Chapter Two

Felicity pressed the button to take the picture of her plate of ham, egg and chips, and sent it straight to Facebook, tagging herself as feeling happy at the beach. Then she put the phone down and sighed flatly. She didn’t want to eat it. It was too greasy, but the options at the soft play adjacent to the beach were limited and the chicken burger had given her a dodgy stomach the last time she had ordered it. She wouldn’t have bothered with a hot lunch, but she knew Pete would be home this evening as he was not doing a shift at Cin Cin, where he had been earning a bit of extra cash at his mate’s bar after work, and the idea of getting everybody’s main meal out of the way was too appealing; especially as getting the children to bed early was integral to what she had planned for Pete later. As the waitress popped two plates of over-fried curly fries and pizza fingers onto the table, Felicity rolled her eyes, sorry Jamie Oliver!

Searching for her children, Felicity scanned each floor of the soft play. She could hear them but she couldn’t see them. She looked at Fred’s little face. She could hardly abandon him in the highchair to go and search for the others. She had told them dinner wouldn’t be long and yet they had disappeared. Why don’t they ever listen? Hiding her purse under the ‘essential’ paraphernalia she carried on the bottom of the pushchair, Felicity lifted Fred out of his highchair and hoisted him onto her hip. Fred let out a grizzle; getting a look at the food and then being dragged away from it was a horrible tease, poor love! Slipping her shoes off Felicity threw back the oversized gate latch and entered the over-threes’ zone.

‘Mummy, Mummy, Callum’s stuck!’ Alice’s sweaty face met her mum’s exasperated look on the spongy stairs.

‘I told you to look after him. Where is he?’ Felicity sighed.

‘In the squishy rollers.’ Alice lifted her hands in a gesture of innocence, accepting no responsibility for her brother’s predicament.

‘What? Where?’

‘Up there.’ Alice motioned her pointy finger upwards.

Felicity looked at the next floor, accessible via tunnels and twists she wasn’t sure her bottom would fit through. ‘Oh, crikey! Here, you watch Fred for a mo and I’ll fetch Callum, OK?’ Felicity deposited Fred and Alice in the baby area and began the chubby-hip-bruising ascent to extricate her son.

‘Mummy!’ Callum beamed at the sight of Felicity hauling herself out of the tunnel. He held out his arms and wiggled his chubby little fingers. Felicity’s thudding-a-little-too-much-after-a-teeny-weeny-bit-of-exercise heart melted at the sight of him.

‘Are you stuck, Pumpkin?’

‘Um … no!’

‘But Alice said you were stuck.’

‘No, I tease her.’ He grinned, showing all of his shiny, white milk teeth, looking very pleased with himself.

‘Oh, Callum, Mummy just came all the way up here and dinner’s ready.’

‘Goody! Let’s do the slide!’ Callum wiggled effortlessly out of the squishy rollers and grabbed Felicity’s hand. ‘Come on, Mummy.’

How could she resist that little, freckly face? He was her only child to inherit Pete’s red hair and all of his cheek too. Not sure that any minute now she wouldn’t be bellowing for the waitress to call the fire brigade to report her bottom being stuck on the slide, Felicity scooped Callum on to her lap. She pushed off and was surprised to find that she actually moved and, as it happened, gathered quite a speed. ‘Wheeeeeeee!’ She sounded more enthusiastic than Callum, but she couldn’t help herself. It was the most fun she’d had for a long time. As they reached the bottom a multitude of rainbow coloured balls erupted into the air as the force of Felicity’s feet hit them and Callum burst into giggles.

Through the net that separated the baby-n-toddler and over-threes’ area Alice cheered. ‘Do it with me now, Mummy!’

Unsure why, but not wanting to miss out on the fun, Fred clapped his hands. Felicity felt like she had won the lottery having achieved the admiration of three out of her four children in one fell swoop. Looking at their beaming faces she felt overwhelmed with love for them! Of course, there were times when they overwhelmed her with a whole lot of other feelings, but, at that moment, with all of them happy, she knew she could have eaten them up!

