We talked until the necessary processing had deteriorated into gratuitous grumbling. I was determined not to allow Mum’s disruption to negatively impact my new sensible bedtime routine, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about the thoughts careening about my head for most of the night, making sleep seem like a cruel joke.
Thursday morning, I stuck on my best calm-capable-mum persona, aware that I sounded like an actor in a cheesy advert as I bundled the kids off to school. I smiled robotically through three post-birth video calls with previous private clients, and had time to set up the online bookings for my autumn classes and update the website. All while ignoring the four calls and even more messages buzzing through from a new, unknown number, having glimpsed one message as starting, ‘Darling daughter, I am devastated…’ before turning my phone screen down.
Nicky called while I was waiting to pick Isla and Finn up from their after-school football club.
‘Your turn,’ she said, with all the authority of an older sister. ‘Stop dodging her calls.’
‘You’re working today. It’s no one’s turn.’
‘She came to the surgery and introduced herself to Martha!’
‘Yuck.’ Martha was one of the receptionists.
‘Precisely. She obviously knew nothing, so made Mum a cup of tea and invited her into the staffroom. She’s been hanging around for nearly three hours waiting for me to take a break. I had to ask Nadia to bring my matcha tea into my room. My step count is fifty-seven, and half of those were scuttling to the patient toilets so she didn’t spot me in the corridor.’
‘Why didn’t she just come here?’
‘She’s waiting for after school, banking on you not making a scene in front of the kids.’
‘I really can’t be doing with this today.’
‘Libby, my last patient projectile-vomited in my hair. It’s your turn. Call her.’
I didn’t call, but I did read the messages and reply that we’d be home at five. She’d grind me down at some point, so might as well get it over with.
‘Hey, I have some exciting news,’ I said, once the three of us were walking home along the footpath.
‘Did you kiss that man again?’ Isla asked.
‘Ew!’ Finn scowled as I reminded her that there’d been no kissing.
‘Is our new baby sister born? Oh, did Toby fix the scary hole in the ceiling where the monsters hide?’
‘What hole? And no, none of those things. Your Grandma Helen is coming to see you.’
‘The one who sends me pictures on my birthday sometimes?’ Isla asked, dark eyebrows shooting up her little forehead. ‘Did she come in a boat?’
‘How is she going to sail a boat to Bigley?’ Finn scoffed. ‘Down the ditch?’
‘She could have put it on the back of a lorry.’ Isla pouted. ‘Or had one of those boats with wheels like in your book.’
‘She doesn’t work on the boat any more, so she came on a train and in a taxi,’ I said, before Finn could pour further scorn on his sister’s suggestions.
‘Did she bring us presents?’ he asked instead.
‘I don’t know. But it would be rude to ask, wouldn’t it?’
‘Zak and Bert’s grandparents give them presents all the time. A postcard doesn’t count, so she might have all my birthday presents saved up.’
‘I’m not sure. There wasn’t a lot of room on the boat to store presents.’
‘Well, I think she owes me at least a small one.’
I corrected his rather rude attitude, even as my heart believed that Mum owed my children far more than a few presents.
When we walked up the drive, our visitor was already waiting at the front door, fiddling with the hem of her patterned shirt.
‘Did you bring our birthday presents?’ Isla asked, stopping a metre or so in front of her grandma, arms folded across her muddy football top.
