Practice Makes Perfect

by Penny Parkes

  Dan had cycled through a variety of expressions by the time he decided to just give the girl a hug. Starting at aghast, via overwhelmed, panicked and exhausted, he’d eventually settled on affectionate and supportive. He cradled Julia to his chest and whispered into her hair.

  After five incredibly awkward minutes that felt more like fifteen and during which Holly realised she didn’t really know Julia half as well as she thought she did, Dan spoke up, ‘Guys, I think you need to know what’s going on.’

  Julia wiped her nose on the immaculate sleeve of her blouse and sniffed. Holly tried hard not to gasp out loud at this ludicrously uncharacteristic display.

  Julia’s eyes never once left Dan’s face as he gently and tactfully filled the others in on Candace’s behaviour of late. It was not as though hearing about Julia’s mum’s taste for alcohol was new news; it was more that the scale of the problem was clearly larger than they had been led to believe. Julia was clever like that – she told people just enough information, so that they thought they knew everything.

  In terms of their friendship, Holly decided, it was like dealing with an iceberg, where the vast majority lay unseen beneath the surface. It was not her moment to feel aggrieved, though; it was time that they all rallied around their friend in her hour of need.

  Julia looked at them blankly as they offered their support. ‘I don’t understand. Why would you want to get involved? It’s a train wreck.’

  ‘Well, I think,’ said Taffy, ‘that you and Dan are far too close to the situation. You can’t have any objectivity about what she needs medically and until she’s ready to look for help then there is a chance that this will make a great story.’

  Julia began to sob again. ‘What if someone sends a reporter to the Gatehouse looking for me? What if they get pictures of her instead? She’d be utterly mortified, to have her dirty laundry exposed in public.’

  Holly and Dan’s expressions mirrored each other, both hit by a bump of surprise that, even with everything else going on, it was actually her mother’s welfare and sensibilities that were concerning Julia. Holly felt yet another shard of guilt, for expecting Julia’s first concerns to be her career and, judging by the look on Dan’s face, she wasn’t the only one.

  Chapter 32

  Taffy looked up and smiled as Holly came in. ‘Check it out, Holly, the boys made supper.’

  ‘Wow!’ she managed, trying not to sound shocked or annoyed. When Taffy had offered to pick up the twins from nursery and make them tea, this was seriously not what she’d had in mind. It looked as though the entire contents of the fridge had been upended on the kitchen table, buttered crusts of bread littered the floor and a bowl of dripping eggshells sat beside the hob.

  ‘They’ve been great. I hardly had to lift a finger. Come and join in,’ Taffy said, indicating the blanket on the sitting room floor where they had decamped to eat; obviously there being no room left on the table. Eric chewed contentedly on a sausage roll, Tom was tucking into a wedge of some kind of gooey frittata and Ben was struggling to get his small mouth around the most enormous club sandwich Holly had ever seen.

  It was one thing to ask the boys to start helping around the house a little, maybe even put their pants in the laundry basket, but this scene of devastation hardly counted as ‘helpful’ at the end of a very long day, by any stretch of her imagination.

  ‘In a minute, I’ll just get their bath running—’ she said carefully, unconsciously adopting the tone that she used when the twins had frayed her very last nerve and she was still determined to be good-Mummy, calm-Mummy – not exhausted-at-the-end-of-a-bloody-long-day-and-merely-a-wobble-away-from-the-edge Mummy.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, we’ve already had showers,’ Taffy said easily. ‘So we could have tea in our PJs, look . . .’ He frowned when he noticed Holly’s expression. ‘The world won’t end if we do things in a different order, Holls,’ he said quietly, the smallest edge of irritation sharpening his words.

  ‘But—’she began, stopping herself. It apparently didn’t seem to occur to Taffy that, by the time the twins had finished their carpet picnic bonanza, they’d require hosing down just to get the sticky off them. She swallowed hard. Taffy had made it perfectly clear how he felt about her arbitrary parenting timetable, teasing her when she talked of ‘being late’ – ‘How can you be late for something when you’ve just randomly assigned a time for it?’ he would remonstrate.

  She’d tried so many times to explain that her system had evolved gradually over the last four years out of sheer necessity – as a way of coping with two small, opinionated humans on her own, without sacrificing every ounce of her sleep, self or sanity.

