Growing pains Most of the time, Mr. James thought, he did an alright job. There was very little to compare to, of course, him having been on his own with Cleo from almost the beginning. There was no rosy life of before to compare to, where she had had a mummy and a daddy. He had always been both. Or been enough. Or tried to be, anyway. He put food on the table, he had taught her to garden and keep shop. He stepped in, when he knew how, to the things that mothers more ordinarily did too. He had washed and folded her little clothes, brushed her hair, attended tiny tea parties held for rabbits, teddies and him. And now, with the rose tinted glasses with which one looks back, that all seemed so simple. All the ways he had had to step up and be something he’d never thought of being - or at least, not for a long time, and not like this - all seemed so easy. Now though… There were going to be all kinds of changes in the coming years. He felt embarrassed and confused at the thought of the things he might have to deal with. One of those though, seemed to be rearing its head already….
Parker Fitzgerald. That name had been bandied about a lot. Parker this, Parker that. Parker seemed to be spending an awful lot of time with his girl. He had wanted Cleo to get out from the Greenhouse, sure, and to make more friends. And certainly, it was a marked improvement that she wasn’t hanging around the Herbology teacher alone all the time, but was it too much to ask that she made some female friends?
Mr. James debated saying something. But what? He waved his wand and wrapping paper folded itself around the floral gardening gloves that were amongst his daughter’s Christmas presents. From his dresser a Cleo of assorted ages varyingly waved, blew out birthday candles, smiled… The one thing that they all had in common was that she looked so young, and she still was that baby girl in his head. And she had given no indication of becoming anything else… She didn’t seem to see this Parker boy as anything more than a friend. And he was a year younger. Could he risk putting it off? He was not looking forward to that conversation. Christmas was supposed to be fun and carefree. And he found that, in spite of the guilty voice at the back of his head, the one that said Cleo needed to know these things before she became Like That and not only after she started showing signs of it, by which point heartbreak and and other horrors might have befallen her - in spite of this, he found that it was quite easy to put off having a conversation that he really didn’t want to have.