Nancy, in ten short months, had come to feel the same way about Cheryl. Not that Nancy was vague and dreamy like her mother had been – oh no, certainly not – Nancy thought of everything, Nancy never (unlike her mother) misplaced important things, she was a list-maker, organized and efficient at home and in the office. Even so, she’d come to feel, almost from the first day, that she could never be without Cheryl. The thought of Cheryl ever leaving them was so dreadful she pushed it out of her head every time it popped in there. She loved coming home at the end of the day – always an hour before Beecham even though they worked in the same office building and went in together on the same 7:06 train in the morning, she always came back ahead of him on the 6:20 in the evening so she was home in time to put Bunny to bed – walking, almost running back from the station and leaving the car there for Beecham when he arrived later. She loved stepping into the hallway, everything so neat and clean, everywhere the bright sharp scent of Windex and Soft Scrub and Murphy’s Oil Soap, the two of them, Bunny and Cheryl, waiting: Bunny perched on Cheryl’s vast swaying hip, newly bathed, in fresh pyjamas, pink and delicious and with his corn-coloured hair parted smartly on the left-hand side so he almost looked like a little boy already instead of a baby still. It was true, it did prick her heart a little, the way he seemed to look older when she came home in the evening than when she’d left him that same morning – subtly different, as if he’d been slowly growing and changing minute by minute and hour by hour while she’d been away from him. But it gave her such joy too, coming back to him, her own boy, her greatest, most miraculous achievement, and such peace, knowing that all the time she was gone he was safe here at home with Cheryl. She couldn’t bear the idea of ever having to get someone else in; to have to make Bunny get used to a new girl. It appalled her, the prospect of ever having to limp along, even for a week or two like she’d had to do after the European girl didn’t work out and before Mary-Katherine’s neighbour had come up with Cheryl; the idea of an agency sitter – a different one each day – rocking up in some battered old Plymouth, Bunny screaming his head off the minute she stepped inside and chucked him under the chin with a curly spangled fingernail.