Page 32 of The Fall-Out

‘Nome?’

‘Patch?’

‘I have to go.’

‘I know.’

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

As it happened, Meredith did smile for the first time while her father was away – although Bridget said it was probably just wind. But Toby held off until the day Patch got home, and when his dad lifted him up, smothering his face with kisses and saying, ‘Where’s my big boy?’ he cracked a proper, unmistakeable grin.

Patch had cried then too.

He’d loved them so much – he still did love them. But somehow, somewhere along the way, he’d stepped back from the day-to-day grind of parenting and I’d taken over. When his job had changed to be office-based, he’d announced with delight that he’d be able to do more with the children now, but it hadn’t happened. Of course he cuddled them and played with them and kissed them good night if he was home early enough. But when Toby resisted sleep at night, Patch didn’t know it was because someone had to check the wardrobe for monsters. When Meredith needed to be taken to try on new shoes for her ballet class, he didn’t know whether they needed to be pink or black.

And the loneliness I’d dreaded that first time he went away had become so much of a fixture in my life that I barely noticed it any more.

I finished stacking the children’s plates in the dishwasher and gave the left-over pasta sauce that was destined for our dinner a stir. Then I opened the fridge, looked at the half-finished bottle of wine on the shelf, and closed it again.

‘Come on, Meredith and Toby,’ I said. ‘It’s time for your bath and then bed.’

‘But Daddy!’ Meredith’s voice was entering full whine mode, and I knew tears would shortly follow if someone didn’t apply some distraction – and fast.

‘Daddy’s busy,’ muttered Patch. ‘Go and have your baths and I’ll come and kiss you good night.’

‘Daddy, play with us.’ Toby’s lower lip was thrust out mutinously.

‘Mate, I’m busy.’ Patch’s eyes had returned to his phone.

‘But I want—’ began Meredith.

I put the wooden spoon down on the counter with unnecessary force, red sauce splattering around it. Clearly, Patch wasn’t going to take over the bedtime routine. I could bawl him out for ignoring them when I was busy, but we’d often had conversations about how to withstand their divide-and-conquer strategy, and had agreed that arguing in front of them about who did what was an instant route to defeat. Besides, bathtime was my job. Quite when it had become my job, even on the nights when Patch was home, I couldn’t recall – but my job it was, as firmly entrenched now as the bins being Patch’s job – except, of course, when he wasn’t here, when it became mine by default.

‘Toby and Meredith,’ I said in my I-mean-business voice, ‘if you’re upstairs in thirty seconds, you can have some of Mummy’s special bubble bath.’

That worked. The promise of a squirt of L’Occitane’s finest was a sure-fire way to make the kids cooperate – not because they appreciated its moisturising, almond-scented, fifty-quid-a-bottle glory, but because they’d seen how badly I’d freaked out the one time they’d tipped half a bottle into their bath before I could stop them, and it was now kept securely out of reach in the same cabinet as the Calpol.

Come to think of it, the twins were the only members of the household who ever got to use the stuff; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had an uninterrupted wallow in the bath. I could barely remember the last time I’d shaved my legs.

The children dashed upstairs and I followed more slowly, with a last longing glance back at the fridge. If I got through bedtime without losing my shit, I promised myself, then I’d have the massive glass of chardonnay I so badly wanted.

Forty-five minutes later, splashed with expensively scented water and with a numb arm from where Toby had lain on it while I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar through three times back to back, I returned downstairs.

Patch was still on the sofa, still on his phone, the football still playing on the television with the sound still off.

I stirred the pasta sauce again. It was starting to catch on the bottom, so I added a splash of wine before sloshing a load more into a glass.

‘Any chance there’s a cold beer in the fridge, Nome?’ Patch asked.

Any chance you could get your arse off the sofa and actually help? I thought. But there was a time and a place for a row, and that time wasn’t now – not yet, anyway. I took our drinks over to the living room and sat down next to him.

‘You know, the kids really love it when you’re here,’ I said.

‘I really love it when I’m here.’ He stretched out his legs, taking a long swallow of craft IPA. ‘Work’s fucking brutal at the moment. I’m knackered.’

‘I get it, I really do. You haven’t been home much before eight for the past couple of weeks. So it’s exciting for them when you’re here. They love having their dad around. And – you know – I get tired, too, doing all the parenting and house stuff on my own.’

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