Home Truths

Whenever his nieces visit from London, it warrants a Spread. And as the forthcoming weekend is to be not just an ordinary visit, but a homecoming celebration, it has to be a Monumental Spread. Django hasn’t seen Cat since the summer. None of them has. Christmas was peculiar for her absence. She’d turned thirty-two years old in the autumn and he hadn’t been able to make her a birthday cake. On top of that, Pip implied recently that Fen has been a little down. He knows of no way better to warm the heart and feed the soul than to fill the stomach with all manner of home cooking first.

Django is at his happiest when cooking for his girls, even though they are all in their thirties, with homes of their own, and their health has never been of concern.

‘It’s habit,’ he’ll say when they say he needn’t have, when they say a pub lunch or ready-meal supper would be fine by them, when they say they are too full for seconds let alone thirds. ‘I’m old and stuck in my ways,’ he’ll declare. ‘Humour me.’ He’ll say the same thing when presenting them with carrier bags bulging with Tupperware containers when they leave again for London.

Django McCabe is their family tree. The desertion of their mother, the death of their father gave him no choice – but ultimately gave him his greatest blessing. His arms, like great branches, have been the protective clasp, the loving embrace of mother, father, confidant and mentor to Cat, Fen and Pip. He provided the boughs in which their cradles were rocked. His are the roots which have always anchored them and kept them safe.

Tuesday

Fen McCabe used to enjoy looking in the mirror. Far from it being a vanity kick, she’d found it an affirming thing to do. In the scamper of a working day, to grasp a private moment to nod at her reflection was sustaining. Hullo you, she’d sometimes say, what a busy day. And in the heady period when Matt Holden had wined, dined, wooed and pursued her, she’d frequently nip to the loo in some restaurant or bar, for a little time out with herself. He likes me, she’d beam at her reflection, you go girl! She’d wink at herself, give herself the go-ahead to party and flirt and charm the man who, soon enough, wanted to be with her for life.

Since having a baby six months ago, Fen has hated looking in the mirror. Not because she finds the sight depressing but because she finds the sight so strange. She doesn’t so much wince away from the sight of a few extra pounds, the limp hair, the sallow skin, the dark and puffy eyes, as glance bewildered and wonder who is that? How can this be my reflection when I don’t actually recognize the person staring back? And mirror mirror on the wall, wasn’t I once a damn sight fairer than this? So it’s something of a relief not to have the time during the day and to be too tired in the evening to face the facts staring back from the looking glass.

The phone is ringing, the baby is crying. Fen is nearer to the phone and Matt is nearer to the baby. Matt knows that Fen can find little wrong with the way he answers the phone so he’s happy to swap places here in the kitchen.

‘Hullo?’ he answers. ‘Well hullo!’ He looks over to Fen. She’s wearing truly awful pyjamas. Even if they’d been a matching set they’d have little to commend them. The bottoms have polka dots on a sickly lilac background. The top is littered with cutesy cartoon animals, a strange hybrid love child of a dog and a rabbit and even some teddy bear chromosomes somewhere along the line. ‘Hold on, I’ll just pass you over.’ He holds out the receiver.

‘Who is it?’ Fen mouths but Matt will only cock his eyebrow and grin. As Fen shuffles over to the phone, the placated baby at home on her hip, Matt notes her slippers. The grey, felted monstrosities he once termed ‘eastern-bloc lesbian clogs’. He’d had her in stitches at the time, she’d done a bastardized folk dance in them and had him in hysterics, before she’d banished them under the bed. For good, so he’d thought, until just then.

‘Hullo?’ says Fen.

‘Boo!’ says the voice.

‘Cat?’

‘I’m back! We’re in a cab, on the M4. Heading for Clapham.’

Matt watches the smile warm her face. He thinks how clichéd it sounds to say that the sun comes out when Fen smiles. But in his eyes, it does. And suddenly he forgives her the pyjamas and the clogs and he feels bad for having felt irritated with her and now he wants to go to her and put his arms around her and kiss the asymmetric dimples on her cheeks, brush her overlong fringe away from her forehead and kiss her there too, scoop her hair into a pony-tail and bury his nose in her neck. She’s hanging up the phone and he thinks that, though he’s now ready to leave for work perhaps there is time for a little spontaneity, for affection, for physical and emotional contact. The baby can stay on Fen’s hip. They’re a family after all. Group hug and all that. So he crosses the kitchen and he’s about to reach for her when her nose wrinkles.

