Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
‘Daddy,’ said Meredith, clambering on to the sofa next to her father.
‘Daddy!’ Toby followed, taking the other side.
‘Daddy, Daddy.’ Meredith turned the volume up a notch.
‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ echoed her brother, his voice taking on the high-pitched sing-song quality that cut through my ears the way the whine of a mosquito cuts through sleep.
‘Patch,’ I said, adding my own voice to the chorus.
‘What?’ He looked up from his phone. ‘Come on then, you two. Who wants to see Jackson score against Arsenal?’
The twins couldn’t have cared less about Chelsea scoring a winning goal, but they instantly squealed, ‘Me, me, me!’ and scooted up closer to their father. Patch slipped an arm round each of their shoulders and angled his phone so they could see.
‘Look how he cuts through the defence. Beautiful pass from Fernandez, and…’
Tuning out his commentary, I remembered the first time he’d left me alone with the children to go up to Aberdeen for work, just after his paternity leave ended. I’d tried to put a brave face on it, telling him I’d cope just fine on my own, that his mother would drop in and help and stay overnight if necessary, that he wasn’t to worry.
Then, at the last minute, just as he was zipping up his bag ready to leave, I’d broken down.
‘They’re so little,’ I sobbed. ‘And I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. What if one of them gets sick? What if I drop them down the stairs?’
When I looked up, I saw his eyes were full of tears too. ‘Fuck it. I’ll stay. I’ll tell work I can’t do being away from home any more. If they sack me, they sack me – we’ll manage.’
I felt a brief leap of relief and joy, but stifled it straight away. ‘You can’t.’
‘I can. You just gave birth – having a tricky talk with work is nothing compared to that.’
‘It’s not just the tricky talk.’ I wiped my nose on my sleeve, glancing automatically over my shoulder to check that the twins were still asleep on our bed, where they’d finally conked out after a lengthy screaming session and a feed. ‘If you lose your job we’ll be fucked.’
‘We’ll find a way. It’s only money. You need me, and besides…’
‘Besides, what?’
He reached out and stroked my cheek, rubbing away a tear with his thumb. Then he sat down on the bed, gently so as not to wake the babies.
‘I hate leaving them, Nome.’
Looking down at him, this strong man next to his tiny son and daughter, I felt like I needed to protect all three of them. I sat down too, and took his hand.
‘Even when I go to the supermarket, I miss them,’ he went on. ‘Everyone says you’ll fall in love with your babies, but I didn’t expect it to be like this.’
‘I know.’ I managed a watery smile. ‘Me neither. It’s worse for you because you have to be away for so long.’
‘Six bloody weeks. What if they smile for the first time while I’m away and I miss it?’
‘I won’t let them. I’ll be the most boring mum ever. If they look like they’re about to try I’ll tell them something really sad.’
He laughed. His vulnerability gave me a confidence that hadn’t been there before – an awareness of the resilience that was there somewhere inside me – at least, I hoped it was.
‘We’ll be okay,’ I went on. ‘Promise. We’ll FaceTime every single night – just let me know what time your shifts are. I’ll take videos of them in the bath and if they crack so much as a hint of a smile?—’
‘You’ll delete it off the recording so I think it’s me that made them do it first?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Nome?’
‘Patch?’
‘I have to go.’
‘I know.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
As it happened, Meredith did smile for the first time while her father was away – although Bridget said it was probably just wind. But Toby held off until the day Patch got home, and when his dad lifted him up, smothering his face with kisses and saying, ‘Where’s my big boy?’ he cracked a proper, unmistakeable grin.
Patch had cried then too.
He’d loved them so much – he still did love them. But somehow, somewhere along the way, he’d stepped back from the day-to-day grind of parenting and I’d taken over. When his job had changed to be office-based, he’d announced with delight that he’d be able to do more with the children now, but it hadn’t happened. Of course he cuddled them and played with them and kissed them good night if he was home early enough. But when Toby resisted sleep at night, Patch didn’t know it was because someone had to check the wardrobe for monsters. When Meredith needed to be taken to try on new shoes for her ballet class, he didn’t know whether they needed to be pink or black.
And the loneliness I’d dreaded that first time he went away had become so much of a fixture in my life that I barely noticed it any more.
