Sundays, and only Sundays, and that is not going to change soon

My children are with me from Friday evening to Sunday lunchtime, every week, without exception, and on the weekdays I am at work and then asleep. What is left is Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening. That is the whole of my availability and no amount of goodwill is going to expand it.

Forty seven, out on the edge of the city where the houses have gardens and nothing else happens. Twelve years in this, one arrangement that ran eight of them and ended when her work took her north.

I lead with the calendar because it is the thing most likely to make somebody stop reading, and I would rather that happened now than in a month. It has ended two conversations already this year, both of them politely, and I did not blame either woman.

What I can offer inside that one day is total reliability. I have never missed a Sunday for anything in twelve years of being a father, and I will not miss one for anything else either. Between Sundays I am available in writing at any hour, I can do tasks in the evenings, and I am extremely good at the sort of arrangement that lives in the gaps of a busy week.

I do not want anybody to meet my children, ever, and I will not discuss them beyond what I have written here. I do not want anything that requires spontaneity. And I do not want to be asked whether the arrangement might change, because it will, in several years, and not before.