‘Gracious,’ she’s saying to the baby, ‘how can someone so little and cute make such a revolting smell.’

‘I’ll change her,’ Matt offers.

Fen falters. ‘It’s OK,’ she says, ‘I’ll do it. I want to check that her nappy rash has cleared.’

She may only be six months old but Cosima Holden-McCabe has decided, quite categorically, that she will not be eating anything unless it is orange in colour. Fen is fretting over whether puréed carrot and mashed sweet potato for the fourth day running – and currently for breakfast – might give her baby carotene poisoning. Or have caused the nappy rash. Or created the current extreme pungency of the nappies.

‘Wouldn’t you rather have a nice squidgy banana? Are you OK, pumpkin?’ Keeping her eyes on her baby, waggling a spoon loaded with orange mush, Fen speaks to Matt. ‘Does she look orange to you?’

‘Pumpkins are orange – you’re probably giving her this complex.’

Fen looks at him for a loaded moment.

‘Joke?’ Matt says with a sorry smile. ‘She looks bonny – she has a lovely glow to her fat little cheeks.’

‘She’s not fat!’ Fen protests.

‘It was a compliment,’ Matt assures her. ‘I meant it affectionately.’

‘But do you think the glow to her cheeks is a bit orange?’

‘No, Fen, I don’t.’ Matt peers in close to his baby and kisses her cheek. ‘She looks fine.’ He glances at his girlfriend. ‘I think Cosima is happy and healthy and that carrot-and-sweet-potato mush is her favourite food of the moment. I reckon it’s because you look peaky in comparison, Fen.’

‘If I do look peaky,’ Fen says defensively, ‘it’s because I’m so bloody tired.’

‘I know you are,’ Matt says and it irritates him that Fen heard an insult instead of the concern intended. He wants to say, I’m tired too, you know; but he hasn’t time for a petty dispute over who is the more exhausted. ‘Why don’t you ask your sister if she’s around today? You can have a little time to yourself?’

‘She’s only just got off the plane!’

‘I meant Pip.’

Somewhere, Fen knows Matt’s intention is sweet. But lately, unbridled sensitivity has lain far closer to her surface than sense. ‘You don’t think I’m coping, do you?’ she says.

‘You’re doing brilliantly,’ Matt says, because the books and the magazines have instilled the sentence in him and advised him to ignore the ironing mountain, piles of toys and general debris. ‘I’m late. What are you doing today? Is it Musical Minis?’

‘No, that’s Thursday.’

‘TinyTumbles?’

‘No, that’s tomorrow. I may meet up with the baby-mums this afternoon.’

‘That’ll be nice.’

Fen shrugs. ‘I always come away feeling a bit insecure,’ she confides. ‘Their babies apparently sleep through the night and most have at least one tooth. And I’m not really sure about the women – I can’t find a connection apart from the babies being the same age. They’re forever trying to out-purée each other with increasingly exotic organic recipes. But all my baby wants is orange stuff.’

‘You’re being unnecessarily hard on yourself,’ Matt says, ‘and on Cosima. And possibly on that bunch too. Stop being silly. You’re wondermum and we love you.’

Fen can’t hear the last sentence. Her ears are ringing with the fact that Matt says she’s silly. She wants to say, Well fuck you. But they’ve made a pact not to swear in front of their child.

‘I’m late.’ He gulps his coffee. ‘Work is mental at the moment – I’ll try and leave early, cook us something nice.’ He kisses the top of Fen’s head and brushes his lips over the peach fuzz adorning Cosima’s. ‘Bye, girls. Have fun.’

* * *

Tom Holmes likes Tuesdays very much. He doesn’t like the fact that at school Tuesdays mean dictation followed by football. Tom finds it difficult to coordinate hearing a word, then assessing its meaning in context and having to write it down, all in the space of about two seconds. It thus seems entirely logical that instructions for rigging a yacht could well be ‘Pacific’ instead of ‘specific’. It frustrates him that he never does well in dictation and that there’s no opportunity in dictation to saliently reason that ‘Pacific’, taken contextually, is just as appropriate as ‘specific’. He’s slightly taken aback that Miss Balcombe won’t at least acknowledge that ‘Pacific instructions for rigging’ sounds fairly logical. He doesn’t like it that there’s no room for manoeuvre with meaning where dictation is concerned.

