Before he could answer her, the door opened and Perry Croft popped his head inside. 'Breda just got in a cab, Phil, I thought she needed to get off home.'
Phillip smiled. 'Thanks, mate. We'll be out in a minute.'
Perry was gone without another word. Christine felt her body relaxing, felt the tension leaving her and the lightness of the relief as it washed over her.
Phillip hugged her to him, kissing the top of her head. 'See? You were worried over nothing.'
'I'm sorry, Phil, I overreacted. I just didn't want you to start a row with Breda, she thinks the world of you. And those blokes she was with, they didn't know she was your sister, they didn't know the score. They couldn't believe their luck that she was giving them the time of day!'
Phillip laughed with her then, and she instinctively rubbed her hand across her belly; she was just starting to round out a bit, as Phil's mother so succinctly put it. Her normally flat belly was beginning to grow outwards, and she caressed it happily. She was inordinately pleased that Phillip had listened to her, had taken her feelings into consideration. She knew that Breda's performance had made him angry, angry and ashamed. Her behaviour was anathema to him. But the fact he had put her feelings first really meant a lot to her.
Christine was becoming more comfortable with her situation by the day, she was growing up fast, and that was not a bad thing considering she would be a married woman in one week's time, and a mother in six months' time. Instead of fearing the change a baby would bring to her, she now welcomed the child. It was already the love of her life after Phillip; now she had accepted its existence she felt a deep and abiding connection to it. She hoped it was a boy, because Phillip wanted a son so badly. He didn't actually say that, but she just knew that was the case.
As she settled once more into his arms, she wondered at how she could ever have questioned her feelings for him. She was lucky, a very lucky young woman. Who would soon be a bride and a mother, and who was not yet seventeen. But as Phillip had said to her on more than one occasion, they were young all right, but they were still old enough to have kids and they would enjoy them. Give them a good life, and love them with a vengeance.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Breda walked into the kitchen to her father shouting merrily, 'The dead arose and appeared to many.'
They all laughed at his words, especially Christine.
'Jesus, Breda, you look like you've just been exhumed,' quipped Declan.
Breda didn't say a word, but she looked at Declan and her expression told him everything he needed to know. She poured herself a cup of tea and, sipping the hot liquid noisily, she sat down heavily at the kitchen table. Her son was sitting on his grandmother's lap, and he grinned saucily at his mummy as she put out her hand and caressed his hair.
Christine looked around her. She had never experienced anything like this in her life. Breakfast in her house had always been a solemn affair – no chat, no camaraderie, no radio blaring in the background. She loved the mornings now, looked forward to them.
'How's the morning sickness, Chris? Shall I get you a couple of cream crackers?' Veronica's voice was filled with concern for her. She had been great about the baby, about the wedding, about everything in fact.
'I'm fine. Really, I feel great.'
Veronica lifted her grandson from her lap and placed him on her chair. Going to the cooker, she put the frying pan on to the hob, saying cheerily, 'How about a bit of sausage and egg? Could you manage that?'
Christine shook her head, pleased at the attention she got from this kind and caring woman. 'Honesty, I couldn't eat a thing yet. I still feel a bit queasy. I'll have some toast later.'
Veronica frowned, her eyes almost disappearing inside the sockets as she surveyed the young girl with mock severity. 'Mind that you do, that child you're carrying needs fuel. Food is fuel for humans. It's what keeps us going. I reckon you've a boy there. Morning, noon and night sickness usually means a son. Girls are easier to carry. No trouble at all really.'
Breda laughed then, a scornful, hateful laugh. Christine saw that whatever ailed Breda, it was much more than a hangover. 'Is that so? Your boys have never caused you any trouble of course, have they, Mother?'
Christine looked at her soon-to-be-sister-in-law's bloated face, and saw the way she looked around the table at her brothers. She watched as Phillip stood up abruptly and walked out of the room, his back ramrod straight and his hands clenched into fists. Sometimes she hated Breda for the way she casually lashed out at her family, her cryptic sarcasm delivered with such venom it made everyone around her as unhappy as she was. Christine picked up her mug of tea and sipped it anxiously; the atmosphere was heavy with dread now. Breda's son was looking at his mother intently, even he was aware that something was suddenly amiss.
It was Declan who spoke first, playing the peacekeeper. He rounded on Breda, not allowing for her son's presence as they usually did. Pushing his face almost into his sister's, he spat at her, 'You're a bitter pill, Breda. You are a vicious, bitter bitch of a woman, and one of these days you'll go too fucking far.'
Veronica walked quickly to where her son sat and, slapping him heavily across his shoulders, she said in a low voice, 'That's enough, Declan. I won't have another word said.'
Declan stood up then and, looking down at his mother, who at just five feet tall was over a foot shorter than him, he answered her, with a loud and angry sneer, 'That's right, Mum, you keep defending her. But she needs to know that all any of us are guilty of is looking out for her. Whore that she is.'
Christine was shocked at the turn the morning had suddenly taken, but this kind of confrontation was par for the course in this house. The rows were as easily forgotten as they were easily started. These people said what was on their minds and, as much as it could be upsetting, like it was now, it was also their way of getting things off their chests and out into the open. After all the years in her own home, where nothing was ever really resolved, she loved that the Murphys felt comfortable enough to say what they needed to without fear or favour. They cleared the air and then forgot about it.
Spandau Ballet were playing on the radio, and Jamsie was eating his breakfast as if nothing was going on around him. Breda was staring at her son, Declan's vitriol for once subduing her usual argumentative personality, and Veronica was shaking her head sadly in despair at her children's need to fight each other.
Declan walked from the kitchen, and Christine knew he would be going to Phillip, would make sure that his brother was OK. Phillip often seemed to take the brunt of Breda's disaffection with her life, and Christine admired him for the way he accepted it from her. Breda, though, was rarely cross with her. In fact, Breda was very kind to her personally. But that could be because she wasn't a blood relative.
Christine waited a few minutes and then, picking up her tea, she excused herself and left the kitchen. She hoped the house Phillip was buying for them went through soon. She decided they needed to put some space between him and his sister.
As she went up the stairs to the bedroom she shared with Phillip, she heard the low murmur of Phillip and Declan's voices coming from the small front room.
Chapter Twenty-Three
'He's a bruiser all right, Chris. Just like his brother.'
Christine grinned with pride at the praise. Breda was genuinely thrilled with her nephews. Phillip Murphy the third was a handsome child, who delighted everyone around him. Even her own mother had succumbed to his charms; the woman who had taken her daughter's pregnancy and marriage as a personal insult to herself was mad about her grandsons, especially the first-born. His thick, dark hair and his sparkling blue eyes which were so like his father's hadn't put her mother off him one iota. In fact, everyone worshipped the ground he walked on.
And walk he did; at ten months he had taken his first tentative steps and by thirteen months he was running around the house like Roger Bannister on speed. He was talking by eighteen months, not just words, but whole sentences. Now at nearly three he could chat with the best of them. Even the arrival of his little brother a year
