“What are you DOING?” I said as Mark shoved him outside and locked the French windows.
“Maybe he’ll jump,” muttered Mark.
“Will you two stop bickering and grow up; it’s like having two children,” I said, bustling around with the tea. “Mark, let Daniel back in.” I had literally turned into Magda and was on the point of saying, “Mummy will smack, she will smack, she will smack.”
“Grow up?” said Daniel, coming back from the balcony. “You slept with both of us in frankly alarmingly quick succession like a member of Generation Z.”
I sat down wearily at the kitchen table. Was this what it was going to be like being a mother? Preparing people MEALS and GRINDING MYSELF TO THE BONE while they squabble and fight? Suddenly remembered I had forgotten to put the kettle on. Maybe I could serve them the Crossover Food muffins?
“Look, the situation is far from ideal,” said Mark. “But it is, perhaps, an opportunity for us all to look at our behaviour and responsibilities, and act with everyone’s best…”
“Right, great, Mother Superior. Is one going to start singing ‘Climb Every Mountain’ now?”
“Teas up!” I trilled. “And I’ve got homemade muffins!”
Daniel and Mark looked at each other, more horrified than by anything before.
—
The three of us sat at the kitchen table, struggling to eat the, by my own admission, disgusting Crossover broccoli muffins.
Suddenly, Mark started choking. He pulled a large piece of glass out of his mouth.
“What’s this?”
“Oh shit! I broke a glass when I was doing the mixture. I thought I’d got it all out. Are you all right?”
Daniel leapt up and SPAT his muffin into the sink. He picked up another piece of broken glass and held it out. “I feel like my life is disintegrating before my very eyes. Is this what parenthood is? Vomit in my car? Chocolate on my suits? Broccoli-and-glass-chip muffins in my stomach?”
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I thought I’d got it all out. I’ve just made a terrible mess of everything. I can’t do this.”
I slumped at the table, head on my arms. I just wanted it all to stop. Apart from the baby.
Mark came over and put his arms round me. “It’s all right, it’s all right. You’re doing fantastically well.”
“You haven’t actually killed us, “said Daniel, freakishly clearing out the sink. “Unless powdered glass is at this moment puncturing all our intestines.”
“It has actually been a near-death experience for us all,” said Mark, starting to laugh.
“So now can we all sort of unite and pull together?” I said, hopefully.
“Push, surely,” said Daniel.
—
Everyone settled down then, and we drank our tea nicely like the sort of well-behaved family you see in old-fashioned movies from the 1950s: unlike modern TV shows where the children snap out sassy and slightly insulting lines at their gay parents written by sophisticated writers’ rooms in Hollywood.
“What about our parents?” I said, suddenly sitting bolt upright.
“We have to tell them, of course,” said Mark.
Oh God, I thought. The village! Grafton Underwood! Admiral and Elaine Darcy! Mum, Una and Mavis Enderbury!
“Parents?” said Daniel.
“Yes,” said Mark. “Do you have parents?”
“Not that I’m ever going to tell.”