The Family Gift Read online

  Lexi did not choose her birth mother.

  Dan did, Mildred pointed out, unhelpfully.

  Dan and she split up when Lexi was a baby, I reminded myself. He’s a good man who wants what was best for all of us, I add.

  I wanted to get up because it was easier but at least if I am lying in bed, I am resting, so I head back to bed where I hope I sleep even a little.

  I could not think about damn Elisa if I was working.

  I would stare at recipe books in the kitchen, sit with my trusty ink pen and paper and write down foods in my wakened version of lucid dreaming.

  It’s how I work when I can’t work: I let the foods come into my mind and the right combinations slip in. I can almost taste the sea-fresh scent of newly-caught cod and my mind skims from Asia with the delicacy of lemongrass and ginger, bok choi wilting underneath while hot sun intensifies all my senses. And then, I flip to a winter’s day when I was a child, home from school, weary, and my mother stirring chowder on the stove, fresh bread baking, and the hint of dill and tang of bacon lardons fill my head.

  I try to make food easier for people, to take the fear out of cooking so the love of it ignites something within them. It’s how I learned to cook: watching my mother, who is the most nurturing cook ever, who effortlessly worked as well as stirring up cakes and making soups on the old stovetop, warming our bellies and our hearts all at the same time.

  Good food should be eaten at a family table, whatever sort of family you are, with the cat/dog/hamster peering over the edge of the table, especially if you and your beloved animals are what constitutes your family. In my recipe books, there are just as many versions of my meals for people who live alone, as more and more of us do. Life is complicated enough without making a cookbook a judgement with its ‘serves four’ tagline on each recipe. I dream up the recipes and cook.

  Lexi had been quiet and subdued after dinner last night and I intuited, though I didn’t want to ask, that there had been no answering message on WhatsApp from Elisa. Lexi is used to friends like her best pal, Caitlin Keogh, replying instantly. Elisa is a different breed.

  Instead of asking if she’d had a reply, I helped Lexi wash her long hair. Then I laboriously brushed the tangles out of it, gently brushing in the love because saying anything at that moment would have been entirely wrong. Sometimes touch is the only love that works.

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said when I’d finished, and I hugged her.

  I love my darling daughter so much and although she did not emerge from my body, that makes her no less my child. I want to fight for her. But I cannot hurt her in the process and if I warn her off Elisa, as I so dearly wish to do, I will do just that.

  Today, house organising has to take a back seat because I simply have to go into work. Freya Abalone, the social media, wonder chef, TV personality extraordinaire has got to come out of hiding and wear something other than mangy yoga pants.

  Or else we’ll never be able to pay the mortgage.

  Real life does not sell well on social media, for some startling reason. At least, it can – but that’s ‘warts and all’ and my business is not sold on warts.

  It’s sold on the firebrand personality of me, who is both Viking Chef and calm woman of forty-two. No sniggering down the back. In other words: I carefully curate my online presence so that I appear to be calm and happy simultaneously.

  I would be fascinated to find really calm women of forty- two because in my experience, women of my vintage are too busy trying to keep all the plates in the air – work, home, children, relationships, family, grocery shopping, laundry, attempting to do some exercise in case our bones crumple – to have really grasped that inner calm thing.

  Nina, my social media guru, public relations genius and the slightly intense boss of her own agency at the age of thirty, explained it all to me in the early days when the production company said I needed to pay someone to handle my publicity year round, as they weren’t going to be doing it.

  ‘You are building a brand,’ she said, already scaring me because it was nine in the morning and she’d clearly had a blow dry and was sipping water out of a giant bottle which she’d already half-finished. Both things I have never managed. If I drink a litre of water a day, it’s in tea and coffee. Sometimes I even consume water in the form of ice cubes if Scarlett and Maura come over at the weekend, and Maura brings her beloved Baileys and makes me drink some drizzled over ice, which she says makes her feel like the last word in sophistication.

