Family Matters

by Cathy Woodman

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Marriage in a muddle? Kids making a mess? Maybe it's time for a spring clean... Cathy Woodman captures the colour and chaos of family life with her sparkling and unique voice in Family Matters. The perfect read for fans of Katie Fforde and Cathy Hopkins. 'Wonderfully honest' - Jill Mansell When Lisa Baker's wedding anniversary entirely slips her husband's mind, she decides it's time to put the va va voom back into her marriage. But everything in Lisa's life seems to conspire against romance. Her headstrong teenage daughter, Jade, is increasingly difficult to handle, while her beautiful newborn baby, Chloe, brings the inevitable sleepless nights. Lisa's more likely to be found in baggy T-shirts and comfy trousers than seductive outfits and alluring perfume. The one thing that is going well is Lisa's cleaning business, Maids 4 U, which she runs with her best friend, Clare. And their curious mixture of clients is a constant source of entertainment. But when an attractive, slender blonde called Jacqui comes literally crashing into Lisa's life, a dented car is the least of her worries... What readers are saying about Family Matters : 'A lovely light-hearted book about marriage and women's friendships ' 'Another Cathy Woodman masterpiece I enjoyed' 'Filled with comedy and a certain quirkiness '

Release date: April 26, 2012

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 320

Sample

My best friend Clare’s fantasy is to wake up with Johnny Depp. Mine is to wake alone, spread-eagled across a sheet of fresh linen. Instead, I find myself sharing a bed with my husband and our two-month-old baby, three bodies hugged together like a row of steaming cannelloni.

The alarm clock bleats. Chloe doesn’t stir. Tony sighs. I reach for his hand, link my fingers through his and give them a squeeze.

‘It’s time we were up.’

‘I am.’ He moves my hand behind my back and down between his legs where the evidence is quite clear.

‘Not now . . .’ I say wistfully.

‘Tonight then?’ he whispers.

My pulse quickens in response. Smiling, I wait for Tony to continue with, ‘I can’t believe it’s been fourteen years,’ or just plain, ‘Happy Anniversary, my darling.’

Instead he grumbles, ‘I can’t remember when we last made love, Lisa.’

‘You make it sound like it was thousands of years ago.’

‘Well, it was sometime BC. Before Chloe.’

I do remember the last time we made love. I was forty-one weeks’ pregnant – a whole week overdue – and we’d been trying to induce labour in the most natural way. It worked, although I’m not sure if it was the sex or the fact I was laughing so much that did it. Tony said it was like making love to a giant Space Hopper.

‘Talking of Chloe, why did we waste our money on that new mattress for the carrycot when she refuses to sleep on it?’ Tony goes on.

‘I can’t help it if she’s hypnophobic. She’s afraid to go to sleep in case she misses something.’ Last night I spent hours sitting downstairs in the dark with the door shut and the radio on. I fed Chloe, changed her, rocked her in my arms, laid her down, and propped her up, but I couldn’t stop her crying. She reminded me of that famous painting by Edvard Munch, The Scream.

‘I’m not criticising you.’ Tony pulls away and jumps out of bed. He stretches his arms above his head and peels his black T-shirt off over his broad shoulders, revealing the rippling muscles of his torso. Although he’s no longer a competitive swimmer, he keeps very fit for a man of forty-two, doing lengths a couple of times a week at the local pool.

‘Whenever I make any kind of observation, you seem to take it personally,’ he goes on.

‘I don’t.’

‘You do.’ Tony screws his top into a ball and chucks it at my face, one of his more irritating customs that I’ve grown to expect, one of the many little things that keep us bound together in matrimony and make our relationship unique and special.

I throw it back, then close my eyes to snatch a few minutes’ more sleep, while Tony disappears off to the bathroom.

‘Mum. Mum!’ I become aware of someone shaking my shoulder, of hair tickling my cheek. Light glints off an enormous gold hoop earring that dangles in my face.

‘Mum, I can’t find a shirt.’

‘Is that all? I thought it was a real emergency.’

