Page 19 of The In-Laws

‘I hate lasagne.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Yes, I do.’

Melanie finished her reply and looked up at the twins. ‘You liked lasagne last week.’

‘No, I did not. Janis likes lasagne. I hate it. I hated it last week and the week before and the –’

Melanie raised her hand. ‘I get it.’

‘I like some lasagne, but I don’t like this one. It’s all mushy. Where did you get it?’

‘Angelina’s.’

‘It’s gross.’ Janis smushed the lasagne with her fork.

‘I’m starving,’ Joni said.

Melanie’s phone beeped with a reply from Peter.

‘Are we going to starve while you keep texting?’ Joni asked.

‘It’s a bit ironic that you’re on your phoneallthe time and then you freaked out when we got new phones,’ Janis pointed out.

God, they were hard-going, and when they ganged up, they were impossible. Melanie was exhausted. She’d been up until two a.m. talking to an American author she was trying to sign and then had a really long day at work. Shehad to read a manuscript by an Australian writer she was interested in before her Zoom call with them at seven in the morning. With Ross throwing his weight around, she felt she had to work even harder to make up for Frank. She didn’t have the energy for the twins.

She opened the fridge. It was full of Frank’s latest vegan food obsession. Tofu and oat milk, soy yoghurts and hummus.

‘How about an omelette?’

‘I’d rather die.’

‘Where’s Dad? He’s awaybetter cook than you. Even his vegan stuff isn’t as bad as your cooking.’

That’s because he has way more time to cook than me, she wanted to shout.That’s because he lives in Frank Land where everything is chill and he refuses to allow stress or worry into his life. I hate cooking. I always have. It’s boring and thankless. I’d rather be reading manuscripts.

Melanie wished for the twins to be older and self-sufficient. She wanted them to be adults and drive and cook and just bloody well grow up faster so that this motherhood bit of her life would be over.

She had never really wanted children. Her career gave her everything she needed and she’d known she wouldn’t be a great mother. But Frank had begged and cajoled and said he’d do all the heavy lifting of parenting. Eventually, she’d given in and reluctantly agreed to have one child. Lo and behold, the ultrasound showed she was pregnant with twins. She’d cried for a solid week when she’d found out two babies were coming. She’d thought her life was over, but to be fair to Frank he had stepped up and done all the night feeds and baby-minding while she went back to work two weeks after they were born. Melanie had literally sprinted out of the door. She had been correct: she wasnot maternal. She did not find babies interesting or particularly cute. She came home late as often as she could, hoping they’d be asleep. She liked them when they were sleeping. She had grown to love them, in her own way, but not in the way Frank did. He adored them: they were his world. They were not Melanie’s world: her work was. They were part of it but not, by any means, all of it.

Once the twins reached adulthood and autonomy, Melanie was confident that their relationship would improve. Only a few more years to go … The years couldn’t pass fast enough. Melanie didn’t understand parents who made their lives all about their kids. Your kids would leave you. She had left home at eighteen and never looked back. Your kids would forge their own lives. A twenty-two-year-old did not want their mother calling them all the time to ‘check in’ and fussing over them. At least, no normal twenty-two-year-old did. People needed to live their own lives and find fulfilment outside being a parent. She had gone to one coffee morning when the twins were starting their new senior school. Frank had coaxed her into it. It was pure hell. A group of parents droning on about their kids – what subjects they were doing, their extra-curricular activities, who they were friends with, what sports they played and then the ‘funny stories’ about what their children wore and said and did that Melanie didn’t find remotely funny. It was mind-numbingly boring. She never went to another. Frank went and somehow enjoyed them. She was happy to leave him to it.

As far as Melanie was concerned, parenting lasted eighteen years and you were done. It felt a lot longer than that but, all told, it was a fraction of your life. Once she’d left for university, she had never asked her parents for anything. She’d worked her way through college, got a job and carved out her own path. People needed to have theirown life, their non-parent life. No wonder so many people were on antidepressants. Melanie would be mainlining Xanax if she didn’t have her career. There was nowhere she would rather be than in the office, advocating for her authors and looking for new talent. It was her happy place. It was her real world.

But Frank’s world was the twins, a stress-free life, and music. Work was very low on his list of priorities. Melanie understood that it dated back to the car crash. She got that he had needed to step away from anxiety to save his sanity. But it had happened twenty-five years ago. He had meditated and sat in therapy sessions for decades. His refusal to allow any form of anxiety into his life had initially charmed her, but now she was irritated by it and resentful. Some things were stressful. Sometimes you needed a bit of tension to help you focus. It was all very well for him to live in Frank Land when his wife was working her socks off to keep everything going.

The fact that Frank earned a salary was due entirely to nepotism and Nancy’s guilt about the crash. She had been supposed to drive Frank to the airport that day, but she’d got a call from her biggest author, who was having a meltdown, so she’d asked her husband, Patrick, to do it. Patrick had been in bed feeling unwell, but he’d got up to drive his son. He’d had a heart attack at the wheel, crashed straight into a bollard and died. Frank had suffered multiple fractures, emotional trauma and life-changing internal scars plus a few visible ones, including one that ran down the side of his face, the result of a gash that required twenty stitches. He was eighteen and Jamie was fourteen at the time. Frank always said Nancy’s heart shattered that day and that the only way she could survive was to harden it to everything and everyone.

Melanie doubted Nancy’s heart had ever been soft andsquidgy, but neither had hers. Nancy’s guilt protected Frank for now. If Ross ever took over the agency, Frank would be in trouble. Ross had no guilt. Frank was only his half-brother and they weren’t close because Ross had been at boarding school, then moved into university rooms and after that his own apartment. They had never spent much time together and were more like acquaintances than siblings.

‘Mum?’ Joni snapped. ‘Earth calling Mum?’

Melanie pulled herself back into the conversation. ‘Aren’t you studying home economics? How about you cook your own meals? I’m up to my eyes.’

‘What a surprise. Mum is busy with work,’ Janis drawled.

‘Let me guess, another author in crisis?’

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