  Nina drinks water and is a green juice fanatic, which is possibly why she still looks twenty-five instead of thirty. I eat too much of my own food, which has lots of green things in it but also lots of carbs, which have recently become Enemy Number One in health-junkie terms.

  ‘Brands are built on a combination of honesty, relatability and reliability,’ Nina went on. ‘Nobody wants to know you had a crappy weekend, that the water heater broke and you got your period. They get that in their own lives. They want you, with a happy quote for the day, a fabulous recipe they can make without hitting the shops, a feeling that you are one of them. Plus lovely pictures.’

  ‘Even on Mondays?’ I said, having failed to switch off my sarcasm button upon entering the building.

  I am so not a Monday person. I am a lunchtime on Friday person.

  ‘Especially on Mondays,’ she said grimly, a flash in her eyes showing me she saw the sarcasm and didn’t like it. ‘You start their week with energy. With happiness. With wisdom. You want to sell books, a TV show and later your own cooking implements and baking dishes?’

  ‘I wish,’ I sighed.

  ‘Then get with the programme, Freya,’ she said. ‘This is what you pay me to tell you.’

  Point taken.

  She is expensive and I can only afford to use her services if I make money. Another bastion of my career is my agent, the London-based Paddy Ashmore, an utter gentleman who never raises his voice and whom I would trust with my life. Paddy does not haunt me with reminders about social media but then Paddy is old-school and negotiates deals for my books. Nina knows more about the frenetic pulse of all sorts of media than he does, so I listen to her.

  In light of my absence from both the bookshops and the TV screens, I know I need to keep my media profile up there.

  With this in mind I work very hard to keep the social media career moving even when I am mid-move, pre- menstrual, have flu, you name it.

  Someone has posted something about difficult roads leading to glorious destinations. Once, I would have loved that – now, I am so over inspirational quotes, although I do my best to post ones every few days.

  Difficult roads lead to more damn difficult roads, and road blocks, and workmen digging a hole and traffic. The universe does not give us what we need – it gives us ulcers.

  I’d love to post that online. But Nina would kill me and as I am sure she has a deal going with the devil to make her successful and stress-free, she would have a plan to hide my body, no problemo.

  In the real world, I post things on all the social media channels most days, even if it’s just me beaming into the camera wearing a flour-covered apron and holding up a whisk, making early morning fruit muffins for the children’s school lunches, which was one of last week’s posts pre-move. It’s sad that nobody viewing this lovely scene on Instagram can hear the background yelling as Teddy informs everyone that she will not eat anything with blueberries in it.

  ‘Bunny poo!’ she insists. ‘Not eating bunny poo.’

  ‘Blueberries do look a bit like bunny poo,’ agrees Liam, ever the peacemaker, ‘but they’re nice in Mum’s muffins.’

  ‘NO!’

  It is funny, so including the bunny poo story, the picture of me goes up. A chef comparing their cooking to animal faeces can never be a good thing, I think, awaiting a backlash. But hey – dark humour is good, right?

  Is that supposed to
be a funny caption?

  Nina texts me about a millisecond later. That woman lives on her phone. She is not child-friendly, either. If she has a child, she will get it from a pod on the mother ship.

  I had sex last night – should I mention it?

  I type the words in and then delete before hitting the send button. Nina’s odd: nothing is out of bounds for her so she might decide that a segment on ‘what foods get you both in the mood’ is a runner.

  In her vision, I would be in a negligee (obviously, I don’t have one), gazing glossily-lipped into the camera in no time.

  Write down funny lines for future, I think. Unfortunately, most of my funny thoughts are too dark to be shared with the world.

  I have a quick morning routine and I get myself done up pretty speedily. Then it’s into jeans, flat shoes – the red suede trainers I adore – and an aquamarine silk shirt that suits my colouring really well. The stylist on the last show insisted I buy it and I thank the stars for stylists every time I get dressed. Pre-styling, my look was a bit chaotic. Except with fabulous shoes. Shoes I can do. It’s the rest that bewilders me. I honestly don’t care about clothes. Nina insists that I can’t possibly say this publicly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because people expect you to have it all! Don’t you get it?’