Football makes Tom miserable, more so because he’s acutely aware that a nine-year-old should never admit to being miserable in the context of football. He supports Arsenal, which has won him friends at his North London prep school, but he hates playing the game. He hates playing because his limbs are often sore from eczema. Mud can actually sting but tracksuit trousers can catch and snag on chapped skin. Though his teammates are pals enough not to comment, Tom still catches them glancing at his body, unintentionally repelled. However, what makes dictation and football bearable is that, on Tuesdays, he stays with his dad and stepmum at their cool place in Hampstead.

They actually only live a mile or so from his home in Swiss Cottage and, though Tom spends every Tuesday, Wednesday and every other weekend with them, and any time in between that he fancies, the novelty value is still high. His dad’s place is closer to school than his other home so instead of his mum slaloming her Renault through the school run (which has its plus points because she appears unaware how much she swears) Tom strolls down Hampstead High Street with his stepmum. And, without actually holding hands (he’s nine now, someone might see), Tom can still subliminally tug her into a detour to Starbucks for hot chocolate.

Tom’s had Pip for nearly four years. Her presence at the school gates continues to provide much intrigue. Being a clown by trade, Pip is well known to many of Tom’s classmates from the birthday-party circuit of their younger years. She’s also been to assembly to talk about the other work she does, as a clown at children’s hospitals. She did the splits and a flikflak on the stage, bonked the headmaster on the head with a squeaky plastic hammer, made a motorbike from balloons in four seconds flat and Tom was the centre of attention all that day. His friends still make a point of saying hullo to her when she collects him. Invariably, she has rushed to school from the hospital, with her hair still in skew-whiff pigtails and traces of make-up on her face. Far more exotic than the widespread Whistles and ubiquitous Nicole Farhi worn by the other mums.

*

This Tuesday was no different. There was Pip, eye-catching in orange-and-purple stripy tights and clodhopping boots, chatting amiably with the other Hampstead mums.

‘Hi, I’m starving. It was shepherd’s pie for lunch. Heinous,’ said Tom, keen to drag her away.

‘Dear oh dear,’ said Pip, ‘heinous shepherd’s pie? I’d turn vegetarian, if I were you.’

‘No way, José,’ Tom retched. ‘The veggie option is always vomtastic.’

‘Vomtastic,’ Pip marvelled, planning to use the word in her clowning. ‘How was football?’

Tom gave a small shrug. ‘Cold.’

‘Are you angling for a brownie and hot choc?’ Pip nudged him.

‘If you say so,’ Tom said.

‘Well, your dad won’t be home till sevenish,’ Pip reasoned with herself, as much as with Tom.

‘It would be very good for my energy,’ Tom said not entirely ingenuously. ‘Starbucks would really help my homework.’

Pip laughed. ‘Come on, tinker,’ she said. They walked towards the High Street. ‘I had a sad day at the hospital. It’s lovely to see you.’

Tom slipped his hand into hers. Just for a few strides or so.

Pip looked at the kitchen table laden with the remains of supper later that evening, then she looked at her husband and his son embroiled in PlayStation. She put her hands on her hips and cleared her throat. They didn’t look up.

‘Hullo?’ she called, as if testing whether anyone was there.

Zac glanced up briefly from the console, but not briefly enough to prevent Tom taking advantage.

‘Dad!’ Tom objected. ‘Concentrate!’

And then Pip decided she’d just smile and ask if anyone wanted a drink. She still found it difficult to gauge her boundaries as a stepmother. Her own standards, based on her childhood and her family’s dynamic, said that a nine-year-old should help clear the table, or at least ask to be excused a chore. But she also acknowledged that this father and son hadn’t seen each other for a week and Zac had been first down from the table challenging Tom to a PlayStation final-of-finals. So she tidied up and allowed them their quality time.

She glanced at the clock and felt relieved that it really was nearing Tom’s bedtime. Zac had worked so late the last couple of nights she felt she hadn’t seen him at all. ‘I’ll run your bath, Tom,’ she said.

‘One more game,’ Zac called to her.

‘I’ll run it slowly,’ Pip said.

Despite actually trying his damndest to win, Zac lost at PlayStation. Far from being wounded, his pride soared at Tom’s skill and after a noisy bathtime, he cuddled up with his son for a lengthy dip into James and the Giant Peach. Pip could hear the soft timbre of Zac’s reading voice. She poured two glasses of wine and organized Tom’s school bag for the morning.

