Two girls in a boat

Abstract

The glob of jam was alive with wasps. Alan crouched beside the feeder. They were German wasps, their stripy abdomens punctuated with little black spots. They were jostling for position, those on the outer layer attempting to burrow past those underneath, and as a result the jam itself was moving haphazardly on the bottom of the ice-cream container. Alan leaned closer. The wasps were kneading their legs on the jam and kissing it with their mouths and waving their antennae. Alan took the lid and carefully placed it on the container. A few strays were left outside and they circled angrily. Alan picked up the talcum powder. On the side of the bottle was a faded picture of fairies or nymphs sitting in an oak tree, their wings open and their slim little legs crossed at the ankles. He had requisitioned it from Flick's dressing table, which was silted with plastic jewellery, beads, those silly ponies of hers with their ridiculously long acrylic manes and tails and come hither eyes. Everything in this house was covered in an ectoplasm of femaleness. Sometimes Alan wondered how it could have happened that he had ended up as the father of four daughters. When they were babies it wasn't so evident - Pippa with her feminist ideas had resolutely dressed them in androgynous green, brown and red - but over the years the house had pinkified. Lately, he had felt the unmistakeable wash of a rising hormonal tide. Chloe, who had once been his secret favourite, who had slept next to him in her goose down sleeping bag under the stars while he waited to ambush the hedgehog that was pilfering their duck eggs - that Chloe was gone, replaced by a foul-mouthed and histrionic teenager. And where she led her sisters would follow.