Maybe she’d just have a sneaky little Tunnock’s Caramel to give her a bit of energy for the task.
She stood up to go over to the cupboard where she’d put her stash (slightly hidden, if she was honest) and then looked at Daniel, who pointed at it.
Hmm. This wasn’t great, actually. She didn’t want to set him a bad example. Shereallywanted some chocolate, though.
Reallywanted it. Quite a lot of it.
Okay, no, she was better than this.
She was going to take Daniel for a walk instead and then plan her chocolate-free day.
When they got back, it was still only ten-fifteen. There were a lotof hours to fill between now and Daniel’s bath-time.
She couldjustify having a Caramel now. She’d just done some exercise, after all.
No. She was going to manageone daywithout lying on the ‘Resolutions’ chat.
The truth was that, wonderful as Daniel was, she was a little bit bored without much adult conversation. She needed to arrange to see some people.
She messaged Georgie, Beth and Ankita separately to say hello and does anyone fancy getting together in the next week to do something fun.
Then, before she lost the impetus, she emailed an address for a baby music class in Little Bishop saying she’d like to join immediately.
And thenshe messaged the vicar’s wife. She’d noticed as she walked past the village church this morning that they wanted someone to start helping with flowers once a month when their church hosted the rotating service. Helping with flowers had to be a pleasant thing to do and she could take Daniel.
Right.
Okay. And now… Hmm. Okay, she was going to take Daniel for another walk and then maybe she’d do some batch baking.
Poppy was so bored by all the solitary walking (because yes the countryside was lovely blah blah blah but trees and wildlife didn’ttalkto you, did they?) that when Beth sent a messagesaying that one of her resolutions was to do go-karting and it would be a lot more fun in a group, Poppy had replied within about twenty seconds.
Yes meeeee, I’d love to.
Ankita replied about two minutes after that.
Yasssss seeing you all more is one of my resolutions!!! Thank you Beth for organising and I am THERE. And I will smash you all.
Georgie replied about ten minutes later.
Yes!!!!! And no you won’t – no one is more of a demon at the wheel than a single mother with a full-time job.
Raf, Noah and Declan all said yes not long after that.
Beth replied:
Perfect. With Dominic that’s eight of us – I’ll book it now.
The next day was such a big rush to get home with Daniel from the (genuinely enjoyable) baby gym class in Cheltenham that Poppy had suddenly decided to take him to, get him fed, bathed and into bed, and dash out of the house with Declan to get to the go-karting place, that she had no time to worry about leaving Daniel with her mum. She also had no time to talk to Declan in the car because she was busy texting her mum about what to doif and when Daniel woke up and then emailing the gym people to say that she and Daniel had loved the taster class and would love to carry on with it, and then paying online for the classes.
‘How was your day?’ she asked Declan, as they entered the building. She couldtotallybe entirely normal and civil to him for the time being.
‘Good. Busy. I was going to ask you whether you thought you might like to locum for us one day a week starting soon?’ He was looking straight ahead as he spoke. Poppy couldn’t detect anything from his profile. Did hewanther to go and work at his surgery, or was he offering her the job out of politeness before advertising?
‘Um,’ she said. ‘I think…’
She stopped, to try to work out what she did think – she was beginning to feel that one day a week at work would be an extremely good thing for her and it would be very convenient to be in the village and therefore close to Daniel just in case. She was pretty sure that her mum would be happy to babysit him regularly if she only did one day a week, because she’d offered alotof times. Maybe she should. Although also maybe she shouldn’t, because there was every chance it would be awful working with Declan, given what had happened. But it might give her the perfect opportunity to work out exactly what had been going on. And also it would be on her CV and make it easier for her to find another job. Maybe shewouldgo for it.
She turned towards Declan, to begin a reply, except she didn’t have time to speak.