  There’s no point arguing with her. Nobody has it all.

  Going quietly, I head downstairs to get the breakfast things ready. After a boost of caffeine, I race upstairs and realise that Dan hasn’t woken up yet, which is unusual because he’s marvellous at getting out of bed in the morning. Sickeningly a morning person, I should add. I must have exhausted him with my fabulous lovin’, I think, wondering again if I could post that? Probably not. I am officially losing control of my mind.

  With that sort of post, I would be invited on to some reality TV show where I’d have to expose my post-baby self in a bikini and drink my body weight in cocktails with people who think that cooking is pressing the ‘on’ button on the microwave.

  Nina would love that. It would ‘broaden my viewership’, which is a vital thing.

  ‘Wake up,’ I yell at Dan from the door of our bedroom. ‘You’ve overslept.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he says, turning around in the bed and looking at his watch. ‘Seven, no! I’m supposed to be in town for eight.’

  ‘Unless you have a helicopter on speed dial, I don’t see that happening.’

  He shoots me a sleepy grin as he throws back the duvet and rips off his T-shirt.

  I race into Lexi’s bedroom to wake her up next. As the oldest, she needs the most wakening. It’s an age thing: the older you are, the longer it takes to wake up. Liam is next, although he’s not too keen on getting out of bed either and Teddy is last. On weekends Teddy can quite happily be up at half five. On days when she goes to Montessori, she is inevitably still asleep when I go in and requires much wheedling to extract her from the duvet nest.

  ‘Come on, lovie,’ I say, nuzzling into her ear, ‘wakey, wakey.’

  The response is Teddy burrowing further into her bed in the manner of something cute on a David Attenborough documentary. David Attenborough never has to haul said cute things out of their burrows while they are whimpering, though.

  It takes twenty minutes to get everyone dressed and downstairs, including Teddy, who has a full-scale argument with me about what colour sandals she’s going to wear. She wants to wear her purple ones with the sparkles and no matter how many times I tell her that we threw them out because they were old and no longer fit her, she continues insisting.

  ‘We’ll buy you new ones,’ said Dan, suddenly sweeping into the room to plant a kiss on her and my foreheads. He’s fully dressed and ready to go. Today’s a suit day and nobody fills a suit like Dan.

  Hot husband.

  Is that suitable for a gratitude list? Damn straight it is.

  ‘That was quick,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘got to rush, bye, darling. Talk to you later.’ And he’s gone.

  Even though I’ve been earning more money than I used to in the past few years, the job of getting the children out of the house and to their various schools is up to me, always has been unless I am away filming.

  Maura, when we have feminist discussions, says Dan should do it.

  I counter this by saying that I am better at it and like our morning routine.

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘Feminism is not higher-level maths,’ I say. ‘The rules are fluid. If the children need to be picked up from school when they are sick, Dan does it more than I do because I’m often somewhere doing a cookery demo. But he’s crap in the morning with the children because his mind has already gone off to work mode, which means Teddy can totally twist him round her little finger, getting her dressed takes half an hour and everyone ends up late for school/work. Plus, he vacuums, which I hate, and he always fills and empties the dishwasher. And takes it apart regularly to remove all the gunk that builds up in it.’

  ‘You iron.’

  ‘Yes, oh wise sister. I am treated like dirt, you’re so right. We definitely need an eighteenth-century scullery maid.’

  ‘Scullery man!’

  ‘The point is, we work it out between us,’ I say wearily.

  I remove the spiders in the house because Dan is arachnaphobic; he does all car and garden-related things, cleans the bath and is currently working on getting Liam to pee with more direct aim. I brush Lexi’s hair, cook and make sure everyone cleans their teeth. It works, without a manifesto.

  Maura teaches women’s studies in university and likes manifestos. Pip is entirely happy to bow to her alpha-ness. He thinks it was the best day in his life when he met her, God help him.

