On Tuesday morning, I lie in bed until 10am, because I can. My wife is already out somewhere, so there is no one around to question my choices. In fact, I am under the impression that I’m alone in the house, but when I eventually go downstairs to make coffee, I find three grown sons sitting at the kitchen table in their coats. They are not, I can’t help noticing, my sons.
“Morning,” I say, trying not to seem surprised.
“Morning,” says the one I will call Cedd, because his name is Cedd. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know,” I say. “Busy busy.”
“Sorry about all the noise last night,” he says.
“I didn’t hear you,” I say. “Or at least I don’t remember.” I go up to my office to finish some overdue work. It’s past lunchtime when I go downstairs again. The crowd in the kitchen has swelled since my last visit. The oldest one, whose friends the group comprises, has finally risen from bed. The oldest one’s girlfriend has joined them. Postal Eddie is there, fresh from his mail round, as is Gabe, from the oldest one’s course. They are collectively engaged in the process of dirtying every cup, mug and plate in the house.
“I’ve just had an email confirming delivery of my wine order,” I say. “Signed for by a Mr Cedd.”
Cedd raises his hand. “I’ve seen no wine,” he says.
“It’s there,” Postal Eddie says, pointing to a box.
“What are you, on strike?” I say.
“That’s the Post Office,” Eddie says. “I’m Royal Mail.”
My wife walks in with two bags of shopping. She stops and surveys the assembled group. “I feel like a stranger in my own fucking house,” she says, before turning around and walking out.
Immediately, people begin to stand up and clear away cups. Someone starts unloading the dishwasher. Postal Eddie wipes tobacco-flaked surfaces. Not for the first time, it occurs to me that I need to cultivate a more intimidating bearing.
When I next go downstairs, it is dark outside and the kitchen is empty. The house rings with a finely tuned silence. I begin to cook without knowing how many people I’m making supper for. In the end, I make enough for four, only to find that my wife and I are home alone. We eat in front of the telly.
“It’s nice to have the house to ourselves for once,” my wife says.
“Where are the other two?” I ask.
“Who knows?” she says.
“I always imagined that at this stage of our lives, the house would either be empty or full,” I say. “I didn’t realise it would be both, on and off, without warning.”
“I’m going to bed,” my wife says. “If anyone comes back here, don’t feed them.”
I stay up watching TV. The oldest one and his girlfriend return some time after 11pm. They sit down on the sofa. “There’s food,” I say.
“What is this?” the oldest asks, nodding at the screen.
“Dunno, regular telly,” I say. “The internet’s buggered. The more we pay, the less things work.”
“Last week I got booted off the Netflix account,” he says, “because you were watching the Gilmore Girls.”
A brief silence follows. “I’m sorry you had to find out that way,” I say.
“Wait,” the oldest one’s girlfriend says. “You watch the Gilmore Girls?”
“No one should be allowed to know that about me,” I say.
“How can you watch the Gilmore Girls?” she says.
I have an unedifying glimpse of my future: a desolate and lonely existence, where my privacy is nevertheless compromised at every turn. “Actually,” I say, “it’s called Gilmore Girls. There’s no ‘the’.”
