Loving Family

Faye: Winter Storm

The magazine came out in late November, just after Mick's birthday and, being him, he hunted down a copy the day it was released and brought it home after work. For some reason he always liked to have a physical copy of the magazine when I was in magazines, which was fine, though felt slightly weird to me when it was us. After all he was at the photoshoot and we had the pictures from that already, but he always told me that he liked how they made the magazines look. I think he secretly liked to keep them because he knew back in the old days I'd kept magazines and cut outs of articles as my own personal record of what I'd done, and he liked to add to that, knowing these days I didn't really with magazines. And naturally Benjamin was curious about it and Evalynn wanted to read the article, in part because it was about her, and part because of me. So I found the three of them sat, the magazine open on the floor, looking at it. Benjamin grinning about how pretty me and Evalynn looked, Evalynn reading the report and Mick no doubt just enjoying the fact he was in possession of another magazine that had a place in our relationship.
"You read it? I mean I brought it so you and Ev could, but someone might have sent you it before it released." He told me.
I laughed. "Not yet. Is it good?"
"Well Eva seems to be approving so far." He said. "B just likes how pretty you two are dressed I think."
Benjamin had been fascinated by both mine and Evalynn's dresses in the photoshoot, where neither of us wore dresses normally I presumed, and I thought it was really sweet. It had given Evalynn a much needed confidence boost during the shoot to hear her little brother say he thought her dress looked 'really super special' because I knew how much she hated it. He always loved pictures of me no matter how old they were, and he liked the music videos too, that was always a bonus. I was suspecting he felt a little bit the same about pictures of Evalynn, though they had the added bonus that they were still a novelty to him at the minute.
"Mamma and Evvy like a princess." Benjamin decreed when he realised I was looking at him.
I grinned. He said it every so often and every time it felt beautifully precious. "Awwh thank you baby."
"Thanks Benji." Evalynn added, glancing up from the magazine to slip her arm round him. He smiled.
"You want me to find something to do with B so you can read together?" Mick asked.
"No, it's fine. Unless Evalynn has a burning need for time with me?" I checked.
She shook her head.
"Alright well then, would anyone like to play a game when Ev's done reading?"
Both children agreed, and as much as Mick protested he should go make dinner Evalynn and Benjamin bullied him into a game of memory anyway. It predictably ended in all the frustration and giggling that I'd learnt to expect from my two crazy children. Especially when Mick, having got three pairs right in a row, got "Daddy!" yelled at him by a slightly grumpy Benjamin, followed up by "Daddy's not being fair!" from Evalynn (over which she turned bright pink from embarrassment and couldn't stop laughing properly for 5 minutes). Everything felt so happy. Then, while Mick made dinner, I helped Benjamin with his tricky words for the week and Evalynn sat at the top of the stairs to read. She liked the window ledge at the top of the stairs, I think she liked to sit there and observe the world, or feel like at any given moment she could do if she needed to.

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Mick had to be away for work again at the start of December, typical we wouldn't be together for our anniversary, though I was feeling more confident about his absence this time. I'd been gifted once again with the sight of Evalynn launching herself into a tight embrace on the morning he was going away and I found it adorable once again. He'd promised me he'd try his best to stay safe and keep in touch as even when he'd left for the trip the weather forecast wasn't looking too promising for either here or Germany (where he was going). It had turned out so much worse than we'd imagined. I'd had both children helping me with cooking during the early evening as the wind had slowly gained it's strength and neither had seemed that concerned really until Evalynn accidentally caught the weather warning on the local news and had understood what was going on immediately after seeing it.
"Is it going to flood?" She asked, breathing heavily.
"Urhm well possibly, why?" I asked, inviting her to come sit on my lap for comfort. She immediately did and I quickly remembered why this didn't work so well with Evalynn as it did Benjamin.
"Because last time there were big floods in Gloucester was with a red weather warning. And they were bad because it took out all the water in the city and the power for a bit..." She trailed off, pressing her head against my chest.
I'd mostly forgotten about the 2007 floods, it being one of the rare occasions when a news-worthy major weather event hadn't too dramatically affected the place I'd lived in so it had never occurred to me that she'd remember them as being such a big bad problematic thing. I slipped my arms round her, only able to guess at how scary it would have been for the situation to be that bad. "Well hopefully it won't be that bad darling."
"Wind can do that?" Benjamin asked.
"Well it can take out electricity but only when it's really bad and scary. This one's not big and bad and scary yet so we don't need to worry just at the minute." I bit down against my urge to reassure them both it would be alright and the storm would miss us knowing that would only make things worse when things did then inevitably start going wrong later.