“Okay, Ben, how does this look?” Tom waved a bowl under his son’s nose. “She’s a cook, remember? A trained chef. It’s no good buying a ready-made salad and hoping to fob her off with that. This has to be homemade, and it has to be good. So what do you think, huh?”

Ben stared with deep suspicion at the concoction his father appeared to be offering him. It contained nothing he recognised – not even tomatoes, which he had once munched on like apples before deciding one day that they were “yucky”. There were green things in it, and there were brown things. And there were greeny-brown things. And then there were brown things that had green things growing out of them. Ben thought they looked exactly like worms.

“Yuck!” he pronounced. “Yucky, ucky, pucky!” He made retching noises to drive the point home.

“Hmm. Coming from you, that’s practically five Michelin stars. Now where did I put the dressing?” He scratched around the kitchen for it, before remembering that it was still in the fridge. “Aha! There you are, you little bast- … dickens. If you don’t do the trick, nothing will. Extra-virgin olive oil,” he told the wide-eyed Ben. “White balsamic vinegar. Berry-infused vinegar. And a squirt of fresh lemon juice. Does that sound awesome, or what?”

“Aah-sm,” Ben repeated solemnly.

“Now you’re talking. Let’s get you dressed, Bennie-boy.”

Ben’s bottom lip started to jut. “Am dwessed.”

Tom felt a sigh coming up from the soles of his shoes. “Yes, I know you’re dressed, but you must put on different clothes to go to Jamie’s house. Nice, going-out clothes.”

“Want spidey-suit. Want it!” His voice was starting to rise.

“Well, let’s go and see what else you’ve got in your closet.” Tom picked him up and started up the stairs with him. He was about halfway up when he had to make a very sudden grab to stop his son from pitching backwards over the banister. Ben had developed an alarming habit of hurling himself backward by kicking out his legs and stiffening every muscle in his body. Tom had almost dropped him more than once.

“Jeez, Ben. My heart. Don’t do that, dude.”

Tom took deep breaths, and they managed to get up the rest of the stairs without incident.

“Okay! Let’s see what’s in here!” Tom flung the cupboard open with all the forced joviality of a circus ringmaster, but Ben was having none of it.

“Want spidey-suit,” he muttered.

“How about these cool denim shorts with this awesome camo T-shirt, Ben? Just think how handsome you’ll look. Jamie will love this outfit, I bet.”

“Mima?” Ben asked.

“Yes, Mima. You want Mima to think you look handsome, don’t you?”

Ben thought about that for a moment. Then his face cleared. “Mima want spidey suit. Mine spidey suit.”

Tom eyed the spidey suit. It wasn’t that he had any objection to dressing his son in superhero outfits. It was just this particular superhero outfit he didn’t like. It was much too small, for one thing. The tag at the back of the neck declared it to be suitable for babies between the ages of six months and one year. Ben was twenty months old, and on the ninety-seventh percentile for both height and weight.

The nylon Spiderman outfit was literally groaning under the strain of fitting his sturdy little body. The seams had already split in several places, and it was worn so sheer in the rear that you could read the logo of Ben’s nappy through the fabric. The pants, which were supposed to be full length, barely covered Ben’s knees, and the sleeves were extravagantly ripped in several places.

Ben looked ridiculous in it, but had insisted on wearing it every day for the last two weeks. The only mercy was that he didn’t actually sleep in it, so it could be washed at night. Tom had considered slipping Vuyiswa R50 to pretend that the washing machine had shredded it, but couldn’t bring himself to face the fallout.

However. There was no way he was going to introduce Ben to Jamie’s family in the appalling “spidey suit”. Ben would just have to deal with it.

Twenty minutes later, Tom’s ears were ringing from the shrieks of his son in the throes of a full-blown tantrum. He had been kicked and punched – accidentally – by the thrashing toddler. And the worst part was that as fast as Tom got Ben into his shorts and T-shirt, Ben ripped them off again. Yes, he’d chosen this moment to demonstrate his new-found undressing skills.

Tom, sweating lightly, closed his eyes and counted to ten. Resisting the urge to scream as well, he dug for the last vestiges of patience. Pick your battles, he remembered reading on a parenting website. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Okay, so maybe this wasn’t the most important battle in the world. Maybe it didn’t really matter what a toddler wore to a backyard barbeque. But it galled him to reward bad behaviour by giving in to his son’s tyranny. He glanced at his watch. They were already late. The way he saw it, he had a choice. He could either let Ben go out in the stupid spidey suit, or he could watch him run around naked the whole afternoon.

A few minutes later, Ben was magically restored to good humour as he strutted out the house in the spidey suit. Tom’s mind was churning with a familiar mixture of guilt and resentment. He felt like a total failure as a parent. Only the suspicion that other parents regularly felt this way helped. Feeling a little sorry for himself, he rang the bell at Jamie’s gate.