  He leaned over and scooped up a can of orangeade with a curly straw in it. ‘Come on, Holls,’ he said. ‘Sit down. We’re having fizzy pop to celebrate Ben’s achievement.’

  Ben looked up at the mention of his name, shoving a large chunk of avocado into his mouth. ‘I can count to twenty now.’ He looked utterly delighted with himself. ‘Twenty things in my sandwich, Mummy.’ He waved it at her to demonstrate and the bread flapped alarmingly, scattering a combination of what looked like Pringles and Hundreds & Thousands everywhere.

  Taffy looked askance at Holly, waiting for her to click into gear, to be the proud cheerleading mummy, to stop staring at the drink in his hand as though it were toxic. ‘It’s only a small can,’ he said, pre-empting any disagreement about sugary drinks before bedtime.

  And to think that she’d been fantasising about a glass of wine and a quiet evening all the way home.

  She breathed out slowly, trying to let go of her exasperation with Taffy’s Peter Pan approach to life – it was certainly a mixed blessing and one that continued to take her by surprise on occasion. ‘That’s brilliant, Ben. Twenty! That really is A Lot.’ She folded her legs beneath her as she sank down on to the blanket, defeated. There was no point fighting her corner this evening – the ship had sailed and the only position left would be as Captain Killjoy. She sipped at the can of lurid orange pop that Ben victoriously thrust into her hand, unable to believe his luck at this unprecedented turn of events.

  ‘And you made all this yourselves? Aren’t you clever,’ Holly said.

  ‘Taffy watched cricket,’ Tom said earnestly. ‘It’s boring. So now I’m Head Chef!’

  Holly raised an eyebrow and looked at Taffy who just smiled and shrugged. ‘What? It was on in the background. Besides, with these two in the kitchen, I would only have cramped their style.’ He squeezed Holly’s knee reassuringly, as the boys divided the grapes between them, each one deliberately counted out for absolute fairness. ‘They have to start somewhere. And before you say anything, of course I was there for the hob and the knives, I just let them do the prep work.’ He looked almost baffled by Holly’s lukewarm reaction to the whole scenario. What had he been expecting, she wondered, smothering a yawn.

  ‘Different isn’t wrong, Holls,’ he said gently. ‘I need to do my part my way.’

  She nodded silently, understanding. ‘I know. I do.’ She took a sip of the orangeade, pleasantly surprised by the burst of flavour and fizz. ‘But does your way have to be so very different to mine?’ She was aiming for humour, but her question was just a little too close to the mark for either of them to find it amusing.

  He shrugged. ‘Well, I can still remember the first time I made supper, you know. I was maybe four and Aldwyn was supposed to be in charge, but he couldn’t be arsed. So I had milky tea, made with cold water, and Angel Delight, which didn’t set. But I felt so grown-up. Like I’d been trusted to do something special. Runny Angel Delight never tasted so good.’ He paused to let this sink in. ‘But after that I discovered the cheese toasty maker, so from there on in, I was pretty much a culinary god.’ He grinned and shuddered. ‘The combinations I put in that machine, it’s a wonder I didn’t get food poisoning—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Okay, not helping, but do you see what I mean?’

  Holly yawned again and looked around her at the mess, at the
sticky puddles, at the delighted expressions on her sons’ faces – of course she could see his point, but surely he could see hers as well. There was plenty of time for culinary adventures when they were a bit bigger, less chaotic, less likely to lose a finger on the chopping board. When she wasn’t already running on fumes . . . She shrugged. ‘I’m glad you guys had fun, I am—’

  She let the ‘but’ hover.

  She didn’t want to be that parent.

  ‘Right then,’ said Taffy, clambering to his feet and stretching, rattled by her reaction, but obviously making an effort to bite his tongue. ‘I might just pop out for a quick run now you’re back.’

  Holly stilled in disbelief. He wasn’t serious? Tired to the point of tears, grateful of course that he’d helped out with the boys, but to leave everything like this? She closed her eyes and took a breath, deliberately calming herself so that her weary disappointment wasn’t written all over her face and couldn’t be mistaken for ingratitude.

