‘I haven’t even had time to make myself a coffee. I’ve failed to do any of the washing. I can’t even remember if I’ve been to the loo today. I don’t think I have – I don’t think I’ve done a wee in eight hours.’
‘Lucy, your child is ill, Sam is away, these are the days you just need to survive.’ Faye pauses. ‘You’re sure you don’t want me to come over? I could bring you some lavender tea.’
‘No, honestly, I just need two minutes to sit down and—’ I stop talking, startled by Felix looming over me with a half-empty box of crayons.
‘Amy ate my crayons,’ he says, brow creased in fury.
‘Sorry, Faye, I need to go. Crayons have been consumed.’
Felix and I stand over Amy in the living room, where she sits in a nest of broken crayons.
‘Do you think she’ll poop the rainbow now?’ Felix asks flatly. His tone makes me laugh, and I see a small smile play at the corner of his mouth. Together we put away all the puzzles and toys Amy has pulled down from the lowest shelf.
‘I’m sorry today was so crazy. I’ll be better tomorrow. I’ll get up really early.’
Felix shrugs, he seems more annoyed about the crayons than anything else.
‘What’s the opposite of eating? Is it “not eating”, or is it being sick?’ he asks me.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, confused by this complete non-sequitur.
‘I think it’s being sick. What’s that beeping?’
‘It’s the washing machine. I can’t turn it off.’
He heads towards the laundry room and I follow with Amy.
‘I’m not letting you out of my sight, you little tornado of havoc,’ I tell her, gently pushing a finger to her nose. She grins up at me angelically.
Felix pulls down the barricade of clothes and shows me a button on the side of the machine. He holds it down for the count of three and finally, silence.
‘Wow. That easy, huh?’
Felix gives me an ‘It was nothing’ shrug. I slump down in the monumental pile of laundry.
‘I’m not very good at this, am I?’ I say quietly.
‘You’re doing okay,’ Felix says, lowering himself down into the laundry pile beside me. Then I feel his arm around my shoulders, Felix is hugging me. My son is hugging me. I have a son. The lightness of his small arm around my shoulder stirs something inside me, a new unfiltered affection for him, breaking over me like a wave. I don’t want to move or say anything because I don’t want him to stop.
‘Real Mummy finds it hard too. Sometimes she goes outside and shouts at the vegetables when she doesn’t want to shout at us.’
I don’t know whether this nugget of information is reassuring or disturbing. Passing him my phone, I say, ‘Come on then, show me these websites you want me to upload your drawing to.’ A promise is a promise.
Felix takes the phone, his face beaming. He taps away, then hands it back to me. ‘This is the best one, the site Molly’s dad said to use.’ He points to the website he’s opened, Arcadefind.co.uk. ‘It’s for people who collect these machines from the olden days.’ He hands me back the phone and I scroll through the subject headings. ‘Wanted; replacement red joystick for Donkey Kong arcade machine 412’. There are some incredibly niche requests on here. Maybe Felix is right. Maybe someone on this site knows where I can find that wishing machine.
It only takes a few minutes for me to create a profile and a post on the site’s ‘looking for’ page.
USER: WishingFor26
LOOKING FOR: Vintage Wishing Machine
DESCRIPTION: Coin operated, 10p to flatten and inscribe a 1p coin with ‘Your wish is granted’. Yellow neon lights, plays a tune that sounds like ‘Camptown Races’.
SIGHTINGS: Newsagent’s on Baskin Road, South London, sixteen years ago.
Once I’ve created the post and uploaded Felix’s sketch, I show it to him. ‘It’s a long shot. We shouldn’t get our hopes up,’ I tell him firmly. I’m telling myself, too.
‘Someone will see it,’ he says confidently. ‘Someone will know where it is.’
At a muffled wail from behind us, we both turn to see Amy with a pair of leggings over her head. Pulling them off, I give Amy a goofy smile. She giggles and reaches for my face, grasping my cheeks like they’re Play-Doh.
‘What do you think the princess of the laundry room wants for tea?’ I ask, getting to my feet and taking Amy with me.
‘We both like fish fingers,’ Felix says, following me out of the laundry room.
‘Okay, fish fingers it is. I can probably manage that.’ Then, because Amy’s huge eyes are staring at me expectantly, I cover my face with the leggings. ‘Oh no, the octopus has got me!’ I cry and Amy squeals with delight as I mime being attacked by the leggings. ‘Quick, Captain Felix, the princess of the laundry room is in trouble, she needs a boat!’
Amy claps her hands, transfixed. Felix shoots me a confused scowl.
‘Captain, we don’t have long. The princess can’t swim!’
There’s a plastic laundry basket behind him, and grudgingly he pushes it towards me with his foot.
‘You’ll need to do it, Captain, the octopus has got me in its clutches,’ I yell dramatically, putting Amy down and miming a fight with my legging-clad hand.
Felix walks slowly across to us, picks up Amy and plonks her in the laundry basket, rolling his eyes at me as he brushes his fringe away from his eyes. But I sense a glimmer of interest, so I step up my performance and go all in, channelling all my drama experience, which consists of playing Sheep Number Five in my primary school nativity play.
‘She’s safe for now, but to get her home, we need to defeat the evil octopus king’ – I wave the leggings in the air – ‘ascend the waterfall’ – I point to the stairs – ‘then take on the Bathtub of Many Questions, before reaching the safety of Castle Cot.’ I pause for dramatic effect. ‘Are you with me, Captain?’
Felix looks around, embarrassed, perhaps checking to see if anyone is watching us. His eyes flicker with indecision. Amy claps in anticipation, completely invested in whatever this is. ‘Please, Captain Rutherford, I can’t do this without you.’
Time stands still, then the urge to play wins. Looking around the room, I grab a pillow from the sofa and throw it to Felix. ‘Your octopus shield, man.’ He bangs the pillow to his chest, launches himself at my legging-clad hand, and a fight to the death ensues. Amy stands up in her boat, applauding our performance. Now that Felix is involved, the game notches up a level in complexity. He tells me that before getting up the waterfall of seven fishes, we must take out the octopus’s lair in the playroom. He grabs a dressing-gown cord from the laundry pile and ties it onto Amy’s boat so we can pull her along as we leap across the furniture. Felix commits to the game with a ferocity I couldn’t have predicted. When we’re both safe on the living-room rug, with Princess Amy moored up in her boat, Felix points to the toy basket at the other side of the room.
‘That’s the secret lair,’ he whispers. ‘Neckie’s in there. He’s the leader. To get up the waterfall we’ve got to get him and his goons out of there, distract them so we can get to the button.’
‘What does the button do?’ I ask, genuinely keen to know.
‘Anti-gravity button. It reverses the flow of the water.’