At least they still did something together. I thought about cooking Sunday dinner. Then decided even thinking about it was enough of a step forward for one week, so continued lying on the sofa staring at the ceiling until they came home. Maggie had met Pop only twice before – at Lydia’s wedding, when she was six, and Fraser’s funeral, when I don’t think they even spoke. While we lived in Liverpool, Mum came to see us once a year, during the dance school breaks. Dad had been catching up on paperwork, in the middle of decorating, attending urgent meetings – making rubbish excuses for every single one of those visits. I had no idea how to nurture a relationship between a man who had built a wall that high and the child who believed he disapproved of her very existence. Of course, my mother had been scheming about it for weeks. After a very late lunch of garlic chicken, roast potatoes, parsnips, sweet potato mash, caramelized baby carrots, minted peas, roasted leeks, two varieties of homemade stuffing, chipolata sausages, cauliflower cheese, cabbage and French beans picked that morning, cranberry sauce and gravy, Mum folded her napkin and announced that Maggie and Pop would be washing up, seeing as I had helped cook the dinner.
