Page 90 of Always Alchemy

He does a funny little dance, rotating on the spot without getting anywhere closer to his tail. I feel a brief stab of guilt. I’ll remove his cardboard prison until the guests arrive and extend his freedom.

The most important thing is that our dog costume is better than Dex’s.

Right on cue, Cheese gives up on trying to shake the crown from her head and scuttles off.

‘No!’ Dex shouts ineffectually at her. ‘Don’t?—’

But she’s got a timely case of the zoomies. She races, crown askew and tutu flying, towards the kitchen sofa—the one that stands on short oak legs. The one she can just about squeeze under at the best of times. And as she disappears under it, my husband groans and I let out a shout of triumph.

Those wings are toast.

DEX

This guest list will win any Best Dressed award.

We have Anton Wolff in the house, dressed as James Bond. Shocker. Gen looks stunning on his arm as a platinum blonde Bond Girl who’s definitely dressed to kill, but their dog, Hades, is drawing all the attention. A Doberman who’s always lacked his owner’s, um, edge, he’s currently trussed up in sunglasses and an orange bikini, from the waistband of which sticks a rubber knife: Halle Berry inDie Another Day.

Not to be outdone, Zach has turned up looking basicallylike himself, except that Maddy assures me he’s supposed to be a librarian. I suppose his hair does look messier than usual, and he’s wearing a mustard-coloured sleeveless sweater over his shirt. He’s made poor old Norm bear the brunt of the responsibility. The dog is wearing a lightweight sandwich-board-type affair, covered to make it look like a library book.

Of Mice and Men, to be exact.

Given his tank-like physique, I’m guessing he’s Lennie. He’s an old guy these days, with plenty of white in his black fur and that tired, rheumy look in his eyes. Even so, he’s bearing his cross with characteristically quiet stoicism. I’ll give it five minutes before I make a plan to rescue him and feed him a sneaky sausage roll.

More aesthetically pleasing are Grace Wright and Blondie, who are both dressed as Anna Wintour. Grace is clutching an edition ofBritish Voguethat bears one of Nat’s designs on the cover, while Blondie actually has a little brown wig on her head, shaped like a bob, and a string of pearls around her neck. Some doll’s sunglasses are propped on the wig. I have to say, she’s far more on board with her headgear than Cheese was. And I could swear she’s strutting—as much as anyone with two-inch legs can strut, anyway.

We endup taking photos of the dogs with their owners almost immediately so we can put the poor creatures (the dogs, that is) out of their misery and rid them of the more cumbersome costumes. Darce gets a fab shot of Max, Charlie and me in our firemen’s gear with our very own pint-sized fire engine. Mac really does look bloody cute. Our wife’s take onfairy princessis borderline porno, but no one’scomplaining. She could take to the Alchemy pole in that getup.

Most importantly (well, after beating Max on the costume front, which I’ve failed spectacularly at doing), Charlie seems ecstatic. Given it’s October, we planned a tentative indoor-outdoor arrangement, with a chef manning the barbecue outdoors and serving up hot dogs, burgers and corn on the cob while we base ourselves indoors. But the afternoon is dry and crisp, and the kids are running around every inch of the houseandgardens.

We spend so much time surveilling him and Milly, watching for any signs that this unorthodox family unit is in any way affecting them for the worse. It’s ridiculous, obviously. They have three adoring parents and a solid family unit. They’re far more fortunate than so many of their peers. But every piece of data we gather tells us the same thing.

They’re great kids.

They’re well adjusted and happy and kind. There will come a time when their schoolmates regurgitate bitchy, ignorant, judgmental things they’ve heard their parents say about us, and when that happens, we’ll deal with it. But with Charlie only one month into “proper” school, that’s not exactly a concern yet.

I take in the chaos around us as I sip my beer and chat to Mum and Charles. While we’ve opted to dress up as the kids’ favourite alter egos, most of our friends and their kids (and dogs) have gone down the spooky route. The little French boys, who’ve wisely given the librarian theme a wide berth, are both dressed as Count Dracula and my sister’s kids, Rosalie and Bobby, are, respectively, a witch and a skeleton. Rafe’s a wizard and Belle is also a witch—the most gleeful hex ever.

Celebrating Halloween still feels a little odd for me andher, given it was banned in our household growing up. My dad felt strongly that it was the Devil’s work and that we were best off steering well clear before spending the first of November praying fervently for our unholy souls.

I suspect that’s why my sister is enjoying this witch gig so much.

Next week, when we’re back in London, we’ll get down to the serious business of preparing for Halloween, with paper bats and carved pumpkins. There are a lot of wealthy Americans in Holland Park who tend to go way overboard with their spooky decorations, so trick-or-treating will be epic, and the Wrights are putting on a giant spooky installation on the facade of their insane pad.

I can’t wait.

One of the best-dressed awards of the day has to go to Charles and Mum. He’s dressed in his old military uniform (the Hunter men aren’t the type to cultivate a middle-aged spread, that’s for sure), dapper as hell and posture ramrod straight, while Mum is sporting red lipstick and victory rolls. Charles’ ancient lurcher, Dickens, is wearing a jaunty green beret and a camo coat. Charlie is fascinated, as he is by any sort of public service uniform.

It wasn’t deliberate at first that we named Charlie after Max’s dad (just as it wasn’t deliberate that Mum and the kids and I all ended up with the same surname: Hunter Scott). In fact, Darcy came up with the name after meeting Charlie, the Sorrel Farm owners’ adorable black spaniel. But it’s certainly fitting. Charles fell in love with my mother and has spent the past five years overhauling everything she thought she knew about relationships.

He’s a king among men, just like his son, and he loves his little namesake with the same exuberant energy that he loves Amelia, who’s his flesh and blood. The way he hasreplaced our dad in our lives is just one of the many weird and wonderful ways Mum, Belle and I have rewritten the futures we thought we’d have.

It’s been a month or two shy of seven years since I’ve had any contact with Dad.

Seven years.

I hear headlines from Mum, who is still in occasional touch with him and with a few of their parish friends. None of them are surprising. He’s in good health and very active with the church. He spends a great deal of time since taking full retirement ferrying frail old ladies to and from Mass each day. They adore him, obviously. Ben is an absolute saint, apparently.

A saint who cast aside his own son and grandchildren for falling foul of his moral codes.

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