"Yes, d.i.c.k, I know what it is."

"I mean, do you want one?"

"No thank you. The children are in the playhouse. For some bizarre reason Josh decided that instead of insisting that they do what he says and eat their tea in the kitchen, he would teach them that if they insist enough, they will be rewarded for it and get their way."

"Pardon?"

"They had their tea in the playhouse and are now playing bedtime in it."

"Good."

"And Josh has gone to bed. He says he's exhausted. I'm hardly surprised. He had lunch with his mother today. That would be enough to exhaust anyone." She walked past d.i.c.k into the hall to get her things. "I really don't understand this generation."

"Thank you, Diane."

"I've missed bridge for this week."

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, d.i.c.k. It doesn't become a man."

"Sorry."

"Good-bye. Give Vanessa my love."

"I will."

d.i.c.k watched the front door close behind his mother-in-law. It was, he had discovered over the years, his favorite time to watch it. He stood there for a few moments, then found his way back to the drinks cabinet.

By the time Vanessa got home he was sitting watching television in the dark, an empty whiskey bottle on the coffee table.

"Oh h.e.l.lo," said Vanessa, startled that d.i.c.k was still up.

"No need to look so surprised," said d.i.c.k. "I do live here you know."

Vanessa sighed. "d.i.c.k, I was thinking," she started. "It might be nice to get the children a brand-new computer."

d.i.c.k stared at his wife in bemus.e.m.e.nt.

"Why?"

"I just think it would be nice. They've been very good about Jo leaving, and we've got the money-"

"We haven't got the money, and why should they be treated to an expensive present just because they aren't being brats?"

"We have got the money and they're not-"

"We haven't!" shouted d.i.c.k.

"Well I have!" shouted Vanessa back.

d.i.c.k took a moment.

"That's right," he croaked. "Rub it in my face."

"Rub what in your face?"

"The fact that you're a success and I'm a failure."

Vanessa started. "What are you talking about? We're a team."

d.i.c.k exploded. "A team? That's rich! You're always on about how the shop is c.r.a.p. Well you're right. It's c.r.a.p. I'm c.r.a.p. I'm a c.r.a.p provider. I'm a c.r.a.p husband."

To her horror, he started crying. Vanessa came over to him.

"What are you talking about?" she whispered. "You're not c.r.a.p."

"I am c.r.a.p," he spat. "I failed at one marriage, and I'm failing again."

Vanessa felt her heart stop. "What makes you think you're failing?"

"Oh leave me alone," he moaned. "Just leave me alone."

Vanessa sat down next to him on the sofa. "You don't get it, do you?" she said. "I don't care about any of that."

"So why do you keep going on about it? Constant jokes about how the shop is c.r.a.p."

"Because..."

"Because you've got no respect for me."

"No!" She almost shouted it. "Because I'm jealous. I'm so b.l.o.o.d.y jealous of you I could scream."

"Jealous?" d.i.c.k was incredulous. "What of?"

"Jealous that you always get the best bits."

"What are you talking about?"

Vanessa sank back into the sofa. Every word seemed to cost her effort and energy. "I don't always want to be Mummy. I can't be a full-time mother, d.i.c.k. I'm hopeless at it. It's bad for me to even try-it damages me. And yet, even though I work in London and you work locally, even though I have a mean boss in a cutthroat business and you're your own boss, I'm still the one who ends up having to deal with all the legwork of having kids as well as do my job. It feels as though my job will never be as...viable as yours. I've got to keep justifying it and defending my right to have it, as if I'm living on borrowed time. It's not fair."

d.i.c.k managed half a laugh. "If one of the children said that, we'd tell them life wasn't fair."

"Yes," conceded Vanessa quietly, "but unlike the children, I can leave home."

There was a long pause before she started again. "The more I think about it the more I feel motherhood is...a relative concept."

"What the h.e.l.l does that mean?"

