car. It smells of a mixture of crisps and Johnson’s aloe-scented baby-wipes, which she still uses all the time, even though Benji is five and there is currently no baby in her branch of the family. I’m aware that I have no right to find this irritating. Fran gets in on the driver’s side, dumps her bag in my lap and sets off without bothering to fasten her seatbelt.
‘Why Silsford Castle?’ I ask. ‘Why not somewhere that’s on our way home?’
‘Home? Where’s that, then?’ Fran turns to look at me, to check her words have shocked me as they were intended to.
‘What?’ I snap. A stab of fear makes my gut twist. ‘What do you mean?’
She shakes her head as if to say ‘forget it’. ‘Is your phone still switched off?’ she asks.
‘No. I turned it on when I—’
‘Turn it off. Don’t ask why, just do it. I don’t want any interruptions.’
I obey the order, aware that I probably ought to protest; that would be most people’s response. Does it say something bad about me that I find it soothing to be told what to do, so I don’t have to think for myself?
Why did Fran ask me where home was?
‘You need to go back to the doctor,’ she says as we leave Spilling town centre behind.
‘What’s the point? He can’t find anything wrong with me.’
‘He can’t be looking very hard,’ she mutters.
We drive the rest of the way in silence. As Fran pulls into one of five disabled parking spaces on the cobbles outside Silsford Castle, I can’t stop myself from saying, ‘You’re not allowed to park here.’
‘I don’t care about allowed. And I’m okay with it ethically because I’ve got you with me,’ she says. ‘If walking out of the police station and nearly collapsing for no reason doesn’t count as a disability, I don’t know what does.’
I hate her for saying it, for making me panic about what will happen when I get out of the Range Rover. Will the dizziness strike again? What if I don’t have enough time to get to something I can lean against?
Fran hasn’t asked me how it went with the police. She must know why I was there.
I’m fine when I step out of the car into the sunny afternoon. Therefore it can’t be going from inside to outside that sets me off, and it can’t be standing up when I’ve been sitting for a while. All I’ve managed to establish, after months of monitoring myself, is that I can have a dizzy attack at any time, in any circumstances – there’s no way of predicting it. Or avoiding it.
The tea rooms at Silsford Castle smell of cinnamon, ginger biscuits and roses, as they have since I was a child. The waitresses’ aprons haven’t changed either – they’re still pale blue, frilly-edged, spotted with tiny pink roses. Without asking me what I’d like, Fran orders two cups of Lavender Earl Grey, then heads for the round table in the corner by the window, the same table Mum always made a beeline for when she brought us here as kids for what she called our ‘weekend treat’, after our Saturday morning trips to the library.
Right, then, girls – shall we get out our library books and read one while we have our chocolate fudge cake?
‘Why am I here?’ I ask Fran.
She narrows her eyes, peering at me. ‘Is it Benji?’ she says. ‘It must be.’
‘Is what Benji?’
‘The reason you’re pissed off with me.’
‘I’m not.’
‘If you don’t want to babysit every Tuesday night, you don’t have to – just say the word. Tell you the truth, Anton and I don’t like it any more than you do. It’s like you’ve got a timeshare in our son. Often we want to do things as a family on a Tuesday and we can’t – it’s carved in stone that you have to have Benji, or that’s how it feels sometimes.’ Fran sighs. ‘Loads of times I’ve nearly rung you and asked if it’d be okay for us to keep him just this once, and I’ve chickened out, in case you’d be offended. Which is ridiculous. Why am I scared to be honest with you? I never used to be.’ I’m not sure if it’s herself she’s angry with, or me.
A timeshare in our son. She didn’t think up that phrase today. She and Anton have been bitching about me and Kit – probably as much as we’ve been bitching about them.