  When she opened them again, the boys were on their feet too – Tom holding a bin bag and Ben a whistle. ‘Ready, steady, go!’ they squealed.

  It was wasteful, it was carnage, but the next five minutes of unadulterated leaping around and ‘tidying up’ were undoubtedly efficient. The floor, the table, the plates all swept clean by tiny grasping hands in competition to get the job done.

  Taffy blew one last blast on the whistle. ‘Cadets! Wet flannels on my mark!’ and to Holly’s disbelief the boys lined up beside him to have their hands and faces firmly scrubbed.

  She laughed despite herself. It wasn’t her way and it vexed her on so many levels, but she had to confess that the twins were in their element.

  ‘What a tidy up!’ she said to the boys. ‘Good job. Great job, actually. I thought you were going to leave it all for Mummy to do.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Tom seriously. ‘Tidy Up with Taffy is the best game.’

  Taffy tried not to look smug. ‘See, different’s not always worse. Mess isn’t always bad.’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Tom seriously. ‘You cannot make a yummy omelette without breaking eggs. I tried.’

  And even Holly had to concede, he might have a point.

  Hours later, with two hyperactive little boys finally convinced into bed and an emergency take-away demolished, Holly and Taffy looked at the paperwork spread out on the kitchen table in resignation. So much for the wine/sofa/box-set suggestion.

  To be fair, Grace had done them proud today as the press had circled their wagons and the phones had burned white hot. Fielding every enquiry with calm, professional aplomb, Grace had firmly maintained that the medical staff were busy with their patients, doing their job – the very job they were receiving all this attention for – and could not be disturbed. Insisting on a written request for each press enquiry had filtered out the more casual applications and now Taffy and Holly were charged with responding.

  Even despite Taffy’s complaints, Holly still felt that they had got the better deal. Dan’s role this evening had been to escort Julia home and to try and persuade Candace that now was the time for treatment and discretion. Press releases still felt like the easy option.

  ‘Did you actually read all those articles this morning, Taffs?’ she asked. ‘They are just waiting for us to start squabbling amongst ourselves and fail. Vultures! It’s almost as if they can’t compute that life can work without a hierarchy. We just have to find a way to be a team on this.’

  He shrugged. ‘I know, I know, teamwork et cetera, et cetera – we’re all making compromises, but—’ He stood up abruptly and filled the kettle, almost on autopilot. ‘Compromise isn’t always good though, is it? Compromise is just another way of saying that nobody gets what they really want.’

  The expression on his face was inscrutable and Holly felt an involuntary flicker of unease. ‘How do you mean?’

  He shrugged. ‘Ignore me. It’s been a long day.’ He sloshed some hot water into a mug and ladled in three spoonfuls of coffee. ‘I seem to be wearing so many hats at the moment, I keep forgetting who I’m supposed to be. At work, at home—’ He broke off, looking uncomfortable as he registered Holly’s expression. ‘I don’t mind all the hats . . . Honestly. It’s just—’

  Holly polished off the last of the spring rolls, buying herself time to think. She was finding Taffy hard to interpret this evening. Maybe Dan had a point and she had just been asking – and expecting – too much? After all, Taffy wasn’t known for his ability to say no to anyone.

  ‘I just don’t know how you do it,’ he said quietly after a moment. ‘You change gears so seamlessly, Holls – doctor, mum, girlfriend – and now media consultant too apparently . . . I don’t know where to start and I feel like I’m making it up as I go along.’

  Holly couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Oh Taffs,’ she said gently, ‘we’re all making it up as we go along.’ She swallowed hard, in for a penny, ‘It’s why I set myself these arbitrary things to work to – bedtimes, mealtimes, walks in the park even if it’s raining – otherwise the whole thing just spirals out of my control . . .’

  ‘If I think about the detail too much,’ Taffy interrupted, ‘the tiny jigsaw pieces that all need to fit together to make everything work, it makes me feel—’ He waved an arm in a circle in the air and looked at Holly expectantly as though she might have all the answers.

  ‘Dizzy?’ she offered.

  ‘No, no – more like, well, drowning?’ He phrased it as a question, but Holly knew from the look on his face that it was closer to the truth.

