All’s well that end’s well; or, in family feuds, sour grapes are best served on ice

We returned tired but happy from London Zoo – a sixth birthday treat for animal lover Ava, stopping on the way home for a Pizza Express supper on Upper Street, Islington – the same I’d gone to with Tom the day I peed on the stick that told me I was pregnant, back when I was still a student. All around me, the street had gentified, but I, no longer young, had a sneaky button undone on my trousers.

The weekend exceeded the promise of last week; begun, upside down after Friday night on the tiles squanked into Saturday; last night’s clothes, begun in the pub post-work worn smoky and wrinkled to a lunch party next day, only refreshed, inbetween by a mildly hilarious haircut and fresh makeup, courtesy of Dr Haushka, applied in Wholefoods (although they may make a sale from me yet – the foundation kept me dewy until I collapsed over a curry some 24 hours after I started.)

At 20, it would be passable behaviour, but at nearly 34, I knew the week ahead was torn to shreds – the previous week, my first post holiday, had been mired in self-discipline as I fasted on olive oil and salad, and ran with the dog before work, toying with it when I got there, with worryingly little to do. I was bored.

But nothing compares to getting enough sleep, and last week Tom was away to boot, as were Helorgi, the sexy childminders, and suddenly, a new project landed on my desk – a book to edit from cover to cover. Suddenly carbs were back on the menu – it’s hard to maintain a diet when the kids are screaming bloody hunger the moment you land through the front door after a day of avid screen staring until your eyes begin to twitch, and you begin to envy the school mums lingering, lonelyish, in the playground in the hope of a morning coffee, a croissant and a chat.

I was tired and emotional, at my desk, when the text came from my dad, intended for his wife, although part of me suspects it was sent “accidentally on purpose” to make some kind of a point. In it, asking his wife to buy a birthday gift for Ava, he described me and my sister, Katie, as mean. Fresh from planning this Saturday’s party food: homemade quiche – two types, and two salads – one pink, one orange, shopping in advance, hungover and deathy last Sunday, the same day we bought poncy riding gear for Ava’s birthday present, in the hope that soon enough I’ll sort out a way to get her proper lessons, despite a distinct lack of time (and funds) to take her; it soured the whole endeavour.

There was this one year when I texted him from the chavvy TK Max near Asda at Leytonstone. Let’s not get Christmas presents this year, I had begged, the pile of discount crap at my elbows weighing on my soul, and my already shattered nerves. At least, not for the adults. It seemed fair enough all things considered. I was struggling to buy the kids shoes.

I remembered the year before, when Lady Bountiful had presented us all with L’Occitane gifts boxes – not the grey market muck you pick up at from TK Max – the real deal, all tissued and ribboned and unnecessary – at the time I was avoiding parabens; the same year we’d made homemade preserves and olive oil salt scrub. We were poor, and it had irked, going home on Boxing Day to a ridiculous show of splendour at a pimped up version of my father’s house, a home I’d not been welcome in for more than half my life; thick carpets and glossy new surfaces, unctuous wallpaper and potpourri balls hanging un-Englishly from door handles. It’s not that I don’t like his new wife, although they’ve been married long enough to have a daughter who exceeds Jonah in age by all of two weeks; but she doesn’t half drip with his money.

This year, he’s had a particular good one, and he’s taking us all to a hotel, which will make a nice change – we’ve not spent Christmas day together since I was a child, where it was always a big deal, and Katie and I would be showered in things we’d gone without all year; until suddenly it wasn’t. I doubt it will go without a hitch – there’s rarely such a thing as a fight-free Christmas lunch. But presents we will undoubtedly buy, to thank Dad for his generosity. Something tasteful, inoffensive and expensively small from Skanden at Westfield Stratford – at least they’ll be easy enough to wrap. But this year, hardpressed though both Tom and I are, at least we can probably afford it.

But that cash strapped, sleep deprived year, I wanted to save myself the stress, not least the necessary expenditure. They didn’t end up coming for Christmas in the end, despite Katie and I both fighting our corners about the gifts; and it took another 18 months of nasty texts, placating conversations, awkward family meals and finally, a slightly stultifying holiday, to get things back on track.

It stung, that text. How could it not? I am not mean. Far from it. To be fair, I don’t like waste, and it riles me to get a gift I didn’t ask for. But I don’t think grown ups need fripparies from family, and Christmas and birthdays should be, in these time poor, cash stretched times, by and large for kids.

I hissed back by text, our favoured mode of conversation, having long since acknowledged that actually speaking raises too much possibility of tears; he texted to tell me my beloved grandad had died, catching me midconversation, whereupon I batted it away for an instant before dissolving; but then Mum’s no better, telling me by SMS my old dog Rosa had been hit by a train.The perils of an aspie family. But the nigh on twenty year old year old wound reopened in an instant, as I held back tears at my desk.

By hook or by crook, I rescued it: the little party I had organised this weekend for my sister Katie and her 3 year old daughter Sam, also celebrating a birthday this month; Dad, Ting Tong and her son Kim Lee, who I’ve known since he was a crazy six year old, now a strapping six foot fourer, stocially enduring “family” time while all his mates were at the pub.

The food broke the ice, as it always does. Tom, who’d only been back from a business trip about six hours, cooked up a pastry storm, with Bakewell tart to finish, and I’d laid it all out prettily on cake stands and a stripey tablecloth, having whizzed around, sweating, all morning to clean up the house and wrap bits and bobs the kids have grown out of for little Sam; to buy last minute extras at the convenience shop up the road while the dog waited mournfully outside; shrieking at the kids for watching too much Stampy Longnose beforehand and letting them eat too much junk once everyone had arrived.

It was warm enough to sit in the garden, small and overgrown though it is, and after a drink or two, we all grew convivial. Ting, driving back, and in any case, without the necessary enzymes to drink like the English, saw sense to leave before Kate and I got argumentative – probably, in fact, it was the best it’s ever been, now we’re all a bit older, getting too tired and fat, to care, and suddenly well-off enough in our own right to no longer mind so much.