Head Over Heels ✓

40 / back to school

september, age 28

The moment Lucas woke up on the fourth of September, he knew it was going to be a difficult day. He had known it for weeks before it had come around, dreading that Tuesday morning, and as soon as he opened his eyes, he felt his heart sink. He wasn't ready for Lucy to start Nursery. If he'd had his own way, he would have kept her home for another year but she had wanted to start, and Asher had persuaded him that it would be good for her to meet other kids her own age.

After a less than traditional start to life, Lucas wanted everything for his daughter. He wanted to give her everything he could, to shower her in opportunities and do everything to raise her as well as he could. It just so happened that the best thing he could do for her was the one thing he least wanted to do. Starting school was a big step, even if it was only Nursery and she would have Cora as her teacher, but he wasn't sure he was ready to take it.

As soon as Lucy had found out that her nana would be teaching Nursery, she had made her mind up that she would be going to school in September. For that, Lucas couldn't blame her. The year that Cora had taught him, before she had become his stepmother, had been one of the best years of school, one of only a handful of teachers who had ever really got him. That settled his nerves too, to some degree, that he could vouch for his daughter's first teacher. He knew they would get on like a house on fire: they already did.

Lucy adored all of her grandparents. She had been a little overwhelmed by the size of her new family at first, but as soon as she had realised she had her whole life to know them and love them, that she wasn't going anywhere, she had thrown herself into spending as much time with them as possible. At least one night a week, she stayed with one of her three sets of grandparents and she always came home a bubble of excitement, spilling with stories.

Much like Lucas had done with Tom, she had taken on Julian, Freddy and Harvey as slightly distant brothers rather than her uncles: they were only ten, just six years older than her, and all three of them doted on her as though she was yet another sister. Lucas loved to see that, how his brothers didn't care at all that Lucy had jumped into their lives as a toddler, that she was technically their niece.

For a moment after he opened his eyes to soft sun pouring through the crack in his window, Lucas lay perfectly still and just basked in the warm rays that bathed his cheeks in light, until his alarm went off after two minutes and he rolled over with a groan. He always set an alarm, and he always woke up before it went off.

One more week off work. Come Monday, he and Asher would be heading back into the office. Although he had popped in at least a couple of times a month as he worked from home, Lucas knew it would be a big adjustment to head back to work while Lucy was at school.

"Rise and shine," he said, nudging Asher, who couldn't hear him. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood with a gargantuan yawn, stretching out his back before he shuffled into Lucy's room. Ever since the year had turned a new leaf, her hearing had started to deteriorate faster and Lucas and Asher knew that she would need surgery before starting Reception.

He wasn't looking forward to that. The weeks after Asher had undergone the operations for his cochlear implants had been some of the hardest as he had tried to adjust to a new kind of sound. The effort had been exhausting for the both of them, and it had been a taxing time when every little thing had irritated Asher and there wasn't much to be done to help. It would be even harder to reason with a child.

"Morning, Lucy," he said, having to make an effort to speak louder than he was. "Time to get up, honey." He opened her curtains and when the light hit her face, she squinted and rolled away from the sun.