I like my children

It might sound an obvious thing for a man to say, but in my case it took several years to like being part of a family. It took leaving Kirsty--who is an attractive, witty, clever, well-dressed, pisstaking woman--and a long period of misdirected resentment at my daughters, to come round to my present attitude. I know that saying this is partly a function of Kirsty doing most of the childcare, but I do like being with my girls; and I include Kirsty in that denominator.

On nights like last night, and tonight, when me and Kirsty are getting amiably pissed, when Fiona is taking the mick out of my burbling commentary on the Test Match highlights, Melanie is asking unanswerable questions about quarks, and Jenny is garroulous about her day's rehearsal for Preston Guild, and there's one of her friends in the house, who borrows my phone to ring her mum (fuck, she's pretty, no, don't look at her arse, she's only thirteen)--I like being part of a family. My family, our family. When Kirsty and I were together and I was working full-time I avoided my house and my children, going down the pub with the Guardian after work, sometimes lying about being late. Now I see far more of them, by choice.

I never wanted children. I remember with daylight clarity, sitting on a Modernist concrete slab with Kirsty in the terraced, watered, lush gardens of the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, the only place in the city with decent vegetarian food, wondering why she wanted to spoil our lives, this vista, with children. We both got jobs on Madeira and moved to Funchal and over the next two years the topic occasionally came up, with the forceful delicacy which I still like in Kirsty. Kirsty is a picture of the woman I should have fallen in love with, but didn't, which makes me think it's an experience I'll never have.

I reluctantly agreed to have one--only one. A couple of years later, returning to London, three girls turned up. They were almost Portuguese, and Melanie, especially, wishes she were. She wants to be bilingual, but with no effort.

We got the girls to bed and I made to go. We made our arrangements about the next few days, seeing as it's school holidays and Kirsty's working Monday to Wednesday and I'm on Trina's boat overnight on Tuesday. I bent down to kiss her goodnight and accidentally touched her tits. I drew my hand away without apologising. We smiled, an understanding half-second which almost made me want to kiss her again. All our history.