Chapter 2
Dinner at the Bailey house was as chaotic as usual, a noisy riot of loud conversations and laughing children and shared food. Peter sat in the middle of it all, poking at his meal while trying, and failing, to get into the spirit of things.
He didn’t know what was wrong with him tonight, but something was.
His parents had been hosting this weekly family dinner for years and Peter usually enjoyed the get-together with his mother and father, Kate and Tommy, and his siblings and their families.
He loved seeing his nieces and nephews, catching up with his two older brothers, Brad and Shaun, and his younger sister, Amber.
He’d always been on great terms with his brothers’ wives, Donna and Lauren, and with his sister’s husband, Mikey.
He came to every weekly dinner armed with sweets for his three nephews and three nieces, who were aged between ten and three, and had endless patience for their excitable stories from school and nursery and for the games they liked to play with their ‘cool uncle’ whose novelty factor allowed their parents to enjoy a few rare moments of peace and quiet.
And since arriving this evening at his parents’ house on Juniper Avenue on the opposite side of Hamblehurst to where Peter lived on Victoria Street, he’d done all the things he’d usually do.
He’d helped his mother in the kitchen, chatted with his father about his latest DIY project, talked football with his older brothers, teased his younger sister, played with the kids, and piled his dinner plate high with his mother’s famous roast chicken and mashed potatoes.
But his food remained only half-eaten when he’d usually demolish the lot. As Peter pushed the chicken around the plate with his fork, surrounded by the chatter and laughter of his family, he realised finally what it was that was irking him tonight.
One singularly irritating question had got stuck in repeat-mode inside his brain: Will I ever have what my brothers and my sister have? A partner, some kids, a family of my own?
“Hey Peter, are you okay tonight, son?”
Jolted from his ruminations, Peter looked up to see his father watching him across the dining table. His father’s bushy grey eyebrows were bunched together in concern as he peered over the top of his glasses at him.
Peter forced a smile. “I’m fine. I just got distracted thinking about something from work.
” He wasn’t about to share the truth of what was actually on his mind.
Those thoughts were too personal and, he realised, much too raw to blurt out in the middle of dinner while his family were enjoying themselves.
“Busy day in the classroom, I take it?” his father asked.
“As always. And I’ve got a pile of marking to deal with once I get home which I’d hoped to rattle through before coming here, but I got dragged into other things.”
Peter taught maths at Hamblehurst secondary school.
He loved his job and loved teaching his students the value of mathematics and proving to them that it was a lot easier to grasp than many of them seemed to think.
Maths scared too many kids, who got it into their heads that they just couldn’t do things like algebra and trigonometry and calculus.
Nothing gave Peter more job satisfaction than convincing dubious kids that they not only could do those things, but that they could excel at them too.
Understanding maths had the power to unlock bright futures for so many kids, whether they went on to use mathematical skills in the future or not.
Competence built confidence, and once kids were confident in their own abilities, they’d be more likely to take on bigger and bigger challenges in life, instead of quitting as soon as things got difficult.
His passion for maths and for developing the maths skills of the kids in his classroom kept Peter motivated through the other bits of his teaching job that got on his nerves, like endless admin and paperwork.
There was no getting away from those tasks, as Peter understood only too well after a decade spent in the classroom, but there was no denying they sapped time he’d rather use to teach the kids or prepare lessons or mark their homework tasks.
“How are things going with the careers tutor role you’ve taken on this year?” his father asked. “Are you still enjoying it?”
“I am, actually. There are worse admin tasks to take on, although I think the headmaster is probably softening me up for something more thorny next year.”
Tommy laughed. “I’m sure you’ll be up to the challenge.”
“I’ll have to be. There’s no option but to put your shoulder to the wheel and do your bit.
I do like the careers tutor role, though, and if I can do it again next year, I’d be up for it.
That said, it will all depend on whether I can pull off the careers fair we’ve organised for next week, which is looking a bit iffy at the moment. ”
“How come?”
