I wake to find my wife in the early stages of packing, making neat piles of winter clothes on the bed. We’re going on holiday.
Because my wife does not ski, none of the stuff in the piles is hers: she takes a largely proprietorial interest in the collection, storing it in an inaccessible cupboard, lending it out occasionally and adding to it when necessary.
“For once, I think we have everything we need,” she says, proudly.
I have a strong desire to go on the sort of holiday where I lie in a bed all day and all night, occasionally glancing at the spine of a book before rolling over and going back to sleep. Ideally, I would take this holiday in my own bed. I realise that what I really want is not a holiday, but a life-sapping mystery virus. It occurs to me that I might already have one. It would certainly explain a lot. With great reluctance, I get dressed.
“You’d better check to make sure everything’s here,” says my wife, before leaving the room. I look over the piles. She is right: it’s an amazingly comprehensive collection of gloves, coats, fleeces and socks. There’s only one thing missing. I go downstairs.
“Where’s my hat?” I say.
“What hat?” says my wife.
“My new hat, that I just got,” I say.
“I don’t know what hat you mean,” she says.
“It used to be there,” I say, pointing in the general direction of the hallway. “It’s blue, and it has an R on it.”
“I’ve never seen a hat like that,” she says.
This infuriates me, but it also makes me doubt the colour of the hat. And the R.
“There is such a hat,” I say.
“It might have got left in the cupboard, but I doubt it,” she says.
“Where’s the ladder?” I say.
“In the garden,” she says.
I find the middle one lying on the sofa in front of the television.
“When was the last time you grabbed a random hat on your way out the door?” I say.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
“Was it blue?”
“I don’t really wear hats,” he says.
“Let me put it this way,” I say, “did you take my hat?”
“What hat?” he says.
“Am I going to find my hat in your room?” I say.
“No!”
I make the same inquiries of the youngest, peppering him with questions while rifling his drawers. At some point – about the point when I find myself dragging the ladder up to the inaccessible cupboard on the landing – I realise that this isn’t really about the hat. Never mind, I tell myself: we’re making it about the hat.
The inaccessible cupboard is bare. Peering into its recesses, I see nothing but four tiny buckled shoes, one pair slightly smaller than the other. Standing there with my head in a dark cupboard and my toes on the top step of a ladder, staring at the strangely formal footwear of toddlers past, I have an overwhelming sense of life being both fleeting and precarious. It’s a moment I’m certain I will revisit in dark times to come.
Twenty minutes later I am stomping down the stairs, heels ringing on each tread, filled with a renewed sense of righteous anger. I intercept the middle one on his passage from the sitting room to the kitchen, and hold my hat up in front of his face so he can see the R.
“Where did I find this?” I say.
“Dunno,” he says.
“IN YOUR ROOM!” I shriek.
He smiles broadly, with the uncomplicated delight of a toddler stepping on his first snail.
“Oh dear,” says my wife, from halfway up the stairs.
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