hair needs a wash.
‘I think you had it in the living room last night, love, when you were doing your homework. Or it could be in that pile on the chair under Lenny’s toys. Are you going to take a shower?’
‘Haven’t got time,’ she shrugs, ‘got choir practice then we’re getting our revision timetable.’
‘What, already? You’ve barely started the course. That’s a bit soon?’
‘Yeah, I know, but Mr Young said two kids in the year above got Bs last year and they don’t want that happening again.’
‘Well, you should wash your hair before you go in. Make you feel fresher, sweetheart. It looks a bit …’
‘I know.’
‘Em, darling, I’m just trying to …’
‘I know, I know, Mum. But it’s like I’ve got so much on.’ As she turns to go out of the door I notice that her school skirt has got tucked in her knickers at the back, revealing a ladder of nasty cuts up her thigh.
‘Emily, what’s wrong with your leg?’
‘S’nothing.’
‘You’ve hurt yourself, darling. It looks horrid. Come here. What happened?’
‘S’nothing.’ She tugs furiously at the back of her skirt.
‘What do you mean nothing? I can see it’s bleeding from here.’
‘I fell off my bike, Mum. OK?’
‘I thought you said your bike was being mended.’
‘Yeah, I rode Daddy’s.’
‘You rode Bradley Wiggins to school?’
‘Not that one. The old, cheaper one. It was in the garage.’
‘You fell off?’
‘Mmmmmm.’
‘What happened?’
‘There was gravel on the road. I skidded.’
‘Oh, no. And you hurt your poor leg. And you’ve grazed the other one. Lift your skirt up again so I can see properly. Why didn’t you tell me, love? We need to get some Savlon on that. It looks nasty.’
‘Please stop, Mum, OK?’
‘Just let me take a look. Hold still a minute. Pull the skirt up, I can’t see properly.’
‘GO A-WAY. JUST STOP. PUHLEEEASE!’ Emily lashes out wildly, knocking my glasses off and sending them flying to the floor. I bend down to pick them up. The left lens has popped out of its frame.
‘I can’t stand it,’ Emily wails. ‘You always say the wrong thing, Mum. Always.’
‘What? I didn’t say anything, my love. I just want to look at your leg, darling. Em. Emily, please don’t walk out of the room. Emily, please come back here. Emily, you can’t go to school without eating anything. Emily, I’m talking to you. EMILY?’
As my daughter exits the house trailing sulphurous clouds of reproach and leaving me to wonder what crime I have committed this time, Piotr enters. He is standing just inside the back door with his bag of tools. I blush to think of him hearing our screaming match and seeing Emily knock my glasses off. I can’t believe she actually hit me. She didn’t mean to hit me. It was an accident.
‘Sorry. Is bad time, Kate?’
‘No, no, it’s fine. Really. Come in. Sorry, Piotr. It’s just Emily had an accident, she fell off her bike, but she thinks I’m making a fuss about nothing.’
Without being asked, he takes the glasses out of my hand, retrieves the missing lens which is on the floor next to Lenny’s basket, and begins to work it back into its frame. ‘Emily she is teenage. Mum she’s always say wrong things, isn’t it?’
Despite wanting rather badly to cry, I find myself laughing. ‘That’s so true. A mother’s place is in the wrong, Piotr. Wrong is my permanent address at the moment. Would you like some tea? I’ve got some proper tea today, you’ll be pleased to hear.’
In his new spiritual incarnation, Richard has acquired a wide range of tranquillity teas. Rhubarb and Rosemary, Dandelion, Lemon, Nettle and Manuka Honey, and something in a urine-coloured box called Camomindfulness. On the recommendation of Joely at the counselling centre, in February he presented me with Panax Ginseng, said to be good for hot flushes and night sweats. A thoughtful present although, if you were being picky, perhaps not totally ideal for the red-hot lover’s message of Valentine’s Day. (After receiving a set of Jamie Oliver saucepans for Christmas I thought we’d reached a low point in the history of Rich’s gifts to me, but clearly there is plenty of floor below that to fall through.) It takes a lot to perturb Piotr, whose temperament feels as generous and easy as his countenance, but even he recoiled when I said we had run out of builders’ tea and offered him Dandelion instead.
‘In my contree, dantyline means wet bed like children’s,’ he smiled, revealing a mouth of characterful, uneven teeth of the kind that have pretty much died out among the British middle classes.
Piotr’s English is bad, yet strangely appealing. I feel no need to correct it, as I do with Ben and Em, because (a) that would be horribly patronising and (b) I love the mistakes he makes because they are so expressive (which I guess is horribly patronising). That’s what happens with the kids, isn’t it? You correct their errors and their speech gets better and better until, one day, they don’t say those funny, sweet things any more. I can’t press Rewind and hear Ben say, ‘I did go’d fast did I Mummy’ or a five-year-old Emily ask if she can come with me to the ‘Egg Pie Snake Building’ (Empire State sounds so dull by comparison) or have ‘piz-ghetti’ for dinner. Or tell me, ‘I’m not a baby I’m a togg-er-ler.’ Sometimes I think I wished away their childhood so life would be easier; now I have the rest of my life to wish it back.
I put water in a saucepan and olive oil and butter in a casserole on the Aga. Kettle not working again while Piotr has the electricity switched off. Methodically, I start preparing the onions, carrots and celery for bolognese, our family’s all-purpose comfort food. It’s the Marcella Hazan recipe and I know it so well that her quaintly formal words float into my head as I chop. The addition of milk ‘lends a desirable sweetness’. Perfectly true, it’s the magic ingredient you could never guess. In the larder – a tiny, pitch-black cupboard leading off the utility room – I grope for tinned tomatoes in the dark and my hand finds a Hammer Horror cobweb. It’s the size and shape of a tennis racquet. Uch. Fetch some kitchen wipes and start to clean down the slatted wooden shelves.
I always dreamt of having an Aga. Visions of home-baked bread, delicious stews murmuring to themselves on the range and maybe even an orphaned baby lamb being gently brought back to life in the warming drawer. Unclear where I was going to find a lamb, except in the meat aisle of Waitrose, and therefore well past the point of reviving, but the daydream persisted. Now, I realise my Aga fantasy was of the pristine magazine kind that comes equipped with its own Mary Berry. Ours is a malevolent old beast encrusted with the splashed fat of half a century and has only two temperatures: lukewarm and crematorium. You know, I really don’t think it likes me. Shortly after we moved in, I put a cauliflower