I finished stacking the children’s plates in the dishwasher and gave the left-over pasta sauce that was destined for our dinner a stir. Then I opened the fridge, looked at the half-finished bottle of wine on the shelf, and closed it again.
‘Come on, Meredith and Toby,’ I said. ‘It’s time for your bath and then bed.’
‘But Daddy!’ Meredith’s voice was entering full whine mode, and I knew tears would shortly follow if someone didn’t apply some distraction – and fast.
‘Daddy’s busy,’ muttered Patch. ‘Go and have your baths and I’ll come and kiss you good night.’
‘Daddy, play with us.’ Toby’s lower lip was thrust out mutinously.
‘Mate, I’m busy.’ Patch’s eyes had returned to his phone.
‘But I want—’ began Meredith.
I put the wooden spoon down on the counter with unnecessary force, red sauce splattering around it. Clearly, Patch wasn’t going to take over the bedtime routine. I could bawl him out for ignoring them when I was busy, but we’d often had conversations about how to withstand their divide-and-conquer strategy, and had agreed that arguing in front of them about who did what was an instant route to defeat. Besides, bathtime was my job. Quite when it had become my job, even on the nights when Patch was home, I couldn’t recall – but my job it was, as firmly entrenched now as the bins being Patch’s job – except, of course, when he wasn’t here, when it became mine by default.
‘Toby and Meredith,’ I said in my I-mean-business voice, ‘if you’re upstairs in thirty seconds, you can have some of Mummy’s special bubble bath.’
That worked. The promise of a squirt of L’Occitane’s finest was a sure-fire way to make the kids cooperate – not because they appreciated its moisturising, almond-scented, fifty-quid-a-bottle glory, but because they’d seen how badly I’d freaked out the one time they’d tipped half a bottle into their bath before I could stop them, and it was now kept securely out of reach in the same cabinet as the Calpol.
Come to think of it, the twins were the only members of the household who ever got to use the stuff; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had an uninterrupted wallow in the bath. I could barely remember the last time I’d shaved my legs.
The children dashed upstairs and I followed more slowly, with a last longing glance back at the fridge. If I got through bedtime without losing my shit, I promised myself, then I’d have the massive glass of chardonnay I so badly wanted.
Forty-five minutes later, splashed with expensively scented water and with a numb arm from where Toby had lain on it while I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar through three times back to back, I returned downstairs.
Patch was still on the sofa, still on his phone, the football still playing on the television with the sound still off.
I stirred the pasta sauce again. It was starting to catch on the bottom, so I added a splash of wine before sloshing a load more into a glass.
‘Any chance there’s a cold beer in the fridge, Nome?’ Patch asked.
Any chance you could get your arse off the sofa and actually help? I thought. But there was a time and a place for a row, and that time wasn’t now – not yet, anyway. I took our drinks over to the living room and sat down next to him.
‘You know, the kids really love it when you’re here,’ I said.
‘I really love it when I’m here.’ He stretched out his legs, taking a long swallow of craft IPA. ‘Work’s fucking brutal at the moment. I’m knackered.’
‘I get it, I really do. You haven’t been home much before eight for the past couple of weeks. So it’s exciting for them when you’re here. They love having their dad around. And – you know – I get tired, too, doing all the parenting and house stuff on my own.’
‘What’s this, the tiredness Olympics?’
‘Of course not. I know how hard you work. It’s just, sometimes I wonder if you know how hard I work.’
‘Sure I do. That’s why we put them in nursery three days a week, even though it costs a fucking fortune.’
‘But on the days they’re there – come on, Patch. You’ve seen what carnage it is getting them out of the house in the mornings. And then there’s all the shit I have to do – cleaning, shopping, seeing your mother, all that. And then it’s time to pick them up again and I’ve got them all afternoon and evening until you get back.’
I could hear the tone of my voice changing – no longer calm and soothing, but querulous, almost carping. Dial it down, Naomi , I told myself, or that row you didn’t want to have is going to happen.
‘So what do you want me to do about it?’ His tone had changed too – no longer genial, becoming combative. ‘Jack in my job, and then we can both stay home and do the shopping?’
‘Patch, don’t be daft. Like I say, when you’re here, it would be nice if you spent a bit of quality time with your children. That’s all.’
