me. I ought to stop him. ‘We can put all this behind us, go back to how we were. Imagine neither of us had a past, imagine today was the first day of our lives.’
‘We wouldn’t be married. We’d be strangers.’ If I don’t turn myself against him quickly, I might never be able to. ‘I agree, that might be preferable,’ I say. ‘At the moment we’re strangers who are married.’
‘What are you two up to?’ Mum throws open the kitchen door without bothering to knock. ‘What are you talking about? Not the police still, I hope. This is supposed to be a celebration. Geoff’s right, Kit – you’ll ring this Ian Grint fellow on Monday, and it’ll all be sorted out one way or the other.’
‘I’m sure it will,’ Kit says expressionlessly.
One way or the other. Which two ways does she have in mind? I wonder. Scientists could kidnap my mother and replace her with a robot that looked exactly like her, and no one would notice as long as they made sure to programme enough clichés into the machine’s vocabulary: one way or the other, now look what you’ve done, what’s that supposed to mean?
I do the only thing that might make the rest of this so-called party bearable: I go back to the lounge and start a conversation with Anton about fitness. I tell him I’m fed up of being skinny, ask what I can do to build up muscle tone without ending up looking like an action woman with hard bulgy arms. I don’t listen to his answer, but thankfully it’s long and detailed, and saves me having to talk to anyone else. Dad and Fran argue on the other side of the room about whether anybody who moves to a city is signalling his or her willingness to be viciously assaulted on a regular basis, and Benji throws plastic aliens up in the air, trying to hit the ceiling and often succeeding.
Between them, Mum and Kit arrange my presents in a heap on the rug – another Monk family ritual performed on all gift-worthy occasions. Everyone takes their turn to pick a present out of the pile and hand it to its recipient. The picking must be done in order of age: Benji, Fran, me, Anton, Kit, Mum, Dad, then back to Benji again if there are still more parcels to be distributed. The system is not without its flaws: when it’s my birthday and my turn to pick, obviously I know that I’ll end up giving whichever present I select to myself. For years, Dad has been lobbying for change: if the occasion is a birthday rather than Christmas, the person whose birthday it is should be excluded from the picking. Mum is violently opposed to a reform along these lines, and has so far succeeded in blocking it.
The whole pantomime makes me want to shoot myself in the head.
This year, Benji has bought me a lavender bag in the shape of a heart. I give him a thank you cuddle and he tries to wriggle free. ‘When people die, when they’re a hundred, their hearts stop beating,’ he says. ‘Don’t they, Daddy?’
Mum and Dad give me what they always give me – and Fran, Kit and Anton – and have done ever since we’ve had homes of our own, for our birthdays, Christmas and Easter: a Monk & Sons voucher for £100. I plaster a smile to my face, kiss them both, feign gratitude.
Kit’s parents used to be good at presents. I assume they still are, even if they no longer buy them for us. I always loved the things they gave me: spa day vouchers, tickets to the opera, membership of wine and chocolate clubs. Kit was never impressed. ‘Anyone can buy stuff like that,’ he said. ‘They’re corporate client gifts, from people with plenty of money who don’t care.’ Even before he cut his parents off, he didn’t seem to like them much. I couldn’t understand it. ‘I’d give anything to have parents who were normal, interesting people,’ I told him, impressed by the way that Nigel and Barbara Bowskill, who lived in Bracknell, often drove into London to go to the theatre or to an art exhibition.
When Simon Waterhouse asked me why Kit had disowned his mum and dad, I told him what Kit had told me: that in 2003, when I was having my mini nervous breakdown at the prospect of leaving Little Holling, when my hair was falling