Zac appeared and made the fast-asleep gesture with his hands. ‘He was tired,’ he said.

‘Well, it’s late for him,’ said Pip, offering a glass of wine.

Zac looked at his watch. ‘I just have a little work to do,’ he told Pip who looked instantly deflated, ‘just an hour or so.’ He took the wine, kissed Pip on the lips, squeezed her bottom and disappeared with his laptop. He’s happy, Pip told herself. She looked on the bright side, which was very much her wont. At least it gave her the opportunity to phone Cat, as long as her youngest sister had been able to resist the jet lag on her first day back in the country.

*

Many would say that being a high-flying accountant would have its ups and downs: financial remuneration in return for long hours and often relatively dull work; a bulging pay packet to compensate for a dry grey image. How else would accountants have become such a clichéd race? But the only things grey about Zac Holmes are his eyes which are dark slate to the point of being navy anyway, and the only dry thing about Zac is his sense of humour. If Zac’s looks and his personality had dictated a career, it would have been something on the funky side of creative. But Zac’s brain, with its amazing propensity for figures, decreed accountancy from the outset. Anything else just wouldn’t be logical. Zac likes logic, he likes straightforward solutions and simple answers to even the most complex of problems. Consequently, he never judges anything to be a dilemma because he knows intrinsically that there is always a way to work it all out. Zac believes that problems are merely perceived as such. If you just sit down and think carefully, there’s nothing that can’t be solved. Problems don’t really exist at all, it comes down to attitude. That goes for his personal life as much as his professional. So, when ten years ago, his on-off girlfriend announced she was pregnant a few weeks after a forgettable drunken friendship fuck, Zac welcomed the news with a shrug and easily devised a formula that would suit them all.

2 firm friends + 0 desire to marry/cohabit

(+ never ÷ by £/

issues) = great + modern parents = 1 lucky child.

June, the mother of his child, can never be an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend because she was neither when Tom was conceived. She’s Zac’s friend and Zac is her friend and for Tom to have parents who are friends is a gift. Tom also has two step-parents. Everyone is friends. It might appear unconventional, but it works. A large family of friends.

Django McCabe may have trawled the sixties, trekking from ashram to commune, hiking from yurt to kibbutz, in search of the same. But he was happy to admit that his eldest niece had found its apotheosis in London NW3.

Pip is hovering. Zac’s hour at his laptop has turned into two.

‘Coffee?’ she offers.

‘No, ta,’ says Zac, ‘need to crack on.’

‘Tea?’ she suggests.

‘Nope, I’m fine thanks, Mrs,’ says Zac. ‘I have to knock this on its head.’

‘Whisky?’

‘No, nothing – I’m good. Thanks.’

‘Rampant sex?’

‘Tempting – on any other night. I have to work. Seriously.’

‘One of my very special blow-jobs?’

Zac looks at his screen. He has a very good head for figures. But if there’s one figure that gives very good head, it’s Pip. His eyes don’t leave his laptop, his finger hovers above the mouse-pad. ‘A special blow-job?’ Zac asks, as if it’s a deal-breaker. ‘Not just a standard one?’

‘Trust me,’ Pip winks.

‘Because,’ says Zac, ‘if it’s just run-of-the-mill sucky-sucky, I’ll pass. This audit is crucial.’

‘I’m not capable of run-of-the-mill sucky-sucky,’ Pip clarifies, hands on her hips, chin up.

‘I mean, I’m talking cosmic, Pip,’ Zac stipulates with a lasciviously raised eyebrow. ‘It needs to be mind-blowing.’

‘I assure you it’s not just your mind I’ll be blowing.’

Finally, Zac looks from his laptop to Pip, then back again. Contriving a sigh, as if he was doing her the favour, he logs off. ‘I’m sure the powers that be will understand,’ he says.

‘I’ll write your boss a note,’ says Pip. ‘I’ll tell him the dog ate your homework.’ She takes Zac by the hand and leads him to the bedroom. They undress silently and have rude sex as quietly as they can.

* * *

Matt had come back from work early, made sausages, mash and onion gravy. Perfect for a cold January night and essential for his girlfriend who’d told him she hadn’t had time to eat more than toast and Marmite during the day. He’d bought a DVD too, which Fen managed to stay awake through despite snuggling up against the cosiness of Matt’s chest. Now she’s reading in bed and Matt is nuzzling the fragrant softness of his girlfriend’s neck. His cock is surprisingly responsive. He’d only intended to kiss her goodnight. He didn’t know he had the energy to feel horny.

