‘But there was another sheet,’ said Billy. ‘Look – here. It’s Craft and Design.’
Not Craft and Design. Billy has spent the last six weeks constructing a small mouse out of bits of felt, then he gets ‘sheets’, which ask mysterious conceptual questions. I looked at the latest sheet: ‘What do you want to achieve by making the mouse?’
Billy and I looked at each other desperately. How global do they expect you to go with a question like that, I mean in a philosophical sense? I handed Billy a pencil. He sat down at the kitchen table and wrote, then handed me the sheet.
To make a mouse.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Very good. Now shall I take you back up to bed?’
He nodded and put his hand in mine. ‘Goodnight, Talitha.’
‘Say goodnight to Talitha.’
‘Mummy. I just did.’
Mabel was asleep on the bottom bunk, head on back to front, clutching Saliva.
‘Will you cuddle me?’ said Billy, climbing into the top bunk. I thought about Talitha getting increasingly impatient downstairs then climbed in with him, Puffle One, Mario and Horsio.
‘Mummy?’
‘Yes,’ I said, heart wavering, fearing he was going to ask about Daddy or death.
‘What is the population of China?’ Oh God, he looks so like Mark when he is worrying about these questions. What was I doing messing about texting some unshaven leather-jacketed stranger who probably—
‘Mummy?’
‘Four hundred million,’ I lied smoothly.
‘Oh. Why is the earth shrinking by one centimetre a year?’
‘Um . . .’ I thought about this. Is the world shrinking by one centimetre a year? Like, the whole planet or just the land bits? Is it to do with global warming? Or the awesome power of waves and . . . Then I felt the slight relaxing sigh of Billy falling asleep.
Rushed back downstairs, panting. Talitha looked up with a self-satisfied expression: ‘OK. I hope you appreciate this. This was a really tough one.’
She handed me the phone.
‘You haven’t sent it?’
‘Not yet. But it’s good. You have to take care of their ego. What do you think the poor guy felt like, with you running off like that and not explaining yourself?’
‘Doesn’t that sound—’
‘It’s a question, and carrying on the thread. Don’t overthink it, just—’
She took hold of my finger, and pressed ‘Send’.
‘Nooo! You said you wouldn’t—’
‘I didn’t. You sent it. Could I possibly have another teensy teensy little vodka?’
Mind reeling I headed for the fridge, but just as I opened the door there was a text ping. Talitha grabbed it. A self-satisfied smirk spread across her immaculately made-up features.
‘Now, Bridget,’ she said sternly, watching the confusion of feelings on my face, ‘you have to be brave and get back in the saddle, for everyone’s sake, including . . .’ She nodded in the direction of upstairs.
Ultimately, Talitha was right. But it couldn’t have gone more disastrously wrong with Leatherjacketman. As she herself said, as we sat on my sofa in the bloody aftermath:
‘It’s all my fault. I forgot to warn you. When you come out of a long relationship, the first one is always the worst. There’s too much hanging on it. You think you’re going to be rescued. Which you’re not. And you think they’re the barometers of whether you’re still viable. Which you are, but they’re not going to prove that to you.’