The Men and the Girls by Joanna Trollope

off.
    â€˜Come!’ Leonard shouted.
    â€˜Look,’ Kate said, holding out her hands.
    Leonard peered. ‘You need my bum stuff. What’ve you been doing?’
    â€˜Chopping chillies.’
    Leonard began to rummage in a drawer. ‘You’d earn more money on the streets.’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜James back?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Know where he’s been?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Kate said steadily.
    Leonard found a huge white plastic pot with ‘Oily Cream B.P.’ stamped on the side, and held it out to Kate. ‘Why d’you reckon he goes?’
    â€˜She interests him and he feels guilty.’
    â€˜Why don’t you like that?’
    Kate looked at him. ‘I don’t know.’
    â€˜But you don’t.’
    â€˜I’m tired,’ Kate said. ‘It’s January.’ She unscrewed the lid of the pot and took out a dollop of cream on her finger. ‘I’d forgotten what slimy stuff this is.’
    â€˜Kate,’ Leonard said. He watched her sliding her hands round and over one another in the slippery thickness of the cream. ‘Kate. If you’d only bloody marry him, you’d have the authority to object.’
    Julia was home ten minutes before she had promised to be. Thursdays were Hugh’s empty days, and he had agreed, without particular grace, to look after the twins while Julia had lunch with Rob Shiner. Julia had thought of asking Hugh to come too, for his sake, and then had decided against it, for her own, and for the sake of their future. She had left a shepherd’s pie in the bottom oven, vegetables ready prepared in saucepans, and a tub of Greek yoghurt in the fridge which her note said the boys could have for pudding with a teaspoonful of clear honey. Hugh told them they didn’t have to have honey. They always had honey, so at first they didn’t know what else to suggest until Hugh said what about jam, which they were seldom allowed. Then the possibilities of this game dawned on them and they thought of marmalade and peanut butter and then (much funnier) bubble bath or mud and then (so funny that George fell off his chair and lay shaking on the floor) poo. After that, they became extremely wild and silly and rushed round the kitchen like express trains shouting lavatory words, and Edward put a cushion on his head in order to be the bees knees of a joke and it fell off into the puddle of yoghurt he hadn’t eaten. That sobered them all up, because the sticky cushion made them think of Mummy. Sticky cushions and Mummy didn’t somehow go together.
    â€˜I’ll wash it,’ Hugh said.
    The twins dragged up chairs to the sink to help him and squirted washing-up liquid all over the cushion in looping yellow squiggles and the cushion went from being a light, soft, coloured, dry, comfortable thing to being a sad, dark, heavy wet lump. They squeezed it and shook it, and laid it on the hot lid of the Aga, where it flopped like an omelette.
    â€˜It’ll be fine,’ Hugh said. ‘When it’s dry, it’ll be just like before.’
    The twins weren’t sure about this. When Hugh took them into their little playroom – bright and clean with a big cork pinboard, and a huge low table for playing trains and painting on – for an after-lunch story, they became babyish and jostled all over him and put their thumbs in. They didn’t really listen to their story, a particularly soppy tale they had insistently chosen about a bad puppy and a good kitten, being far more intent on their wriggling battle to occupy the prime place on Hugh’s lap. After the bad puppy had chewed a little girl’s new bedroom slipper, Hugh gave up and said they were going out for a walk. They immediately shouted ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ and began to stand on their heads. For a fraction of a second, even Hugh had to remind himself that he loved them.
    The walk was not a success. George had a sock that