silent again. The ramifications of this discovery just keep on coming.
“Forever is a lot longer than I thought,” says Dan heavily.
“Me too.” I slump against the cabinet. “So much longer.”
“It’s a marathon.”
“A supermarathon,” I correct him. “An ultramarathon.”
“Yes!” Dan looks up in sudden animation. “That’s it. We thought we were running a 10K and now we’ve found out we’re in one of those nutty hundred-mile ultramarathons in the Sahara Desert and there’s no getting out of it. Not that I want to get out of it,” he adds hastily, at my glance. “But nor do I want to…you know. Collapse with a stroke.”
Dan really knows how to pick his metaphors. First our marriage is a mortgage. Now it’s going to give him a stroke. And by the way, who’s the Sahara Desert in all this? Me?
“We haven’t paced ourselves properly.” He’s really warming to his theme. “I mean, if I’d known I was going to live that long, I probably wouldn’t have got married so young. If people are all going to live until a hundred, then we need to change the rules. For a start, don’t commit to anyone till you’re at least fifty….”
“And have babies at fifty?” I say, a little cuttingly. “Heard of the biological clock?”
Dan is drawn up short for a moment.
“OK, that doesn’t work,” he concedes.
“Anyway, we can’t go back in time. We are where we are. Which is a good place,” I add, determined to be positive. “I mean, think of your parents’ marriage. They’ve been married for thirty-eight years and counting. If they can do it, so can we!”
“My parents are hardly a good example,” says Dan.
Fair enough. Dan’s mum and dad have what you might call a tricky relationship.
“Well, the queen, then,” I say, just as the doorbell rings. “She’s been married for a zillion years.”
Dan just stares at me incredulously. “The queen? That’s all you can come up with?”
“OK, forget the queen,” I say defensively. “Look, let’s discuss it later.” And I head to the front door.
* * *
—
As the girls burst joyously into the house, the next sixty-eight years or whatever suddenly seem irrelevant. This is what matters. These girls right now, these rosy-cheeked faces, these fluty high-pitched voices calling, “We got stickers! We had pizza!” They both drag at my arms, telling me stories and firmly pulling me back toward them when I try to say goodbye to my friend Annelise, who’s dropped them off and is waving cheerily, already heading back to her car.
I hold them to me, feeling the familiar squirm of their arms and legs, wincing as their school shoes trample on my feet. They’ve only been on a two-hour playdate. It was nothing. But as I clasp them to me, I feel like they’ve been away for ages. Surely Anna’s grown? Surely Tessa’s hair smells different? And where did that little scratch on Anna’s chin come from?
Now they’re talking in that almost-secret twins’ language they have, their voices overlapping, strands of their blond hair meshed as they gaze reverentially down at a sparkly seahorse sticker on Tessa’s hand. From what I can hear, I think they’re cooking up plans to “share it forever, till we’re grown up.” Since it will almost certainly disintegrate as soon as I take it off, we’ll need a diversion, or there’ll be howls. Living with five-year-old twins is like living in a Communist state. I don’t quite count out the Shreddies into the bowls every morning to make sure things are equal, but…
Actually, I did once count out the Shreddies into the bowls. It was quicker.
“Right!” says Dan. “Bath time? Bath time!” he corrects hastily. Bath time is very much not a question. It’s an absolute. It’s the lodestone. Basically, the entire edifice of our household routine is based on bath time happening.
(This isn’t just us, by the way; it’s every other family I know with young children. The general perception is that if bath time goes, everything goes. Chaos descends. Civilization disintegrates. Children are found wandering the street in tatters, gnawing on animal bones while their parents rock and whimper in alleyways. Kind of thing.)
Anyway, so it’s bath time. And as our nightly routine gets under way, it’s as though the weirdness of earlier on never happened. Dan and I are operating as a team again. Anticipating each other’s every thought. Keeping communication brief in our almost-psychic parent code.
“Shall we do Anna’s—” Dan begins, as he passes me the hair detangler.