Claire Seeber - Never Tell

He walked towards me, thin and no longer elegant, wiry-limbed and crop-haired instead.

‘Hello, Rose,’ he said, and I tried to find my voice.

‘I thought,’ it came at last, ‘I thought that you were dead.’

It wasn’t turning out to be one of the good mornings. Fred had been up three times in the night simply seeking company, so my eyes now stung with tiredness. Alicia was in a foul mood because Effie had scribbled all over her new birthday sketchbook in purple felt-tip. Effie had insisted sweetly that she was dying for porridge until finally I caved in, and spent ten minutes stirring it like an automaton, whereupon she spat the first mouthful dramatically all over the floor and refused even one more try, citing the ‘yucky bits’.

‘Put your other slipper on, Freddie. The floor’s freezing.’

‘It’s lost,’ he announced dramatically.

‘It’s not lost. It’s on the radiator there.’

He turned earnest eyes on me. ‘Superheroes don’t wear slippers, Mummy.’

‘Well super-heroes are going to have horribly cold feet then, aren’t they?’

I wondered plaintively for the three hundred and sixty-fourth consecutive day why James couldn’t get up just once and make the struggle with plaits, porridge and a three-year-old’s tantrums at least partly his own.

‘I want my milk warm, Mummy,’ Effie puffed, abandoning the cornflakes and dragging the milk bottle towards her across the table.

‘Just have it cold, Ef, OK?’

‘I want it warm,’ she pouted and promptly upended the entire pint over the flowery tablecloth.

‘For God’s sake, Effie,’ my restraint deserted me. ‘I told you not to do that, you silly child.’

‘Shut up, Mummy,’ she shouted back. ‘You’re rubbish.’ Her little red mouth was wobbling.

A Ready Brek-encrusted Fred looked in wonderment at the raised voices and cross faces; Effie and I glaring at one another, me wavering between laughter and annoyance until Alicia turned Radio One up loudly. My pounding head pounded harder as Alicia pronounced, ‘This is Fred’s favourite song,’ and jiggled so alarmingly at him that he fell backwards and promptly burst into tears. Finishing a complicated riff about some girl not knowing her name, she whacked her arm on the chair and burst into dramatic sobs that equalled her brother’s. Soggy J-cloth in hand, I gazed at them, weighing up my options: opening the gin or joining them.

Into this chaos walked Mrs McCready, never more welcome, unbuttoning the shiny old coat that hid her ill-fitting velour tracksuit, a choice baby blue today. (‘I think she sleeps in them,’ James remarked at least once a week.) She took one look at Fred’s furious red face and swept him off the floor.

‘Come here, my precious,’ she crooned, clutching his plump little body to her huge chest, his head half the size of one of her bosoms. ‘I’ll go and get him dressed,’ she said. ‘Won’t I, precious? Come on, Effie.’

I turned the radio down, tossing the cloth towards the sink. It hit the floor with a soggy thwack, narrowly missing the cat. I kissed Alicia’s arm better until her sobs eventually subsided, and retied her red ribbons before dispatching her to piano practice whilst I made a desultory attempt to clear up.

Waiting for the kettle to boil again, I gazed out of the mullioned windows at the cold March morning. It was crisp and clear now, the last tendrils of dawn mist dissipating under a slow-climbing sun. Two robins took a quick dip in the stone birdbath, flicking each other with something like affection. Below them a blackbird bounced along a lawn glistening with dew, hopefully pecking for a worm. It was chocolate-box perfect.

The kettle snapped off as I caught my reflection in the glass. I am in a stupor, I thought, I have been in a stupor for months. Not months, even – years. I move slowly, I have become plumper, my skin is soft and golden, the glow of repleteness is on me. And yet I’m not replete.

I shook myself from my self-indulgence. Things are good, I thought, trying to convince myself once again, and poured boiling water all over my hand as James appeared noiselessly behind me.

‘Ouch!’ I yanked my hand back quickly. Quickly, but too late.

‘Careful,’ James yawned, stretching, displaying a hairy stomach above stripy pyjama-bottoms. I ran my hand under the cold tap, the freezing water a new kind of pain on my scalded skin.

‘Any coffee going?’ J scratched his belly. ‘Have you seen my phone?’

He rooted through the piles of paperwork I’d stacked neatly last night, through the old newspapers full of articles I kept meaning to read and never got round to, forms for Alicia’s school trips and Effie and Fred’s dinner money, bank statements that needed to go to the accountants, my notebook full of scribblings for ideas that I needed to write up properly. Scribblings that were decreasing in number.

‘I need to call Liam. I’ve had a fucking blinding idea for Revolver. We’ve got to go all out on the VIP room. Marble, gold, the works. Seventies kitsch.’

I watched one pile slide dangerously to the right and bit my tongue.

‘Where the hell’s my phone? Did you move it again? I do keep saying just leave it.’

‘Oh, J, don’t mess it all up again,’ I muttered, but my beautiful symmetry was already descending towards the floor.

‘Don’t fuss, Rose.’ He found the phone in the pocket of his fleece. ‘McCready can tidy it. She loves it.’

Ruined.

‘Who’s she?’ Mrs McCready stomped back into the room, a beaming Fred beneath her arm like a small parcel. ‘The cat’s mother?’

‘Oh, McCready, you angel.’ James kissed her resoundingly on one thread-veined cheek. ‘You’re here to save us all, aren’t you, petal?’

I couldn’t help smiling. ‘I thought I was your petal?’

‘That’s right, Rosie Lee,’ my husband winked at me, ‘you are. My one and only petal. Bring the coffee to the studio, would you? I’ve got to get on.’

I caught McCready’s eye over his dark head. Obviously it was a good day.