I totally blank her. ‘Hi, Georgie,’ I gush. Making a big fuss of him, I ruffle his hair and lean down to blow a raspberry on his neck. ‘I’ve got a cupboard full of goodies for you. But go and say hi to Stan first – he’s waiting for you in his room.’

  He scampers straight down the hallway, leaving me to retaliate as best I know how. ‘Yeah, Rach, so Grandad just called – he wants his shoes back,’ I scoff as I eyeball her sensible brown-leather sandals.

  She punches me in the arm, calls me a twat, then hugs me. ‘Get me some scissors and I’ll sort you out,’ she says.

  Rachel did a night-school course in dog grooming back in her twenties, so she’s just about capable of giving my straggled mane a trim. My hair hasn’t been cut since before Jack was born, so I figure that a hairdresser for dogs is better than no hairdresser at all.

  Stanley is terrified of haircuts, so I grab us a couple of Diet Cokes and a pair of rusty, blunt scissors from the kitchen drawer, then we lock ourselves in the bathroom out of sight. I sit on the toilet and she hacks off nearly a year’s worth of dead hair while filling me in on the latest gossip from Tref Y Glaw.

  Hot off the press is the news that Ozzy the sandwich man has been caught cheating!

  ‘Dai Chops saw him through the window of the Dragon House and took a photo of him in the act,’ Rachel tells me. ‘Then he posted it on the Facebook community page so now everyone knows.’

  ‘God! And what did his wife say when she saw it?’

  ‘Claire was well miffed, of course. I mean, getting busted scoffing down a whole tub of chow mein with his bare hands? Not good. Especially when he’d spent a mint buying up every bit of meat and avocado in the village for his keto diet.’

  ‘Not to mention the pork scratchings!’

  ‘I know! Literally everyone is ripping the piss out of him now. Poor fella.’

  In other news, she tells me that Bungalow Baz has apparently been back to fix our parents’ conservatory floor, but he ended up talking our gullible dad into hiring him to paint their spare room as well. Mum is beyond livid. And, most shocking of all, Kelly Ann Evans – a girl from the year below me at school – is about to become a grandmother for the second time.

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Way!’ she says. ‘A grandmother, twice, at thirty-two. You couldn’t make it up!’

  Ten minutes of haphazard trimming later and my hair is finished. ‘Done,’ says Rachel, ‘have a look and see what you think.’

  I stand in the bathroom mirror flicking around what’s left of my mane, trying to get it to sit right. ‘It’s not quite “show poodle”, is it?’

  ‘More like “rescued terrier”, but it’s still better than it was.’

  Once Jack wakes up from his nap, Rachel suggests that, in light of the baking weather, we should all head out to the park. George has been sitting in a car for three hours and is desperate to burn off some steam, like any ordinary seven-year-old, so I’ve little choice but to agree.

  Stanley is less enthused. ‘I want to play body parts!’ he screeches, then scrunches his face up in a tight ball. I’ve noticed that he has been doing this repeatedly over the last week – since Ed left, in fact – and after doing some googling, I’ve convinced myself that he either has extreme anxiety or he has a tic and is developing Tourette’s syndrome. Either diagnosis is not good.

  ‘Stanley, stop pulling that funny face. Why do you keep doing that?’

  He doesn’t reply and continues to scrunch his face involuntarily whilst drumming his fists on his chest.

  ‘Leave him alone, Luce. He’s fine.’ Rachel throws her arms around him and gives him a gorilla hug, which makes him laugh and calms him instantly. ‘Come on, kid, let’s go to the park and I’ll buy you a toy on the way home.’

  Her offer swings the deal and we leave the flat without a huge drama, for a welcome change.

  Sand is one of Stan’s major repulsions, so when George makes a beeline for the sandpit, I brace myself for a potential ordeal. The ghastly stuff is right up there on Stanley’s list of ‘YUCK!’, sharing the number one spot with Johnson’s baby shampoo, wrongly shaped bananas, broccoli and haircuts. I’m just about to suggest an alternative place to go when, to my absolute delight, I watch him casually follow George into the pit without any objections.

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ I gasp.

  ‘Can’t believe what?’

  ‘He hates sand, Rach – like, hates it with an absolute passion. Normally, he freaks if he goes anywhere near it.’

