Sunday rolls around, bringing its normal uncertainty.
Effie is an early riser, so I am too. Another reason not to date. After nine in the evening, I morph into a pumpkin, and no-one wants one of those. Any helpful souls who suggest I keep Effie up late so she sleeps in have never experienced the horror of an overtired child, whostillrises at the same time every morning but is then bad-tempered all day. My lie-in will have to wait a year or three.
Opening my eyes from a dream where Anders is about to kiss me, I’m disconcerted to find Effie’s face an inch from mine, her breath feathering my cheek.
“You’re ‘wake,” she pronounces, her tongue not always able to twist itself around her vocabulary. “Will you read this?”
Her head retreats to make room for a book. A big book on reptiles. I recoil a little at being confronted with the imageof a venomous snake, its tongue flicked out, its beady eyes malevolent, this early in the morning.
“Give me a minute,” I breathe. “Mummy needs a cup of tea before her reading brain can function.”
“Okay,” she agrees, flopping back on my pillows. She opens the book before she adds, “Be quick.”
I smile almost certain she’s echoing her teacher’s words. Sliding out of my bed, I head for the kitchen and bathroom in that order. By the time I return, Effie’s head is bent as she concentrates on the pictures and what she can puzzle out of the text. Her reading is quite advanced for a girl of four and a half. I’d like to take the credit but it’s all Effie. She’s been going to nursery since she was two. Somehow along the way, she picked up reading.
She scoots over as I climb back into bed, placing my hot tea safely on the bedside cabinet, away from her. As soon as I’ve settled my legs under the covers, she’s back, snuggling into my side and thrusting her book into my hands. I’ve got to admit; these are some of my favourite moments. It's not often I get to cuddle my daughter.
“Read,” she instructs.
“Please?” I remind.
“Please?” She copies my tone and inflection. Effie doesn’t mean to be rude, but when she’s focused on something, it overtakes everything else.
“The Big Book of Reptiles (and Amphibians),” I begin. The book has a school library stamp, which explains why I don’t recognise it.
“What’s a fiban?” she asks. And so it starts. Reading to Effie is always slow, usually with a question every other sentence. But when I hear her stomach rumble, I call a halt. We’ve barely made it three pages in. She may have a healthy appetite when she eatsbut she’s quite capable of forgetting mealtimes altogether when she’s down an Effie-shaped rabbit hole.
As I set a bowl of Weetabix in front of her and a cup of milk for her to dunk the dry biscuits (it makes me shudder too), she asks, “If we can’t have a puppy, can we have a snake? You don’t have to walk a snake.”
I suppress another shudder. I don’t want to pass on my own prejudices to Effie. If she likes snakes, so be it. Hard as I try, I struggle to think of a reasonable reason for rejecting her request. In the end, I go with the unreasonable.
“People should only have pets they love. And although you love snakes, I don’t.”
“Why not?” she asks. “They eat mice. You wouldn’t have to worry about mices anymore.”
“One mouse, two mice. Never mices.” The correction is automatic. “Because when I was your age, Grandpa and Grandma lived somewhere with snakes that would kill you if they bit you.”
“Did you see someone get bit and die?” Her eyes are wide.
“No, I never saw anyone get bitten. But ever since, I find it hard to relax around snakes.”
“And Daddy,” she says. “You don’t r’lax round Daddy.”
I recognise my own words. It’s always a mistake to assume Effie isn’t listening. And she has the memory of an elephant.
“It’s a Daddy Day today,” she reminds me between bites of Weetabix, her mind leaping, making connections I can’t always follow.
“It is indeed,” I keep my tone neutral. He has access visits every other Sunday from ten o’clock to four in the afternoon. But he seldom arrives before midday, if he comes at all. Each Daddy Day we just have to wait to find out if the one-armed bandit that is Effie’s father will hit the jackpot or not.
I’ve tried not telling Effie when he’s due, leaving it to be a surprise when he arrives. But Effie is not a girl who likes surprises. She needs to know how her day is going to go. When Mike actually turned up, she refused to go with him. Effie had a meltdown at the prospect of being forced to go, while Mike screamed at me, claiming I was turning his kid against him.
Now she’s at school and understands about calendars, she can work it out for herself. We wait together when Mike is due and I watch her little soul being crushed on the days he doesn’t come. The thing that gets us both is the randomness. He’ll turn up six times on the trot, and she begins to think it’s fixed and then he’ll no-show. No message, no explanation, just no Mike.
I offered to cut his access to one Sunday a month, in the hope it might be more achievable, but Mike’s always had a victim complex, and my suggestion didn’t go down well. There was another polemic about mothers who poison their kids against their fathers. I gave in, not because of Mike’s tantrum but the realisation that if he missed a couple of sessions, it could be months before Effie saw her father. And unfortunately, all the research suggests a bad parent is better than no parent.
After breakfast, I sneak off to message Mike:
I’ll have Effie ready for your visit at ten. Please let me know if you can’t make it.