‘I take them to swimming every Saturday.’
Sure you do, Dad of the Year. Giving me a precious one-hour window which I spent – if I was honest – messing about on my phone, jumping guiltily to my feet and dragging the Hoover out when it was nearly time for them to get home.
‘And they love it,’ I said. ‘Just like they’d have loved it if you’d given them their bath and put them to bed just now.’
‘Toby won’t settle for me,’ he pointed out, as if our son’s behaviour was some force of nature beyond his control. ‘When I try, he just yells for you.’
‘Of course he does.’ I could hear my voice rising again. ‘Because I do it every bloody night and it’s what he’s used to.’
‘Because you’re here every bloody night and I’m not.’
And here we were again, right in the middle of the same circular argument we’d had dozens of times before.
‘I’d just like some time to myself,’ I pleaded. ‘Like you do, when you leave the house at six three times a week to go to the gym.’
‘Do you seriously think I like having to drag myself out of bed at five thirty?’
Well, obviously. Because otherwise you wouldn’t do it.
But I didn’t get a chance to say that.
‘If you want to go to the gym, knock yourself out,’ he went on. ‘I’m not stopping you. You can get up and go right now if you want.’
He was right, of course. I could, if I wanted to.
‘I would.’ I felt like I was caught in a trap – the trap of an argument I wasn’t going to win. ‘But come on, I’m tired. Like I told you. It’s eight o’clock and I just want to eat and go to bed.’
‘And? That’s what we’re going to do, isn’t it? Eat and go to bed. Living the dream.’
‘Fine.’ My glass was empty and I was fresh out of ideas, too. ‘Set the table. I’ll cook the pasta.’
‘Want me to make a salad?’
Aware that the point I’d been trying to make had been – again – lost in the familiar pattern of our bickering, Patch became conciliatory. He filled up my wine glass without being asked, made a dressing for the salad, complimented my puttanesca sauce, asked how the children had got on at their street dance session that afternoon.
And I should probably have left it there. Taken the easy way out, gone to bed, accepted that this was a situation of my own making and wasn’t about to change.
But I didn’t.
When we’d eaten and I was ferrying the dishes from table to counter while Patch – still in co-operative mode – stacked the dishwasher, I asked, ‘What were you doing on your phone earlier, anyway?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The kids were clambering all over you. They wanted their dad, and you just blanked them. What was so important?’
‘You seriously expect me to remember what I was looking at on my phone two hours ago?’
‘You seemed pretty engrossed in it. Typing away.’
‘Jesus, Naomi. Maybe I was answering work emails. I don’t know.’
‘It wasn’t your work phone.’
‘So maybe I was messaging the guys on the gym WhatsApp. Or checking the football scores. I can’t remember.’
Maybe he couldn’t. But I wasn’t sure I believed him. There’d been something about the way he’d gazed at his screen, ignoring the children as if they weren’t even there, that had seemed… different. Off.
‘Patch?’ I asked. ‘Has Zara been in touch with you at all?’
He gave me a long, cold stare. Then he said, ‘Actually, yes. She wants to see me.’
‘Why? What the hell for?’
‘She has something of mine, and she wants to give it back.’
I have something of hers , my mind echoed, and she wants to take it back.
I forced air into my lungs. ‘Patch, I’m not sure I’m comfortable you seeing her.’
He laughed shortly. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. What do you think’s going to happen?’
‘I don’t know. It’s not that I don’t trust you. It just feels – wrong, somehow.’
To my surprise, he said, ‘Okay. In that case I won’t. It’s only an old DSLR camera – I’ll never use it and it’d fetch pennies on eBay. I’ll tell her to take it to a charity shop.’
Relief and gratitude washed over me. He cared – he’d heard my concern and fear and taken it on board. Everything would be okay.
‘Look,’ I offered, ‘why don’t I pick it up? I can go when the kids are at nursery. And then you can decide if you want to keep it or not. I’ll message her now.’
In my eagerness to make amends, to be as selfless as he’d been, I grabbed my phone and started typing. When I looked up to ask Patch for Zara’s number, I thought I saw a look of something like panic on his face, but it vanished before I could be sure it was ever there.