  ‘Well, he loves it now.’ Rachel smiles. ‘Tick that one off the worry list and chill out. He’s fine … he’s happy.’

  Ability to touch sand: TICK. Now I just have to get him to look at me when I speak to him, to hold a conversation about something other than anatomy, to stop washing his hands every fifteen minutes, oh, and the newest worry: to stop his face twitching.

  ‘Maybe I do worry too much.’

  ‘No shit! You’re borderline hysterical … as usual. But, to take the edge off, I gift unto you this bad boy.’ She opens her bag, pulls out two cans of gin and tonic and dangles one right up close to my face.

  ‘Rach!’ I snatch it out of her hand and swiftly tuck it in between my legs. ‘We’re in the bloody park, woman. With three kids! What will people think?’

  ‘People?’ She shrugs. ‘What people? It’s just a little treat that I picked up at Reading services. I’m on my holidays, aren’t I?’ A wicked glint sparkles in her eye. ‘Just hold your hand over it and it’ll look like a can of pop.’

  I scan the park quickly: there’s no policeman, no priests, no social workers and not a single Yummy Mummy in sight, so I discreetly open the can and take a sneaky sip. The shame of it!

  Dressed in cheap leggings and cami vest tops, we sit like rebellious teenagers on the bench swigging our cans of gin and tonic, witnessing the sheer miracle of George swinging Stanley around by his arms in a pit filled with billions of grains of sand.

  I moan about Ed and how his life is all Hollywood-glamour and mine is more Shitsville-broccoli-vomit. I obsess about Stanley’s obsessions, whine about how I miss drinking wine with my friends and blather on about my failing career, my lack of sleep and my protruding pot belly.

  Performing her assigned role on this planet as my older sister, Rachel delivers her best nuggets of wisdom to help me pull myself together. ‘Forget about the size-ten waist,’ she says firmly. ‘Only Victoria Beckham has strolled out of a maternity ward with one of those, and that’s because she was a size minus-fifty to start with.’

  She lifts a tube of BBQ Pringles out of her bag, tears off the lid and swings the tube over in my direction. ‘For now, focus on keeping alive so you can raise these kids, and if that means eating crap all day, then do it. Lettuce isn’t going to get you through it.’

  I look down at my gut that I’ve tucked into my maternity leggings, release a sigh then pull a thick wedge of crisps out of the tube and stuff them all in my mouth in one go.

  ‘And cut Ed some slack. The man is out working,’ she continues. ‘Yeah, he’s probably getting hammered most nights and lying around most of the day, but that’s what musicians do, isn’t it? And what if he had no gigs and was sat around the flat stinking up the place, eh?’

  ‘I’d be freaking out even more about money, I know.’

  ‘Yep, of course you would. And, Luce, I’m not being funny, but if your friends are all too busy to see you, go out and make some new ones. There’s got to be other weirdo-creative types around these parts.’

  ‘“Weirdo-creative”? Thanks for that, dickhead.’

  ‘And quit moaning about work, for God’s sake. You’ll be back working stupid hours soon enough and you’ll wish that you’d enjoyed this time to hang out with your kids. You’ll never get this chance again – believe me, I know.’

  When George was only eight months old, Rachel was offered a promotion to office manager. By accepting the job, she was forced to cut her maternity leave short and put him in a nursery for ten hours a day to be looked after by strangers. It’s only since becoming a mother that I fully understand just how hard it must have been for her.

  ‘Thank God I took that promotion now that I’m single. I’d be screwed without it.’

  My guilt is immediate. ‘God, I’m such a moany, selfish bitch.’

  ‘Yep. You’re a major twat.’ She smiles and swigs her gin. ‘As usual.’

  ‘So, um, how’s it all been … flying solo?’

  ‘Well, if you ask Mum, I’m “lonely, sad and miserable and in need of a nice wee man to keep me company”, but the truth is I’m great,’ she says. ‘It’s just me and my little boy and that’s the way I like it.’

  I squeeze her thigh and force a smile to mask the sadness that has suddenly consumed me. ‘You’re amazing, Rach.’

  ‘And do you know what? So is Stan,’ she says. ‘I don’t know any adult, let alone any kid, who can say the alphabet backwards and talk about colons in such detail. And, before you start, no, he doesn’t have Tourette’s, you total nutter.’

  ‘He might have it!’

