Truly Madly Guilty

'What?' cried Holly, predictably shocked and enraged, as if this were a brand new threat, not one she heard virtually every day of her life. 'No fair!'

'Just one mouthful,' said Sam to Holly. 'You too, Ruby.'

'Did you play with Isabel at Honey Bees today?' said Clementine to Ruby.

'Ummmm ... yes,' said Ruby. She lifted her eyes and tapped her fingers to her mouth, trying to remember. 'I mean no.'

They said she was fine at day care. Not traumatised or affected in any way as far as they could see, just happy to be back. In that first month after the accident, Clementine had decided, and she truly meant it at the time, that she would give up her career and become a stay-at-home mother. (She had even allowed for the fact that they wouldn't be able to afford the mortgage repayments, they would sell the house, sell the cello and rent a modest flat, where Clementine would spend her days grating vegetables, doing craft and never removing her eyes from her children.) She had said to Ruby, 'Would you like to give up Honey Bees and stay home with Mummy every day?' Ruby had looked at her as if she'd asked for a treat and been offered a raw carrot. 'No fank you,' she enunciated very clearly. So that was the end of that as a means of atonement.

'Fine then, I'll have one mouthful.' Holly picked up her fork and took the teeniest, tiniest possible mouthful. Her face contorted into a paroxysm of disgust.

'Oh for God's sake!' Sam thumped the palm of his hand flat on the tabletop so hard all their plates rattled and everyone jumped. He stood, grabbed both the girls' plates and walked into the kitchen where he dropped them into the sink with a loud clatter.

There was silence. Holly and Ruby looked flabbergasted. This was never part of the shepherd's pie routine. It wasn't meant to be serious. They weren't a family who yelled and thumped tables.

Ruby's lip trembled. Her eyes swam with tears.

'It's okay, Ruby,' said Clementine.

Ruby ducked her head and covered her face with her hands as if she were trying to hide.

'Oh God, Ruby, I'm so sorry, sweetheart,' said Sam from the kitchen. He sounded close to tears. 'I just got frustrated. I'm very sorry. Very, very sorry.'

Ruby lifted her tear-stained face and sucked noisily and deliberately on her thumb.

'That was actually a very loud voice, Daddy,' said Holly shakily. 'It hurt my ears.'

'I know, I'm sorry. Who wants ice-cream?' said Sam. 'Lots of ice-cream!'

'What? They can't have ice-cream for dinner.' Clementine, whose chair faced away from the kitchen, turned around to look at him.

'Sure they can,' said Sam feverishly. 'Why not?' He went to the freezer.

'They should at least have a bread roll first,' said Clementine.

'I want ice-cream!' howled Ruby, suddenly recovered and furious, waving her pink, waterlogged thumb in the air for emphasis.

'Me too!' said Holly.

'Bloody hell, Sam,' said Clementine. 'They're not having ice-cream for dinner.'

Their parenting these days was all over the place. They veered from excessive leniency to excessive strictness and back again.

'They're having ice-cream,' said Sam. He put the tub of ice-cream on the bench and pulled off the lid. He was frenzied, agitated. It was like he was on drugs. 'Who cares if they have ice-cream for dinner? Seize the day. Live for the moment. Life is short. Dance like no one is watching or whatever that crap is.'

Clementine stared at him. 'Why are you being so ...'

'Where's the ice-cream scoop?' said Sam, his head down as he looked through the cutlery drawer. 'The one with the polar bear -'

'It's lost!' shouted Clementine. 'Like everything else!'

chapter sixty-four The morning after the barbeque Dakota felt her unhappiness before she opened her eyes. It was like her whole body felt different, flatter, heavier and yet emptier, as if something had been sucked out of her. Yesterday, she had done something terrible, disgusting and irresponsible. She had played with a beautiful little girl like she was a doll and then she'd just tossed her aside when she'd got bored with her and gone to play with something else and the little girl had nearly drowned. She thought about the lady on the corner who was having a baby. Dakota and her mum had run into her at the shops just last week, and Dakota's mum had suggested that Dakota could babysit one day when she was older and the lady had been, all, 'That would be great!' and everyone had been all smiley, smiley, not knowing that Dakota was so irresponsible she could never ever be a babysitter, she would let the baby electrocute itself or get burned by an iron or pull a saucepan of hot, bubbling soup over itself or -

BANG!

Dakota jumped. There was an awful banging, crashing, smashing sound coming from the backyard. She threw off her covers and ran to her bedroom window. She got up on her knees on the window seat and pulled back the blind.

Her dad was standing in the fountain, except all the water was gone so there was nothing but ugly muddy ground. He was swinging a big metal bar like a baseball bat at the giant monument in the middle of the fountain. Dakota was reminded of some old footage she'd seen on TV once from a war or a revolution or something where hundreds of people were using ropes to pull down a giant statue of a man, and they all cheered as it slowly toppled.