‘Sammy?’ I frowned at our eight year old in the backseat, tapping away at his tablet and completely ignoring me. ‘Sammy?!’
Nothing. No response.
I turned back around and let out a sigh of relief.
‘We’re good,’ I said to his mother.
‘This is a terrible time to have this conversation,’ Lynette fretted, eyes flicking up to check on him in the rear-view mirror. ‘I don’t want him to think he needs glasses.’
‘He does need glasses,’ I frowned at her. ‘We’re literally on our way to a clinic in Brighton that offers eye tests for children.’
‘But I don’t want him to think that!’
‘Honey,’ I said with a sigh, putting a hand on her rapidly-bouncing knee. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’
‘It could be the end of his,’ she insisted, white-knuckling the steering wheel. ‘You had glasses growing up, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, self-consciously adjusting the frames.
‘And it sucked, didn’t it?’
‘Not really,’ I shrugged. ‘I actually found it kinda helpful, y’know… having vision.’
‘But weren’t you picked on relentlessly?’ she pressed me. ‘Wasn’t it torture every day, being called those horrible names?’
‘What horrible… Lynn, what sort of freaky soap-opera high school did you go to?’
‘I’m just worried about my boy!’ she yelled out.
I took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of my nose. ‘Look,’ I said eventually, ‘you’re counting the chickens early, or whatever. First-things-first, let’s just get that eye test. Brighton is so far away, by the way. Didn’t any of the local optometrists have appointments open—’
‘No,’ she said quickly. Too quickly.
My eyes narrowed.
‘Lynette,’ I asked her, as coolly as I could. ‘Did you book an eye test as far away as possible and make us drive for hours because you didn’t want any of your or his friends to see him getting it and potentially having to leave with glasses?’
Silence filled the car as we rocketed along the highway.
‘No,’ she said eventually.
We sat in silence for a while longer.
‘Okay, fine,’ she relented with a sigh.
‘Lynette!’