My Favourite Part

61: daddy issues

"M-I-C-K-EY! M-O-U-S-E!"

Watching the animated figures dance across the screen in obscenely bright blocks of colour is sort of hypnotising. I don't even know at what point after getting home I opened a tub of cookie dough and fell into the kids' cartoons section of YouTube, but here I am, cocooned in my duvet, shovelling cookie dough into my mouth, and on season 3 episode 13 of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: 'Mickey's Mousekersize'. I know I'm going mental when I start to seriously consider Mickey and Minnie couple goals.

"Hey, Ange..." August taps her knuckles against my door, but it's open already, so she comes in warily, as she eyes the round-eared cartoon mice on my laptop screen.

"Hey, Augs! Everything good?"

"Um, yeah... I was gonna ask about something, but this looks like a... dark time," she says, her eyes darting between the cartoons and cookie dough before returning to me.

"No, no!" I shake my head, wriggling it out from under the duvet. "I was just- now's fine, come sit!"

August approaches slowly when I pat a space on the edge of my bed, and alright, maybe I'm being a little overeager, but I'll take anything over mindless Mickey Mouse to distract myself from Macklin.

"Angie, do you think Mum's been acting... weird?"

"Weird how?"

August gets her bow-shaped lips from Dad, and they both purse them the same way when they're unsure; although with August, uncertainty is rare.

"I don't know. I mean, she's been wearing makeup recently - and she never wears makeup, not even to work," she starts, raising her full brows to make clear the severity of the situation.

I nod along slowly. "Mhm..."

"And the other day, I was trying to tell her about this new shoe store in the city, and I caught her smiling at her phone."

Incredulously, I tilt my head.

"Couldn't it just have been a meme?"

"Does Mum even know what a meme is? I'm pretty sure she calls them mee-mees."

Grimacing at the memory, I nod.

"You're right. Okay then, Inspector August: what are we thinking?"

August's shoulders are high, confident in her theory. "We're thinking that Mum has a man."

"No. Way," I say, blinking fast as I consider it. A man?

It's possible. I've been so distracted with distracting myself lately, that I definitely could have missed the signs. It's been ages since Walt; it only makes sense that she'd try and move on.

"But who?" I gasp. "Oh my gosh, not that guy from the Sainsbury's? He's always smiling at her, and he never charges her 5p for the bags."

"God, no. I was thinking Leo from Marketing - he's literally the first one to like her new Facebook posts every single time. Either him or..."

"Or?"

When August's lips press together again, I'm about to thwack her in the leg and force her to come out with it, but suddenly, Mum's figure marches out from behind my door with folded arms.

"Right," she says, using her back to close the door behind her and lean against it. "Since when did who I'm dating become a gossip topic, hm? And, for your information, I know exactly how to pronounce memes."

She says it like an alien sounding out a word they only just learned how to pronounce, but it doesn't stop the self-satisfied smile she wears afterwards.