Work Text:
Day seven. Benedict had survived day seven.
This was not a given. At various points across the past hundred and sixty-eight hours he had genuinely questioned whether all five of them would make it to Sophie's return intact, or whether the house would simply reject them, collectively, the way a body rejects an organ transplant. The purple handprint on the hallway wall (Vivi, acrylic, Wednesday, motive still unclear) had been the first sign of systemic failure. The pizza boxes stacked by the recycling bin told the rest.
Four. He'd ordered Pizza Express four times. Sophie had meal-prepped before she left. Fourteen labelled containers in the freezer, each with heating instructions written on masking tape in her neat, squared handwriting. He'd made it through three of them before Alex had opened the freezer on Tuesday evening, surveyed the remaining containers, and said, "Dad, I would rather eat my own shoe," and Vivi had burst into tears because she thought Alex was actually going to eat her shoe, and Willow had gone very quiet in the way that meant she was composing a letter to Sophie in her head, and Charlie had looked up from her phone just long enough to say, "Domino's or Pizza Express?"
Pizza Express. Every time. Because he was weak and they knew it.
Now it was Saturday morning and Sophie's train from Edinburgh arrived at King's Cross at half two, which gave him approximately four hours to transform this household from crime scene to welcoming committee. He stood in the kitchen doorway and assessed.
The island was covered in Alex's revision notes, spread in a pattern that suggested either an elaborate study method or the aftermath of a paper explosion. Willow's sketchbook lay open on the sofa, a half-finished watercolour of Dubu drying on the page. The dog himself was asleep under the dining table, his golden coat still faintly sticky from Thursday's peanut butter incident, which Benedict had decided to address by simply not addressing it.
Charlie sat at the table, earbuds in, typing on her laptop with the sort of controlled ferocity required in composing a document that would determine the fate of nations. She was sixteen. The document was probably her history coursework. She'd been awake since half five.
"Charlie."
Nothing.
"Charlotte."
One earbud came out. She looked at him with Sophie's eyes, dark and assessing. "What."
"We're going to the farmers market. All of us. Together. As a family unit."
"Why?"
"Because your mother comes home today and we're going to buy her flowers and pastries and pretend we haven't been living like feral animals for a week."
"I haven't been feral. I've maintained my schedule."
"You've maintained your schedule. The rest of us have been in freefall. I need you to rally the troops."
Charlie removed the other earbud. This was her version of agreeing. "Alex won't want to go."
"Alex doesn't want to do anything that doesn't directly serve Alex's interests. We're going anyway."
"Willow's been crying again."
Benedict's chest compressed. "When?"
"This morning. In the bathroom. She thinks I didn't hear her."
Willow. Ten years old and homesick for a person, not a place. She'd slept in his and Sophie's bed three nights running, curled on Sophie's side, her face pressed into the pillow. He hadn't said anything about it. Just left the door open and let her come.
"I'll talk to her."
"Don't make it weird," Charlie said. "She doesn't want to talk about it. She just wants Mum."
"I know."
"Also, someone needs to do something about Vivi's hair. She won't let me touch it."
Vivi's hair. Right. Sophie normally braided it each morning, a French plait that kept the fine dark strands out of her face. Benedict had attempted this on Monday. The result had been so architecturally unsound that Alex had photographed it and sent it to Sophie, who had responded with a single emoji: a skull.
By Wednesday he'd graduated to passable pigtails. By Friday, Vivi had taken matters into her own hands and appeared at breakfast with her hair held back by four bulldog clips, two sparkly hair ties, and what appeared to be a bread bag twist tie. She looked like a small, cheerful art installation.
"VIVI," he called up the stairs. "Get dressed. We're going out."
"WHERE?"
"Farmers market."
"CAN I BRING DUBU?"
"No."
"WHY?"
"Because last time he ate an entire wheel of brie off someone's table and we were asked to leave."
A pause. Then, from Alex's room: "That was genuinely the funniest thing that's ever happened in this family."
"Get dressed, Alex."
"I'm doing revision."
"You're watching TikTok. I can hear it through the floor."
Another pause. "It's educational TikTok."
"There is no such thing."
"Okay, boomer."
"I'm forty-six. I'm a millennial."
"Same thing."
He took a breath. Counted to five. Sophie would be home in four hours.
Getting four girls out of the house took forty-five minutes. Charlie was ready in ten, because Charlie existed in a state of permanent preparedness. Willow took twenty, emerging in a corduroy pinafore with her sketchbook tucked under one arm, her eyes slightly pink behind a pair of tortoise-shell glasses. Benedict squeezed her shoulder as she passed. She leaned into it, just briefly, before pulling away.
Alex descended the stairs in an outfit that could only be described as committed. Oversized vintage denim jacket, likely stolen from his wardrobe. Platform trainers. Sunglasses indoors.
"It's October," Benedict said.
"Fashion is seasonless."
