‘Where’s Joni?’ I asked when he came down the stairs to greet me.

‘Sleeping soundly, as instructed,’ he said proudly. He kissed me tenderly on the forehead. ‘She’s just fed. Come and see. You’re back early?’

When Lucy appeared behind me at the door too, he seemed surprised.

‘I just bumped into Aisha as she got out of the cab,’ Lucy said quickly, taking the words out of my mouth.

‘I said Lucy could borrow our steriliser. We don’t need two. Okay with you?’

‘Yeah, of course,’ Jason replied.

‘Great. Please stay for tea,’ I said, rattled by Jason who was not being particularly friendly towards Lucy.

As he was asleep, Lucy left Albie in his pram by the front door and I made us tea in the kitchen. Jason didn’t stick around to say more than ‘Hello’. But I knew he could be funny about people and as my first impressions of Lucy hadn’t exactly been overly positive, perhaps he was clinging on to that. He could be quite protective.

And maybe he was just being sensitive, leaving us to it when our conversation turned into a full-scale mum-to-mum chat about breast pumps and when it was safe to stop sterilising all the equipment that went with it. Poor Lucy told me she had been suffering from mastitis too. No wonder feeding had been so painful for her recently. The extra make-up today was an attempt to make herself feel better. ‘Believe me, I’m tired and pale underneath,’ she confessed.

I had just offered to crack open some Hobnobs when we were distracted by the sound of Albie beginning to stir downstairs.

‘I’ll head off.’ Lucy stood up. ‘I’m sorry I’m not the best company today. But I’ll see you next week, at the pottery shop.’

‘Yes, such a cute idea, it will be nice to do something crafty. I’m really looking forward to it.’

‘I’m sure you’ll show us all up with your artistry!’ she teased and moved towards the stairs.

‘Oh – don’t forget the steriliser!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ll just grab it for you.’

Chapter Thirty-Two

Lucy

Tuesday 10^th August

In the pottery shop, I focused on choosing my colours, opting for a blue, green and white combo for a plate for Oscar’s birthday, and then I got to work on my design. A hush fell as everyone concentrated, broken only by noises of frustration when something went wrong with their brush stroke, or they struggled to get a good baby hand or footprint onto their ‘masterpiece’. The babies were remarkably well behaved.

‘Oscar’s going to love that!’ Will exclaimed as I somehow managed to cajole Albie into producing two reasonably recognizable little blue foot prints on the plate.

‘I think he will,’ I smiled.

The truth was that Oscar had been sleeping in his office on and off over the last week and I was having serious doubts about whether we could get through this rocky patch. I was doing my best to give him some space, so he might come around, but it was hard. It was taking all my energy not to cave in and tell him everything. There had been a couple of moments lately when the secret had risen inside me like a towering wave and I had wondered, if I chose to surf it, whether I would come out by the shoreline, or drown. It felt as though I had partially lost him anyway. Did I have much more to lose?