She has gone, and we are two again.
Poor Roger Poopy was heartbroken. He jumped into the back of her car with her bags, and sat down, looking hopefully from one of us to another, just in case somebody might say, kindly, that he too could go to school.
We didn’t. He was obliged to get out. Mark picked him up and held on to him, and we waved her off as she chugged away down the road. Then we collapsed into bed and slept soundly until it was time for work.
Roger Poopy retreated to Lucy’s room, and burrowed sadly under her quilt, breathing in the last smell of her, and sighing heavily. He is not supposed to do this, and jumped off, guiltily, when I went to look for him, and eventually he realised that he was being observed. Lucy is his favourite person, probably because she does not mind having a small loving dog curled up next to her in bed at night. He will be forlorn for a couple of days before his bounce restores itself.
I don’t know why we should have been so tired, partly because we worked late last night, but also, partly, because we had reached a small turning point in our family road. Once the children have gone away life feels very different.
We had coffee all together in bed this morning and exchanged stories about the previous night’s drunks. Lucy had discovered that you do not need to go out dressed in sequinned underwear and high heels to be fatally attractive to intoxicated young men, and I had spent an entire journey to Ambleside trying to explain to a particularly ill informed youth that even though it is almost winter in Australia, it is not almost Christmas.
He was under the impression that every day it is Christmas somewhere in the world, and had utterly failed to grasp that Christmas happens on a pre-determined date, regardless of the season. He understood my explanations, and those of his embarrassed friend, but it took some time.
It turned out that he was a degree student at the University of Cumbria. I drove away feeling not entirely sorry that Lucy had turned down the place that they had offered to her.
We woke up for work with a shock at the realisation that the expected phone call informing us of Lucy’s safe arrival at school had not happened.
She should have arrived over two hours earlier.
I have discovered over the years that when something horrible happens to one of my children, I am stricken with sympathetic agonies of fellow-suffering.
No such unpleasant sensations troubled me, and so I did not feel especially anxious on Lucy’s behalf. Nevertheless, certainty is a splendid thing, so I rang her, and she did not answer.
After that I rang the Head of Sixth Form, who said reassuringly that she would check to see if Lucy’s car keys had been handed in, which they hadn’t.
I do not do unnecessary worry. It was more than obvious that having driven off to school, her recollections of home had dissolved out of existence and she had dumped everything in her bedroom, and blithely gone to dinner.
The Head of Sixth Form does do unnecessary worry, and belted off to search for her.
Ten minutes later Lucy rang, laughing at her own absent-mindedness. She explained that she had dumped everything in her room and gone off to dinner. She had been travelling for two hours, which had been more than enough time to forget her home and family completely. We had vanished out of her head like the lake mist on a sunny morning.
I was pleased to hear this.
It is lovely to know that one’s children have achieved independence.
We can be by ourselves without needing to worry that they are lonely or missing us.
It will be nice to be two for a couple of weeks.
