Shred it.

I could feel my breathing rate start to increase. Short sharp breaths.

'No, no, no, no, no!', I muttered under my breath.

With the quietest, sternest voice I could muster, you know that discrete angry voice that you develop to try and subdue children in public spaces, I informed Lotty,

'Peanut must never, never, never see this! do you understand?!'

We were in London and I had taken the girls to my office at 5pm. It was empty, with all the sensitive stuff locked away and limited opportunities to get into mischief. They'd never been before and as I pottered on sorting something out Lotty and Peanut were playing offices. It's is remarkable the giddy joy a spinning chair can offer a child.

Lotty got a couple of blank sheets of paper and a clipboard and Peanut was watching mind rot on the iPad. On reflection Lotty's studious attention to whatever she was up to was slightly out of character. But like the mantra of all good fathers 'if they're not bothering me don't interfere' I cracked on and finished whatever I was up to.

I started to pack up and Lotty came over with a smile that would melt icebergs holding the paper for me to look at it.

It was an adoption profile for Peanut.

That day we'd been at a friends who's foster child was being prepared for adoption. The girls were very excited. Every corner of our lives is consumed with adoption. Peanut lives in a world where this is normal and everything else is slightly suspicious. Her five sibling in our house are all a mixture of biology and social engineering, her biography is pretty standard in Coates Towers. We talk about it all the time, our friendship group is foster carers and adopters, it's my work and  Flossy shouts on a daily basis 'I wish you'd not adopted me!'.

Peanut wandered over and saw her name on the profile!

'What's that?' 

I'm not going to take the risk of thinking that I've brought her to work to put her up for adoption. I give my 'Nuclear Look' to Lotty and tell her she's not to explain. She smiled the look of a child who has me where she wants me and I was a man at the mercy of my children.

Fawlty dad surfaced and I ran and rammed it into the shredder. Before I did I looked again, it was actually quite well written, appearance, interests, and biography pretty good a realistic appraisal of her behaviour and all grammar and spelling on point.

I should get her a job.

Just say No

With the nonchalance of tone and certainty of it happening Peanut asked:

'You know when we adopt again, well could we.............'

With the tone of a man who really knows what that means, a broken man no less,  I interrupted sharply:

'Nope, no, never, never, never.......................just no,  I mean it, really stop that before you even start. We are not, I repeat, not adopting more children'

Flossy and Peanut who were feigning disinterest up til that point then joined in.

'It would be cute to have a baby though wouldn't it?'

Realising that this needed to be well and truly stamped out I unleashed the full Fawlty Dad, the whole nine yards, descriptions of how in no uncertain terms I was not going to be the father of another child, how by the time Peanut is 18 I will have been a parent with a child under 18 for 34, yes THIRTY, flaming, FOUR years, how the teachers of my children weren't even born when I started taking my children to parent's evenings, on and on and on I went, a man on the edge.

Flossy and Peanut no longer feigned disinterest, they were genuinely disinterested and Peanut had wandered off bored.

I felt quite traumatised.

What a peculiar paradigm we appear to have created. I couldn't stop thinking about what a strange world Peanut inhabits, quite an interesting model of family we've got going on round here. Aunts that aren't and sisters that are and aren't. Some who can live with us and some who can't. It's her version of normal.

Epilogue

This morning I woke at 4am in a cold sweat.
I'd dreamt that we'd been asked to adopt a sibling group of six, lovely children no bother at all. In the dream I'd thought about saying 'yes' and woke myself up in terror because I'd not said 'no''