn’t help herself from whispering. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a who…’ Annie hinted. And at that they could hear steps coming down the stairs.
‘Is it Owen? Is he back from the ’versity?’ Max wondered. But by now, they could catch a glimpse of legs in pink and white pyjamas.
And at this both the twins raced to the foot of the stairs, where they began shouting: ‘It’s Lauren, it’s Lauren! Lauren is home!’ At the top of their voices.
And Lauren charged down the stairs to meet them.
Scooping them up, raining kisses on their faces and telling them how much she missed them.
Annie could feel herself welling up at the sight.
She immediately thought of Owen and didn’t want him to be left out of this happy reunion, so she snapped some quick photos with her phone and sent them to him with the message:
Surprise! Look who has turned up from NYC. She’s planning to be here for a bit, so will see you when you’re back. Mxx
* * *
It was much later in the evening, when everyone had been fed, when the twins had been finally calmed and bedded down for the night and the sitting room set to rights – including the juice box clean-up – that Ed and Annie settled into the plumped-up sofas to listen to Lauren.
‘Alienated… that was how I felt,’ she told them, curled into a defensive huddle in the corner. ‘Like I didn’t belong, like hardly anyone knew me and I didn’t matter. Like a tiny dot in this giant busy world and I just had to come home.’
‘Did anyone in particular make you feel small?’ Ed wondered.
‘I don’t want to pin it all on one person, especially a boy,’ Lauren said. ‘I really am not the girl who’s running home after a bad break-up. I am not her.’ Lauren’s brows pushed together daring them to challenge her.
‘No, we know you’re not,’ Ed said gently, ‘but he did something to make you change your mind about things?’
‘Yeah, he did,’ Lauren agreed. ‘I thought…’ she began carefully, ‘I thought that I mattered a lot to him. But he got a new job, in another city, and that mattered a lot more than me.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Lauren,’ Annie said.
‘And his life change made what I do feel not at all important. He’s moved to Cleveland to join an animal conservation society.
It’s important, it matters. When he gets out of bed in the morning, that’s what he wants to be doing and when he stays late in the office, it’s to make a difference.
And that’s how I want to feel about my work.
I really can’t care about what colour is in fashion this season and how to make another three sales before month end of a product that’s probably going to get worn three times and then end up in landfill.
So, if it’s OK, I’m going to be here for a while, while I rethink my life. ’
Annie first of all assured Lauren that of course it was OK, of course she could be at home and take the time she needed. But then, she couldn’t help making something of a defence of the industry which had been so important to her for all these years.