‘It is an emergency.’ My other daughter Jade is thirteen going on seventeen. She’s sensitive about her appearance, yet she keeps dyeing her long straight hair this peculiar shade of pale chestnut so that I’ve almost forgotten what her natural colour looks like. It should be like Tony’s – brown with blond highlights, as if it’s been kissed by the sun.

‘There are plenty of shirts on your bedroom floor. Use your eyes.’

Those eyes darken, turning shadowy blue like a summer’s evening sky.

‘I can’t go to school in a dirty shirt. It’s disgusting.’

‘Tough!’

She stamps off, triggering a minor earthquake in the floorboards under her feet, and there’s no way I can sleep now even if Chloe can, having finally dozed off at dawn. I leave the baby on the bed, slip into my dressing-gown and wander downstairs like a zombie. On my way through the hall, I stub my toe on a metal toolbox, but I am so tired that the pain barely registers. Tony’s a plumber and he’s had his tools nicked from his van so many times that he brings them indoors every evening. I’d like him to keep them locked in the garage, but you can’t get into our garage for old kitchen units which are supposed to be going to Clare and her husband Jim as soon as they can afford to have them fitted.

Tony and I had our kitchen extended, and a utility room built on the back of the house while I was pregnant with Chloe. The Shaker-style cabinets looked great in the showroom, but I soon discovered that only cleaners with obsessive compulsive tendencies should buy white units.

In the kitchen, beneath the stalactites of dried flour and milk that adorn the ceiling – the consequence of Jade’s enthusiasm for tossing pancakes with her dad – I make myself black coffee and toast with strawberry jam. However, my bum hardly makes contact with the stool at the breakfast bar before Chloe screams for attention. (I don’t need one of those baby monitors – you can hear her at their maximum range and beyond without one.)

I whisk Chloe downstairs, snuggling her to me. ‘Hi there, my darling.’

She yawns and smiles. She’s beautiful – all blue eyes and a fuzz of blonde hair – until nightfall when she turns into the Baby from Hell. I don’t remember Jade giving us so much trouble, but she’s more than making up for it now, banging about in the kitchen cupboards, looking for breakfast. No cornflakes. No cereal bars. All my fault.

By the time I’ve organised Jade into making herself a sandwich instead – she chooses salad cream as the filling – Tony is down. He’s a rarity, a man who can carry out more than one task at once: he has his mobile glued to one ear, a pencil over the other, a notebook in his left hand and a slice of toast in his right. I glance at my plate. Empty.

‘Hey – that’s my toast.’

‘Finders keepers.’ He grins and my heart somersaults.

‘Anything special on today?’ I ask.

‘I doubt it.’ He turns to Jade who’s wearing a blouse undone to her navel, a skirt up around her buttocks, and no socks or tights. She’s already slipped into her shoes, black clumpy ones with heels so high that you can see her calf muscles straining to keep her upright. ‘Go and get dressed, Jade.’

‘I am dressed.’

‘Properly,’ Tony insists. ‘Take off that scarf you’ve got wrapped around your bottom and put on a skirt.’

‘You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to,’ Jade argues.

‘Don’t speak to your dad like that,’ I say.

‘I can’t help being in a bad mood, can I? I haven’t slept for weeks because of that,’ she points at Chloe, ‘that thing!’

‘Chloe is your little sister. She’s a baby.’

Jade isn’t listening. ‘Mum, you know you said I could invite a friend for a sleepover?’

‘Did I?’

‘I’m going to ask Kimberley, the new girl at school.’

‘What about Alice?’ Alice is – was – Jade’s best friend. I like Alice.

‘I’m trying to make Kimberley feel welcome.’

‘Well, she can come to tea sometime, but you’re not having a sleepover. The answer is no,’ I add in answer to Jade’s fierce scowl.

‘You’re always so negative,’ Jade moans.

All in all, it isn’t a promising start to what should be a romantic day, and I still have no idea of Tony’s plans for our anniversary. When he leaves to take Jade up to the bus stop on his way to work, I try again. ‘You haven’t forgotten anything, Tone?’

He turns and frowns. ‘Sandwiches?’

