than convincing Phoebe of her civic responsibility, it just exposed her lack of historical knowledge surrounding the Suffragettes. I might have laughed in an exasperated way before Victor’s arrival, but now I felt she was deliberately showing us up. Ginny probably had all sorts of fascinating and intellectually stimulating exchanges with Victor.
When I moaned to Patrick about Phoebe’s apparent disinterest in the world, he shrugged. ‘You just need to relax and stop trying so hard.’
‘Well, who would be trying if I wasn’t? We’d all be sitting staring at our plates and counting the grains of rice, for all the effort you and Phoebe make.’
Patrick stared at me. ‘Honestly, the boy’s just getting used to being here. He’s probably way more concerned about how long it will be before he can escape back to his Xbox than he is about any election or Emmeline Pankhurst, for that matter. We shouldn’t have to pretend to be anything other than who we are. This is our family, take it or leave it.’
‘That’s easy for you to say. You’re not a seventeen-year-old with nowhere else to go. We do have to adjust a little bit. I don’t mean talking politics, but finding ways to include him.’ I couldn’t escape the sensation that both Patrick and Phoebe were waiting for me to realise that I’d made a bad decision and somehow reverse it.
As he did so often these days, instead of replying, Patrick buried himself in his laptop as though he had fifty-five urgent emails to deal with.
I was desperate to get Victor feeling comfortable at home before he had to run the gauntlet at school in September. I begged Phoebe to include him on trips into town with her friends. ‘What’s he going to do when we’re all trying on stuff in Topshop?’
‘Could you, I don’t know, go bowling or something?’
She rolled her eyes like I’d suggested a session with Play-Doh. But after much frantic stabbing at her phone and endless video calls, they went, with me throwing ridiculous amounts of money at them for snacks and drinks out of the pure joy of having a few hours without worrying about whether Victor was bored.
Patrick kept saying, ‘He’s just got to get on with it. We can’t be planning events to keep him entertained. We’ve got to live our lives too.’
Which was great in theory, but really difficult to stick to when I imagined him lying on his bed upstairs, studying the cracks in the ceiling and wishing he could go back to his old life with Ginny, that none of this had ever happened. Worse still was when I overheard him FaceTiming Tayo, with both of them trying to be brave.
Surprisingly, Phoebe provided the watershed. ‘We need to paint Victor’s room.’
Patrick immediately leapt in with, ‘But we only had the decorators in about two years ago.’
Phoebe’s head dropped. ‘Yes, but, Dad, it’s beige. Boring.’
I was so keen to say yes to anything that either Phoebe or Victor showed enthusiasm for, I said, ‘What were you thinking?’
Phoebe nodded towards Victor, who looked as though he wished he was somewhere else. ‘Well, you’re always on about how Victor needs to feel at home, so we thought we’d paint it the colours of the Welsh flag.’
‘What, red and green?’ Patrick asked, failing to disguise his irritation at the suggestion.
Phoebe clapped her hands together. ‘Yes. We’ll paint it ourselves. And Niamh said she could paint a dragon on the wall.’
Patrick’s forehead wrinkled at the mention of Phoebe’s friend, Niamh, as though he was hearing her name for the first time, despite her coming to our house at least twenty times in the past year.
I baulked at the colour scheme. ‘Don’t you think red and green might be a bit… overpowering? It’s not a very big space.’
‘I knew you wouldn’t let us.’ She turned to Victor. ‘I told you Mum would spoil it.’
I pushed away the rage that I was getting the blame for saying no, when I was pretty sure Patrick wouldn’t agree either. So, in a moment of impulse, I said, ‘Why not? If it makes Victor feel at home, then I’m all for it.’
Patrick glared at me. ‘Really?’
I nodded with more confidence than I felt and before I could change my mind, they were off on the bus to Homebase, with me shouting, ‘Nothing too bright…’ after them.
They both came back giggling, with several cans of bright green and red gloss. Patrick took one look and started to tell them that there was no way