Summertime by Raffaella Barker Page B

information superhighway. He and Giles have sorted it all out in a series of expensive phone calls, and they even got Charles to give me one of his old computers, which is little short of a miracle. It was delivered last week, and we have made great strides in getting it out of its box and up and running with some shooting and chasing games favoured by the boys.
    I have to choose whether to have my email brought to me by Virgin or Demon, Sonnet or Silence. It all sounds so poetic, and romantic. David and I will communicate across the time zones in a highly modern and up-to-date fashion. We will be like the peopleyou see in car and mobile phone advertisements on television, dressed in taupe and slate with lots of hair gel, smiling into green-screened computers as we download crucial documents and send them on. I’m not sure where to.
    Finally select Angel as my delivery company, and persuade them to let me have ‘[email protected]’ as my email address. I am delighted with my amusing and original idea, until I realise how silly I sound giving this address out to the various corporations I work for. David laughs when I ring him to tell him I have the technology and the address all ready to go.
    â€˜You’ll get the hang of it very soon. And Giles and Felix will know what to do if you get in a muddle. But I think you should change your email address to something less provocative. You’ll attract some very odd mail if you give it out indiscriminately.’
    â€˜But I can’t. It took hours of nightmare on the telephone to the helpline to get that one, and I’ve given it to loads of people already. It’ll just have to be fine. Or you’ll have to come back and change it for me.’
    He answers in the dead straight, very serious, smoky-voiced way I love, ‘You know I would if I could.’
    What is it about distance that brings resentment so powerfully to the forefront of a relationship? And is it just me, or is David also feeling resentful, but hiding it better?
    Battle to keep truculence out of my voice as I ask, ‘Well, are you coming back for Desmond and Minna’s wedding?’ But it is hard, as I am convinced that the answer will be no.
    The line buzzes and snaps with distance and the strain of the connection, but through it he answers, ‘Well, I was going to surprise you, but actually, I can’t bear not to tell you. Yes, I am. I’ve got a week—’ The line blips and dies. I haven’t had a chance to tell him that the wedding is going to be here, but it doesn’t matter. I’m sure he’ll love it.
    Dance around the kitchen singing hooray, hooray with The Beauty, who is taking after her grandmother as a reveller, and pronounces, ‘Let’s have a party.’ She swiftly removes all her clothes and replaces them with an old nightie and a vest covered with pink sequins, bought at a recent jumble sale.
    â€˜Do dancing, Mummy,’ she commands, bobbing about in circles like a shuttlecock in her ragged lacy nightdress, undeterred by the lack of music. I obey, doing just as she tells me, anxious to avoid confrontation and thus leave myself free to think.
    The knot garden is waterlogged and swamplike, everywhere else is a mudbath, and there are no flowers anywhere to be seen. In the house squalor reigns, no one has made their bed or picked up any clothes since Easter. There are half-empty baked bean and tuna fishcans in the fridge, as well as certain items of sports equipment, and ants and hens (living, not oven-ready) in the larder, all testament to the slobsville level our domestic set-up has reached. Worst of all, neither Lowly nor The Beauty show any sign of becoming house- or potty-trained. The wedding is on May Day, in three weeks’ time. David will be back in twenty days. We must make efforts to improve by then. Surely it is possible?
    April 12th
    Improvements are making everything a hundred times worse, and very much more