Page 33 of Kiss Me Like You Mean It

But when I leave my bedroom I find Phoebe and Nico in the kitchen, bickering.

‘Everyone knows the first pancake has to go in the bin,’ Nico grumbles, his voice still rough with sleep. ‘You need to get into the zone.’

A worn grey T-shirt hugs his torso. He’s wearing a pair of pyjama bottoms and his feet are bare; his hair sticks up at the back in dark curls and whorls. His face is unshaven, shadowed with stubble.

He looks delicious.

Which is more than can be said for whatever he’s cooking.

‘This pancake needs to be buried in the backyard.’ Phoebe’s nose wrinkles as she pokes at the plate. She is wearing a long, fluffy black hoodie, and the hood, which is pulled up, has cat’s ears on top of it. ‘Why is it green in between the black bits?’

‘I put spinach in the batter,’ Nico says defensively. ‘I found the recipe online. Apparently you can’t taste it and I’m trying to get some vitamins into you.’

‘Do donuts have vitamins?’ Phoebe asks.

That’s when Nico spots me and he smiles. He has a smudge of flour on his cheek. My heart rolls over in my chest.

‘Morning,’ he says.

‘Lee, my dad is trying to poison us.’ Phoebe slumps, the picture of desolation, against the kitchen counter. ‘Do you know how to make pancakes?’

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’ I approach the kitchen, which is heavily splattered in green batter that I’ll admit looks troublingly like nuclear waste, but I sense that Nico needs a parenting win. ‘But I think spinach pancakes sound delicious.’

I am rewarded when Nico beams. ‘Right? And the woman I follow on TikTok says that the flax seed totally covers the taste.’

I try not to blanch while Phoebe looks accusingly at me and mouths the words flax seed like a dark curse.

‘Great,’ I say weakly.

‘Do you always dress so fancy?’ Phoebe asks then, giving me a once over.

I glance down at my cream-coloured shift dress, and then uncertainly towards Nico, who swats at his daughter with his spatula, sending more drops of green batter flying. Thankfully I am outside the line of fire.

‘You look lovely, Daisy,’ he says and his eyes run over my dress and down my legs, where they seem to linger for a moment. He swallows and turns back to the stove. ‘Phoebe’s just not used to seeing clothes without creases in them.’

‘Oh,’ I mull this over. ‘I brought a travel steamer with me. You can borrow it if you like?’

Phoebe snorts as Nico huffs out a deep chuckle so I’ll take that as a no. Joke’s on them because a good travel steamer is the key to creating a perfectly formed capsule wardrobe that accounts for all the variable weather that October brings.

We sit around the table and I try really hard to eat the disgusting grey-green abominations Nico serves up, while Phoebe makes loud retching sounds and drops them on the floor for Taco.

The dog takes one sniff and lets out a distressed howl before running off to the other side of the room, cowering with his tail tucked between his legs.

‘Okay,’ Nico says, ‘that feels a touch overdramatic. I’ve seen that dog literally eat rocks.’

‘Rocks would taste better than this.’ Phoebe takes a deep gulp of orange juice, swilling it around her mouth.

‘Daisy?’ Nico looks at me hopefully.

‘It’s a really… unique flavour.’

Nico’s head sinks into his hands.

It’s a perfect, sunny Saturday, and light filters through the big picture window in front of us. Tall trees fill the view and I think how lovely it must be, watching the seasons change. Right now it’s a bonfire of red and gold.

In the light of day, I can see that the back door opens onto a small deck and fenced yard cut into the trees. I sip the coffee Nico made – delicious and spinach free – and can’t help thinking how nice this is. A family breakfast. I’ve never had that before. Even as a kid, the closest I got was mornings with Gran, but it was rare she’d take the time to sit and eat breakfast with me.

It reminds me of walking around the neighbourhood where I grew up. In the winter, when people put the lights on in their front windows, I’d peek into those cosy domestic scenes and imagine that I lived inside them. Long tables full of noisy relatives, lines of stockings hung over the fireplace at Christmas, people curled up on the sofa together, lit by the glow from the TV. Simple things that filled me with longing.