Vanessa sighed. "If we'd been living 150 years ago and were rich, I wouldn't have even been expected to breast-feed my babies, but I felt so guilty because I couldn't. If I'd been poor, I'd have popped them out in my tea break and got back to work." She started to talk fast. "If I'd lived in a biblical tribe, I'd have had all the women of the tribe supporting me, helping me, feeding me, and looking after me. Only one generation ago, I'd have probably had my family living down the street, would have known all my neighbors and would have spent the first fortnight of motherhood being looked after in hospital and sleeping off the trauma of giving birth. I don't have any family support apart from the occasional visit from my mum-your mum sees the kids once a year-I don't know my neighbors so I can't ask them for help, I was home from hospital making my family dinner the day after I'd given birth, and my workplace seems to think that my miraculous ability to have children is proof that I'm flawed, rather than proof that I'm helping the human race survive as a species. I mean, can you imagine any other animal in the animal kingdom treating their mothers like this?"

She stood up and was pacing the conservatory. "And yet I'm expected to feel guilty because I can afford one woman to help me. Well I refuse to feel guilty, d.i.c.k. Or evil. Or selfish. I admit it." She lifted her hand. "I need help being a mother. Everyone does. And if they say different, they're lying."

d.i.c.k gave a slight nod. Vanessa calmed herself down before continuing.

"I love my job. Love it. I need it. Just as there are some women who feel utterly complete being mothers, I feel utterly complete having a job. I don't mind the fact that you have the shop, what I mind is that you don't respect my job and how b.l.o.o.d.y good I am at it, and that you imply I've got something lacking in me as a woman because I prefer the company of adults to children. For all we know, I'll come into my own as a mother when the children are teenagers-or adults. Who knows? And what I mind is that you resent the fact that I bring home the bacon! I mind that I have to fight you to feel fulfilled. I mind that I thought you were going to be my biggest support but you've turned into my biggest block to happiness. I mind that I'm so angry with you that I can't remember how to love you." She was crying.

d.i.c.k was now rigid, as Vanessa took a deep breath before continuing.

"If you wanted to give up the shop and become a...a...carpenter, I'd happily support you. I'd support you in anything you wanted to do. I'm a born career woman. It doesn't mean I don't love my children, I'm not a freak of nature. I just love my job. Why can't I be allowed to be a woman with children who loves her job?"

d.i.c.k was pale. "Because you can do both," he wept. "And I can't do either."

"That's not true!" cried Vanessa. "I spent the last two weeks aching for Jo to come back. And so did the kids! I was hopeless. They were bored, I was bored-it was awful. I can't do it, d.i.c.k. I am just not cut out for it. Why should all women be able to do the same job just because they're female? Can you imagine expecting every man to be able to..." She thought frantically for a relevant job description..."I don't know...garden? Just because they're all men?"

d.i.c.k managed a smile. "I'm quite good at the garden," he mumbled.

A laugh hacked out through Vanessa's tears. "And you're a wonderful father. The kids adore you. You've got far more patience with them than I've ever got."

"But they don't need two fathers."

"I don't want to be a father, d.i.c.k, I just want to be me. And whatever the kids need, they need two happy parents."

"And a good nanny."

"And a good nanny."

d.i.c.k looked at his wife. "You can't remember how to love me?" he whispered.

She gave him a half smile. "I'm beginning to remember," she whispered back.

When the rhythmically raised voices of d.i.c.k and Vanessa lowered again, and Josh could hear his father crying, he felt a choking sensation rise in his throat. And for the first time, he felt pity for his father instead of for himself.

Outside in the playhouse, Zak, Tallulah, and Ca.s.sie huddled together under their blanket.

"Is Daddy going to leave us?" whispered Tallulah. "Like he left Josh and Toby?"

"No," whispered Ca.s.sie.

"How do you know?" sniffed Zak.

"Because we won't let it happen," said Ca.s.sie.

"How?" asked Tallulah and Zak.

They all tried to think of an answer.

"When did all the rows start?" asked Ca.s.sie eventually.

"When Jo went," sighed Tallulah.

"Exactly," said Ca.s.sandra. "So we're going to get her back."

"How?" whispered the others, in hushed awe.

"Easy," said Ca.s.sandra. "You see, it's all about knowing exactly who you're dealing with. Bringing out sides of people they didn't know they had themselves."

