Cleo

Mum’s voice was jagged over the phone. She told me not to be upset. I prepared for bad news. She’d had to take Rata to the vet again. The old dog hadn’t been coping. She couldn’t walk. The vet was wonderful, such a lovely young woman. She’d been a friend of Rata’s. She went red in the face when she and Mum made the decision. Mum stroked Rata while it was happening. She went out wagging her tail.

Video footage of Rata rolled through my mind. Sam and Rata charging through the surf, Rata helping the boys dig holes in the sand and scuffing it over disgruntled sunbathers, Sam throwing driftwood for her to rescue. Rata shaking her coat and showering us all in seawater. Rata galloping down the zigzag. Cleo curled between Rata’s giant paws. Tender, loyal Rata.

Rob didn’t say much when I told him. We put our arms around each other. He was so tall now. With the old dog’s departure another connection with Sam was broken. Mum was going to feel it, too. I invited her to spend a few days with us, though she never stayed long in our “busy household.”

Frantic was a better word for it. In the weeks the children were home it was a kaleidoscope of school runs and homework; rushing home from work to make spaghetti bolognese; bed time stories on the run. Once they were in bed I often worked on a feature that was due the next day. I was too exhausted to watch television.

It wouldn’t have been possible to hold together without Anne Marie calmly folding laundry, vacuuming, making sandwiches, tidying toys and countless other things she said nannies never do. She’d sometimes stay on for a coffee after I arrived back from work. We learned to appreciate each other’s strengths and tolerate the differences. Sometimes I’d arrive home so tired I’d collapse on the floor and doze in a patch of sun—something she said none of her employers had done before. She once commented she’d never seen anyone so tired. Yet I always managed to dredge energy up to sew fairy wings for Lydia or teach Rob how to make sushi. Nothing was perfect, but somehow things got done. I began to think there was a goddess of solo mothers who gave strength when it was needed and arranged for the right people to turn up at the right time. If there was such a goddess I reckoned she looked like a cat.

Steve was carving a new life for himself in a cottage five minutes’ drive away. I was pleased when the kids mentioned he had some women friends. He deserved another roll of the happiness dice.

Even though Philip had won Rob’s approval on the pizza night, I wasn’t sure the kids and I had met whatever expectations were floating around inside his head. He’d seen us as a set, and was no doubt beginning to absorb the enormity of entering the lives of all three of us (plus cat). The phone stayed quiet for several days. Then, to my surprise, it rang. He obviously hadn’t had enough punishment. He invited all of us, including Cleo, for a weekend at the lake.

The drive seemed longer by daylight with two extra passengers, one silent, one whining. The road buckled and bent like a cobra in its death throes.

“I’ve got a sore tummy,” moaned Lydia as the car meandered up a hill.

“No, you haven’t.” Unlike more conscientious mothers, I treated children’s health complaints as imaginary until proven otherwise.

“I’m going to frow up.”

“Take some deep breaths,” I said, turning to examine the backseat patient. Her usually jellybean-pink face had turned the color of a blueberry.

“I think we’d better stop,” I said to Philip. While I was immune to the potpourri of stale vomit and various other bodily fluids in my own car, I was certain Philip wasn’t psychologically equipped to have the ambience of his Audi permanently altered by Eau de Family.

He pulled into a siding near the top of the hill. I concentrated on the spectacular spine of ranges spread out below us while Lydia vomited copiously into a ditch.

Misty haze enveloped the cottage as the car pulled up under a silver birch. Rain was something I hadn’t counted on. Philip said it wouldn’t matter—there was always something to do at the lake. The leafy smell was intensified in the damp. Cleo recognized the place straightaway and sprang gleefully from the car into a thicket of ferns that was suspect mouse guerrilla territory.

The children were slower to be impressed. Rob gathered his sleeping bag and trudged inside, the screen door slamming behind him. Philip didn’t seem the least fazed. No doubt he’d seen the full spectrum of male behavior in the army. Alternatively, having endured his own adolescence only a few years earlier, he probably remembered what it was like. Either way, Philip seemed immune to the ogreish male teenage stuff I was at a loss to deal with.

I helped Lydia slide from the backseat onto the moist earth.

“It’s a forest,” she said, gazing up at a tree.