Chapter 27 #3
By the time we got home, we were all filthy, freezing and beyond fed up.
I still hadn’t bought any food, toys or anything else for the kids to do.
There were more tears and tussles about lunch, Lennon having decided he only liked Crandon Fried Chicken, Harley wanting turkey and roast potatoes because it was Christmas and Kaylynn demanding sprinkle sandwiches, whatever they were.
It felt as though some of that mud had oozed inside my skull, clogging up my neurons, and in the end, I took a stand and said we would go to the shop and if they were good, they could each choose a meal deal.
They weren’t good, apart from being good at ramming people’s legs with the trolley, grabbing whatever random items they could and chucking them in, persuading their little brother to climb into one of the freezers and having a sword fight with rolls of Christmas wrapping paper.
Everyone got a meal deal anyway, because I had been good and deserved not to have to come up with another plan.
I mentally ripped up the Panto tickets I’d bought online the day before and we spent the afternoon baking Christmas cookies instead, which wasn’t that bad until Harley got overexcited and vomited all over the first batch.
The second they’d finished their Christmas pasta shapes with, respectively, cheese and tomato sauce mixed together, plain cheese and then pasta, sauce and cheese in three separate bowls, I put the younger two back in the bath with a mountain of bubbles and some empty plastic bottles.
By the time they got out, there was more water on the floor than in the tub, but I’d managed a mug of tea and to clean up the kitchen while Lennon ignored his new fidget-robot and messed about with his old, broken one.
‘Is it always like this?’ I asked Bronte once they’d all crashed out in my bed again, at a blissful ten-thirty. I’d waited until they were asleep to eat but was now too drained to even think about pasta, so it was more cheese on toast. Once I’d eaten, she had insisted upon sorting my raggedy nails.
She shook her head, focused on smoothing off my thumbnail.
‘Home might seem like chaos, but it’s familiar.
You know Lennon struggles with change, and when he’s dysregulated, the others become even more unsettled.
Weekends are always tougher. Mum’s learned to stick to the same schedule, times, food, words, everything. ’
‘Words?’
‘You use different phrases and react in ways they don’t expect. They know that when Mum says, “I’m about done with you,” things are going to kick off if they don’t stop messing. She uses this mindfulness stuff. Counting things or breathing or whatever.’
‘I can do that. I’ve used mindfulness in my work.’
‘Yeah. It’s not the same, though, is it? Even the way you hug them is different. Not worse, or wrong, or anything. You’re actually an awesome hugger. You’re just not Mum.’
I wondered if Bronte would be saying this if she knew the real reason they were here.
This conversation was ripping me in two.
I’d done a zillion things wrong today, thought that being fun and easy-going and giving them time and attention would be enough.
These kids didn’t need exciting. They didn’t want new toys, new food or experiences.
If their world came crashing down, and they lost the one thing they did need – their mother – the least they deserved was for everything else to stay the same.
Despite every cell in my body groaning with weariness, I lay awake for a long time that night, thinking.
Alex Nixon, ex-Fixer, could come up with only one solution to this problem.
I could not tear these children away from their house, their school, their lives.
The familiar smells, instinctively knowing where the bathroom is when it’s dark and they’re half asleep.
The cranky pipes, rumble of traffic and my mum’s TV, along with the thousand other background sounds that reassure a child’s nervous system it is home.
I could buy the right food, fetch their blankets, get a big chart on the wall so we all knew the routine. It wouldn’t be enough.
The last thing Lennon had asked before he finally drifted off was whether they were absolutely definitely going home tomorrow.
I had no job here, no commitments. I’d only had friends for a month.
My house could be rented out for a few years.
Years. The very thought of years in Crandon, in that house, with my parents, was inconceivable.
I vaguely promised myself that once the kids had got used to me, they could handle us moving into another house, maybe one of the new-builds near their school.
Somewhere that meant Lacey wouldn’t have to move back in with Mum and Dad once she was released.
What I refused to dwell on, even as my heart kept pulling me back there, was the one thing I would be leaving behind.
Well, two things.
Leaving Will meant that the half of my rapidly expanding heart not already crammed with nieces and nephews would be staying in Bigley, too.