  Liam is a chatterbox and he and Teddy have entirely unrelated conversations as they eat breakfast. Since going to secondary school, Lexi doesn’t do a lot of talking in the morning. My beloved girl no longer lets me hug her anywhere near the school. In fact I have to turn the music in the car down when we drive into the parking area.

  ‘Somebody might hear,’ she hisses at me for the millionth time.

  I have given up trying to explain that, if we can’t hear into their cars, they can’t hear into our car.

  We are working to Teenager Rules which have no basis in reality.

  ‘Bye,’ she mutters as she climbs out of the front passenger seat, then slams the car door shut in a way that makes the entire vehicle shake.

  ‘Bad Lexi,’ shrieks Teddy from the comfort of her child seat in the back. ‘Bad Lexi.’

  Liam, who has clambered into the front seat because he’s finally tall enough, is next, little pet, and once his older sister is out of the car he talks excitedly about his day. He and Lexi aren’t getting on as well anymore and it upsets me, although Maura explains that it’s normal for children of different ages to get irritated with each other at times.

  ‘We did it,’ she says.

  ‘Did we?’ I say. And then I remember Con and how we used to fight with him, tease him and put dresses on his Action Man, and I have to agree with her. Scarlett was our baby and we dressed her up like a doll. I think Con may have been dolled up and lipsticked too, and grin at the thought.

  The power of older sisters is amazing.

  I’m allowed to surreptitiously hug Liam goodbye before he gets out of the car in the school car park. This is the first year I haven’t walked him into class – ‘only little kids have their mums come in!’ – so I sit there in the car waiting until he’s walked along the path and in the school door. Then I wave again even though he doesn’t turn round, and when I can no longer see his departing back, I settle myself into the car to deliver Teddy to her little school.

  ‘Music,’ shrieks Teddy, ‘music.’

  She can shriek very loudly, definitely in the bad-for-your-hearing-long-term range. So I put on some of
her favourite tunes, at the moment the soundtrack of Frozen, which is not as nice when you have heard it eight hundred and fifty-nine times.

  Sometimes I feel that I am Anna and Elsa.

  As we pull up outside Little Darlings crèche and Montessori, Teddy’s mood changes drastically.

  ‘No go, no go,’ she says tearfully, reverting to the almost baby language she occasionally uses when she’s in a particular mood. Small children grow up in a two-steps-forward, one-step-back sort of way, I have found.

  ‘Teddy,’ I said, undoing the car seat straps which will cut off a finger if done too quickly. ‘You love it here. Don’t you want to see all your friends? Ella and Marcus and the hamsters?’

  ‘No,’ she says, kicking her heels against the seat.

  There is a certain amount of wriggling, fighting and struggling but eventually Teddy and I make it into Little Darlings, whereupon she totally abandons me, rips her hand away from mine and races off squealing with delight at seeing her friends.

  Koala baby to teenager outside a disco in one fell swoop.

  ‘Tough morning?’ says Babs, the crèche owner, seeing me sighing at Teddy’s departing form.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘ we’ve just moved into the new house and it felt a bit chaotic this morning, not our usual routine,’ I say. ‘And then Teddy was doing her I don’t want to go in thing.’

  ‘But now look at her,’ Babs finishes, as we gaze at where Teddy is delightedly holding court with her closest friends over at the little plastic kitchen.

  ‘I know, you just always feel bad, don’t you?’

  ‘Mothers’ guilt,’ says Babs cheerfully. ‘Tougher than titanium. Isn’t that the toughest substance on the planet?’

  I nod. Sounds about right. Or else that stuff that totally banjaxed Superman.

  Outside, I see a gaggle of the women who make me feel totally inferior: Mums Who Exercise. They do not have saggy bits, worry about fat knees or having trouble closing the button on their jeans.

  Why don’t you do any exercise? Mildred wants to know. You could. Because look at them with their skinny legs and perfect butts in their Lululemon leggings?