‘My mother won’t take any payment, Delia,’ Jenny said firmly. ‘I’ll tell her you’ve offered, but I know she’ll refuse. Besides,’ she said feelingly, ‘she’s had Jack and Susan and their children living with them all these years,’ and she raised her eyebrows so that Delia would understand the unspoken allusion fully. ‘There’s much making up to do, I think.’
Jenny ordered lunch, and whilst they were waiting for a table Robin went to have a wander around the hotel.
‘I can’t thank you enough, Jenny,’ Delia said fervently, and if Jenny had had any reservations about her friend’s having left her son with people who were virtual strangers to him, they were now dispelled. Delia obviously loved him so much that she had felt compelled to take such a drastic step to assure his well-being.
‘I ought to buy him a Christmas present,’ Delia murmured. ‘But will it be questioned?’
‘There’s no need,’ Jenny responded. ‘You are his Christmas present; I told him that was why we were coming to Hull, to give him a present. He won’t want anything else now that he knows you’re safe and that he’ll see you again. He’s a lovely boy, Delia. I love him to bits and my mother does too, and she will all the more if I tell her that he’s her grandson.’ She paused. ‘The difficulty will be keeping it from my father. But I’ll wait until Jack and all of them move out. Then we’ll have a heart to heart.’
‘And Robin?’ Delia said quietly. ‘I don’t want him to know everything; not yet. Not until he’s old enough to understand. I don’t want him to feel hostility at such a young age; not as I’ve known it. And I don’t want him to know about my parents either; people who could be so cruel as to disown their own child.’
Jenny had asked her father to pick them up in Hedon and he was patiently waiting in the station yard.
‘Thanks, Da,’ she said, and kissed his cheek. Now more than ever, she was appreciative of the fact that her father had always cared for her and would have done anything to make her life as perfect as possible, spoiling her with little favours in the way that fathers did with daughters; some fathers, she corrected herself. He would have been appalled if he had known how Davis Deakin had treated his. No one would have known; she hadn’t and she was Delia’s closest friend.
When they arrived back at the farm, Robin shot out of the trap shouting ‘Thank you, Aaron’ and ran into the house, while Jenny lingered to add her thanks again as her father pulled away towards the barn.
‘What’s this, then?’ Peggy had turned away from the range, having given the stew in the pan a stir, and was almost bowled over by Robin, who hurled himself at her and buried his face in her comfy body, his arms around her ample waist.
‘I can stay, Granny Peg,’ he said, his voice muffled. ‘I can stay! Tell her, Auntie Jenny.’
Peggy looked down at the boy whose face was flushed and whose eyes were moist. He looked up at her with elation. Then she glanced at Jenny who was watching from the doorway, smiling broadly.
Jenny nodded, and then, as the back door clicked again and she heard children’s voices, she said, ‘Robin and I have lots to tell you.’
‘Loads and loads,’ he blurted out.
‘But we want to tell you later, don’t we, Robin?’ She dropped her voice. ‘Because some of it is secret and we only want to share it with Granny Peg, isn’t that right?’ She put her finger to her lips.
‘Oh, yes,’ he breathed. ‘I almost forgot because I was so excited.’
The girls all tumbled into the room, and he whispered, ‘But I can stay, Granny Peg. I can stay!’
The youngest girls were tired as they had all been backwards and forwards to Foggit’s farm for most of the day, helping to take some of their own things over and squabbling about who should sleep where. Molly had been helping and was slightly disgruntled that she wouldn’t be going to live there too; Louisa, on the other hand, was delighted with her single room. It had been used as a store room when the Foggits had lived there and smelled rather damp, but Grandpa Aaron had said he would bring wood and coal and light a fire in the grate, and distemper the walls to make it look nice and put up some shelves for her books.
Robin longed to tell Louisa about his mother, but Auntie Jenny kept giving him a secret wink and tapping her fingers on her lips so that he would remember they shared a secret, and then he began to think that it was rather fun.
After the girls had gone to bed and Granny Peg had made up his bed on the sofa, he thought that they would be able to talk, but they couldn’t because although Aaron and Jack had gone down to the hostelry Susan was still there, going on about what they needed to do at the other house, and Jenny and Granny Peg were offering suggestions. Robin tried to keep awake in case Susan went to bed early, as she sometimes did, but it wasn’t long before he drifted off to sleep, worn out by the excitement of the day.
‘Just look at him,’ Susan chided. ‘Onny just gone off to sleep. He’s been trying to keep awake, listening to our conversation.’
‘Well, we weren’t talking about anything he shouldn’t hear,’ Peggy pointed out. ‘It’s generally wholesome conversation in this house.’
‘I’m not saying it isn’t,’ Susan huffed. ‘I’m onny saying—’
‘Shall we have another cuppa?’ Jenny rose to her feet. ‘And then I’ll be off to bed. I’m catching the morning train, Ma. I’ve some work to do on school reports before Monday morning. Then we finish at the end of
