'I can't get the top off.' Tom reappeared, pathetically holding out the paracetamol container. He sank into a chair as Iris lined up the arrows and flipped off the top, and watched pallidly as she filled a gla.s.s of water for him.

'Thanks, Mum.' He made a great play of swallowing the tablets, jerking his head back and retching as they went down. He had always been terrible at taking medicine, and she had dreadful memories of the time he'd had impetigo, when she had had to invent a different ploy for every single dose of antibiotic: mashing in jam, liquidizing in syrup, crushing in ice cream.

'I think I'll go back to bed,' said Tom, barely moving his mouth.

'Do you want your presents now?'

'No. Later.' He stood up carefully and made his way out of the kitchen, one hand on the wall to support himself.

Iris still liked to maintain a semblance of surprise when it came to giving birthday presents, so the boys would specify a narrow range of goods, among which she was allowed to freely pick her gift. Robin had requested a subscription to either Viz magazine or The Face (she had chosen the latter) while Tom had asked for a Nike t-shirt, v-necked, short-sleeved either in dark blue with a white neckline or white with a dark blue neckline. Even though it made shopping easier, she yearned for the days when there were so many things they wanted that she could scarcely decide which to get. Flying in the face of experience she still bought them one or two extras books they would never read, key-rings for losing, videos for taping over but the resulting pile of gifts, supplemented only by Boots' tokens from her father and a five-pound postal order (between two) from Auntie Kath, seemed woefully little compared to the mountains of electrical goods and clothing reportedly received by their friends.

'IgottaincarstereoanerwalkmansixpairsofCalvinKleinpants anerRolextypewatchthanksforaskinMissisUnwin,' as Tom's friend, the fast-talking but always impeccably polite Leon, had informed her recently.

'How on earth does his mum afford it?' she'd asked after he left. ('ByeMissisUnwinthanksforhavinme.') 'His uncle nicks it,' Tom had replied, laconically.

3. Limit Dad's phonecalls to half an hour

She'd given up trying to cut down the frequency of her visits; her father was lonely, her work was only five minutes' walk from his house and there was therefore really no excuse not to pop round for supper on Tuesdays and Thursdays and for at least a cup of tea on Fridays, though the latter was not an absolutely rigid appointment. Sunday lunch, on the other hand, was immutable; the roast went in the oven before her father went to church and she would arrive just in time to make the gravy, a task which she rather enjoyed. After lunch, she'd do the washing-up and her father would take 'ten minutes' and then he'd garden and she'd read, and then soon enough it would be Monday again. And if there were moments when she panicked at the encroachment upon her own life, when she wondered what would happen when the twins left home whether he'd expect her to visit every night on the whole it seemed simpler just to go along with his routine rather than live with the guilt of breaking it. The problem (the problem that she wanted to tackle this year, anyway) was the phonecalls. They were getting longer.

On Mondays she rang her father; on Sat.u.r.days and often on Wednesdays and sometimes even on Sunday evenings, he rang her. As they had always only just seen each other, there wasn't an awful lot to say, and he took such a very long time to say it.

He had never been much of a conversationalist, in the dictionary sense of giving and receiving information in a relaxed and entertaining way, and on her visits they would often maintain a comfortable silence for long stretches; but of course that wasn't possible on the phone, and his calls were more in the nature of slow monologues, which she would prod along with supplementary questions. She had recently splurged a frightening amount of money on a cordless phone and had thus found that during one of her father's average calls she was able to empty the washing machine, hang the clothes on the line, take them in again when it started raining, cut an irritating snag off her left thumbnail and peel a panful of potatoes, all the while saying little more than 'uh huh' and 'really?'

He was holding back the silence, postponing the moment when the phone would go down and he'd return to an empty house, and as a result she knew about every aspect of his life, knew which shoe polish he used and where the best pork chops could be bought. She knew his favourite weather forecaster (Michael Fish) and where he got his lawnmower repaired. Most of all she knew about Mr Hickey, the hated neighbour whose garden backed on to his own and whose fence was, according to her father, creeping inch by inch across his herbaceous border.

Robin and Tom had long since ducked out of the Sunday visit, but still dutifully talked on the phone to him once a week, calls in which her father tried to resuscitate his moribund conversational skills.

'Hi, Grandad.

'It's Robin... yes I know, everyone says we sound alike.

'Ha ha.

'Fine.

'Art, Media Studies and General Studies.

'Ha ha.

'Six foot five.

'OK, bye then. Here's Tom.'

'Hi, Grandad.

'Yup.

'Six foot five, yup.

'Same as last week, Geography, Spanish and Theatre Studies.

'Don't know yet, depends if I pa.s.s them.

'Yup, she's called Samantha Fox, we've been going out for two years.

'You told me that one last time.

'OK, bye then. Here's Mum.'

Frowning at Tom, she would take the phone. 'Hi, Dad. How's things?'

Apart from 'Oh yes, and what did he say?' that would be almost her last contribution to the conversation. Towards the end of the call he would usually remember to ask her a couple of questions about work or finances, but was completely thrown if she replied with anything other than the blandest of a.s.surances. Detail rattled him.

'What do you mean? Processing what?'

'Word-processing skills. It's just a three-day course, so I can keep up with new '

'Dr Steiner saying you're not skilled at the moment, or what?'

