However, it was the first time I’d seen any real energy about Victor. His eyes were bright, his face mischievous, as though just for a few minutes he’d forgotten about Ginny.
‘Come on, we can paint over it if it’s terrible.’ I directed myself to Victor, ‘Great idea to bring a bit of Wales to our corner of England. Let me just find some old sheets to put down.’
I wanted to show Victor I could be devil-may-care like Ginny. She’d had the knack of suggesting something no one else wanted to do and convincing everyone to join in. She’d dash straight into the sea while we were all debating whether it was warm enough. Insist on a barbecue on a day when the weather looked uncertain and I’d already decided it would be much easier to cook in the oven. But we’d all go along with it and end up having a great time.
And, just once, I wanted Phoebe – and Victor – to think I was that wild mum, completely cool with them transforming his bedroom into a cross between a postbox and a leprechaun lair.
Patrick followed me out. ‘You’re not going to let those two loose with those disgusting colours, are you? It’s going to look like a bloody graffiti crack den.’
I hissed back. ‘What have you done to get Victor interested in anything? Anyone can sit on the sidelines carping about what they don’t want to happen.’
‘Sorry for having an opinion. I’d forgotten that what I want doesn’t count for anything these days.’
In that moment, the injustice of that statement transformed itself into a little fantasy about divorce papers landing on the mat, out of the blue, with Patrick standing there saying, ‘What? Why?’ as I tossed a couple of cases and an airline ticket into the back of a car.
Over the three days that Phoebe and Victor were decorating, Patrick huffed and puffed about ‘everyone still needing some boundaries’ and ‘not being able to give him special dispensation indefinitely’. I veered between wanting to check that the old sheet was covering the carpet right up to the skirting board and feeling like the most liberal mother on the block when Phoebe’s friend, Georgia, gasped as she walked in, ‘Your mum let you do this? That’s so cool!’
The summer wore on in an odd one step forwards, two steps backwards rhythm. Occasionally there’d be a moment that ticked all of my happy family boxes, when, unbidden, Phoebe dug out the Swingball from the garage and, over several days, had a super-competitive tournament with Victor, which even Patrick joined in. But far more often I’d fret about Victor spending too much time in his bedroom – even a bedroom complete with a Welsh dragon that looked like a winged pug. And just when I was beginning to hope Phoebe was forming some kind of bond with Victor, she’d moan about him taking over the TV or being in the way when she wanted to talk to her friends. I also couldn’t help wondering if Phoebe’s escalating rudeness was the result of having less attention from me.
And simmering through the months was the sense that Patrick was tolerating rather than participating in our expanded family. ‘Why don’t you ask him to go jogging with you? Exercise is a great way for him to work out his feelings.’
Patrick would wrinkle his nose. ‘I just want a bit of time in my own head after being at work all day,’ he’d say, which made the line between love and hate feel perilously thin.
On the days when Victor felt like part of the furniture, volunteering to take out the bins, or carrying in the shopping or I’d hear him laughing with Phoebe over a YouTube video, I’d tell myself we’d done the right thing, that we’d all learn from this and come out better people for it. But far more frequently than I could admit even to myself, I felt overwhelmed, ashamed of my irritation at his trainers discarded in the hallway and the toast crumbs all over the work surfaces and increasingly feeling I was failing on more fronts than I’d known existed.
By the end of August, the start of school couldn’t come soon enough for me. I couldn’t wait to be in an empty house without anyone needing me. I wanted to go to my office, without checking where Victor was, annoying him – though he was too polite to say so – by asking if he