"Take the sunglasses off. You look like a tiny celebrity avoiding the paparazzi."
"I am a tiny celebrity. I have six hundred followers."
"On what?"
"You wouldn't understand. You still have a Facebook account."
"For Messenger."
"Exactly."
Vivi appeared last, her jumper on backwards and one shoe untied, clutching a stuffed rabbit whose name changed weekly. This week it was Jude Bellingham. Or J. Belly for short.
"J. Belly wants to come," she announced.
"J. Belly can come."
"J. Belly wants a pastry."
"J. Belly can have a pastry."
"J. Belly wants—"
"J. Belly gets whatever J. Belly wants if we leave in the next thirty seconds."
The farmers market in Bermondsey was rammed. Saturday morning, late October, the kind of bright cold that made London look scrubbed clean. Benedict kept Vivi's hand in his and deployed Charlie as a forward scout, because Charlie could navigate a crowd the way her uncle Anthony navigated spreadsheets—with ruthless, lateral efficiency.
"Right," he said. "Flowers first. Then pastries. Then we find the ceramics stall."
"Can I get a crêpe?" Alex asked.
"After."
"Can I get a crêpe now and another one after?"
"No."
"Mum would let me."
"Mum isn't here, and she wouldn't. That's literally the point of today."
"I want a crêpe too," Vivi said.
"No one is getting a crêpe until we've—"
"DAD. Look at the DOG." Vivi was pointing at someone's French bulldog with the intensity of a tiny human who had just discovered extraterrestrial life. She strained toward it, dragging Benedict's arm. Jude Bellingham the rabbit swung dangerously.
"Vivi, focus. Flowers."
The flower stall took fifteen minutes because Willow insisted on selecting each stem individually, turning them in her fingers, studying the colour against the light. She chose dahlias, pale pink ranunculus, and stalks of eucalyptus that smelled sharp and green when Benedict bent to inspect them. She arranged them as the stallholder wrapped them, her small hands sorting and repositioning with the quiet absorption that saw the world as a series of compositions.
"These are Mum's colours," she said.
Benedict looked at the bouquet. Soft pinks, dusty lavender, silver-green. She was right. They were exactly Sophie's palette—the tones she gravitated toward in her clothes, her ceramics, the print she'd hung above their bed.
"Perfect," he said. Willow glowed.
The pastries were easier. Charlie selected a box of Portuguese custard tarts from a stall she'd apparently researched in advance, because Charlie researched everything in advance. The ceramic mug was another of Willow's contributions, a handmade piece from a potter who worked in speckled stoneware, glazed in a pale sage green that she held up to the light and examined from every angle before nodding once.
The record was Benedict's mission. He'd been hunting for it for weeks—a first pressing of a Cécile McLorin Salvant album Sophie had loved in her twenties, something she'd mentioned once while they were driving and it came on shuffle and she'd gone quiet for the duration of the song, her hand resting on his knee. He'd remembered, filed it, and waited.
He found it at a vinyl stall wedged between a cheese monger and a hot sauce vendor, tucked in a crate of secondhand records. The sleeve was slightly worn at the edges. He held it up and something in his chest released.
"What's that?" Alex appeared at his elbow, crêpe in hand. He hadn't authorised the crêpe.
"A record for Mum."
She squinted at the cover. "Never heard of her."
"You wouldn't have."
"Is it old?"
"It's from 2013."
"So yes."
"I hate you."
"You love me. I'm your second-favourite."
"I don't have a second-favourite. Or a favourite."
"Liar. It's Vivi."
It was Vivi. Everyone knew it was Vivi, including Vivi, who wielded the power with the benevolent carelessness of a five-year-old who hadn't yet learned that love could be strategic.
They got home at one. Benedict put the flowers in water, hid the pastries in the cupboard Vivi couldn't reach, wrapped the mug in tissue paper, and placed the record on the kitchen table where Sophie would see it. Willow rearranged the flowers twice. Charlie cleaned the kitchen island, which was an act of love so profound Benedict nearly hugged her.
Alex sprawled across the sofa, scrolling her phone. "Charlie, Oliver messaged you again."
Charlie's head snapped up. "How do you know that?"
"Your phone buzzed. His name came up. I have eyes, Charlotte."
"Stay out of my messages, Alexandria."
"I'm not in your messages. Your phone was on the counter. It's not my fault he's obsessed with you."
"He's not obsessed—"
"He's sent you nine messages today. It's not even two o'clock. That's obsession, babe."
"Don't call me babe."
"Oliver calls you babe."
Charlie's ears went pink. Benedict looked between them, calculating the cost-benefit of intervention. On one hand, Charlie's privacy. On the other, intelligence gathering.
"Who's Oliver?" he asked, carefully neutral.
"Nobody," Charlie said.
"A boy from school who's down catastrophically bad for her," Alex said.
"Alexandria, I will end you—"
"He plays football. He's reasonably fit. Six out of ten."