There was silence.

"We won't have to get Jo back ourselves," said Ca.s.sandra, "because Josh is going to bring her back for us."

Chapter 22.

Stupidly early on the Monday morning of her fifth week at home, Jo was the first one up in the kitchen. She looked out at her mother's neat little garden, replaying the conversation she'd had with Vanessa the night before. Vanessa had sounded weary but resigned. Yes, they all wanted her back, but they had no choice but to give her only two more weeks before they started looking for a new permanent nanny. Jo had spotted her chance to say she desperately wanted to come back-but with a view to becoming their part-time nanny; she wanted to study and look after the children at the same time, she wanted to live in London and go to university, she missed the children, missed the chaos, missed the tension, but she needed more. Instead, she had felt the gap in the conversation where this was all meant to be said come and go without her even opening her mouth.

The birds were so loud she could hear them over the boiling kettle. She usually loved this fleeting moment between night and day-as if she'd caught G.o.d off guard taking a power nap. And she usually loved this moment best at exactly this time of year because it was so proud with potential, and she usually loved experiencing this moment in her parents' house before they'd woken up, because they were her comfort zone, yet sometimes the thought of them was less exhausting than the experience of them. Technically, this should have been up there in her favorite moments.

But not this morning. Something had changed-she had changed. Everything had changed. This morning the signs of summer made her itch with dissatisfaction at her life. And her parents' home had stopped being a comfort zone ever since the row with her father. He was still sulking, and she believed he might never get over it. And she hadn't been sleeping well because certain disturbing images of Josh Fitzgerald kept waking her up.

She heard her father pad downstairs. He was up early. She turned round and watched him come into the kitchen, pour himself a cup of tea instead of making a pot, then go upstairs for his bath without looking at her.

She filled the cafetiere, took a coffee, and put them both on a little tray, opened the back door, and took her mug into the garden. She sat down on the B& Q bench by the gnomes and, with her mind somewhere between Niblet-upon-Avon and Highgate, watched the garden wake up.

Half an hour later in Highgate, Josh was feeling torn. When Vanessa had got the call from Jo saying she couldn't come back that week, he reluctantly said that he had to go back to the office. His job was meaningless drivel, but it paid the bills. And he could do with the break.

Josh now saw mothers in a somewhat different light. Instead of looking straight through them-as had been his wont-he found himself inclined to bow as they pa.s.sed him in the street. And he certainly looked at nannies in a different light. As far as he was concerned, nannies and mothers had taken over the role of biblical midwives-silent, invisible lifesavers, giving their menfolk time to go round slaying each other and recounting ripping yarns about themselves. Up till now his arguments in favor of the superiority of his gender had always felt indisputable. Why was there no female Shakespeare, no female Einstein, no female Shackle-ton? he used to say in bars all over London to girls who would pout at him in mock anger. But now he knew the answer. They'd all been busy wiping babies' bottoms and doing finger-painting. What a tragic waste, he thought.

Of late, he had begun to notice a worrying habit of waking up, as if from a trance, in Jo's bedroom, and finding that he'd been sitting on her bed, or looking at her photos, or holding her stupid Mickey Mouse clock, or reading the spines of her books. He had seriously needed to get back to work.

When he told Vanessa and d.i.c.k that he had no choice, he had to go back to work, Vanessa had looked at d.i.c.k in a way Josh had never seen her look at him before.

There was a tenderness in it and yet an expectation of great things. d.i.c.k then said it was his turn to stay at home, and stay at home he would. In fact, he became positively evangelical.

"It's my turn to look after the children," he said firmly. "I'll only open the shop for a few hours a day when they're all at school. I'll be absolutely fine." There was a pause. "I'm a modern father, and this is a modern family." Another pause. "Now, how do you work the clothes dryer?"

When Josh wandered through the kitchen on his way out to the big wide world, d.i.c.k was staring at the timetable on the fridge door. He looked at his son with haunted eyes.

"Where's the spaghetti bolognese?" d.i.c.k asked.

"The mince is in the fridge."