a red plastic tunnel and they are in deep conversation. Ed occasionally throws a smile in my direction: everything is fine, nothing to see here. My mouth responds appropriately and my hand waves. The day is going well: I haven’t looked at Kerry once, even though right now she is hanging upside down from the monkey bars with a lollipop in her mouth.
Oscar jumps from the swing and runs over to join his sister where she and Ed are giving each other high fives. I follow him nonchalantly, trying not to pay attention to the cautious way that my daughter is watching my approach even though she is grinning proudly.
‘I did it, Mummy!’
The pride in her eyes melts my insides. She’s always been scared to crawl through the tunnel part of the apparatus. Ever since she was little, she’s avoided the tunnels in soft-play areas; she’s never liked to feel closed in. ‘Oh-oh,’ Kerry used to say. ‘She’s coming up to another tunnel of doom.’
‘Nice one, Hailey!! You made it through the tunnel of dooooooom!’ Kerry elongated the ooooh like a ghost. I bat her away as though I’m shooing a bee.
‘You did it!’ I say, stepping in front of my dead sister as I begin to perform the dance of victory that we made up last year. It involves wiggling our bottoms and doing the two-fingers-across-the-eyes dance, like John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. But the pride in Hailey’s face has fallen away and she looks at me with embarrassment.
‘Silly Mummy,’ Oscar laughs. ‘Can I try?’
I nod and follow him to the beginning of the equipment, helping him up, noticing that the shorts he is wearing are too tight and that his tummy is spilling over the waistband. I glance over to where Ed is kneeling in front of Hailey, rubbing her arms, reassuring her about something. I squint, but I can’t make out what they are saying. Hailey nods at him and runs off towards the big slide. Ed walks towards me, pulling his sunglasses from his head over his eyes and throwing his arm around my shoulder.
‘Don’t you think Oscar is getting a bit chubby?’ I say from the corner of my mouth as I clap him for pulling himself up to the next rung.
‘He’ll grow out of it. But maybe, you should, you know, stop giving him so much chocolate between meals.’
‘You’re the one who always gives them too much choc—’
Our conversation stops as our youngest tumbles to the floor. Crouched knees, kisses, and sentences ending with the word ‘brave’. Oscar rights himself, wipes his snot on his own arm despite me passing him a tissue from the depths of my handbag; quite where all my packets of tissues have disappeared to I don’t know. He runs off, climbing up the slide rather than the net, and does the victory dance, his T-shirt riding up.
Ed squeezes my shoulder, whispering into my ear. ‘Maybe we should cut back on giving him so many treats . . . do you remember that scene from The Goonies?’
I cover my mouth with my hand, trying not to let Oscar see me laughing as I picture ‘the truffle shuffle’. Ed plants a kiss on my head as I lean into him.
Chapter Forty-Two
Ed
I look up to Hailey as she crawls through the red plastic tunnel joining the parts of the play equipment together. She used to be scared of being closed in, but she nailed it a few months ago.
I’m feeling good, happy. I’m mean I’m not deluded, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t expect that Jen would just be better after our tough love chat. Jen is struggling, of that I have no doubt, but walking into the kitchen this morning felt like . . . like I’d been holding my breath without realising it and when I saw them, saw her face, it was like I could exhale, you know? Things feel normal; she seems normal. Take the kitchen, for instance. I know I’d got used to things being different, the coffee not always on like it used to be, the sounds of classical music playing, the smell of the fabric softener coming from the washing machine . . . things that separately don’t mean a thing but all together? It smells and feels like home. Our home.
Conversation has stayed on track, and I find myself starting to relax, but Hailey isn’t fooled.
‘Why is Mummy acting all—’
‘All what? It’s Saturday, she’s in a good mood.’
‘I guess.’ I reach