she was in the pyjamas he’d teased her about and he was in a robe with melted snow on the shoulders and dripping off his hair and those curiously sexy bare feet planted squarely on the tiled floor.
And now she knew what had been under that robe, it would be all the harder …
‘I don’t really know what you can do,’ she said, but he followed her anyway, and he managed one-handed to make himself very useful. He helped lift the turkey out of the dish, entertained Thomas while she warmed his lunch, and then blew on it and fed him while she made the gravy and put everything out into the serving dishes he’d found for her.
‘Lunch!’ she called, sticking her head round the door, and they came pelting down the hall and skidded into the breakfast room.
‘Oh, it looks really pretty!’ Kitty said. Jake lit the candle and she carried in the turkey and knew how Tiny Tim’s mother must have felt when Scrooge gave them the goose.
The food was delicious, and the children piled in, eating themselves to a standstill, and still there was enough there to feed an army.
‘I hope you’ve got a nice line in leftover recipes,’ Jake murmured as he carried it out to the kitchen and put it on the side, making her laugh.
‘Oh, I have. I can turn anything into a meal. Have you got any brandy to put over the pudding?’
‘I have—and holly. I picked it this morning. Here.’
He turned off the lights, and she carried in the flaming pudding by candlelight, making the children ooh and aah. Then, when they couldn’t manage another mouthful, they cleared the table and put on their warm, dry coats and went back out in the garden for a walk, with Rufus in his smart new tartan coat and Thomas snuggled on her hip in his all-in-one suit. When the children had run around and worked off their lunch and the adults had strolled all down the long walk from the house towards the woods, they turned back.
And, right in the middle of the lawn outside the bay window, Kitty stopped.
‘We have to make snow angels!’ she said. ‘Come on, everybody!’
‘Snow angels?’ Jake said, his voice taut, and Millie looked at him worriedly. Was this another memory they were trampling on? Oh, dear lord—
‘Yes—all of us! Come on, Jake, you’re the biggest, you can be the daddy angel!’
And, oblivious to the shocked reluctance on his face, she dragged him by the arm, made him lie down, and lay down beside him with her arms and legs outstretched and fanned them back and forth until she’d cleared the snow, and then she got up, laughing and pulled him to his feet.
‘Look! You’re so big!’ she said with a giggle. ‘Mummy, you lie down there on the other side, and then Edward, and Thomas, too—’
‘Not Thomas, darling, he’s too small, he doesn’t understand.’
‘Well, Jake can hold him while you and Edward make your snow angels,’ she said, bossy and persistent to the last. She looked into Jake’s eyes and saw gentle resignation.
‘I’ll take him,’ he said softly and, reaching out, he scooped him onto his right hip and held him firmly, one-handed, while she and Edward carved out their shapes in the snow, and then she took her baby back and they went inside to look, shedding their wet clothes all over again, only this time their trousers were wet as well, and they had to go up and change.
‘Hey, you guys, come and look,’ Jake called from his room, and they followed him in and stood in the bay window looking down on the little row of snow angels.
‘That’s so pretty!’ Kitty said. ‘Jake, take a picture!’
So he got out his phone and snapped a picture, then went along the landing and took another of the snowman. Afterwards they all went downstairs again and Kitty got out her book, and Edward got out the construction kit, and they set them up at the far end of the breakfast table and busied themselves while she loaded the dishwasher and cleared up the pots and pans.
There was no sign of Jake, but at least Thomas in his cot had stopped grizzling and settled into sleep.
Or so she thought, until Jake appeared in the doorway with her little son on his hip.
‘He’s a bit sorry for himself,’ Jake said with a tender smile, and handed him over. ‘Why don’t you sit down and I’ll make you a cup of tea?’
‘Because I’m supposed to be looking after you and all you’ve done is make me tea!’
‘You’ve been on your feet all day. Go on, shoo. I’ll do it. Anyway, I can’t sit, I’m too full.’
She laughed at that, and took Thomas through to the breakfast room, put him in his high chair with his shape sorter puzzle and sat down with the children while she waited for her tea.
‘Mummy, I can’t do this. I can’t work it out,’ Edward said, staring at the instructions and the zillions of pieces he was trying to put together. It was complicated—more complicated than anything he’d tackled yet, but she was sure he’d be able to do it.
And how clever of Jake to realise that he was very bright, she thought, as she saw the kit was for older children. Bright and brave and hugely talented in all sorts of ways, and yet his father couldn’t see it—just saw a quiet child with nothing to say for himself and no apparent personality.
Well, it was his loss, she thought, but of course it wasn’t—it was Edward’s, too, that he was so undervalued by the man who should have been so proud of him, should have nurtured and encouraged him. It wouldn’t have occurred to David to look into choir school. He would have thought it was sissy.
But there was nothing—nothing—sissy about Jake. In fact he was a lot like Edward—thorough, meticulous, paying attention to detail, noticing the little things, fixing stuff, making it right.
The nurturer, she realised, and wondered if he’d spent his childhood trying to stick his family back together again when clearly, from what she’d overheard, it had been broken beyond repair. How sad that when he’d found his own, it had been torn away from him.
And then he came out and sat down with them all, on the opposite side of the table, and slid the tea across to her. Edward looked up at him and said, ‘Can you give me a hand?’
‘Sure. What’s the problem?’ he asked, and bent his head over the instructions, sorted through the pieces and found the missing bit. ‘I think this needs to go in here,’ he said, and handed it to Edward. Didn’t take over, didn’t do it for him, did just enough to help him on his way and then sat back and let him do it.
He did, of course, bit by bit, with the occasional input from Jake to keep him on the straight and narrow, but there was a worrying touch of hero worship in his voice. She only hoped they could all get through this and emerge unscathed without too many broken hopes and dreams, because, although Jake was doing nothing she could fault, Edward was lapping up every moment of his attention, desperate for a father figure in his life, for a man who understood him.
And she was dreading the day they moved out, to wherever they ended up, and she had to take him away from Jake.
She doubted Jake was dreading it. He was putting up with the invasion of his privacy with
