It is the season of spiders, when I am enveloped in webbing wherever I go, indoors or out, blundering through elaborate creations I cannot see.
The spiders do not appear to get downhearted about this. What I destroy in the morning is often rebuilt by afternoon, waiting for me to walk into it face-first again from the other direction. When the house was full of my sons, the main routes through the house and garden were kept open by the sheer volume of traffic, even at the height of spider season. Now I feel as if I’m losing the battle – one day, I will simply be cocooned.
Elsewhere, adjustments are still being made. At lunchtime I walk into the kitchen, cobwebs hanging from my hair, to find the table piled with shopping bags. I am peering into one as my wife walks in with another two.
“Thanks for all your help,” she says.
“Did you buy a chicken?” I say.
“You’re looking in the bag,” she says. “Why are you asking that question?”
“It’s just, when are you and me gonna eat a chicken?”
“It’s a very small chicken,” she says.
“So like, half each?” I say.
My wife sheds the two bags she is holding so she can stand accusingly, hands on hips.
“Is this going to be what it’s like from now on?” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s uncharted territory.”
“Because I’m really not sure how many conversations about chicken I can have.”
“Fine,” I say.
“Go back to your office,” she says. “I can’t have you in here right now.”
I turn, step through the kitchen door and stride across the lawn. On the way I open my mouth to shout something cutting, just in time to get a mouthful of spider’s web.
It has not been that long since the last of our three adult sons left the nest – six days by my count – but it would be fair to say I am not handling it well.
Neither is the cat. It stands on the edge of the bath while I’m lying in it, howling into my face as I try to finish the crossword. I have made a particular effort over several years not to become the cat’s go-to guy for everything, but now the cat has no one else to go to.
“I’m sorry your little friends have left,” I say. “Never to return.”
“Miaow,” says the cat.
“You really are ruining this for me.”
Of course our sons do return, mostly without warning, because they all have keys. The oldest arrives in the dead of night after missing the last train to his side of London. The youngest one turns up in the early evening to collect the perishable food I’d rescued from his flat the day before, after he had texted me from work to say his fridge was broken.
It turned out he’d accidentally tripped an isolator switch hidden in a cupboard while putting away a pan.
“You put away a pan?” I say. “How long has this been going on?”
“Anyway,” he says, “I’ll see ya.”
“When?” my wife says. “Can you be more specific?”
The next morning the middle one comes round to do some work, because his flat still has no wifi. When the cat hears his voice, it runs across the lawn and through the door to leap into his arms.
“Did you miss me?” the middle one says.
“He did,” I say. “I might have a coffee. Do you want a coffee?”
“There’s no more milk,” he says, holding up his brimming cup.
My wife, at least, is occupied with plans: she wants new cupboards built in one room, old shelves ripped out of another. She has taken dozens of children’s books to a charity shop, and stored dozens more in boxes. She has presented me with a pile of clothes – my clothes – and told me to make up my mind: keep or bin. She shows me samples of curtain fabric, floor paint, bathroom tiles.
“We’re retiling?” I say.
“That’s phase two,” she says.
At 6pm I take an entire chicken out of the fridge and stare at it for a bit. I suppose we can eat it all week, I think, although the idea fills me with despair. Then again, I think, if I just put it in the oven, there is a fair chance at least one of my three children will turn up unannounced to eat it.
The cat comes in and looks up at me.
“Miaow,” it says.
“As if,” I say, stepping into the garden to get some rosemary. Halfway there I walk through a spider’s web so dense it presses my eyelids shut.
