Dear Thing Read Free Page B

strong positive, Ben,’ said Claire, and her face was radiant. ‘I took two this morning at school, and then another one this afternoon. They were all the same.’
    ‘We’re going to have a baby!’ Ben picked her up and whirled her around in his arms. Claire laughed, her feet flying out behind her and narrowly missing the Aga.
    ‘Plenty of things can still go wrong,’ she told him, but he bent her back and kissed her, passionately, like a hero in a black-and-white film.
    Romily felt a burning in her eyes. She didn’t have to watch them, together in the sunshine streaming through the French windows. She’d seen it a million times. But she did watch them.
    ‘How are you feeling?’ he murmured.
    ‘Wonderful.’
    ‘You look amazing,’ Romily said. ‘You’ve got a sort of bloom to you. I was thinking it earlier.’
    They both looked at her at the same time, as if they’d forgotten she was there. Well, why wouldn’t they? ‘Congratulations,’ she added.
    Ben set Claire back on her feet and turned to Romily. ‘I’m going to be a daddy!’
    She beamed back at him. ‘Congratulations, Daddy.’
    ‘We’ve still got a long way to go,’ said Claire. ‘Nine months. And the official test tomorrow. Which might say otherwise.’
    ‘It won’t. This time we know it’s a good, healthy embryo. A baby.’ Ben held out his arms, wide enough to embrace the whole kitchen, the whole world. If Romily had thought Claire’s happiness was beautiful, his was nearly blinding. ‘Forget the beer. I’m going to find some champagne. You can have some, can’t you, Claire? A little bit?’
    ‘Better not.’
    ‘Romily and I will drink it, then.’
    ‘I need to drive home.’
    ‘Stay the night!’
    ‘I’ve got to take— er, Posie’s little friend home.’
    ‘Amelia,’ supplied Claire.
    ‘That’s it.’
    ‘Then I’ll drink the sweet taste of my wife’s lips,’ declared Ben, and he took Claire in his arms again.
    This time, Romily didn’t watch them kissing. ‘I’ll just tell the girls to wash their hands and get ready for pizza,’ she said. She didn’t think Ben and Claire heard her, and when she went into the other room, the girls had their heads together inside the castle and didn’t look up, either. She made a detour to the bathroom, where she discovered that her dark croppedhair was stuck up all on one side, and probably had been since she’d been caught in the rain.
    She tidied it as best she could, taking her time, and then washed her hands and tried a bit of Claire’s hand moisturizer and, for good measure, counted how many blue tiles there were around the sink (thirty-eight) before she went back to her daughter.
    Quietly, she sneaked on sock-clad feet, her hands outstretched to surprise Posie with some birthday tickles.
    ‘So why do you go to Crossmead if you live all the way out here?’ Amelia was asking.
    ‘Oh, I told my mum that I wanted to go to school there.’ Posie’s voice was offhand. ‘But I definitely live here.’
    Romily stopped.
    ‘Who was the lady who picked us up from school, then?’ Amelia asked.
    ‘That’s Romily.’
    ‘Isn’t she your mum? My mum thought she was your mum.’
    ‘No, my parents are Claire and Ben. They’re the best parents in the world.’
    Romily coughed loudly, and Posie pulled her head out of the doll’s house.
    ‘Pizza’s ready,’ Romily told them. ‘Go and wash your hands, please.’
    ‘Okay!’ Posie trotted to the bathroom. Amelia followed, looking even more bemused than she’d been since Romily had first met her.
    Romily stood near the doll’s house for what felt like quite a long time before she joined the party in the kitchen.
    Afterwards, after the oven chips and the singing, after Posie closed her eyes and made a wish that Romily thought shecould probably guess, after she’d unwrapped the anticlimax of a jigsaw puzzle and an illustrated edition of
Alice Through the Looking Glass
, after they’d dropped off Amelia, sticky and still