“But what about the twins?” Trish asked. “You can’t take them, can you?”
“Medical opinion thinks it wouldn’t be good for growing bones to be in gravity that low. That’s the favor. We wondered if you could take them. There’s room, and they always love visiting you. We could ask Sophie’s parents, but they’re getting old. Well, they’re younger than you are, but they’re somehow resigned to being old and sort of mummifying in it, not like you. I always feel I have to tiptoe in their house—whereas your house is always lively.”
“Of course I will,” Trish said, sitting down at the kitchen table and fumbling with the notepad. “When would you have to go?”
“Sophie would go almost immediately, but I’d stay here until the end of the school year. Then they could come to you for the summer and start school up there in September.”
“You seem to have it all sorted out,” Trish said. “I should really check with Bethany before disrupting her this way.”
“I thought they could go to my old school,” George said, disregarding this. “That’s another plus to them being in Lancaster. The schools in Aberystwyth are very dull. But Lancaster has great schools, it always has had. I know the Grammar School has gone comprehensive, but from what I hear everyone’s getting an excellent education up there.”
“The schools are doing fine. And so is the university. We saved the market. And we’re even keeping the old swimming pool open instead of opening a stupid new one in the middle of nowhere,” Trish said, well briefed on local issues by Bethany. “But why are you talking about the grammar school? How old are the twins now, exactly?”
“They were six in February,” George said. “Too young for the grammar school for a while yet!”
After she had put the phone down she found her pen and wrote firmly TWINS, JUNE and put it on the fridge. Then she wrote it down on all her other lists.
Bethany helped her get rooms ready for Rhodri and Bronwen. They got a man to come and help move beds and paint, and they bought new duvets—one with dolphins and one with dinosaurs. “That wouldn’t have been my top choice to say boy or girl,” Bethany said, shaking the covers on.
“They’re very pink dinosaurs, and the alternative was yachts or houses,” Trish said. “Boy and girl stuff doesn’t matter the way it used to anyway. Things are much less gendered than they were when my kids were small, or even when Tamsin and Alestra were.”
“It’s great really,” Bethany said. “Huge strides for women. Dinosaurs!”
George arrived with the twins on a rainy Sunday morning. “We’ve brought masses of books and toys and clothes,” he said, proceeding to unload the car and dash inside with armfuls of things. “But buy them whatever they need. I’ve opened an account for you to draw on.” He handed her a checkbook and a bank card. “The pin number is the year of your birth, change it when you get the chance.”
Trish wrote the number down on her pad. “I’ll change it,” she said.
“Would you really forget it?” George asked.
“Things fall out of my head like water sometimes,” she admitted. “And I never know which things.”
“You won’t forget to collect the children from school?” he asked anxiously.
“Bethany’s here to help,” Trish said.
“That’s a relief!”
The children had vanished into the house. “Helen’s coming over later with her kids so they can all play,” Trish said. “How long are you staying?”
“Just tonight I’m afraid. Tomorrow morning I’m flying from Manchester to Miami and from there to Kennedy. I’ll be on the moon before next Sunday.”
“Amazing,” Trish said.
“Thanks for doing this, Mum. It makes all the difference knowing they’ll be looked after properly.”
Rhodri and Bronwen ended up staying for two years on that visit. Trish enjoyed having children around again. She cut down her evening classes to one a week, for which Helen babysat. She taught two adult education classes in the afternoons, which she did not enjoy as much—they were basic literacy classes. At her evening classes she had the fun of seeing people who had never had the chance to appreciate literature learning how to do it. Here she was teaching adults to read, which she admitted was necessary, but more of a slog.
She spent more time with Helen than she had for years. Helen worked while her children were at school. She did some programming for businesses where Don sold systems, and some time working in the shop selling computers and games and other programs. She stopped work every day at three and collected the children from school. Often now she collected all four children and brought them back to Trish’s house for a few hours.
“It reminds me of when Tamsin and Alestra were young,” Trish said, listening to the children chase each other around the garden.
Tamsin was in the third year of a professional nursing program in Manchester. Alestra was about to graduate from university.