A Spot Of Bother

78

Katie felt wrung out.

You expected crises to resolve stuff, to put it into perspective. But they didn’t. When they’d got to Peterborough she’d imagined staying for a few days, a week maybe, just her and Jacob. Keep an eye on Dad and make sure he wasn’t planning to hack something else off. Give Mum a hand. Be a better daughter and atone for the guilt about disappearing last time.

But when Dad got back with Ray and told everyone they could go home, she was relieved. Another day in that house and they were going to kill each other.

The wheelchair was a shock, but Dad seemed strangely buoyant. Even Mum seemed keener on looking after him on her own than sharing the house with her children.

As they were leaving, Katie steeled herself and apologized.

Mum said, “Let’s just forget about it, shall we.”

And Dad overcompensated by saying, “Thank you for coming. It was lovely to see you,” despite the fact that this was the first time he had actually been awake in her presence.

Which reminded Jacob that he hadn’t given Grandpa his chocolate buttons. So Ray went outside and retrieved the packet from the glove compartment and Dad made a show of opening it and eating a couple and declaring that they were delicious despite the fact that the car heater seemed to have fused them into a kind of brown porridge.

They drifted to their cars and drove away and Ray and Jacob played I Spy for half an hour and Katie found that she was actually looking forward to getting back to the house she’d been so desperate to get away from only the day before.

When they arrived Ray and Jacob put the train set together on the living-room floor while she made supper. She bathed Jacob and Ray put him to bed.

Neither of them had the energy to argue and they spent the next few days playing the role of dutiful parents so as not to trouble Jacob. And she could see them turning slowly into the people they were pretending to be, the problem they were meant to solve drifting slowly into the background, the two of them turning into a team whose job it was to bring up a child and run a household despite the fact that they had nothing in common, having conversations about what was needed from Tesco and what they were going to do at the weekend, going to bed and putting out the light and rolling away from each other and trying not to dream about the lives they could have led.