Saturday meant more food shopping, Jemima opted to stay with Simon again, who didn’t seem to worry too much about being left holding the baby. He was managing to limp with the use of an elbow crutch, so he could fix her a drink or snack if necessary. Stella decided to come with me. We left after I made up another bread mix.

I bought a fresh leg of lamb, none of this New Zealand, frozen stuff. This was Welsh lamb, some of the best flavoured in the world. Of course, living in Bristol, we had relatively easy access to it, and although Cotswold lamb is good, Welsh is better. So we actually shopped at a butcher’s not a supermarket.

Along the Gloucester road, we found all the veg we needed as well, so a bottle of white wine and some mint jelly, and I had all the ingredients needed for our meal tomorrow. Today was going to be some homemade soup for lunch with the fresh bread–assuming Simon hasn’t eaten it all. For dinner, I was going to do a pasta bake, probably tuna, it’s so easy, and I had a can of condensed mushroom soup to make the sauce.

At home, once the soup was on the go, I peeled and boiled the apples, then cooled them and mashed them for the sorbet. While I was cooking, Tom arrived back and wiped off Kiki’s feet, where they’d got muddy. I was still trying to understand that as we’d had hard frosts for several days consecutively. Apparently the top surface defrosted and got muddy and very slippery.

Soup was served with fresh, still warm bread. The whole saucepan of vegetable goodness disappeared and so did the bread. They all sat about with very satisfied grins on their faces. Stella went to make the teas and coffees, while I finished the sorbet and shoved it in the freezer.

Simon had gone back to the couch for a nap with the rather replete Mima, who cuddled up with him. “They look good together,” said Stella. I smiled, but felt irritated, it seemed Mima had little time for me unless she wanted something; still, at least it kept her from getting under my feet in the kitchen.

Simon got upset when I ran round with the vacuum cleaner, “Can’t you do that later?”

“No I can’t, I’ve been on the go since I got up this morning, you’ve been sat on your increasingly large arse, I’d like to sit down sometime as well, but I have a dinner to make, so don’t you start or you’ll be cooking it!”

“I’ve been baby sitting, ask Meems.”

“Yes, Daddy bin wooking after me.”

“Well seeing as you seem to do most of that with your feet up and your eyes shut, it doesn’t strike me as exactly energetic.”

“I can’t help having a bad leg, can I? After all, I got while I was indulging you.”

“Oh that’s right, blame me, like it’s my fault you can’t ride a bloody bike.”

“I got hit off it, if you remember?”

“Yeah, so you said, if you’d taken a bit more time to get fit instead of sitting on that fat posterior, you would have been up with me and the van would have been an irrelevance.”

“Mummy cwoss. Don’t be cwoss wiv Daddy, he got a baddie weg.”

“He’s always got something wrong with him, darling, just enough to stop him actually doing anything called work. I’ll bet if we went to a disco, his mobility would dramatically improve, almost by miracle.”

“That is unfair of you, Cathy. You take that back. The only reason you’re rushing round like a blue arsed fly, is because lover boy is coming tomorrow.”

“It’s because we’re having a visitor, not a specific one. I like this place to look tidy as much as I like the food we serve to be as tasty as I can make it.”

“You make it sound like a restaurant, we’re running here,” Simon fired back.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped and stormed off leaving the vacuum cleaner in the middle of the room and ran off to my bedroom, where I fell onto the bed and burst into tears.

I must have fallen asleep because it was getting dark when I awoke. No one had come looking for me, so had they missed me–didn’t look like it. I felt really fed up. I tried to think of positive things in my life, but at this moment, there didn’t appear to be any. I might just as well be dead.

Tom poked his head around my door, “Cuppa?”

“Thanks,” I sat up, and accepted the mug of hot beverage.

“You’ve been crying.”

“Have I?”

“Yes, you have panda eyes.”

“Oh bugger,” I said and started to sniff.

He sat on the bed alongside me and put his arm around me. “I think you’d better tell me what’s going on. I heard the exchange with Simon earlier. If you want Mima, you’d better think about your relationship with Simon. If social services find a weakness, they are likely to take full advantage of it.”

“I know, but I just feel so fed up with everything.”

“Why don’t you go up to your house in Bristol for a couple of days?”

“With Mima?”

“No, leave her here with us, we’ll manage between us.”

“No way, I’m responsible for that child, so where I go, she goes too.”

