Page 19 of Beyond Repair
‘This thing,’ Russell said gesturing to a squirming Finlay, ‘is not getting his mitts on these trousers. Designer, darling.’ With that he threw the precious trousers up on top of the kitchen unit and out of harm’s way and released Finlay, who promptly used Russell’s leg as a climbing pole, crawling up it like a monkey until he was level with Russell’s face, then slapping both his little chocolate-covered hands on his cheeks. Once Russell’s face was sufficiently covered, Finlay moved onto his perfectly styled hair, making it stick up in chocolate-laden peaks.
‘Do you have any midazolam in your bag?’ Russell asked, and Katie rolled her eyes. ‘I’m serious, one shot and they’ll be passed out until midnight.’
‘It’s their bedtime soon,’ she told him. ‘And anyway, you promised to help me. I’m drowning here.’
Sarah was away at some maternity-leave keeping-in-touch day at the school (given that Sarah had been on permanent maternity leave for the last eight years Katie thought this was a little pointless) and Rob was at the set and couldn’t get away. Katie was on a very short list of people willing to take on the boys for an entire day and evening, and she’d drafted Russell in to help with bedtime, seeing as he only lived round the corner. Unfortunately she’d had to bribe him by agreeing to take on some of his heart-sinks – certain patients in general practice are labelled ‘heart-sinks’: invariably they attend every week, sport sore expressions, come armed with a list, and suck all the energy out of the consulting room, having much the same effect on the atmosphere as a Harry Potter Dementor.
‘Where are the other two?’ Russell asked.
‘They said they were going to go and do their Maths, but that was a while ago …’ Katie and Russell looked at each other for a moment and then both flew out of the kitchen carrying the two toddlers.
‘What on earth?’ Katie shouted. Jack and Benji froze. All the bedding from every bedroom in the house had been dragged into Sarah and Rob’s bedroom and was suspended between their furniture, covered in muddy footprints. Finlay and Baby Thomas both squirmed wildly and managed to break free from Katie and Russell. They both ran at high speed into the sheets and duvets, adding copious amounts of chocolate to the mess.
‘We were going to build a den but then decided why stop there? Why not build a city? So …’
‘You. Are. Very. Naughty. Boys,’ Katie said slowly, hanging onto her sanity by a thread. Finlay emerged from an overhanging duvet clutching one of Sarah’s colourful chunky necklaces, whilst Baby Thomas managed to knock a box of Sarah’s hair accessories onto the floor.
‘Pwetty,’ said Finlay, waving the necklace at Russell.
‘Oh dear, gorgeous,’ Russell said, eyeing the necklace with a of look disgust. ‘Uncle Russell issogoing to have to teach you to accessorize. There is nothing pretty about that particular piece of bad taste.’ He scooped Finlay up and strode over to Baby Thomas and the hair accessories. ‘Now, boys, let’s see what we can find.’
‘On, on, on,’ chanted Finlay, waving the offending necklace in front of Russell’s face. Russell rolled his eyes. ‘If you insist, darling, but we’ll have to balance it out with something hair-wise, and maybe a bit of blusher …’
‘Don’t you dare put make-up on those children, Russell,’ Katie told him as Russell reached for Sarah’s cosmetics.
‘Come on, K.K.,’ Russell said, sweeping a generous amount of blusher across Baby Thomas’s cheeks and then securing a flower hairgrip to hold back his thick blonde fringe. ‘Soldier-boy will never know. Live a little.’
Just as Katie was about to make a grab for the little ones, music started blasting out from the house’s inbuilt sound system. She felt in her back pocket and realized her phone was gone, and seeing as ‘Backstreet’s Back’ was now playing on all the speakers in the house she had a pretty fair idea of who might have taken it.
‘Benji,’ she tried to shout over the music, walking to the top of the stairs and looking down, to see his cheeky face grinning up at her.
‘Come on, Auntie Katie,’ Jack shouted, running up behind his brother. ‘You promised to finish teaching us the dance.’
*****
The first thing to hit Sam as they walked in through the door was the wall of sound. Next was the smell of burning.