Remembering the food congealing at their table, Felicity rounded her children up and settled them into their seats. Once she had sorted everybody’s drinks, asked for the second time for a spare plate for Fred, chopped up everything that needed chopping and squirted out more packets of sauce than was probably necessary she looked again at her own dinner. Ewwww! It hadn’t improved with the delay. She picked at it, leaving the plastic-looking ham and dipping a few chips in the egg until she ran out of runny yolk. Pushing her plate to one side she rummaged in her bag for three boxes of dried apricots and raisins. She needed to do something to redress the bad food balance of her children’s lunch. Feeling like a thoroughly bad mother she pondered how much salad she had in the fridge to offer them with sandwiches or crackers for tea.

Picking up a signal her phone beeped with the five ‘likes’ her Facebook status had achieved. Raising her eyebrows, Felicity pressed to see who had left them, but as she noticed the time she realised she ought to hurry the children along. Her mother-in-law was due to drop Megan back soon, and Felicity couldn’t be entirely sure how much mess she had left the house in as they’d finally shut the front door that morning.

Pete’s mum never actually said she disapproved of Felicity’s housekeeping skills, but, nonetheless, Felicity could feel her disapproval whenever she caught her off guard with a drop-in visit. And it wasn’t that Felicity was particularly tardy when it came to housework; every evening by about nine o’clock the place looked fabulous. But during the day she just couldn’t see the point.

When Megan was little clearing up after her had been manageable, then when Alice came along it was a little harder but she could enlist Megan’s help and achieve tidy moments in the day. However, once the two boys came along, and Fred learnt to commando crawl and then walk, clearing up became futile; a challenge to see who was fastest – her tidying up or her boys on a destruction mission. They won almost all of the time! Once she stopped trying to clear up, she could actually keep an eye on them more fully and stopped having to replace the crockery they regularly pulled out of the cupboards.

Wiping the children’s sauce covered faces and greasy fingers, Felicity agreed to just ten minutes more in the soft play, deciding that would be just enough time to let Alice and Callum run off their food high without letting Fred get too tired before his afternoon nap. If she was lucky, he wouldn’t fall asleep in the car and she could get him down at home, put CBeebies on for the other two and tidy up ready for her mother-in-law’s inspection. Then, she might just be able to give Megan a bit of attention and hear how her show rehearsal went before teatime.

Ideally, Felicity had been hinting at her mother-in-law having the little ones while she took Megan to her ballet rehearsal, but she apparently misheard that and steadfastly fixed on the rehearsal details before Felicity could repeat the request. Felicity sometimes wondered what her mother-in-law thought she was going to get up to if she had a moment to herself. She always seemed to view any request she put in for help with an air of suspicion. It was madness. The only things she ever wanted to sneak off and do were to drink a warm cup of tea and have a wee without an audience! Let it go, Flick, she breathed. Maybe she was being unfair, comparing her mother-in-law’s manner to the easy way her own mum had always offered to help.

Felicity sat in the baby area of the soft play, keeping one eye on the pushchair while Fred clambered over big, spongy, coloured blocks practically half his size – his big, nappied bottom sticking disproportionately into the air. She could hear Callum giggling with Alice on the floor above. What would you have made of my boys, Mum? Would you have melted at their cheeky faces, and kept up with their boundless energy?

Tears welled in her eyes as Felicity felt how keenly she still missed her mum and the close relationship they’d come to share, all too late. She thought about all the time she had wasted being angry with her as a child – not a day passed now where she didn’t think of something she wished she could share with her; silly things, as well as important things.

As a child Felicity had spent too long feeling she had somehow ruined her mum’s life, mistaking her mum’s eagerness for her to have more, do more and be more, as her spurning what her own life as a single parent had become. On reflection she had spent too long rebelling against guilt her mum never intended her to feel. Funny how things that can seem so important at the time can be obliterated into insignificance by something else!

Much to Fred’s disgust, Felicity picked him up for a cuddle she needed more than he wanted to give. Blowing a raspberry on his belly she got him to sag into her arms. Relaxing his rigid body as he laughed, Fred grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked it. As Felicity squealed in pain Alice shouted from the floor above.

‘Mummy! Mummy. Callum’s stuck!’

Putting Fred down, Felicity rolled her watering eyes and decided it was time to go.