“Don’t you trust us?”

“It isn’t about that, she’s my responsibility.”

“I thought we were all one family here?”

“We are…”

“There’s a but coming, isn’t there?”

“You know me better than own father ever did.”

“I think he began to understand you towards the end.”

“Don’t humour me, Tom, for most of my life he was a total shit. You’re not, you’re a caring and civilised man.”

“I thought you held Simon in the same category?”

“I do, but he’s trying to take Mima off me.” Tears were streaking down my cheeks.

“Ah, so that’s it is it, you’re jealous of him and probably of her too. It’s unusual, it’s usually the father who gets jealous of his wife, and feels left out.”

“So, I’m a failure as a mother and a woman am I? My partner is more female than me. Who am trying to kid, Tom? I’d be better off dead.” I was crying now, and he’d removed the tea from my hand before he hugged me tightly.

“You silly girl, can’t you see, this whole household revolves around you. You aren’t a failure, you’re a wonderful success, but it comes at a price–that of lots of work, which is never rewarded, just taken for granted. Millions of women share the same experience every day. We never fully appreciate the efforts of our wives and mothers, until it’s too late.”

“How can you understand me so well, Tom?” I sobbed crying against his shirt. I was aware of his masculine smell, a bit of sweat mixed with the odours of soap and his deodorant. It was a reassuring smell to me and I felt safe in his embrace, part of me wished he could hold me for a long, long time. I knew that was impossible, but don’t we always want the impossible?

“I’ve had a daughter and a wife, if you remember. I also like to think that whilst I can pretend to be an irascible chauvinist pig, I’m not, I notice when folk are unhappy, especially those about whom I care, and I care very much for you, my girl.”

“I know, Daddy, and I love you too.”

“You need to talk things over with Simon, don’t keep things back from him. He’s not stupid, but he probably isn’t aware of much of it either, he’s a bloke and they often aren’t.”

“But so are you, so how have you noticed?”

“I’m one step removed, Cathy, so I have the room to see these things, I’m also a bit older and more experienced–remember, experience is what we call our mistakes.” He chuckled at his own joke.

“So you got it wrong with your wife and daughter, then?”

“Oh yes, but I learned, eventually. My Catherine, taught me an awful lot, just as you have, about women and their plight.”

“I didn’t think I knew enough about being a woman to teach anyone, including myself.” I sniffed in my apparent failure.

“Yes you have, you’re even more natural than Catherine was, you exude a femaleness she didn’t have.”

“You mean I have PMS?”

“That as well,” he chuckled and I laughed too, until I started to cough, then I had to take a sip of tea. “Why do you beat yourself up so much, your standards are much too high.”

“What do you mean?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get a strong impression that you are scared of anyone detecting or suggesting that you’re anything but one hundred percent female. You try so hard to cover any flaws and to do things just right. Is this so?”

“Sometimes it feels like that,” I admitted.

“And if anyone says anything or challenges anything you say and do as a woman, you take it very deeply, even though the incident was probably trivial and instantly forgotten by the other party.”

“So, I can’t help it. It’s something transsexuals do.”

“And if I really wanted to upset you, I’d challenge your suitability as Mima’s custodian and guardian, in particular, your role as her foster mum.”

I felt the tears start again, “Yes,” I said very quietly.

“I am going to say this only once. Please stop trying to be a perfectionist, ordinary women make mistakes, they aren’t all perfect, far from it. You are as female as any of them, just because you don’t have ovaries and a uterus, but then neither do all of them. Forget all this, I used to be business, move on and just be the woman you are, believe in yourself, we all do.

“As for being a mother and a wife, you look after us all in those roles and for which we treat you with the same contempt we did our own wives and mothers–or so it might seem, but we love you to bits, we know it and assume you do because it’s implicit. Maybe we should say so more often but we don’t, but that’s par for the course: and the reason, because you are so natural in it. If you like, you’re a victim of your own success.

“If I was thirty years younger, I’d be chasing you myself; instead, I have to settle for being your adoptive father. I’m content with that, a small portion of someone you love and respect is better than a large portion of someone you don’t. So, come on, dry your eyes and come on down to your family, who love you to bits but also take you for granted.”

After this I howled for several minutes while he held me, safe and secure and so patient. I loved this man, who I would have chosen as my father had I been given a choice and like him, have to be content with the period of my life I can now share with him in that role.