‘You’re laughing at me.’
‘I’m laughing at your puppy. There’s a difference. Rose is awake.’
‘Goody.’ She scrambled to her feet, put the puppy down and made to go indoors. ‘She went to sleep on the way home and wouldn’t wake up. She’ll be so hungry. I almost woke her but then I remembered there’s an English comedy show I like on TV late tonight, and it’s the best fun watching it with Rose.’
Then as he blinked, trying to reconcile late-night comedy and a fourteen-month-old toddler, she hesitated. As she’d started toward the door Taffy had followed.
‘You haven’t done what you need to do,’ she told the puppy, and pointed to the grass. ‘Duty first.’
The puppy looked up at her new mistress with adoration, and wagged her tail.
‘Stay here with her while I fetch Rose,’ Susie ordered Hamish, and he nodded and put a foot out to stop Taffy following her mistress.
Taffy sat down and howled.
They both looked at Taffy. Taffy looked at both of them, opened her jaws and howled even longer.
‘Whoops,’ Susie said. ‘What have I let myself in for?’
‘Give her back,’ Hamish told her.
‘What?’
‘You don’t have to keep her.’
She snatched Taffy up and glared. ‘What a thing to say. Don’t listen, sweetheart. You’re mine. We’re a family. I don’t mind the odd howl. It’s an excellent howl and it’s all your very own. I wonder if you’ll like my TV programme, too.’
This was seriously weird. There were all sorts of things happening inside Hamish that he had no idea what to do with.
‘You can’t be a family to that…that.’
‘That gorgeous pup? I can be a family with whoever I want,’ she snapped, hauling herself up to her full five feet four inches and glaring. ‘Taffy needs me out here. Can you fetch Rose?’
‘What, get her from her cot?’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘Just walk in and pick her up?’
‘You earls have great courage,’ she said, obviously trying not to sound sarcastic. ‘If you pick her up under the armpits and close your palms, it won’t even hurt your blisters.’
It wasn’t his blisters he was afraid of. ‘I can’t pick up a baby.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Get in there.’
‘Woof,’ said Taffy.
He stared at the pair of them and they stared back, challenging.
He could do this. Right.
Right.
He strode into the house, followed the sound of Rosie’s increased indignation and pushed open the door to Susie’s and Rosie’s shared bedroom. And paused in astonishment.
The bed was vast, a great four-poster with mounds of eider-downs and more mounds of cushions. There were pinks and purples and almost crimsons and gold. It was an amazing bed.
And the walls…
Deirdre’s kitsch ornaments had been taken down, and Susie had covered the walls with prints-not expensive artwork but prints she’d obviously ordered because they appealed.
There were all sorts of prints.
Tree ferns taken from strange angles. Waterfalls. Rock formations. That was one wall.
Another wall was the sea-vast curling waves, surfers doing all sorts of incredible twisting turns, shots of foam, a single rock pool, a tiny minnow against a vast pier pile…
The third was people. Grins. People smiling. These weren’t people she knew. Ancient Tibetan grandmothers with gap-toothed grins. Old men smiling at each other in friendship. A group of kids in Scout uniform, smiling in unison.
And the last wall was photographs blown up. Susie as a kid, he thought, looking at twins cavorting on a beach. Photographs of a man who was obviously Rory. A couple in love. He looked at them smiling at each other, and felt a twist of…
No. Don’t look. You don’t need to feel like this.
It was dumb to put such photographs up, he thought. This was as kitsch as Deirdre’s efforts.
But then he thought, No, it’s not. He thought of his apartment back in Manhattan, and Marcia’s, planned by the same minimalist decorator who’d recoil in horror if she saw this. But this sort of worked. It was a huge collage of life, of living, of all Susie held dear.
An indignant yell brought him back to earth. In the centre of the room was that which Susie held dearest. The toddler was beaming as she saw she’d caught his attention. She was holding her hands out and saying, ‘Up.’
‘Hi,’ he said weakly, and she bounced and grinned and held her hands higher.
‘Up, up, up.’
He could do this. He put his hands under her arms and gingerly raised her.
She giggled and pointed to the bed. ‘Dappy,’ she said.
Dappy. He thought about it. Then he realised what she meant. Um, no.
He made to carry her-holding her at arm’s length-out the door, out to her mother, but her yell became urgent. He had her agenda wrong.
‘Dappy, dappy, dappy.’
‘Where are your diapers?’ he asked, and she pointed an imperious finger to the pile on a side table. Under the Tibetan grandmas.
‘Dappy.’
OK. He set Rose down on the floor but she yelled in indignation. Her routine was obviously to be followed to the letter.
‘Bed,’ she said, and pointed.
‘Give me a break,’ he said weakly, but he was a man under orders. He tossed a diaper across to the bed, then lifted Rose and set her down on the eiderdown. She almost disappeared in its vastness.
She giggled and kicked her feet, squirming away from him and burrowing under the cushions. This was obviously a game, played whenever she woke up.
The bed smelt like Susie.
The room smelt like Susie.
Rose lifted a cushion, grinned at him, chortled and pulled the pillow back over her head again. He considered, then put a finger on the small of her back and tickled.
Shrieks of laughter and she squirmed deeper. Right under the quilt.
He put his head under the quilt and said, ‘Boo.’
‘Dappy,’ she said, and pushed the quilt away, lay flat and waited. ‘Boo’ was obviously the magic word.
And he performed magic as well. Hamish Douglas, corporate financier, ninth Earl of Loganaich, successfully changed a diaper.
‘Like climbing Annapurna One,’ he told himself, setting Rose on the floor, carrying the used diaper into the bathroom in triumph and thinking of the world’s second most difficult climb. ‘A soggy diaper. A soiled diaper represents Everest.’
Then as Rose looked thoughtful he tossed the diaper into the wastebin and dived on the toddler to take her out to her mother before she could send him up his second mountain.
He wasn’t ready for Everest yet.
Susie was still waiting for Taffy to perform. She was sitting on a garden seat, watching the dark settle over the garden, simply…waiting.
Hamish delivered her daughter, Rose squirmed down onto the grass and she and Taffy proceeded to investigate each other.
