It clicked shut behind her, but not before Blofeld, the family’s other cat, slipped in and trotted across the kitchen floor. Bell looked across at Linus again, seeing how he watched until Hanna disappeared from sight down the steps. A room always felt different when she left it, as though the oxygen–nitrogen balance of the air itself changed; she was somehow all things – elegant yet chaotic, softly spoken yet commanding.
‘Right, champ, you just about ready to shoot? One of us overslept her alarm this morning, and you’ve got your maths quiz today. We don’t want to be late,’ she said, immediately setting about gathering the dirty plates off the kitchen table and putting them in the sink – out of sight until she could deal with them later.
‘I don’t want to go,’ he said, watching as Bell wiped a blob of honey off the worktop with a tear of kitchen paper.
‘Sure you do.’ It was the same every Wednesday morning, maths not being his strong point. ‘What’s eight times four?’
‘Thirty-two.’ The hesitation had been only fractional. They had spent every morning and afternoon walk to and from school this week learning this times table.
‘Nine times eight.’ She glanced up at him as she scooped up the carton of oat milk and replaced it in the fridge, along with the jam, cheese and pickles.
‘. . . Seventy-two.’
She gave an impressed nod. He hated the numbers higher up the ladder. ‘Eleven eights.’
‘Too easy,’ he scolded. ‘That’s a cheat one.’
She shrugged. ‘If you think that, then you’re totally ready. You’re going to slay it today and that gold star will be yours.’
‘Nils will beat me. He always does.’
‘Not this time. You’ve got this. He got the fours and the sevens and the threes, but you got the fives, sixes and nines. And now the eights will belong to you too.’
He stared at her. Could it be true? Could he really beat his old foe? She gave a nod in silent affirmation and he slid off the chair. ‘Good boy – shoes on. And tell your sisters they’re wearing their hats. No arguments. It’s bitter out there this morning.’
He darted out of the kitchen, hollering up the stairs at the twins as Bell rinsed the coffee machine’s foamer before the milk dried to a stubborn crust. Twenty seconds later, there came the stampede of tiny feet down the stairs.
‘Let me see,’ Bell said as they skidded to a stop in front of her, mouths pulled back in rictus grins to show their gleaming milk teeth. ‘Very good,’ she smiled, wiping a bit of toothpaste from the corner of Tilde’s mouth and taking the hairbrush from her hand. ‘Now who’s having plaits today?’
‘Me!’ Elise’s hand shot up first.
Hanna and Max didn’t mind the girls wearing the same clothes – as was often their wont – but they liked their hair to be worn in separate styles to impose some sense of difference between them. The point of the exercise was to promote the girls’ individuality but it was a helpful marker of distinction for the outside world too: they really were truly identical. When she had first started, it had taken Bell several weeks to confidently know which twin was which, but now she saw their differences easily. Both had what Max called his ‘buggy’ blue eyes and long limbs, but whilst Elise had their mother’s self-composed Mona Lisa smile and confidence, there was a tiny crook to the left in Tilde’s grin, and her left foot was fractionally pigeon-toed – the faintest strain of a palsy? It was common in twins.
With practised deftness, Bell quickly brushed Elise’s white-blonde hair free of her bedtime tangles, ignoring her dramatic squeals of protest, and plaited it into pigtails. Tilde had a half-ponytail with a blue gingham beribboned band. ‘Okay, very smart. Now boots on. Hats on. Gloves on. Quick-quick-quick.’
Linus walked back in, fully dressed and with his backpack already shrugged on his shoulders. His lips were moving but no sound escaped them as he ran through the eights again.
‘Five eights?’ Bell said, knotting the girls’ scarves.
‘Forty-eight.’
She hitched an eyebrow fractionally as she pulled their hats down over their ears.
‘Forty! Five eights are forty,’ he corrected himself quickly, the panic evident in his voice.
‘Good boy. Don’t worry. It was just a slip. Remember to breathe.’
He shot her an annoyed look. Nine-year-old boys didn’t appreciate mindful reminders such as remembering to breathe.
‘Okay. Have we got everything?’ She assessed them swiftly. Everyone was clean and bundled up. ‘Right, quick march. We’ll have to walk fast if we’re not going to be late.’
‘Did you oversleep again Bell?’ Elise asked.
Bell shot her a bemused grin. ‘Cheeky . . . And yes, I did.’
‘I can take my board and go on ahead,’ Linus said immediately, as though helpfully.
Now it was Bell’s turn to shoot him a look. He knew perfectly well his mother’s views on that, with all the hills in their neighbourhood.
‘Fine,’ he muttered, walking to the back door and holding it open as the twins followed after him – a reluctant young gentleman, but a gentleman nonetheless.
‘Twelve eights,’ Bell said, locking the door as the girls ran down the steps to see whether the birds had eaten any of the seeds they had left out on the bistro table overnight. The frosts were still hard at the moment, and all four of them had been broken-hearted to find a dead sparrow on the ground the other morning.
Inside the house, the phone started ringing just as Bell pulled the key from the lock. She sighed and hesitated, staring back in at the superficially tidy kitchen – the dirty dishes hidden from view here, the crumbs too small to see on the counters. But the signs of a sprawling, unwieldy life lay scattered everywhere: a basket of laundry had been brought up from the utility room, ready for ironing; a raincoat from last night’s showers was slung across the back of a hemp linen armchair, rather than hanging from its designated hook, no doubt leaving a water mark. The weekend’s newspapers had been carried through from the living room, almost but not quite making it to the recycling bin. The water in the glass vase of lilies had been used up, she saw, and needed immediate refreshing . . .
She dithered as she listened to the phone ring on the other side of the glass. They would be late if she answered it, but there was something always so urgent, so insistent about a ringing phone. The ringtone for her mobile was set to ‘Lark’, far less . . . pressing. What if it was Hanna or Max? Had they forgotten something? Hanna had been in her version of a rush, with that emergency . . .
‘. . . Ninety-four.’
Huh? She glanced back towards the outdoor table. The girls were kneeling on the cafe chairs, freeing the sunflower seeds from their stuck-down positions with little fingertips. She made a mental note to remind them to wash their hands if they handled the chicks that had recently hatched at their nursery; now that the babies were a couple of weeks old, the children were allowed to pet them.
‘Twelve eights are ninety-four . . .’ Linus frowned. ‘No – wait . . .’
‘I’m just going to answer that quickly,’ she said with an impatient sigh, pushing the key back into the lock. It might make them a minute later, but it would be sod’s law Hanna did need something, and then she’d have to do an extra trip back here later. ‘It might be Mamma.’