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Chapter 1
There’s a trespasser in my bedroom. I snap my eyes shut and play dead but alas my daughter Lila, destroyer of circadian rhythms, is now inching under the duvet. And so here we are dancing the dawn dance again, I realise reluctantly. I can but hope that she’ll retreat to her own bedroom until the clock strikes a more acceptable hour of the morning. Six a.m., maybe? Imagine sleeping until seven, I think wistfully as I take an elbow to the ribcage, Lila now attempting to scale me like a mountain.
It’s a surprise to no one that playing dead is proving unsuccessful. My four-year-old housemate has started shrieking ‘MUMMY’ as she claws my eyes open with a force that belies her small-person size. With my eyelids unceremoniously peeled back, I spot the alarm clock next to my bed.
‘It’s five a.m.,’ I mumble through the fog of interrupted sleep. ‘Go back to your room.’ But Lila laughs in the face of instructions and today, she’s bought ammo. I must immediately admire the Duplo train set she has reverentially placed on the bed.
‘Isn’t it the best train ever? Mummy, look! Mummy? MUMMY!’ – more urgency – ‘LOOK.’
I dutifully look.
‘What’s your favourite bit?’ she probes.
It’s a challenge to muster enthusiasm for a stack of brightly coloured blocks at the best of times, more so at five a.m.
‘The blue bit?’ I suggest. Unfortunately my child is finely tuned to being fobbed off and is not pleased that I am yet to engage in the labour of love that is three plastic carriages adorned with a Duplo cat.
‘No.’ She shakes her head, tufts of blond standing on end.
Silly me, I’ve got my own opinions wrong again.
‘The red bit,’ I reply with what I hope is more conviction this time.
I am wrong.
Lila flicks on the bedside light to add a bit of blinding to this morning’s torture regime. She has her arms folded and a frown across her face, which means that the toddler tightrope has begun already. One false move from me could send the entire day into a string of seismic meltdowns. What I should do is explain calmly that toys have no place in my bed in the middle of the night and insist politely but firmly that she bugger off back to sleep (or similar).
And yet. No amount of positive parenting can prepare for the concrete stubbornness of four-year-olds. Lila is a tiny assassin with cherub cheeks. A miniature emperor who rules our roost with an iron fist. So, while I’d love to announce that I’m the one in charge around here, that would be a stonking lie. Instead, I pull myself up in bed and blurrily admire the plastic tat until she is happy because I am a great big pushover.
‘I am a morning person. I am a morning person,’ I mutter unconvincingly, eventually lurching out of bed to turn the heat on, my feet crunching over more discarded toys on the floor as I move. The irony is that I actually did used to be a morning person. Before Lila crash-landed on the scene I’d hop out of bed and enjoy a sunrise yoga class before work like a smug tosser. Not for the first time, I find myself wondering if the Sunrise Sophie of old was all a fever dream.
Three hours later and I’m having heart palpitations. After Duplo at Dawn, the morning had stretched ahead, long and languid, to be filled with plaiting hair and hosting a teddy bear picnic. Now at eight a.m., quite suddenly and with just thirty minutes until we need to leave the house, Lila has announced that today is World Environment Day at school.
I stop plaiting and freeze. Since she started at St Barnaby’s last September I’ve learned that any kind of ‘day’ requires parental input. Bloody days. As if we don’t have enough on our plates. I don’t remember reading about this one, though. I try my best to keep up with the sheer amount of school admin but the emails are so very long and then there’s the app, the text message system and the class WhatsApp to monitor too. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I pour myself a glass of wine simply to celebrate not developing a stomach ulcer from the pressure of it all.
‘World Environment Day?’ I ask, attempting casual as I scroll through my phone for clues.
Ooh here’s the email. Parents and carers, et cetera. I skim through. World Environment Day blah blah. Please help your child craft something which represents looking after our planet. Our suggestions include making bees out of recycled cardboard, growing seeds in flower pots or how about getting adventurous by crafting a set of scales with the world in balance? Fossil fuels on one side and trees planted on the other!
‘Craft something,’ I mumble, checking the time. Quite clearly I cannot grow a plant in half an hour.
‘Yes, Mummy.’ Lila beams. ‘We need to make something to take in.’
She drops the bombshell casually, a mouth full of Weetabix, her hopeful eyes trained on me. ‘Oscar says he’s made a fruit bowl out of recycled magazines.’
I know it’s wrong to formulate strong opinions on four-year-olds but Oscar, quite clearly, is a douche. He can’t pick his own nose without getting his finger stuck up there so I imagine his mum Celeste, Queen Bee at the school gates, has delegated making this alleged fruit bowl to his long-suffering nanny.
‘Right-o!’ I plaster on my best competent mother smile. ‘Let’s draw a picture of the planet.’
Lila gives me the kind of sassy look that makes me wonder whether she is secretly a teenager already.
‘Drawing’s boring.’
‘Painting, then?’ It’s a last-ditch attempt. I usually try to avoid it because of the hellish mess.
‘YES!’ She claps, thrilled, and my heart squeezes for her. Note to self: let small child paint occasionally. As I pull out the paint stuff from a cupboard that Lila can’t reach herself, I see that my phone is flashing with a warning about train delays. I’m meeting potential new clients in Bath later this morning and I cannot be late for the pitch. Normally I’d drive but my car’s in for a service and URGHHHH would it be too much to ask for things to run smoothly for once? I take a breath and tell myself not to panic. It’s all going to be okay because I’m a morning person.
Just multi-task the heck out of it, Sophie!
