“Mummy, are you coming to my concert tonight? It’s at 4 o’clock. I’m doing three solos”.
Entirely uninformed of this event, I am about to disappear to a series of meetings and workshops that will only bring me back just before bed time. And Daddy is overseas. I explain this as gently, as kindly as I can.
"If you were a proper mummy, you would come to my concert instead of going to work”.
She’s crestfallen, understandably. I deaden my inner howl of anguish and explain that I would love to come to the concert, but that I am working hard so that they have the chance to go to such a lovely school with all the opportunities for music lessons and dancing and performances and so forth.
“But if we didn’t go to private school, you wouldn’t have to go to work so much. You could do your writing in the daytime and pick us up in the afternoons. We could go to the park together and have hot chocolate, and we’d still get good marks because you could help us with our homework. It would be like when you have a day off and you are making tea while we are doing our maths, and it’s all cosy in the kitchen and we’re laughing”.
Well, yes.
I went to my meetings. Two workshops with small businesses struggling in the construction sector. An OFSTED inspection at the College where I am a governor, which provides vocational training in deprived areas of the inner city and is fighting for survival. I thought that, on balance, they were lucky girls.
I watched the solos later, when I finally got home. Grainy mobile phone footage and crackly sound. It still brought tears to my eyes. All sorts of reasons.
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