Peter was touched as always by his father’s interest in the minute details of his job and happy to chat about the various trials and tribulations he encountered.
None of this was what he’d actually been thinking about when his father asked if he was okay, but it was true that this stuff was simmering at the back of his mind.
While the rest of the family chatted amongst themselves, Peter was glad of the chance for a few minutes of conversation with his old man.
“We decided to schedule some talks for the kids to listen to, so they could find out more about different career paths from people working in those areas right now and how the subjects they studied at school were important for getting them into those careers,” Peter explained.
“Unfortunately, I found out today that one of the speakers has pulled out because of a last-minute calendar clash and now I have to rustle up someone new.”
“Can I help?” Tommy asked. “I’d be glad to step into the breach and talk about my career as a pilot. I bet the youngsters would find that quite interesting.”
Tommy had worked his entire career as a commercial airline pilot, logging many thousands of hours in the air before retiring four years ago.
“They would definitely find it interesting, Dad, but when we planned this careers fair event we all agreed we wanted to include speakers who are as close to the kids’ ages as possible. We hope that will help them engage better and relate to the speakers and their experiences.”
“That makes perfect sense. But if you’re still stuck and can’t find anyone, just say the word.”
“Thanks Dad.”
Peter appreciated the offer. If he couldn’t pin down another speaker over the next few days, he’d take his father up on it.
Tommy would have plenty of great stories to share about life in the cockpit and he was a natural speaker with an easy charm who’d keep the kids engaged.
It was good to know there were options if he ran out of time to find an emergency replacement.
His story from the school chalkface had at least provided some sort of explanation for his lack of engagement tonight at the family dinner.
Around him, the usual conversation and laughter continued.
His mother’s gaze fell on his still half-full plate of food and her brow furrowed, just as his father’s had done a moment ago.
The last thing he wanted was an inquisition from his mother about why he wasn’t eating the meal she’d cooked, so he forked up some chicken and potatoes and got to work clearing his plate.
While he ate, Peter tuned into the chatter around him and thought about the people gathered beside him at the table… and how much he stuck out like a sore thumb compared to his siblings.
His two older brothers, Brad and Shaun, had married young and had their first children by the time they were twenty-five.
Brad and his wife Donna had three boys, Evan, Cole and Charlie.
Shaun and his wife Lauren had two girls, Jasmine and Willow.
Peter’s younger sister, Amber, had her first baby when she was just twenty-one and she and her husband, Mikey, had tied the knot three months after their daughter Alicia was born.
On the sideboard across the dining room, there was a framed photo of their wedding day, with Amber in her wedding dress and Mikey in his smart suit, the two of them looking ridiculously happy as they held Alicia in their arms, who was beyond cute in a gorgeous white baby gown and pink headband that matched her mother’s bridal bouquet.
There were framed photographs of his brothers’ wedding days too and countless photographs of all the kids.
In the centre of the display was a photograph of his parents’ wedding day.
They’d married when his father was twenty-four and his mother was twenty-two, and it still amazed Peter to see how young they looked in that photo—and how happy they looked, too.
The photo beside his parents’ wedding photograph was taken on their thirty-fifth anniversary, a couple of years ago.
The whole family was in the shot, all dressed up for a special dinner celebration together.
Peter remembered the chaos involved in getting everyone to pose for the photograph and persuading the over-excited kids to stand still long enough to capture the perfect image his mother insisted on.
While his siblings grinned out of the photograph while standing next to their spouses and kids, Peter stood alone.
He was smiling of course, because it had been a happy night filled with joy and celebration.
The thought might not have been at the forefront of his mind when the photo was taken, but Peter had always assumed that at some point he too would join his brothers and sister in falling in love and getting married and starting a family of his own.
And yet here he was, two years down the road from when that family portrait was captured on his parents’ wedding anniversary and he was no closer to those things than he’d been back then.