'No, it's just that we're computerizing the '

'It's a vocabulary thing, is it?'

'No it's a '

'He knows you got a place at university, doesn't he?'

'It's not that, it's '

'I used to learn a word a day. You should get the boys to try that. Start at A in the dictionary and work through...'

It was not she told herself that her father didn't care, just that he found it hard to focus on other people's problems. It was as if her crisis of eighteen years ago was still quite enough to be going on with thank you very much, the shockwaves still reverberating.

She looked at the resolution again, and then feeling brutal crossed out 'half an hour' and subst.i.tuted '20 minutes'; there was no point in being half-hearted about this. She had to be ruthless in pursuit of this year's aims ruthless, bold, b.l.o.o.d.y and resolute as she reclaimed her life.

Though as to her method of prising him off the phone, she had no clear strategy. There was a limit to the number of overflowing milk pans or unexpected visitors she could claim, and she really didn't feel ready (just yet) to tell him the truth.

4. Widen my outside interests

She paused for a moment, crossed the item out, and subst.i.tuted:

4. Acquire an outside interest

And then, because it looked such a pathetic statement, such a spineless admission of defeat, she scrubbed it out again.

The trouble was there was no time, there was never any time; meeting a friend for lunch, finishing a book, watching a TV programme without being interrupted every thirty seconds were the peaks of her ambition. The window of opportunity which had opened when the boys were at last old enough to be left in the flat by themselves had been slammed shut by her mother's protracted illness, and then by the amount of time she spent with Dad. She was no longer sure what she was interested in it was such a long time since she had actively pursued anything other than the dullest necessities. Other women her age went to clubs and wore leather trousers and took drugs. Or had weekend cottages in the country and dogs and au pairs. And husbands.

In just under a year the boys would be off to university and everything would change. Suddenly she'd have spare evenings and Sat.u.r.days vast empty echoing s.p.a.ces of time to fill with activities not involving laundry or vegetable preparation. The flat would triple in size, and those moments of solitude which at present she so relished, would become the norm. She needed to prepare.

The washing machine began the groaning drum-roll which denoted its spin cycle. It was almost as old as the twins and had begun to emit ominous tw.a.n.ging noises on unloading. Clothes were starting to emerge without their b.u.t.tons, and the machine would subsequently disgorge them in small pieces, like teeth after a fight. Under the thunderous climax of the spin, she could hear the fragments rattling round somewhere deep in the interior. Recently, and for the first time, she had managed to push her savings account over the 300 mark; it was rather depressing to think it would all go again on a new washing machine.

She looked again at the ruined page and decided to use the remaining s.p.a.ce to make a list of the things she enjoyed doing most. She had got as far as 'Going to the library' and 'Having a bath' when Robin emerged.

'Hi, Mum.' He gave her a stubbly peck on the cheek. He was both more affectionate and more gloomy than Tom.

'Happy birthday.'

'Ta.' He lowered himself into a chair. 'I'm getting old. Eighteen's old.'

'Robin, what do I enjoy doing?'

'What?'

'If someone asked you what I was interested in, what would you say?'

'What you're interested in?'

'Yes.'

He wiped his nose and sat in a stupor indicative of deep thought. Almost thirty seconds went by.

'It doesn't matter,' she said, closing the address book with a snap. 'Bacon sandwich?'

5.

The trampled vegetable patch had made an incomplete recovery. When all was safely gathered in, the harvest comprised four pounds of plums (too high for Porky to reach), a wizened pumpkin imprinted with a trotter-mark and a small bucket of root vegetables. Of the five carrots which had survived, four were deformed.

Fran allowed a junior school party to feed the latter to Porky, in the interests of recycling, and cut the remaining one into twenty-eight pieces so that everyone in the cla.s.s could have a bite.

'I don't like things what aren't cooked.'

'I can't eat this, I'm allergic.'

'Lee's spat his bit out, Miss.'

'Miss, my mum said I shouldn't eat things off the ground.'

Pieces were dropped, thrown, trampled in the mud and offered to the ducks. The teacher, a weary-looking woman in her forties with a wool suit and a laissez-faire att.i.tude, rolled her eyes at Fran. 'I think it's delicious,' she announced, crunching her own portion, 'and it's very kind of this lady to give her carrot to us, isn't it?'

There was a low drone of 'yesses' from most of the cla.s.s and a soft but distinct 'This garden smells of s.h.i.t,' from a very small boy in a red woolly hat. When the wave of thrilled giggles had died away, Fran made the most of the opportunity.

'There's a very good reason why it smells like that. Anyone know why?'

'Cos it's your toilet,' said the same boy.

'It's not my toilet,' said Fran, when the cla.s.s had finished shrieking, 'but when Porky the Pig goes to the toilet, we scoop up the poo and we dig it into the earth here.'

'Uuuuuuuuur'

'Because animal poo helps plants to grow.'

'Uuuuuuuuur'

'That's disgusting, Miss.'

'So Porky eats vegetables, and Porky's poo helps new vegetables to grow.'

'Uuuuuuuuur'

'I ain't never going to eat a carrot in my life no more,' said a horrified girl.

'And something which helps plants to grow is called a fer-til-ize-er.'