‘They’re in your hand.’

‘And the van isn’t going in for a service till next week.’ He smiles and leans forward to kiss me. ‘Bye, love,’ he adds quietly.

Is that how you’re supposed to treat the person you’ve been married to for the past fourteen years, when she’s cooked for you, done all your washing and ironing, borne your children, and collected you and your mates somewhat worse for wear at closing time from just about every pub in South London with minimal complaint? Excuse me if I sound just a little bit resentful.

Ten minutes later, Chloe is fast asleep in her carryseat, which I’ve put down in the middle of our bed. My throat tightens like the tiny fist that grips the edge of her yellow blanket. I lean down, press my lips to her cheek and inhale her warm, milky breath.

‘Love you,’ I whisper.

She shifts slightly, rolls her eyes and yawns. Wind or a bad dream, perhaps? I turn my attention back to the mystery of the missing anniversary present.

Why is it I can never find anything in this house? Why is it that no one, apart from me, ever puts anything away? As I sort through the bits and pieces on my bedside cabinet, a handful of receipts flutter down to the bedroom floor: nappies for Chloe; staples for Jade’s science project; frozen bloodworms for Tony’s tropical fish; cookies for me. All things that I bought on my recent foray into Croydon. Okay, so I don’t put things away either, but is it surprising when I have so many people to think about, so much to do?

I open the drawer of the dressing-table and scuffle through the clothes. Nothing. No cute cuddly bear. No chocolates. Not a scrap of flimsy underwear. I cram the matronly bras and mumsy knickers back into the drawer and force it closed.

Where next, I wonder. I stand on a chair and sweep my hand across the top of the wardrobe. My fingernails catch on the edge of a piece of paper, an envelope. My sense of anticipation grows at the thought of a romantic evening out with tickets for a West End show, then shrinks like a punctured football. The envelope contains tickets for a match: Arsenal are playing at home.

Arsenal were playing at home in a crucial FA Cup match when Tony and I celebrated our fifth anniversary, yet he sacrificed his ticket to take me to Paris instead. I remember lying in his arms on a king-sized bed, watching the view from our hotel window of the Eiffel Tower illuminated in the night sky. I tried to ignore the faint smell of drains and the sound of traffic, while he spoke to Jade on the phone. It was our first night away together since before she was born and we’d left her with my parents.

‘Jade wants to speak to you, Lees.’ Tony handed me the receiver, but it was Mum on the other end.

‘Your daughter has something to tell you,’ she said.

I could hear Jade’s snuffly breathing.

‘Granny says you have something to tell me,’ I said gently.

‘I know,’ she said, her voice taut with excitement.

‘What is it?’

‘Oh?’ I pictured her tapping her knuckles against her forehead as she wailed, ‘I can’t remember.’ I heard Mum prompting her. ‘We had dog for tea.’

‘She means cod,’ Mum said in the background.

‘Well, I tried oysters for the first time,’ I told my daughter.

‘Goodbye, Mummy,’ Jade said, and the line went dead.

‘She cut me off.’ I turned to Tony who took the receiver and replaced it on its cradle on the bedside table. ‘She isn’t missing us.’

‘You’d be more upset if she was.’ Tony paused. ‘Cheer up, love. Have a drink.’

We shared champagne kisses, the slow burn of Tony’s lips against mine contrasting with the pricks of cold fizz popping against the roof of my mouth. Tony pulled me closer, crushing my breasts against his chest. He tugged at my French knickers, tearing the lace in his impatience to strip them down over my hips, and make love to me.

We didn’t sleep much that night, or the next, but what I remember most about our second honeymoon, a memory that never fails to bring a smile to my face, is of Tony on a boat on the Seine, doing impressions of Inspector Clouseau.

Of course, much water has flowed under the bridge since then. My memories of our marriage are not all happy ones.

I glance at my watch. It’s nine thirty. There’s no time to continue my investigations right now. Clare’s car, a battered but shiny green VW Polo, is already pulling up outside the house.

