Beautiful Child Read Free

not?’
    ‘ No, I’m not!’ blushed Penny, before laughing at the terrified look on her husband’s face.  ‘I just meant one more to finish off our family.’
    ‘Penny, I’m more than happy with the three we’ve got and we’re not exactly rolling in it. I don’t think we could really afford another child’
    ‘We could if we wanted to.’
    ‘Penny, that’s not fair. You’ve been working up to this, haven’t you. I can tell you have.’
    ‘The kids are growing up so fast. Tom’s twelve, Amy’s ten, Katie is five and … ‘
    ‘…yes, Penny, I do know the ages of our kids.’
    ‘But what am I going to do when they don’t need me as much?’
    ‘Penny, that’s life,’ said Adrian firmly. ‘You have kids, you do your best for them, then they grow up and find their own way leaving Mum and Dad to rediscover why they got together in the first place.’
    ‘You old romantic.’
    ‘Well I am trying to be practical too. I mean, we keep afloat financially because of what we get from your job at the school. Having another child would put a big financial strain on things for us.’
    Penny enjoyed her job as a teaching assistant at the school where Katie, their youngest, went and she would also have to agree that the family finances had been easier since she’d gone out to work. But she was broody.
    ‘I suppose it’s my ticking clock talking,’ said Penny.
    ‘I didn’t mean to be insensitive.’
    ‘You weren’t,’ said Penny.
    ‘ To be honest, Pen, I just don’t think I could go through the nappy and sleepless night stage again,’ Adrian admitted, ‘I like the fact that our kids are kids now and not babies anymore. There’s a great thing going between the five of us.’
    ‘ I know’ said Penny, smiling at certain memories. She’d always thought she’d be closer to her daughters and indeed she adored her girls. But in fact it was her son Tom who was her ‘mate’ amongst the three. She sometimes thought it may be because she saw so much of Adrian in Tom and that led to her being a little bit in love with her son like many mothers were.
    ‘I’d like us to get the overdraft down and pay off some of the balance on the credit cards. You know, get rid of some of our debt.’
    ‘Isn’t that what you up your mortgage for?’
    ‘Yes, but there’s a limit to that, Pen, and we’re very close to it considering the way house prices are at the moment.’
    ‘I didn’t realise things were that bad.’
    ‘They’re not,’ said Adrian, ‘we’re in a better position than many others. We could just do a bit better than we do, that’s all.’
    She kissed him on the cheek.
    ‘Now what have I done?’
    ‘Nothing,’ said Penny. ‘I just felt like it, like I just feel like getting another one in and this time, I do mean a drink.’
    A little while later they joined some of their friends and neighbours at the bar. As they talked Adrian kept a light hand on his wife’s bottom and an intimate closeness that she responded to with equal affection. Her touch in the small of his back, the smell of her perfume as she stood so close, were just two of the things that made him glad that she was his wife. When they got home, Adrian’s Mum had a coffee with them before leaving. Then Adrian and Penny went upstairs to bed and made love.
    Just before one o’clock in the morning they had another baby on the way.
    *
    Canon Brendan O’ Farrell of the Holy Saints Catholic Church in Salford had always been a very proud and fastidious man. It had been fifty years since he’d graduated from the seminary in Dublin and cut the ties with his native County Clare for a life in the priesthood. Holy Saints had been his very first posting and he’d been over in England so long he almost felt like he’d gone native. But whenever he went back home to ‘Clare’ his seven brothers and sisters reminded him that he was a thoroughbred Irishman. Brendan was the oldest and therefore the one who’d come under the most pressure from