Horse Face

Fifteen

The next couple of days pass by in a bit of a blur, I am living on auto pilot, doing the usual things but with a preoccupied brain. I feel like I don't even know my own family and, even though I hate to admit it, they don't know me either. Rebecca is working, home for tea and then goes out. Sometimes she comes home, sometimes she doesn't. Cam is either hiding in his mancave of doom with his friends, or out, Rosa is quite content or will be when we have made cakes for the cake sale at school tomorrow and Philip has been home for the last couple of nights. I am too busy observing his behaviour and looking for his phone to communicate with him properly. We do the usual 'How was your day?' and polite talk over dinner, then he does his PlayStation thing and I watch Netflix and dream up ways of making his life hard if we get divorced. So far, I have come up with a few ideas.

Take PlayStation and hit it with a hammer, then put the plastic scraps in a sandwich bag and give them to him, on the pretence that I have made his packed lunch for work. I thought I could add a nice little note saying something along the lines of; 'This PlayStation is in the same state as our marriage. . . in bits. '

Wrap Dexter the Demon Dog up in wrapping paper and deliver it to his new shagpad, I mean flat, and tell him it's a housewarming present.

Wait until he moves out and then report him to environmental health for being a really noisy shagger. I could send an email to his boss pretending that I live next door and my children are traumatised by it and could he please have a quiet word with Philip and ask him to keep the noise down and his windows closed.

It's Wednesday and I still haven't managed to get hold of Philip's phone. it made me realise something. He never leaves it lying about. Never ever. Why have I never noticed before? And when he sleeps, he has it next to him on charge, face down. Last night I asked him why his phone was face down, I told him he would scratch the screen if he kept doing it. He replied saying that notifications for his phone games come through during the night and the light wakes him up. A likely story.

'Are we making cakes mummy?' asks Rosa. 'It's the cake sale tomorrow.' she says excitedly.

'Shall we go and buy some really yummy ones?' I ask her hopefully. 'They have some really nice ones in the shops.' I add hopefully.

Rosa pulls a cross face before saying, 'That isn't the same. Everyone else is making theirs.'

'Well ok then, if you really want to.' I say. 'Philip, would you go to the shops and get some ingredients?' I ask him.

Leave your phone behind, leave your phone behind, please leave your phone behind.

'Sure, what do we need?' he says getting up off the sofa and stretching.

'Cooking chocolate and a couple of cheat boxes, so we can just add egg and water' I tell him. 'Oh, and can you grab some bread and cupcake cases as well.'

'Right so cake boxes and bread, and what else?' he asks. 'Just text it to me' he says patting his pockets to make sure his phone is there.

Shit.

'Ok, I say smiling, but it's more of a grimace.

I cannot bake cakes, period. Nothing about me is remotely artistic or talented for cake making, and it is all Philips fault. I stare at the cake I have just iced and at the box which has a picture on the front. That is, presumably, what they are supposed to look like.

Usually, the cheat boxes just have a bit of icing and then a wafer paper picture to stick on the top, but not these ones. These give you a big lump of coloured icing that you have to make a dinosaur out of. On the box it has orange icing, four green spikes a head and two spots either side. Mine has three spikes because I ran out green, a head that looks like a caterpillar and spots that look like a ladybird.