Mike’s up before me. This doesn’t usually bode well. I check my phone. It’s precisely one minute until my alarm. That’s good. Bonus points for switching it off before it buzzes.
The children won’t be up for another twenty minutes. I say ‘children,’ but they’re practically adults. I shudder. Adulthood means uncertainty and danger. I ensure my slippers are perfectly aligned before stepping into them, then take my morning tablets in the correct order and rhythm. It involves popping the foils and swallowing each in turn, to the beat of ‘Another One Bites The Dust.’ My stomach stops churning.
I don’t strictly need to be up yet. It’s not as though I have a job to go to. I relinquished my career when the children were born, and I don’t regret it. Not one tiny bit. They get extra time in bed if I make their breakfast and packed lunches. Teenagers’ brains need plenty of sleep and food, and that is a proven scientific fact.
Food prep successfully completed, I move on to my shower. My task there is not so much about cleaning myself as it is about creating a vivid visual image in my mind of Tom and Anna, and imagining a perfect bubble surrounding them. Then I do the same for Mike and me together. This keeps the children and my marriage safe from harm. Sometimes the bubbles burst or they won’t form properly, or the image just isn’t clear enough and I have to start again. But today’s a good day.
A kiss for Mike on his way out the door completes Level One. But there’s no time to rest. No time to consider why he’s wearing aftershave. Or to compare myself with Kate across the road, who is climbing into her car on the way to her Very Important Job, looking immaculate. And definitely not to picture the busy road Anna and Tom have to cross to get the bus, or how they’ll be distractedly checking their phones as they walk. Not when there’s important food shopping to do.
The woman at the self-service checkout beside me is annoyingly efficient. Her items are arranged in the basket with all the bar codes facing the correct direction for the scanner. She’s out the door in seconds, beating me fair and square. Meanwhile, my bottle of wine triggers the attendant to come and verify my age, and to add insult to injury, his face doesn’t show even the slightest flicker of doubt that I’m over twenty-five.
There’s still time to claw back some points. An extra round of cleaning should do it. I’ll still have dinner in the slow cooker before Loose Women starts, and even if Anna and Tom are out for dinner and Mike stays late at work, it’s reassuring for them if there’s a home-cooked meal waiting here.
Later, with everyone home for the night, I tot up my points. Over one hundred. My precious family will be safe and intact for another day.
