‘So you were brought up around here?’

‘That’s what “all my life” means, yes.’

The silence expanded. Ask open, not closed questions, I told myself. ‘Where do you work? Tell me about your job,’ I persisted.

You stopped washing up, pulled off your rubber gloves and stepped towards me, pouring your angry eyes into mine. ‘I’m a wife and mother. It isn’t a job. It’s a privilege and a pleasure. I would have thought a girl like you with brains sprouting out of your ears would have realised that.’

2

Caprice

‘Have a good day at work, dear,’ I shout as you leave. ‘I’ll tidy up, and then I’ll take the children to school.

‘You’re welcome,’ I mutter beneath my breath as the front door bangs shut.

You never really thank me for all I do with the children. Difficult to work with, getting through nannies like cannon fodder, you are coming home from work early tonight to interview yet another one. In the meantime, I take the flak and help you out. And recently your ingratitude has ramped up a notch. Since I could no longer bear being cooped up in the poky annexe at the back of the house like a factory-farmed chicken, and insisted on moving into the guest suite of the house I paid for in the first place, you have been even more sparing with your thanks.

Saffron, why, when he had a homemaker for a mother, did my son choose to marry you? A selfish career-obsessed woman?

I sigh inside and begin to clear the breakfast table. I wouldn’t mind so much, but you are such an intellectual snob, looking down your nose at me because I went to secretarial college. You may have a double first in philosophy from Cambridge University, and have set up your own boutique law firm, but you live in an intellectual bubble; no empathy with real people. You talk to Miles endlessly about politics and legal issues but you never ask my opinion about anything. I am irrelevant. Invisible.

It’s not as if you have any redeeming features. I can’t understand why Miles finds you physically attractive. Your clothes are too masculine. Sharply tailored trouser suits for work. Jeans, Doc Martens and T-shirts riddled with designer holes for home life. I have to admit, you have long bleached blonde hair, which is nicely conditioned, and pretty cheekbones. But why do you spoil your face with thick horn-rimmed glasses? Haven’t you heard of varifocal contacts?

Table cleared, dishwasher loaded and rumbling, I take off my apron and walk towards the playroom. Even though you have washed and dressed the children, and given them breakfast when you got up at 6 a.m., I expect you have left them watching a boring educational programme again.

Upper middle-class children can be as underprivileged as those on benefits. ‘Quality time’ is a fallacy that deprives in its own way.

3

Hayley