  ‘I have one word for you, Luce.’ She pauses dramatically and looks me straight in the eye. ‘Syphilis.’

  And we both start roaring with laughter.

  As teenagers, we used to spend rainy afternoons flicking through my mum’s old nursing manuals, entertaining ourselves with gross pictures of infected testicles and warty bum holes. Then one day, I found a weird sore on my bikini line and was driven in a panic to the manuals for answers. I diagnosed myself with syphilis within five minutes and howled with tears all over Rachel’s shoulder.

  But in the end, it turned out to be an ingrown hair.

  ‘I mean, syphilis!’ She squeals and spits her gin out from laughing so hard. ‘You haven’t changed at all!’

  I slap her on the arm and yank the tube of Pringles out of her hand. ‘Shut it.’

  A shrill interjection slices through the joyous atmosphere like a machete. ‘Hiiii! I thought that was you – Lucy!’

  Startled, I turn around to find Marsha standing over my shoulder with Hugo by her side, nibbling a stick of celery.

  ‘What is that? Gin and tonic?’ Her lips instantly shrivel up as she glares at the tin of shame in my hand. ‘Having a rough day, are you, ladies?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I reply casually, trying my best to appear innocent, ‘quite a good day, actually. Marsha, this is my sister, Rachel. We’re just sat here chewing the fat.’

  ‘Hello.’ She smiles wryly, quickly eyeing Rachel up and down. ‘Look, Lucy, I can’t stop as I have to get Hugo to yoga by 4.30. I just spied you and quickly came to drop off an invitation for Stanley. It’s Hugo’s birthday next week.’

  ‘Great, thanks,’ I say as I take the silver envelope.

  ‘Yes, it’s definitely not one to miss. All of their new classmates for next term are going to be there. So far, twenty-seven have RSVPed.’

  ‘Really? Twenty-seven? Wow. How do you know what class they’ll be in already?’

  ‘Oh, I have my ways, Lucy,’ she says as she taps her temple with her index finger. ‘Let’s just say that I have a “friend” who has access to the right files. I can’t say any more, or I shall have to kill you.’

  ‘No! No! No! NO!’ bellows Stanley from over six metres away. He runs over and catapults himself on to my lap. ‘You are not killing! You are not killing!’ His face is twitching uncontrollably.

  Startled, Marsha leaps back and instinctively pulls Hugo behind her.

  ‘It’s just pretend, Stanley, just pretend,’ I say, but he won’t listen. The boy is seemingly blessed with the gift of bionic hearing, but fails to listen to anything that is being said. He becomes hysterical and squeezes his arms around my neck so tightly that strangulation is imminent.

  ‘I’d better go. Sorry to cause upset, Lucy. Hope to see you at the party.’

  ‘Looking forward to it,’ I lie.

  Marsha leaves behind a scene of devastation that takes over fifteen minutes to dissipate, but once we’ve convinced Stanley that no one is going to kill me, he skips back to the sandpit to play as if nothing has happened.

  With order restored, Rachel reaches into her bag and pulls out two more cans of gin.

  ‘Ding, ding!’ she says. ‘Round two.’

  35

  Let’s Pretend

  The kids scoff down a typical beige dinner of chicken dippers and Smiley Faces, and with full bellies, they’re perfectly content to lie on the floor and play with the new toys that Rachel bought them. George chose a crappy plastic truck, and after digging out Stanley’s Marvel superhero figures from the bottom of the toy box, he’s now engrossed in a game in which Spiderman is fighting the Green Goblin.

  ‘You can run but you can’t hide. Take that, Goblin!’ says Spiderman, unleashing his web and throwing the Goblin onto the bonnet of the truck. ‘You are one ugly dude, Goblin!’

  Stan lies quietly next to him on the rug lining up the numbers from the puzzle that he chose, his face now twitching constantly. We already own several copies of the same puzzle, but he refused to leave the shop without another one, and for once, I didn’t try and persuade him to choose a shitty truck like George had. He wants what he wants and I’ve accepted that buying anything else is pointless. We have boxes full of trucks and expensive action figures which only see the light of day when George comes to visit, after all.

  George lifts Stanley’s numbers two and three off the rug and plonks them in the middle of the large stain that’s still there after my unfortunate Blue Shit incident a couple of months ago.

