‘Yeah, but I didn’t know her,’ Toby said with the blunt pragmatism of a six-year-old. ‘My daddy says Aunty Christine looks like her. The photos are a bit the same. And Aunty Christine loves this house. She comes in here and looks at it and cries.’
Oh, great…
‘Aunty Christine says Digger shouldn’t come into the house because he messes it up but Daddy said he put his foot down over that, whatever that means,’ Toby told her. ‘And I want a Darth Vader poster on my bedroom wall ’cos Daddy and I love that movie, but Aunty Christine says my mummy would hate it and I mustn’t even ask Daddy because it’d make him sad. Do you think it’d make him sad? Or is it something else he’d put his foot down about?’
‘Maybe.’ This wasn’t a conversation she should get drawn into, she decided. Not when she’d known these people for not much more than two minutes.
There was lots of background here that she didn’t understand.
But at least she had a bed, she decided, brightening. An amazing bed. She’d had a truly excellent meal. She could put up with a little red and gold opulence.
She sat down on the bed. It gave under her weight. She gave a tentative bounce and the bed bounced back.
The symmetry of the covers was ruined.
Great.
‘Do you do much bouncing?’ she asked Toby, and he looked like he didn’t know what she was talking about.
‘You ruin the covers if you bounce,’ he told her. ‘Aunty Christine says so. She says don’t move things. Don’t touch. She says Mummy would have everything perfect.’
Rachel’s eyes widened. What an extraordinary statement. ‘But…bouncing’s fun. I’m sure your mummy would want you to have fun.’
‘Aunty Christine would growl at me if I bounced on my bed.’
‘Would she growl at you if you bounced on mine?’
Toby thought about it. Deeply. ‘I guess she wouldn’t,’ he said at last. ‘You’re a grown-up. She couldn’t growl at you.’
‘I’d like to see her try.’ She’d never met the unknown Aunt Christine but already she held her in aversion. And Hugo… What had they created? A shrine to a dead wife and sister when it should be a home.
She knew-who better?-that life was to be lived by the living. For the living. Not for the dead.
It could all be taken away so quickly…
Enough. She bounced again. And smiled at Toby and moved along so that there was room beside her. ‘Want to try?
‘Yes,’ Toby said, and went to join her.
They bounced.
Digger, watching from the doorway, ventured further in, looking as stunned as it was possible for a goofy dog to look.
They continued to bounce.
Digger started to bark and Toby giggled and bounced higher.
It was great. Stupid but great.
It had been one heck of a day. Rachel’s emotions had been pushed to the limit. She didn’t know what she was doing here. She didn’t have a clue what was happening to her, but for now…for this minute there was just one crazy time, a tousle-headed child who looked as if he didn’t get enough laughter in his life and Rachel. And Rachel knew she definitely needed more laughter. More bouncing.
If the springs broke, she’d pay for them, she decided. If the tassels frayed. If the gilt was tarnished. Some things just had to be done, and they had to be done now. She had hold of Toby’s hands and they were bouncing in unison as Digger barked a crazy accompaniment on the side.
‘What on earth…?’
She looked over to the doorway. Hugo was watching them. Stunned. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
She refused to give up the moment. Not yet. She’d had a very big day and so had Toby. A vision of Toby’s face as he’d watched them work on Kim came back to her. It was too much horror for a six-year-old to be put to bed with. He needed to sleep with bouncing.
‘We’re bouncing, Dr McInnes,’ she told him, then gripped Toby’s hands tighter and bounced again. ‘Care to join us?’
‘You’ll break the bedsprings.’
‘I’ll pay for them,’ she said nobly. ‘I’m donating one set of bedsprings to the common good. I need a bounce and so does Toby. I’m sure you do, too.’
‘I wouldn’t fit,’ he said faintly, and she grinned.
‘That’s what you get for showing your guest to a room with a single bed.’
‘Daddy’s got a bigger bed,’ Toby volunteered, mid-bounce. ‘Can we can go there?’
Digger barked again as if he thought that was a truly excellent idea.
‘My bed’s for sleeping in,’ Hugo told them, and Rachel grimaced.
‘How boring.’
‘The kettle’s boiled. Do you want a drink?’
Rachel considered. She bounced a couple of times and looked down at Toby. He bounced with her and met her look-co-conspirators. Co-bouncers. ‘Do we want a drink, Toby?’
‘I’d like some hot chocolate,’ he told her, and bounced again.
‘That sounds good.’ Another bounce. ‘Maybe we could stop and bounce again tomorrow night.’
‘Are you staying for two nights?’
She cast a sideways glance at Hugo and bounced a bit more. ‘I may,’ she told him. ‘If I’m not kicked out because of my bouncing habits. I think I’m needed.’
‘Because of the fire?’ Toby asked, and she nodded.
‘Because of the fire. And because…maybe because you guys could do with a bit of bouncing. Like me.’
What was happening here?
Hugo prepared three mugs of hot chocolate and listened to their laughter. He’d backed out of the room fast.
Why?
He didn’t know. Confusion, he thought. He was definitely confused. The sight of one crazy doctor, gorgeous in her borrowed Crimplene, holding his little son and bouncing as if she were six years old, too…
Confusion summed it up, he thought. She was like no one he’d ever met.
She was…gorgeous?
She was also married. She was wearing a band of gold very definitely on the third finger of her left hand. She was attached to a creep called Michael.
How attached?
Married attached.
But, then…he wore a wedding band as well.
Why?
Habit, he guessed. Beth had been dead for almost six years now.
So why did he keep wearing the ring?
The vision of Christine came into his head. Beth’s older sister. Christine, who came in every day and cared for Toby, fussed over this house, made sure Toby had a memory of his mother.
Christine would marry him. He knew that. She was just waiting for him to move on from her sister.
So he wore a wedding ring.
‘It’s time you got over it,’ Christine had told him, but he wasn’t ready. He hadn’t been ready to marry Beth. He hadn’t wanted to marry anyone.
The memory of his parents’ loveless marriage was always there-his mother, cool and calculating, with eyes
