‘Bonnie thinks it’ll have a bad effect on her brain,’ said Ben. ‘After the highly educational conversations she has with me – and you,’ he added politely.
‘Oh dear,’ said Simmy, thinking there was nothing whatever she could do about that particular problem. All she could suggest was sending Verity out on as many deliveries as possible.
‘That’s hardly within my control, is it?’ Bonnie replied crossly. ‘She already does all the deliveries, anyway.’
‘Maybe there’ll be a nice juicy murder sometime soon. That’ll give her something new to talk about,’ said Christopher.
‘Don’t say that!’ cried Simmy. ‘That’s the last thing we want.’ She moved closer to her sleeping infant. ‘And even if there is something horrible, I don’t want to know anything at all about it. Do you hear me?’ She glared round at the three faces. ‘I’m on maternity leave, and that means nobody brings anything nasty or sad or dangerous into this house for at least a year. I mean it, you know.’
‘Calm down,’ said Christopher. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to disturb your idyll. I’ll barricade the door myself if I have to.’
‘My hero,’ she smiled, not entirely mollified, thanks to the hovering presence of a man called Crickers.
Robin was stirring for his afternoon feed and Simmy had a moment’s indecision as to whether or not she could do it in front of Ben. Angie had talked incessantly about how she would bare her breast anywhere, any time, in order to perform an entirely natural function, and Simmy agreed with her in theory. A friend had bought her a kind of cape, which she was supposed to use to cover her modesty, but Robin disliked being pushed under a curtain of material where he couldn’t watch his mother’s face as he suckled. In the pub, she had remained in the public bar, but tucked into a quiet corner, where nobody had noticed her.
‘Go ahead,’ Ben waved at her, realising her dilemma. ‘I’ve seen it all before.’
‘Have you?’ Bonnie rounded on him. ‘When?’
‘There’s a psychology tutor at uni, who’s got a kid about six months old. She carries it around with her and feeds it every half hour, as far as I can work out. She gets a kick out of showing her flesh to the male students.’
‘Is that allowed?’ demanded Christopher, scandalised.
‘I doubt if there’s a specific regulation, one way or the other. There have been mutterings, but nobody’s quite reached the point of complaining. I mean – who wants to be seen as being that prurient? For a start, it would have to be one of the girls, and they’d be accused of being anti-feminist. When it comes to safe spaces and comfort zones and all that tripe, nobody can quite work out how breastfeeding fits in.
It’s hilarious, actually. And Simmy’s boobs are far neater and more discreet than Ms Sellers’ are.’
‘Well, don’t stare,’ said Bonnie.
It was half past four when Christopher drove the pair all the way back to Bowness, where Ben’s family lived. Bonnie spent a lot of time there too, although technically she still lived with Corinne, her foster mother, half a mile north of the Harknesses. The streets of Windermere and Bowness merged into each other, confusing visitors and mapmakers. Simmy enjoyed an hour with Robin, pulling faces at him and marvelling at the energy building up in his little arms and legs. He was so full of life, it seemed miraculous. More often than she would admit to anybody, the image of poor dead little Edith lying limply in her lap would superimpose itself over Robin’s healthy little body. He would never know his older sister, but always live in her shadow, however faint and forgotten it might become as he grew up. When people asked her how many children she had, she would be forced to decide, every time, whether or not to include her firstborn, who never lived.
Already she was allowing herself to hope that Robin would not be an only child. Her fortieth birthday, and Christopher’s, given that they were born on the same day, was only months away, but somehow it seemed less of a deadline, now she had achieved a living child. The complications that would multiply concerning the shop and finances and logistics if she had another baby were easily pushed aside. How much more difficult could two children be than one? In some ways, it would surely be easier, with them amusing each other as they got older.
She dozed on the sofa with Robin on her chest, their breathing synchronised, everything warm and contented. Life was good. Outside there was half an acre of ground, legally theirs, for garden and shed and cars and paddling pools. That alone had made the new home wonderful to her. Granted it was rocky and steep and covered in scrubby, prickly vegetation, but it was so full of potential it made her breathless. When she had lived in Worcestershire with her first husband, they had only had the tiniest patch of garden, almost all of it paved over. In Troutbeck, she had a bit more, which she filled with tall, colourful flowers – but this was her little family’s own piece of Lakeland fell, and she loved it.
Humphrey the builder would be back next morning, and countless mornings over the coming months, creating two more rooms upstairs and installing walls, shelves, cupboards and floors all over the building – which was still more of a barn than a house. Robin would probably be crawling before it was all finished. Simmy would be back at the shop, with some other woman doing a share of the childcare. Any hope that that would be Angie was fading. The demands of the B&B were relentless, and tentative hints about retirement fell on deaf ears.
Christopher still wasn’t back at six o’clock, when Robin wanted another feed and Simmy herself was feeling decidedly peckish. It was not her job
