Page 75 of Daydreamer
Lucy and I had built what my mother and Hetty both agreed was a “modern monstrosity” in between Moonreach and my mum’s estate. For the last five years we’d lived between here and London but, given how good the village school was and how much the kids loved it here, we were likely to be based much more in Little Buckingham going forward.
“Henry Moretti!” I shouted as Legolas started picking up speed. “You come back here!” Legolas, ever willing to piss me off, broke into a canter just at the point I decided to pick up Bea and give chase. The old bastard barely managed a trot usually, but he had it in for me after years of preventing him from eating Lucy’s maps. “Jesus Christ,” I said as I saw the gate was open.
“Cheese and rice,” Henry shouted gleefully – now thoroughly enjoying being a passenger on the all-out run across the countryside we were having to do. I was going to kill that pony. We followed them over the field and through the gate. I knew where the furry menace was headed now as The Badger’s Sett pub garden came into view. Henry squealed as Legolas jumped the small fence separating our land from the pub’s. Unfortunately it took a little longer for me to negotiate the fence withBea in my arms, so by the time we made it into the garden, Legolas had already knocked over a couple of tables and snatched an apple right out of Emily’s youngest daughter’s hands.
Emily snorted. “Good luck, Moretti.”
“What the bloody hell kind of show are you running there?” shouted Jimbo as we ran into the back door after Legolas. There was a trail of destruction in here too.
“Free Sunday lunches for everyone,” I cried over my shoulder and a cheer went up amongst the patrons despite the carnage we’d left behind.
“And drinks, you tight git,” Mikey called after me, and I gave him a one-finger salute as we emerged onto the street.
“Daddy!” Bea admonished. “You mustn’t finger swear.”
“I was waving at your uncle.”
“That was not a nice wave. I knows all about finger swears. Theo Harding does them all the time.”
Well, Theo Harding was a little shit just like his dad, who I would be having a word with once I’d found that bloody pony. I was really panicking now. Little Buckingham didn’t get a lot of traffic, but it only took one car to?—
“Missing something?” My head snapped around and I breathed a sigh of relief. Standing there in front of the village shop was my very beautiful and very pregnant wife holding onto the reins of a not-looking-in-any-way-sorry Legolas with one hand, and the hand of our overexcited son in the other.
Bea wriggled in my arms to get down and then ran over to them. “Daddy said ‘cheese and rice’andhe finger swore at Uncle Mikey.”
I scowled at the little snitch, but she stuck her tongue out at me and hid behind her mother’s legs. Lucy sighed.
“I was gone for twenty minutes, Felix,” she said.
I threw up my hands. “They’re totally unmanageable.”
“We are not unmanny-at-all,” Bea said, her hands going to her hips in indignation. “Mummy’snever lost one of us.”
“That’s because your mother is perfect,” I said as I stalked over to them, plucked Henry off the ground to tuck him under one arm then reached down to tuck Bea under the other before tickling them both. Then, with the kids still under my arms I leaned forward and kissed Lucy.
“Ew, gross,” complained Henry as they both wriggled out of my grip.
“Daddy, you do some things good,” put in Bea, clearly concerned that she might have hurt my feelings.
“Oh really? What’s that then?”
“You give really good cuddles. You can throw us in the air super high. You let us climb trees way higher than Mummy. And you… can cook really good pancakes.”
“Well, thank you for that performance review.”
Lucy smiled up at me as she burrowed under my arm and kissed my neck. “Your dad does have his strong points.”
Lucy had been worried that the daydreaming side of her would make parenting difficult. It took a lot of reassurance when she first fell pregnant for her to believe that she wouldn’t just one day forget the twins existed as she dreamt up another story. I worked mostly from home for the first three months after they were born, and then she’d often come into the office with the twins. But it turned out that, when it came to the kids, inattention was not a problem. Lucy was in fact way more of a helicopter parent than me, hence my allowing Henry off the lead rope and the ensuing chase across Little Buckingham.
“Mama, I’m tired,” Henry said in a small voice, and we looked down at him to see him swaying on the spot. Henry was a full-power kid, but when his battery ran out, he just sort of deflated. I scooped him up, and he nuzzled into my neck.
“Sorry, Daddy,” he said around a yawn.
“I’m riding Legolas home,” Bea declared, using the opening of her brother’s exhaustion to her full advantage. So that’s how we walked through the village – Bea riding Legolas, one of my arms around Lucy and the other holding up a muddy, nearly asleep Henry.
When we arrived back at the house, Bea was just as exhausted. I listened to Lucy tuck them into their beds for a nap and waited outside the door for what I knew they’d ask. Almost in unison the question came:
“Mummy, can you tell us a story?”