over to the kettle. ‘Any tea in the pot?’ she asked brightly.
‘I should make some fresh,’ Joy said. ‘It’s been there a while. I would have brought you up a cup but Mike said to let you sleep.’
‘Mmm,’ she said, filling the kettle and avoiding Mike’s eye. They hadn’t exchanged a word since last night, and she felt ludicrously self-conscious and aware, her body still humming from his touch. If she looked at him …
‘How about a fruit smoothie?’
Oh, lord. He was right behind her, his body big and powerful and radiating heat. He rested his hand on her hip, and she leant against him, wondering what his family would make of their closeness and deciding it was none of their business. ‘OK,’ she said, surprised by his suggestion as well as his closeness. ‘Want one?’
‘Please.’
She met his eyes, saw the unspoken message and smiled. So he was engaging with this diet, taking it seriously, even though she knew he was afraid for her in case it all went wrong again. She went up on tiptoe, brushed a kiss over his lips and then pulled a selection of fruit out of the fridge.
‘Two smoothies coming up,’ she said lightly. Chopping the fruit, she wondered how long his family were going to hang around before they left them in peace so they could go back to bed and carry on where they’d left off …
It was a glorious few days.
Fran absconded from the farm, taking Mike to get his cast changed again and his stitches removed. The skin had healed well, and the swelling had subsided a lot, so they put on a lightweight walking cast and told him to start bearing weight.
Which meant they could do more, and so they did. They drove down to Penhally and had lunch in the Smugglers, then sat on the harbour wall in the sunshine and watched the children crabbing off the jetty, and then they went home and went back to bed and made love until the racket in the kitchen told them that milking was over and Joe was returning Brodie to them.
She pulled on her clothes and went down, Mike following her a few moments later when he’d dressed himself more slowly, and if the family was studiously avoiding looking at them, she didn’t care, because she’d got her husband back, the man she’d loved for years and thought she’d lost, and she wasn’t going to be ashamed of spending time with him in their own home.
Even if it was the afternoon!
‘Can you guys manage without us for a day or so?’ Mike asked, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms round her, the declaration so blatant they couldn’t fail to understand it.
In unison they chorused, ‘Of course!’
‘Going anywhere nice?’ Sarah asked.
Joe started to say something and got her elbow in the ribs for his pains, and Joy and Russell just looked at each other and smiled.
‘We might take a run down to Falmouth if the weather stays fair,’ Mike said. ‘Don’t really know. We haven’t made any plans, but as I can’t really do anything and Fran hasn’t had a holiday for ages, we thought we might just take off for a night or so. Could you hang on to Brodie till Sunday?’
‘Sure.’ Joe nodded. ‘Got a hotel in mind?’
Fran felt Mike shrug. ‘No plans. We’ll see where the road takes us.’
In the end they found a fabulous hotel right on the clifftop with spectacular views of the rugged Cornish coast, and booked in for two nights, taking advantage of a late cancellation, and spent most of the day in bed, making love slowly and lazily, getting to know each other again—and talking.
Talking like they’d never talked before, talking about anything and everything.
Everything except the whole baby thing. That was taboo, a sort of tacit avoidance, because at the end of the day all that really mattered was that they loved each other. Anything else was just the icing on the cake.
And then, relaxed and comfortable with each other, closer than they’d ever been, they went home because Sophie was coming, and Mike broke the taboo.
‘Will you be OK?’ he asked, and she smiled, realising with surprise that she would.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him. ‘And I’m looking forward to seeing her again.’
Sophie was fizzing with excitement, of course, because Kirsten and Andrew had told her about the baby and she was utterly obsessed with the prospect. She talked about it non-stop, her holiday hardly getting a mention, and Fran thought it was just as well she was OK with it, because if this had happened before she and Mike had spent the last few days together in their glorious idyll, it would have been intolerable.
But then Sophie snuggled up to her that evening, her restless little body finally still, and said, ‘I wish you could have a baby too, ’cos then I could have a baby in both my homes!’
It was the ‘homes’ that did it for Fran. The fact that Sophie still considered this to be her home, even though she and her mother had moved out of it years ago and she now had another home, nearly moved Fran to tears. She hugged the little girl tighter, looking up and meeting Mike’s eyes and giving him a supporting smile, because his mouth had pressed together and his eyes were over-bright.
‘That would be nice, wouldn’t it, Mike?’ she said. ‘We’ll have to think about it.’
‘Maybe one day, sweetheart,’ he said softly, looking at Sophie, but Fran felt his words were for her. ‘And, anyway, you might like coming here and having a bit of peace at night without the baby crying,’ he added, this time definitely to his daughter, and her nose wrinkled.
‘Babies do cry a lot, don’t they? And they smell. Suzie’s mum’s got a baby and she had to change his nappy the other day when I was there and it was really smelly!’
Fran chuckled and hugged her again, then stood up. ‘Come on, young lady, it’s time for bed.’
‘Oh, do I have to? I haven’t seen you for ages!’
‘It’s only two days longer than usual, so don’t give us that rubbish,’ Mike said with a laugh, standing up and scooping his daughter off the sofa and throwing her over his shoulder. He winced as his ribs twinged, but Fran handed him the crutch he was using as a stick and he hobbled out of the room, Sophie draped over his shoulder and giggling.
‘Mike, are you sure you’re OK to put her to bed, or do you want me to do it?’ Fran asked as he limped away.
‘I can do it. I’m fine,’ he assured her. Sliding Sophie down to the floor at the bottom of the stairs, he clapped his hands behind her and chased her up. She won easily, because he still found the stairs hard, but she heard him stumping along the landing, a great roar and a little shriek echoing back down the stairs, and Fran hoped he wasn’t doing too much for his ankle.
Whatever, she thought. He was a grown man, he knew if it hurt or not and she wasn’t his mother. He had one of those already, making more than enough fuss over him, so she really didn’t need to join in.
She went into the kitchen and made them some fennel tea, letting it brew while she loaded the dishwasher, and by the time she’d finished he was down. ‘All