‘Christ alive,’ Sarah said, stepping over the pile of shoes and coats blocking the front door. ‘I wouldn’t have thought even Katie would have been capable of this level of carnage in the time she had available.’
As they strode down the corridor into the kitchen, Sam hung back behind Rob and Sarah. He was debating whether he shouldn’t just slink off and leave them to it. After all, he’d said all that needed to be said, and they were both in the picture now. The last thing he needed was for Katie to know how involved he was; he expected that he wasn’t exactly her favourite person, and it would probably be a good idea to keep it that way. But still he found his feet driving him on. It was pathetic but he knew he would do just about anything to see her again.As he stepped into the kitchen and took in the sight in front of him, a strange feeling of helplessness overcame him, and he realized that he was not going to turn back, maybe not ever.
The kitchen was absolute chaos. Two of the kids were attempting to breakdance in the middle of the floor, and whirling around them was Katie clutching a laughing toddler in her arms. Her curly hair was flying out as she spun, and was copiously covered in flour; she had chocolate streaks across her cheeks and covering her jumper, the neck of which had been stretched out by the toddler and was hanging off her shoulder, revealing a pink bra strap. Just as Rob reached for the sound system console on the wall, Katie executed a very deep dip, lowering the toddler's head to the floor, then whipping him back up whilst he wriggled and chuckled, squirming in her arms. The music shut off abruptly as she straightened, and when her head came up her eyes connected with Sam’s, and the smile fell from her face.
‘Hey, crazies, what’s happened to the tunes? We were just …’ Sam’s gaze shot over to the pantry door, from which a half-naked man was emerging. He was also covered in flour and chocolate, and he had a large cookie in one hand and a large toddler in the other (whose face suggested that he may have already devoured an equally large biscuit, or ten). Sam scanned the man and his fists clenched by his sides when he registered that this joker was only in his goddamn boxer shorts. He was familiar – Sam knew him from somewhere – but he also knew there was no way hewouldn’tremember the man if he had ever been involved with Katie. God knows he knew enough about that Dylan character. For the first time Sam registered how strange it was for a woman like Katie to have only been involved with one man in the whole six years he’d known her. As his eyes travelled back to the new guy’s face, he did a double take. There was lipstick smeared all over his mouth. Katie hadn’t been wearing any lipstick, had she? Glancing at the two toddlers, he realized that they in fact were daubed with lipstick, blusher, eye shadow, and multiple necklaces. One of them was sporting a number of flowery hair clips that pulled his fringe back, and the other had his blond locks up in two pigtails at the top of his head.
‘Russell,’ Rob barked, and the trouserless guy jumped about a mile in the air.
‘Golly, calm down, big man,’ said Trouserless Man, recovering from his shock, casually strolling past the island to Katie and slinging his arm around her shoulders. ‘They’re alive. The house is still standing. I for one think we made a bally good effort.’
Sam couldn’t stop staring at the man’s arm around her shoulders. He felt like his head was going to explode. And why were Rob and Sarah exuding amused exasperation whilst appearing to hold back grins? Did they really think it appropriate for Katie’s latest fuck buddy to parade around their house in his boxers, covered in chocolate and eating their shit?
‘What exactlyisthat stuff all over my children?’ Sarah asked, swiping at Benji’s face but not having much success at removing any cake mix.
‘Oh, we’ve tried to wipe it off,’ Russell said, allowing a squirming Finlay to crawl down him and run towards his daddy. ‘But it’s like welded on or something. Not sure what K.K. put in it, but it certainly has staying power.’
Rob had picked up Finlay and was holding him out in front of him, looking him over in horror. ‘Russ, mate, tell me you did not put make-up on my boys.’
‘Look, I can’t say it was all me,’ Russell said, his hands going up, palms forward in a gesture of surrender. ‘They did a lot of that to themselves and to me, I was just along for the ride. Anyway, I’d have thought a little more gender-neutral parenting would be welcomed in this house. Life’s not all about big guns and even bigger dicks, soldier boy.’