‘How did we make Cosima again?’ Matt whispers, running his hand the length of Fen’s thigh, spooning against her, the sensation of her buttocks against his erection causing his pelvis to rock automatically, his hands to travel up along her torso. He bypasses her breasts. They’re Cosima’s for the time being. He doesn’t really mind, it’s lucky he’s always been a legs and bum man. And his hands sweep down to Fen’s thighs again, and over them, and around. And he walks his fingers up through the fuzz of her sex then attempts to tiptoe them down in between.

Fen’s hand joins his. ‘I do want to,’ she announces, a tinge of apology, a ring of reluctance, which stills Matt’s hand immediately. ‘I’m just really really tired. Sorry.’

‘I bet I can have you in the mood; bet you I can have you hollering for mercy,’ he tells her. He always used to be able to. He leans across her and kisses her, pulls her to face him, holds her against him. He rocks his groin gently against her, takes her hand down to his perky cock and works his hands over her body. He is not sure whether he’s taken her breath away or whether she’s holding it to pull her stomach in. But he feels her stiffen, and a glance at her face, where anxiety is mixed with reluctance, causes him to turn away from her, to stare at the ceiling with a sigh.

‘Do I feel different to you?’ she asks. ‘I’m still so squidgy and unattractive.’ And then she mutters that she shouldn’t have had all that bangers and mash.

‘You look gorgeous,’ Matt says, ‘I keep telling you. God. Wasn’t my raging hard-on proof enough how much I fancy you?’

Fen shrugs and looks downcast. ‘I know you do,’ she says quietly, ‘but I have to fancy myself, too, to feel horny.’

‘Will you give yourself a break,’ Matt says. He switches off the bedside light and kisses her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Stop being silly.’

Fen lies in the dark, wide-eyed and confused and wishing they had a spare room she could withdraw to. She encourages a hot, oily tear to sting its way from the corner of her eye and slick down her cheek and onto the pillow. She knows it’s bizarre, but rather than being bolstered by Matt’s assurances that he loves and lusts for her however she feels she looks, she’s cross that he appears to trivialize her concerns, her loss of confidence, her fragile self-image.

He called me silly. For the second time today. Silly is a stupid, insensitive word to use. He just doesn’t understand.

God. It’s gone midnight. Cosima will wake in a couple of hours. I have to get some sleep.

Django McCabe and the Nit-Pickin’ Chicks

Though only three years separated the oldest and youngest of the McCabe sisters, Cat had always been very much the baby of the family. She was a little shorter than Pip and Fen, her features more petite. She lacked Pip’s aptitude for performing, to entertain, which gave her eldest sister her apparent sassy confidence. Nor did she have Fen’s self-containment, her ability to seem so quietly self-possessed, so attractively serene. While Pip and Fen had encountered the various dramas in their lives head-on and for the most part single-handedly and discretely, Cat had always simply stood there and cried loudly for help. It wasn’t that she was particularly feeble, nor was she excessively attention-seeking or spoilt; Cat was accustomed to being looked after because there was something about her that inspired others to care for her. Ben believed it was to do with the arrangement of her features; her large eyes set winsomely around the childlike upturn to her nose which led down to the natural pout to her lips. It compelled one to offer protection, even if it was not specifically needed or asked for. However, Cat’s strength was that she was never too proud to ask. She’d grown up knowing that what made her feel strong and able was the presence of her support network, her sisters in particular.

When Cat had gone to live in America with a relatively new boyfriend (as Ben was then) and brand new job, everyone anticipated floods of tears to wash her soon back again. But the anticipated plea to be rescued never came. Her letters and e-mails and phone calls attested to her happiness, and her occasional visits home confirmed this. Her apparent self-sufficiency was a source of joy and relief for her family and soon enough they were delighted for her that she’d gone. Not half so thrilled as they are now, four years later, that she has come back.

Being swept north by rail for their family reunion, the McCabe sisters were initially preoccupied with three-way inane grinning and quietly assessing physical details and changes.

‘So.’

‘So?’

‘So!’

‘You’re back.’

‘I am.’

‘For good?’

‘Indeed. For better, for worse.’

‘I do love your hair,’ Pip told Cat. ‘When you e-mailed to say you’d gone short and red, I had visions of a ginger buzz-cut.’