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They came to the lake and sat down on the bench but almost as soon as they had, the lack of motion set Ava off.
‘Let’s walk,’ Naomi suggested when she saw that Merida was close to tears.
‘No, let’s head back.’
Poor Merida was so exhausted that she took Naomi’s suggestion that, rather than feed her, she head off for a sleep. ‘I’ll wake you at six,’ Naomi said.
‘I can’t leave her crying till then.’
‘She won’t be,’ Naomi said, rather hoping that was true.
Ava did her level best.
‘Is she hungry?’ Barb asked a couple of hours later when Naomi came into the kitchen with a screaming Ava over her shoulder.
‘She wants to use her mum as a dummy,’ Naomi said, then corrected herself so that Barb would understand. ‘A pacifier. I’m hoping that if Merida can have a proper sleep and I can calm Ava down, they might get a good feed. I’ll give her a bath soon and hopefully that will calm her.’
‘Doesn’t her crying bother you?’ Barb asked.
‘A bit,’ Naomi admitted, ‘but nowhere near as much it upsets Merida—she has the keys straight to her mother’s heartstrings.’
But held upright and lulled by the conversation, Ava started to calm. ‘What are you making?’ Naomi asked Barb.
‘Chicken soup, the proper way. For Jobe.’
Naomi smiled and decided to watch and see how chicken soup was made theproperway. There was a whole chicken simmering in the pot, along with vegetables and herbs, and the kitchen smelt divine—it must have because, though awake, little Ava had stopped crying and was resting on Naomi’s shoulder.
‘Bernard will take it in later,’ Barb said. ‘And some for Abe too.’
‘He’s there a lot, is he?’ Naomi couldn’t help but check.
‘He goes in after work and I think he’s staying till late at night. I wish that he’d stop here afterwards, but he seems to have stopped doing that.’
Naomi swallowed. She really hoped that what had happened between Abe and her wasn’t affecting his decisions. She doubted it, though. Of course she had looked him up online more thoroughly and it would seem a kiss in a park was extremely chaste compared to his other well-reported shenanigans over the years.
She doubted he had given it a second thought.
Whereas she thought about him all the time.
All the time.
Yet how could she not?
There were photos lining the walls and his name was dropped into the conversation numerous times. And each night she’d lain there, with ears on elastic, wondering if he might have decided to stay after he had visited the hospital.
It would seem that he hadn’t.
‘You came just after Mrs Devereux died...’ Naomi said.
‘Yes.’ Barb rolled her eyes. ‘We’d have lasted five minutes otherwise. She went through staff like a dose of salts.’ Barb had started to chat more easily with Naomi now and had admitted that all the staff had no idea, apart from what they read, how serious Jobe’s illness was. ‘Twenty-five years we’ve been here now. Bernard’s worried that we won’t get another live-in job if...’ She paused. ‘Well, there’s nothing to be gained stressing about that.’
It was clear to Naomi that she was stressing, though.
Naomi’s little ploy to keep Ava awake and Merida asleep seemed to have worked. After a bath and dressed in her little sleepsuit, Ava was more than ready to feed and Merida seemed a lot more relaxed.
‘What time will Ethan be back?’ Naomi asked as Ava fed.
‘He just called, he’s going to come and have some dinner and then head over to the hospital. They’re meeting with Jobe and his specialist. He’s not doing so well. The treatment he’s having just drains him. It’s tough. Especially as Ethan and he have just started talking. I mean really talking.’
