‘Do you need to go?’ I asked. We’d almost finished eating, anyway.
He shook his head, sitting up again as he started to type a reply.
‘No. She’s either going to bed by herself, in order to sleep, or with Damon. Either way, there’s no point me being there.’ Heput down his phone. ‘I’ll still come along to the class, if that’s okay? I need all the information I can get, especially while Ellis’s attention is elsewhere.’
I screwed up my face in apology. ‘Sorry. We really can’t have a male attending alone, especially if he’s not the baby’s father. It’s hard enough for some of the mums to relax around men as it is.’
‘Of course. I should have thought. Okay. I guess I can find some videos online… buy a book, if you can recommend anything?’
I replied without even thinking about it. The thought of Jonah missing the classes, of potentially not seeing him every week, felt far worse than it should have done. I still had so much to ask, apologies to make, stories to share.
‘I do plenty of private, one-to-one classes, if that would be helpful? I mean, the only time I’ve done them without a mum present was for a gay couple who adopted, but it’s different when it’s an old…’
I trailed off, unable to call Jonah my foster brother after everything that had happened. He’d never been Bronah to me.
‘Old love?’ he filled in, using my word from before, with a lopsided smile that sent my heart thumping.
‘Old friend?’ I said, ducking my head.
‘When can you fit me in?’
‘Tuesday? You can come over about half seven, once the kids are in bed.’
‘Sounds perfect.’
‘Oh, and just come to the house. I’ve got a lad and his daughter living in the cabin.’
Jonah clicked his phone on the QR code to pay, then stood up, ready to leave. ‘So I heard.’
24
The plan was that on Friday morning I was going to wake up ready for a day carefully divided into house-care, self-care and childcare, resisting the urge to message, call or visit any of the Bloomers or other women I worked with. I did need to spend some time on business admin, but that was a carefully scheduled hour in between a power walk in the forest and lunch in the garden with a book.
Things started off awry when my alarm didn’t go off. I woke up to Isla squeezing my cheeks and asking in a high-pitched wail if I was dead. After a horrified check of the time, I decided a shower could wait until after the school run, along with breakfast and a second’s peace to myself.
Shooing Isla off to get dressed on my way to badger Finn out of bed, I consoled myself with the knowledge that the lunches were made, bags packed and uniforms ready.
‘Mummy, my trousers are yucky!’ Isla screeched down the stairs as I fruitlessly rummaged in the fridge for butter and jam, which didn’t take long due to the shelves being virtually bare.
‘Where did you put your lunches?’ I asked Finn, as he slouched into the kitchen with his eyes half closed, hair stickingup in every direction, before tripping over a robot dinosaur and crashing into a table leg.
The second I’d helped him clamber onto a chair, Isla hurtled into the kitchen in her school polo-shirt and knickers.
‘I said I’ve got no trousers!’
‘We didn’t have time to make lunch because we had a water fight and then Hazel started crying really loud and didn’t stop and then we were really late for bed,’ Finn mumbled, his head buried in his arms, which were folded on the table.
After dragging myself away from Jonah the night before, I’d raced straight to the Bloomers class. A quick call to Toby on the way had assured me that everything was fine and under control.
‘Where’s your summer dress?’ I asked Isla, scraping the dregs of an ancient jar of peanut butter onto her toast.
‘It got wet in the water fight,’ she said, taking one look at the breakfast I placed in front of her and making a gagging sound.
‘And it hasn’t dried overnight?’
‘Well not really but anyway it smells because Finn ran out of water so he threwed some milkshake on it instead.’
‘Did you get the food for Roman Day?’ Finn asked, suddenly springing upright.