  ‘Help us, Spiderman! Help!’ cries George dramatically. ‘The Goblin is going to drown us in the pond!’

  Stanley freezes and glares in horror at the sight of George touching his numbers and I can see his brain ticking over, deciding if he is going to flip out. But then his frown relaxes and a big smile follows when Spiderman dives into the pond to save his numbers from drowning.

  ‘Here comes eight and nine walking to the pond, when BANG! The Goblin throws the monster truck on them, and it squashes them so bad that their brains and guts fall out. Nooooo!’

  ‘No!’ yells Stan, genuinely appalled.

  ‘Pretend,’ I interrupt, ‘it’s just pretend, Stan.’

  He allows my words to sink in and forces a slight smile.

  ‘Get me the four, Stan,’ says George excitedly. ‘He’s going to fall off a tower, and you can be Spiderman and you’ve got to save him with your webs.’ And, to my delight, Stanley hands over his favourite number, then lifts Spiderman off the rug and joins in.

  I don’t realise that I’m weeping until Rachel climbs out of the recliner and comes over to hug me. ‘See, Luce, I told you. He’ll be just fine.’

  The boys play for ages in the bath then head to bed holding their favourite toys: the truck and Green Goblin in George’s hands, and numbers four and eight and Spiderman in Stanley’s. Distracted by the exciting presence of his cousin, he doesn’t ask for his stack of foam numbers to be kissed goodnight, nor does he request his red dummy. I leave the room with the biggest of grins on my face, and a few more tears gathering on the rims of my eyelids.

  ‘Lights!’ he calls out just as I’m closing the door.

  ‘Yes, love.’

  ‘Lights! Lights!’

  ‘Okay. Here they come.’ I flick the switch. ‘One, two, three, four. Now, goodnight to you both. Love you.’

  Rachel and I spend the rest of the evening doing what we love most: eating Chinese takeaway, drinking cheap Prosecco and watching Legally Blonde for possibly the four hundredth time together. It’s been a great day and we have much to celebrate. Stanley has played perfectly with his cousin, he’s miraculously overcome his fear of sand and he’s been invited to a birthday party – his first-ever invitation to date. Things are looking up for him at last and I feel my shoulders drop down to their natural position for the first time in months.

  A bottle and a half of Prosecco down, Rachel pauses the TV. ‘Is it time?’ she says. ‘’Cos I’m feeling tipsy and if you want it doing, then it needs to be now.’

  I tiptoe down the hall and pop my head into the boys’ bedroom to confirm that they are both out for the count. ‘The time, dear sister, is now.’

  Armed with a pair of scissors and a comb, Rachel crouches over Stanley’s bed and trims his locks as he snoozes away, totally oblivious to the fact that a terrifying set of deadly shears are just inches away from his face.

  ‘A little more off the fringe,’ I whisper.

  ‘Shine the torch here, I can’t see.’

  ‘That’s it. Just whip it off, quick, before he wakes up,’ I hiss.

  ‘Shhh! Don’t stress me out! Just let me do my thing.’

  Rachel trims away six months’ worth of Stanley’s hair and, seeing as she’s there, I make her cut his finger- and toenails too. I brush up as much dead hair and nail clippings as I can see in the dark and dispose of it so he won’t learn of our illicit behaviour come morning. When she’s satisfied that she’s done her best, we creep out of the room and crack open the gin to celebrate our cunning victory.

  ‘Cheers Rach, you legend!’

  ‘Cheers! And yes, I am a legend.’

  It is the best of days.

  36

  The Funky Raccoon

  ‘Lucy. Luce! Have you checked Facebook?’ Rachel bursts through the bathroom door and whips back the shower curtain with such vigour that half of it tears free from the hooks.

  ‘Jesus, give me a minute. I’m naked here!’

  ‘Get out,’ she squeals. ‘You’re going to want to see this, trust me. Come on!’

  I turn off the shower, quickly wrap a towel around myself and take the phone which she dangles in front of my face impatiently.

  On the screen is the latest status update from Fit Ben:

  Ben Johnson is with Ed Wright and 4 others at Montage Beverly Hills. 10 July at 02.35 a.m.

  Excellent gig in LA tonight. Here’s my best mate Ed, renamed the ‘funky raccoon’ by THIS legend!

  My jaw drops when I see the photo that Ben has attached. ‘Holy shit!’

 

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