"ALEX."
"Fine. Seven. But only because he's tall."
Benedict decided this was information he could live without for the moment. He'd ask Sophie tonight, because Sophie would know. Sophie always knew.
"Everybody," he said. "Your mother's train gets in at half two. She'll be home by three. Can we please, for the love of God, try to look like a functioning household for twenty minutes?"
"Define functioning," Alex said.
At six minutes past three, the key turned in the front door.
Benedict was in the hallway before he'd made a conscious decision to move. Sophie stepped inside, her overnight bag over one shoulder and wheeled suitcase behind her, her dark hair loose around her face, her cheeks flushed from the cold. She smelled like train coffee and her perfume, something warm and slightly woody that he could pick out of a lineup at fifty paces.
She looked at the purple handprint on the wall. Back at him.
"Later," he said.
"Benedict—"
He kissed her. Right there in the hallway, his hands on her face, her bag sliding off her shoulder and hitting the floor. She tasted like coffee and the particular sweetness of being home and he kissed her like he'd been thinking about it for seven days, which he had.
"Ew." Alex, from the living room doorway. Delivered with the theatrical disgust of a fourteen-year-old who found all parental affection personally offensive. "Get a room."
"We have a room," Benedict said against Sophie's mouth. "Several, in fact. We own the house."
Charlie appeared behind Alex, phone in hand, expression carefully blank. She'd typed something, stopped, put the phone down. "Welcome back, Mum."
"Thank you, darling."
Willow came next, and she didn't say anything at all. She just walked straight into Sophie and wrapped both arms around her waist and pressed her face into her mother's trenchcoat and stayed there. Sophie's hand came up to the back of her head, fingers threading into her hair, and something in her expression shifted, softened, broke open slightly.
"I missed you," Willow said, muffled.
"I missed you too. So much."
"Dad tried to braid my hair on Monday."
"I heard."
"It was really bad."
"I saw the photo."
Vivi was last, which meant Vivi had been waiting, strategizing, building to her entrance. She came around the corner at full speed, Jude Bellingham the rabbit in one hand, and launched herself at Sophie's legs with a force that nearly toppled all three of them.
"MUMMY. We have a SURPRISE for you! Daddy let us have pizza FOUR TIMES and Alex said a bad word and Willow cried and I drawed on the wall but it was an ACCIDENT and J. Belly missed you and I missed you and can we have crêpes?"
Sophie looked at Benedict over the heads of their children. Her mouth was twitching.
"Four times?" she said.
"The meal prep ran out."
"I left fourteen containers."
"They staged a coup on day three."
"A coup."
"Alex called your japchae, and I'm quoting directly, 'a suitable meal if we were living north of the DMZ.' Vivi cried. Willow wouldn't eat. Charlie offered to cook but then got distracted by—" He stopped and pictured a boy in lower sixth named Oliver. "Her coursework."
Sophie pressed her lips together. "Show me the surprise before I start asking about the wall."
He led her to the kitchen. The dahlias in their vase, the eucalyptus scenting the air. The box of pastéis de nata from the market. Willow's mug, wrapped in tissue paper. The vinyl record, waiting.
Sophie unwrapped the mug first. Turned it in her hands. Sage green glaze, speckled, handmade. She looked at Willow, who was watching with her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
"Willow picked it," Benedict said. "She spent twenty minutes choosing."
"It's your colour," Willow said. "The green."
Sophie set the mug down carefully and pulled Willow into her side.
Then the record. Sophie picked it up and her hands stilled on the sleeve, her thumb tracing the edge. She looked at it for a long moment without speaking.
"How did you—"
"You played it in the car. Last spring. You went quiet for the whole record."
She looked up at him. Her eyes were bright and he knew, with the absolute certainty of seventeen years of marriage, that she was about to cry, and that she would rather die than cry in front of Alex, who would screenshot her tears and send them to the family group chat.
"Right," Sophie said, blinking hard. "Put it on."
He set the needle. The first bars filled the kitchen, warm and crackling from the vinyl, and Vivi immediately began dancing with J. Belly, her movements bearing absolutely no relationship to the tempo.
Alex swiped a pastry from the box and bit into it, scattering flakes across the counter she'd watched Charlie clean just moments ago. Charlie opened her mouth, closed it, and took a pastry of her own.
Willow leaned against Sophie's arm and didn't let go.
Benedict watched his wife in their kitchen, surrounded by the wreckage and the love of their week apart, custard tart in one hand, the record spinning, their youngest dancing with a stuffed rabbit that would be named someone else entirely by tomorrow.
Sophie caught his eye across the island. Mouthed four times?
He shrugged. She shook her head. Her smile reached her eyes.
Dubu padded in from the garden, still faintly peanut-buttered, and pressed his nose into Sophie's knee. Vivi tripped over him mid-dance, caught herself on a chair, and kept going.