Clare, my business partner as well as my closest friend, double-checks the handbrake before she jumps out, and waits for a woman in a pale pink mac to bring a double buggy and a child on reins under control down the precipitous descent of York Road before she crosses the pavement. She looks up, raises her hands to her mouth and yells. I’m not sure whether it’s Clare’s voice that does it or a sneaky breeze that brings a shower of cherry-blossom down from the tree beside her.

‘Lees, you lazy slapper, get yourself down here – and don’t forget the baby!’

‘All right, all right.’ I close the window and check my make-up.

My bob of dark brown hair contrasts starkly with my pale complexion, and my eyes are puffy through lack of sleep. I am wearing a blue cotton surgical top with the company logo Maids 4 U embroidered to the left of the V-neckline.

The plastic apron and baggy trousers fail to disguise what is left of my figure, ravaged by pregnancy and childbirth. My breasts, belly and hips appear over upholstered yet sagging, like a cheap and nasty sofa. The extra three stone that I fondly imagined was all baby turned out to be mainly me. Chloe was born eight weeks ago weighing just six pounds.

However, there are still signs of the woman I used to be. At thirty-eight years old, I have no need yet for hair-dye or Botox. My lips are full and, though I say it myself, very kissable. And my bum – I smile as I give it a wiggle – is neat and firm.

Clare rattles the letterbox. I grab Chloe’s changing bag in one hand, the carryseat in the other, and make my way downstairs.

‘Well?’ Clare relieves me of Chloe as soon as I open the front door. While the uniform does nothing for me, Clare carries it off as if it’s Moschino. The shape enhances her sexy curves, and the blue picks up the colour of her eyes which spark in anticipation of the question of the day. She can’t wait to ask me. ‘What did Tony give you then?’

‘Nothing yet.’ I follow Clare to the car, where she begins strapping Chloe into the rear seat beside her baby, Fern, a procedure requiring a degree in manual dexterity and bucketloads of commonsense, neither of which I possess.

‘I expect he’s planned something special for this evening – a meal at the Tapas Bar perhaps,’ Clare says brightly. ‘I’d like Jim to take me to that new Indian sometime, but spicy food gives Fern terrible colic,’ she adds with the air of superiority that breastfeeding mothers can’t help acquiring when speaking to their bottlefeeding friends.

I did try to breastfeed Jade and ended up with double mastitis. Tony said that I looked like a Cabbage Patch doll with red-hot cheeks and cabbage leaves spread over my boobs. I didn’t care. I thought I was going to die. When Chloe was born, she went straight on the bottle.

‘Tony didn’t stop me taking the chicken out of the freezer for tonight.’ I can’t help noticing the dark roots in Clare’s bottle-blonde hair as she fiddles around inside the car. She does her own. She’s pretty handy with the bleach, in more ways than one.

‘That would take away the element of surprise,’ Clare observes. ‘I can’t remember exactly how long ago it was that you made me suffer the indignity of flouncing around in that pink dress as your Maid of Honour.’

‘It wasn’t pink. It was cerise.’

‘Same difference. How many years have you been married?’

‘Fourteen. We’re way past the Seven Year Itch.’

Clare whistles between her teeth.

‘If Tony did have an itch back then, I made every effort to ensure that it was me who scratched it,’ I say mournfully. ‘Maybe you do start to forget by the time you reach fourteen.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Tony hasn’t forgotten.’ Clare emerges from the car with a dry laugh. ‘He wouldn’t dare.’

I’d like to believe her. Clare’s opinions are usually sound. In fact, I can hardly remember a time when I didn’t depend on them. Clare found me hiding in the girls’ toilets at primary school, bawling my eyes out because someone – I knew who it was but was too frightened to utter her name, let alone point the finger at her or confide in a teacher – had filled my satchel with water, ruining my reading book and turning the biscuits that I’d saved from break for my little brother Mal, into a sloppy gruel.

Clare helped me out. Even then she had a cleaner’s eye, pointing out the limescale on the taps and the gunge in the sinks, as she bailed out the satchel and stuffed it with paper towels. With her on lookout, I swapped the bully’s reading book for mine, and jammed her schoolbag into one of the cisterns. There were no repercussions. From then on, it was two against one. Me and Clare against the rest of the world.

