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It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, with the calm that comes before the rush of Monday morning - the alarm clocks, the traffic jams and the deadlines. The clock struck three and Laura's elbow still rested on the arm of the tapestry-covered sofa. With her fingertips she traced the rough piping that ran along its seams, while the toes of her left foot moved back and forth across the edge of the sheepskin rug. She found the action comforting. It reminded her of being a child in the family sitting room, playing with the fringes of another rug until her mother snapped at her to stop - which, of course, only made her do it all the more. A sudden whiff of glue drifted over from Katy, who sat on a cushion in the middle of the room like an island in a sea of cardboard, sequins and felt-tip pens, surrounded by sheets of white paper she had quietly taken from her father's study. She really should be working at the kitchen table, Laura thought, but I don't have the appetite for the outburst that might follow if my genius daughter is disturbed at work. Every few minutes Katy got up to replay the same pop song. "Why don't you listen to the whole CD, Katy?" said David, sprawled on the other sofa. "You'd like the other songs too." "Nah. Too boring." On the lamp table beside her lay a letter that had arrived a week earlier, advertising exercise classes and a slimming club. She had kept it there as a reminder, or perhaps to conjure up the same magical effect people hope for when they pay for an expensive gym they rarely visit. "Have you seen this flyer?" she said. "Just the thought of going for a workout makes me want to go and lie down." There was no reply. She let out a heavy sigh, then a yawn - the first in a series of hints that she would like David to make her a cup of tea. "Who's going to make the tea, then?" she asked at last - her third and most obvious attempt to get a drink before, as she put it, she died of thirst. David stood up. "I suppose it's my turn. Again." He went off to the kitchen, and Laura, the victor, snuggled a little further into the sofa. On the rug, baby Charlie woke from his nap and began his own happy babbling. When Charlie's babbling turned to a grizzle, Laura bent down to scoop him up. "Mum, he doesn't want feeding - you've only just fed him," said Katy. "I'll try, just in case." Luckily the baby was ready after all, so Laura saved face with her daughter. David came back at that moment, her cup of Earl Grey wobbling in its saucer and a large mug in his other hand. She gave him a warning look that dared him not to put the cups down on the oak blanket box that served as their coffee table: its surface was already scarred by two rings where hot drinks had been carelessly set down. "Where's Katy got to?" David asked after a while. The answer came from upstairs, as they heard their older child push through the curtain in her bedroom doorway. It was like the beaded curtains that had been fashionable when Laura was young, but instead of beads it was made of a dazzling collection of pink, purple and silver plastic squares. Laura couldn't remember which of them had named it the 'jingle-jangler', but the name was very apt.