I am on my knees with my head inside the cupboard under the stairs, extracting items of varying degrees of uselessness: a broken tent, a single boxing glove, a case for a long-lost guitar. Stuff piles up around me, but there is plenty more to come; the cupboard’s floor is 2ft lower than the hall floor and I need to dig all the way to the bottom.
Below the bag of mismatched wellies, things get a bit sedimentary: there is a whole layer of leaky air mattresses and another of forgotten picnic rugs. I remove a dusty box of 100 styrofoam cups and two pairs of rollerblades. I find a wheeled, skateboard-like attachment that once enabled a child to stand on the back of a buggy. Below that, I hit floor. I have to crawl farther in and start again.
I am looking for a case of wine, bottled in the year of my youngest son’s birth and presented to him when he was a baby. Some instructions, handwritten on the lid by his godmother, prohibited him from drinking the wine until he reached his 18th birthday. Unbelievably, that day has arrived.
“I can’t find it,” I say.
“Keep going,” my wife says from the kitchen. “It’s there.”
Eventually, reaching into the cupboard’s farthest recesses, I feel a wooden corner. Under the pressure of decades of stowed junk, the case has been shoved up on its side.
“Whoa,” the youngest one says as I heave the dusty box on to the kitchen table. I hand him a hammer and chisel.
“Start near the corner, “ I say. “Tap gently, then twist.”
“I’ve got it,” he says.
“You’re doing it wrong,” I say, grabbing the chisel back. “Look.”
“So, even though I’m an adult, you’re going to do this for me?” he says.
“Oh my God, he’s an adult!” my wife shouts.
“I can’t watch you chop off your thumb,” I say.
Even after all these years, my children’s thumbs are still my thumbs. When the oldest one slices an onion, I have to leave the room.
I demonstrate my approved technique and return the chisel. He levers up one corner, then another, and pulls the lid free. Inside, 12 bottles of red wine are stacked in two layers, in alternating directions.
“Half of these bottles have been stored upside down for who knows how many years,” I say. “The other half right side up.”
“Which is better?” the youngest asks.
“Neither is good,” I say. “Six of them could be corked. Or possibly all of them.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, your father is the glass-half-empty type,” my wife says.
“Somebody has to be,” I say.
The youngest one removes a bottle and starts sawing away at the foil with a kitchen knife. I close my eyes and picture bloodied digits landing in the fruit bowl. He operates a corkscrew, for what appears to be the first time in his life.
I fetch three glasses, and he fills them. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse the kitchen clock: it’s 10.15am. I raise my glass. “Happy birthday,” I say. “You’re society’s problem now.”
“Cheers,” he says.
We clink glasses, and drink. “That is a decent breakfast wine,” I say.
“My baby!” my wife shouts.
The youngest sticks the cork back in the bottle, selects another bottle and puts both in a shopping bag, so he and his friends can drink them in the park, like posh vagrants.
After he leaves, my wife and I sit at the kitchen table, staring at each other over the wooden case.
“I have no children,” she says.
“No, me neither,” I say. “Let’s get wasted.”