I can rely on Clare to help me through a crisis. I’ve helped her through enough of her own – her numerous failed romances, for example, until she learned to distinguish love from lust, and settled for her husband Jim. Today though, her reassurance isn’t quite enough.

Clare pushes the car door softly shut then goes round to the driver’s side. She’s taller than me and prettier in my opinion, with high cheekbones and a beauty spot above her upper lip. She says that if she could afford plastic surgery, she would have her nose made smaller, but it really isn’t that big.

I slide into the passenger seat, arranging myself around the mop in the footwell. Clare turns the key in the ignition, releases the handbrake with two hands, and accelerates jerkily up the hill. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Fern’s eyes widen. I’m surprised – I’d have thought that she’d be used to Clare’s driving by now.

Fern is smaller and appears more delicate than Chloe. Her hair is dark and, like her dad’s, there isn’t much of it. She grins when I reach back to straighten her headhugger; unlike Chloe, she rarely cries.

Chloe remains asleep, unmoved by the bumpy ride up through Selsdon where we make a quick stop at the baker’s for doughnuts.

According to the sign at the traffic lights on the High Street, this suburb of South Croydon is a village. Not any more. It doesn’t have a village green, just a patch of mud and trees called The Triangle, in front of the new library. The Triangle boasts a useful Superloo, which will soon be replaced by a clock of cutting-edge design. I still can’t understand why it cost thousands of pounds to create a piece of art resembling a sticky lollipop that’s been kicked around in cobwebs, but then I didn’t think much of Damien Hirst’s dead sheep or Tracey Emin’s tent. In my opinion, whoever made Clare’s earrings had more taste.

‘Those earrings are new, aren’t they?’ I ask.

‘Jim bought them for me.’ Clare fingers the mother-of-pearl-effect discs that dangle from her left ear. ‘Do you think they’re too big?’

‘Size doesn’t matter, when it comes to presents anyway, and neither does value. It’s the thought that counts.’ So why didn’t Tony think of me, I wonder. ‘The last thing Tony bought me was a tub of salt for the bath when my stitches broke down.’

‘Tony’s a practical man. You should be grateful that he has your welfare at heart.’

‘I am. I’d just like him to give me something frivolous once in a while.’

Clare parks outside a block of maisonettes. ‘Come on, let’s get started.’ She carries baby Fern in her seat and a bucket. I brush sugar off my front and take Chloe and the mop.

We set up Maids 4 U before the babies arrived, and our clients were none too keen on my idea of us both taking a year’s maternity leave. Neither was Clare, considering it would be unpaid, so we compromised, sending apologetic, impersonal notes to those clients with the dirtiest homes, and keeping on the few who had slipped us the odd tenner or bottle of wine at Christmas.

Clare beats me to the front door of number 11A. She drops the bucket, not the baby, and pulls a bunch of keys from her pocket. She selects a key, slips it into the lock and jiggles it until it turns, then pushes the door open.

I follow Clare inside and up the stairs where a wall of humid air hits us. It’s like getting off a plane in Majorca, but the air is laced with added notes of cold sweat and methane.

‘You don’t think . . .?’ I say nervously.

‘I hope we’re not going to regret stuffing those doughnuts.’ Clare wrinkles her nose as we pass the bathroom door. ‘Do you remember our first visit?’

‘How could I forget?’ It was like having morning sickness all over again. There was a carpet of nail clippings on the bathroom floor, mouldering tissues under the bed, and the most immaculate toilet brush that I’ve ever seen, still wrapped. An overlying scent of fresh Lynx failed to disguise the acrid odours of sour milk, uneaten takeaways and unwashed clothes. We booked three days to clear it up, and transformed the whole flat.

In the living room the curtains are closed and the lights are on. A CD is spinning, but not playing inside the mini hi-fi. Fragments of glass glitter from the laminate floor. The décor is – no, was – quite minimal; open beechwood shelving, and paper tube lamps hanging artily from the ceiling.