  ‘Okay,’ she said slowly, trying to understand, trying not to take it personally or feel hurt. ‘That doesn’t sound great. Are you feeling that way now?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I mean, yes – a little bit.’

  He looked so vulnerable in that moment, Holly truly wanted to comfort him. Perhaps this was just his manly equivalent of her spinning plates dream, the one she’d been having ever since the twins were born? He just hadn’t had the years to gradually adapt to a total loss of control or spontaneity. But what if it was more than that?

  ‘And the run didn’t help?’

  He shrugged. ‘I just felt bad about leaving you with all the work when I said I’d help.’

  Holly took a breath, feeling as though she were walking on eggshells, knowing that they were talking about so much more than handling a few press releases or rustling up nursery tea. ‘Sometimes,’ she said slowly, ‘it’s better to say you can’t help . . .’

  ‘And leave you in the lurch?’ he said sceptically. ‘How crap would that be?’

  Holly shrugged eloquently. ‘I think sometimes, it’s better to say no, than to say yes and resent it.’ She looked up at him, her face an open book. ‘I think that you do so much for me and the boys and The Practice, that it’s okay if you can’t always muck in. And, honestly, I think that saying yes and then feeling, well, like this—’

  ‘It’s worse, isn’t it?’ Taffy cut in. ‘But I do want to help. I do want to muck in . . . All my efforts though seem to . . . ’ Holly noticed his hands slowly unclench. ‘I just don’t want to be like Milo.’

  ‘Oh Taffs, no, you are nothing like Milo. I can promise you the fact that you’re even thinking that, means you’re safe on that front.’

  Taffy looked up. ‘But I got as far as the end of the road and I realised something – all this talk of the Big Picture I’ve been going on and on and on about? And don’t pretend it hasn’t been pissing you off, because I’ve noticed. It’s just so I don’t have to focus on all the little pieces. There’s bloody hundreds of them!’

  Holly smiled, trying to soften the intensity of his words. ‘Well, that’s kind of better in a way – if anything, I thought you were turning in to Aldwyn for a minute there.’

  ‘Oh dear God!’ said Taffy with feeling, following her lead. ‘And, to be clear on this, Holly, you do know you can’t win, don’t you? If you’re all independent and don’t ask for my help with the boys, I think you don’t really ne
ed me and I’m getting in the way. And if you ask me to step up all the time, I get panicky. Really, seriously overwhelmed. And I know it annoys you when I do things my way. And I can’t even moan about it, or I sound like your ex.’

  Holly nodded. ‘This is new territory for me too, but it all sounds fairly normal to me.’

  ‘Really?’ Taffy said incredulously. ‘Well, it seems pretty fucked-up to me. And what do you do, when you feel like that?’

  Holly thought for a moment. ‘I suppose I talk to a friend, or eat a Hobnob or seven, or have a little cry . . . Depends on the trigger really. But most days, the drowning feeling is more like a wave I can ride.’

  ‘This too shall pass?’ Taffy said aloud, his Catholic upbringing leaving its mark despite his rampant atheism these days.

  ‘Erm, something like that – more shit-happens, what’s next?’ She grinned. ‘I read that in a parenting book somewhere, but it works in most scenarios. But you know, if your running-like-a-loon plan works too, then let’s not fight it. Just because we’re both juggling doesn’t mean we have to use the same balls.’

  ‘You should embroider that on a pillow,’ Taffy said drily.

  ‘Make it part of a “Big Picture”?’ Holly countered.

  ‘Touché.’ He smiled and the atmosphere between them shifted slightly. ‘Holly,’ he said, ‘I meant it. I don’t ever want to be like Milo. I don’t ever want to make you feel the way he does. That text . . .’ He held up his hands as though words failed him. ‘One text. And I’ve seen you these last few days, how much it’s been preying on your mind.’

  She nodded, unable to deny it. ‘What can I say though? When it comes to Milo, to the divorce, all I want is for it to be over. But I guess it never really will be, will it? Because of the boys.’ She sighed, the reality of that statement taking overwhelmed to a whole new level. A lifetime of negotiating with Milo, of managing her reactions to Milo, of comforting her boys when he inevitably let them down.

  ‘Probably not,’ Taffy conceded, his voice heavy with unspoken emotion.