Haven't They Grown(10)

On the first floor, Zannah and Ben’s bedroom doors are wide open. Both of them close their doors whenever they’re in their rooms, to remind intrusive parents to stay out. Dom’s office door is closed, with a sliver of light visible underneath it. I can hear his fingers tapping at the keyboard.

I push open the door and find him slumped at his computer. ‘Sit up straight. Your back,’ I remind him.

‘I wondered why it was aching.’ He stays in the same position, staring at the screen, which is full of different versions of the same logo: three letters twisted artfully around one another, a well-known local company’s initials. ‘Which do you think’s the strongest?’ Dom asks. ‘I mean, obviously no one apart from the woman who commissioned them will notice the difference or care, but I have to pretend to have a strong opinion by next week.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Five to … uh … twelve. Shit. It’s nearly midnight.’

For the first time since seeing what I saw in Hemingford Abbots, I wonder: could something be wrong with me? I’ve slept through the whole evening.

No. I’m fine. I needed to recharge, that’s all.

Is it? What about seeing the impossible?

‘Where’s Zan?’ I ask.

‘She went to Victoria’s.’

‘Is she staying overnight?’ It’s not unheard of for lifts home to be requested as late as 2 a.m.

‘Yup. We can go to bed with no fear of chauffeur duties.’

‘I’ve just been asleep for three hours. I’m not tired.’

‘Well …’

‘What?’

‘I think you’re more exhausted than you realise, Beth.’

‘Dom, I’m wide awake. I’ve just—’

‘I’m not saying come to bed now if you don’t want to, but … what happened to you today, and then sleeping all evening …’

‘For God’s sake, Dom. You have naps all the time.’ I’m unreasonably annoyed with him for having the same worry I just had; it makes it harder to dismiss.

‘I think you’ve been stressing out and pushing yourself too hard for too long. You have clients from 8 a.m. till 6 p.m. five days a week. You never take a proper lunch hour—’

‘That’s a normal working week. We have a huge mortgage to pay off, university costs coming up in a few years …’

‘I know. I just … it’s evenings too. You’re doing chores and admin till midnight, sometimes.’

I wish I could deny it, but I can’t. And there’s no point saying that he’s the one who’s working late tonight; we both know that if I hadn’t fallen asleep, we’d have spent the evening talking and Dom wouldn’t have considered coming up here to work on logos. He’d have gone to bed at half past ten or eleven and … yes, I’d then have done a couple of hours of admin. Is there any woman with a full-time job and a family who doesn’t need those hours between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. to catch up and stay afloat? Probably. I don’t know any.

Dom has a great talent that I lack: the ability not to give a toss about most things. He regularly announces that some project or other has been delayed, and seems amused by his colleagues’ panic over missed deadlines. We’ve had the conversation dozens of times: me saying that if his work bores him, he should do something else, him telling me I don’t understand, and that not caring about his career is his favourite hobby.

He reaches for my hand, squeezes it and says, ‘I also think you’re stressing out about Zannah and Ben more than you realise.’

‘Zan and Ben are fine.’

‘I agree. But they’re teenagers, and more demanding than they used to be, and you let it get to you in a way that I don’t. Is their school good enough, is Zannah too cheeky and rebellious, is it our fault?’

‘No, yes and yes, in that order.’ I sigh.

‘Beth, everything’s fine. You know my life’s great guiding motto.’

‘I don’t, actually.’

‘Let it wash over you.’

I smile. ‘You’ve never told me that before.’

‘That’s because I just made it up.’

‘But you’re right: that is your life’s guiding motto.’

‘I wonder if maybe it’s not a coincidence,’ Dom says.

‘What?’

‘This idea of Thomas and Emily Braid, who are teenagers the same age as ours, being suddenly little kids again.’ He looks nervous. As if he knows he’s taken it too far.

‘Wait, are you saying …’ I laugh. ‘You think I have a secret desire for Zannah and Ben to be little again, and it made me hallucinate five-year-old Thomas and three-year-old Emily?’

Dom looks suitably embarrassed. ‘That’s mad, isn’t it?’

‘Totally. Whatever I saw, whatever happened, it’s not that. I think—’ I break off, too proud to say it: I think I’m handling the challenge of parenting two teenagers really well. My kids like me. I like them. How bad can it be?

‘Was Zan … okay?’ I ask. ‘When she left, I mean.’

‘Fine.’

‘She wasn’t worried by … any of it?’

‘Not at all. I think she’s enjoying the mystery. Which I’m a bit closer to solving.’ Dom smiles proudly, tapping his computer screen.