My mouth goes dry. Something is very wrong.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ I warn Clare as she plonks Fern on the sofa. She tugs the curtains apart, throws a window open and takes the CD out of the player. ‘This might be the scene of a crime.’

‘It is. Look at this.’ Grinning, Clare holds out the CD. ‘The Opera Babes. Beyond Imagination.’

‘That anyone should be interested in classical music is beyond my imagination.’

‘Me too, except I do like that piece that Torvill and Dean used to dance to, “Bolero”. Jim bought it before we met.’ Clare colours slightly. ‘He maintains that it’s rather erotic. Have you and Tony you-know-what yet?’

I shake my head. As Tony pointed out earlier this morning, we haven’t made love since before Chloe was born. I’ve been too sore, too weary, but I’m planning for tonight to be the night . . . A tiny quiver of anticipation runs down my spine as I imagine the pressure of Tony’s hands on my back, his skin snagging on a pair of silk knickers, or more realistically a set of cotton/Lycra-mix pants because he hasn’t bought me glamorous underwear for ages. He hasn’t even bought me a tacky novelty item. He hasn’t bought me anything.

I start to wonder if it might be my fault. I mean, I did lose it when he presented me with a waitress outfit one Christmas, but that’s understandable when I wait on everyone hand and foot all day, every day. I don’t need a uniform to remind me of my position as domestic servant because that’s how I feel sometimes.

I change the subject. ‘Do you think it’s safe – hygienic, I mean – to leave the babies in here?’

‘They’ll be fine, Lisa. You know, I think we can justify charging Mr Harman for a couple of extra hours with all this mess.’

‘Two hours? I was hoping to be home early today.’

‘It doesn’t have to take us two,’ Clare says wickedly, ‘if we put our backs into it.’

‘Oh, all right then.’ I place my daughter beside Fern. ‘I ought to wake Chloe up, otherwise she’ll keep us up all night again.’

‘If you wake her now, she’s bound to want a feed—’ Clare stops abruptly, interrupted by a bloodcurdling groan. ‘Did you hear that?’

I tighten my grip on the mop.

‘We are not alone,’ Clare continues dramatically and somewhat unnecessarily, I consider, from the soft thud that comes from the bedroom.

I head towards the source of the sound, then hesitate just outside the open door, brandishing my mop.

‘Show yourself, whoever you are!’ My voice comes out as a squeak. I’m not sure who I’m expecting – a man in a striped sweater carrying a swag bag, or a youth in a black hooded top with a gun. It’s neither of these. A naked man with wide, ice-blue eyes comes lunging at me full frontal, brandishing a truncheon.

I scream. The head of the mop makes contact with my assailant’s forearm, knocking his weapon from his hand. He trips back against the bed, tries to regain his balance, fails and falls onto the mattress.

‘Mr Harman?’ Clare says from behind me.

‘I didn’t recognise him,’ I bluster. ‘He looks so different.’

‘And so he would.’ Clare throws him a duster. ‘Last time we saw him, he had his clothes on.’

It’s true. When we met to agree the terms of our contract, Mr Harman was wearing a suit with a lilac shirt and tie, which gave him an air of sophistication and maturity that he lacks just now. He’s twenty-eight according to his passport, which he keeps in a small fire-safe but not cleaner-proof box, along with other important documents, and he’s worth about ten thousand in savings and ISAs. He’s tall and moderately handsome with flecks of grey running prematurely through short, mid-brown hair: not a bad catch.

Mr Harman slowly sits himself up on the edge of the bed with the duster clutched between his long thighs, and what I can now see is a wooden ceremonial truncheon at his feet. He groans, half-opens his eyes then closes them again. ‘My head hurts . . .’

Clare moves round and shakes his shoulder gently. ‘Mr Harman, it’s Clare and Lisa here from Maids 4 U.’

‘I’m sorry if I frightened you,’ he says. ‘I thought you were burglars.’ His lips are encrusted with flakes of what could be dried baby rice, or something rather more unpleasant. ‘What day is it?’

‘Monday,’ I say.

‘Heavy night, was it?’ Clare nods towards the empty bottle of vodka on the bedside cabinet, but Mr Harman seems preoccupied with some other concern.

‘I should be at work.’ He tries to stand up. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Ten o’clock.’

‘I’m supposed to be at a disciplinary hearing.’

‘Is that your job, sacking people?’ Clare likes to stick up for the underdog.

‘They’re trying to sack me.’ He is on his feet. He sways, turns green and sits down again. ‘You can stop all this Mr Harman nonsense – call me Neville.’

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ I suggest.

‘I’ll get it,’ says Clare.

‘Oh no, you won’t.’

‘Oh yes, I will. What do you fancy? Espresso, cappuccino or latte? Red Monkey Blend, Organic Peru El Guabo, or Kenyan Elephant Ears?’

In spite of his hangover, Neville raises one eyebrow, while I flash Clare a warning glance. He has every right to be surprised at the depth of our knowledge of his coffee supplies. We might be strangers, but we are his cleaners, and therefore know far more about him than he would probably wish, or believe. We know that Neville owns a state-of-the-art coffee-maker with a frothing nozzle. We know that he collects ceremonial truncheons, but he isn’t a policeman. We know that he’s some kind of manager for a branch of one of the large supermarkets, but he shops at one of their competitors.

Within half an hour, we know quite a lot more.

While Neville’s in the shower, Clare pops out to buy breakfast, and I shove his sheets in the washing machine on a hot wash. Then we sit him down in the armchair in the living room with a plate of fried eggs on his knees, while Clare and I put the babies on the floor and tuck into bacon butties.

‘There’s no need for you to do all this for me,’ Neville keeps repeating. He looks more human now, dressed in a pair of navy track-pants and a grey sweat-top.

‘It’s all part of the service.’ Clare wipes her face with a clean duster before hitting the rest of the doughnuts.

‘I’m sorry about the mess, and look – your top’s soaked,’ Neville goes on. ‘You haven’t got the knack with the coffee-machine yet.’

‘It isn’t that. I’m leaking.’ Clare picks Fern up then sits down again, cradling her in one arm while she lifts her top and unfastens her bra. ‘You don’t object?’

If Neville was going to protest, he changes his mind, looks discreetly towards me and continues to eat while Fern latches on with noisy snuffles and sucks.

‘You should go back to bed while we clear up.’ Clare relaxes back into the sofa and half-closes her eyes.

‘I have to go to work.’

‘You can’t, Neville,’ I say. ‘You look terrible. Why don’t you call in sick? I’ll ring them if you like.’

‘Would you?’

‘I’ll pretend I’m your mother.’

‘My mother’s Irish.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ I am. ‘Not that she’s Irish – just that I can’t do an Irish accent.’

‘I can,’ says Clare.

‘My mother’s in Ireland. You’ll have to pretend you’re my girlfriend.’ Neville hesitates. ‘Not that I have a girlfriend any more . . .’ He sits back, tipping his plate so that his knife and fork fall clattering onto the floor, a noise which finally wakes Chloe from her slumber. Her head jerks, her hands open and close on the end of rigid arms, and her feet pummel the air. Her face turns red, her chest pumps up and down, and then she opens her mouth and lets rip with an earnumbing scream. Fern merely pauses from sucking just for a moment, more to catch her breath, I suspect, than because of the racket.

‘There, there, my poppet.’ I unstrap Chloe and pick her up. ‘Did that scary man frighten you?’

‘Lisa doesn’t mean it,’ Clare says to reassure Neville.

‘I didn’t mean to upset him.’ Neville has a dribble of egg yolk on his chin.

‘Chloe is a girl,’ I say sharply, upset that anyone could possibly mistake my darling daughter for a boy. ‘Her Babygro is covered in pink rabbits. Do I look like one of those politically correct mothers who dress their boys in pink?’

Neville apologises. ‘I just assumed – her seat thingy is blue . . .’

Once we have all calmed down, apart from Chloe who is alternately sobbing and sucking on her tongue, I dig a bottle out from the si