‘Yiayia swears more than me, Mama, and she’s stone deaf.’
Yiayia threw Allegra a dirty look and muttered some deeply unpleasant insults in Greek.
Pav’s mother ignored them both and turned her attention to Millie, sweeping her gaze from head to toe of immaculate designer perfection, suppressing a lip curl and faking a smile. ‘So glad you could make it, Camilla,’ she lied.
Pav watched Millie swallow before she forced her own smile. ‘Th-thank you for inviting me.’
Her voice was tight and expressionless but there were two things Pav knew that his mother noticed: the first was Millie’s slight stammer, and the second was how her hand trembled as she extended it out to the older woman. Pav knew this because he saw his mother’s expression soften as she took Millie’s hand.
‘We Greeks,’ Talia said, her tone now much more gentle than before, ‘we don’t shake hands.’ Mama used Millie’s hand to pull her towards her before letting it go and resting both of her hands on Millie’s shoulders. ‘We do like this.’ She kissed one of Millie’s cheeks and then the other. ‘Understand?’
Millie’s eyes were wide but she didn’t flinch away. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, her voice heavy with relief and her lips forming a genuine, if tremulous, smile. ‘Thank you.’
‘Millie!’ a five-year-old ball of fury pushed her way into the group and in between Mama and Millie.
‘Rosie …’ Libby’s warning voice came from behind Pav as she reached for her daughter. ‘You are being a right –’
‘Everyone’s going to eat all the chocolate, and there’ll be none left for me ’cause you and Jamie-Daddy are so mean! I wanna stay with my Millie.’
Rosie climbed up Millie like a little spider monkey, her chocolatey hands smearing all over the designer dress. When she reached her goal she shoved her face in Millie’s neck and burst into noisy tears.
‘Oh God, Mils, I’m so sorry,’ Libby muttered in horror as she surveyed her daughter’s handiwork. ‘Your dress! Your beautiful dress. I –’
‘It’s just a dress, Libby,’ Millie told her, as always loving the warm weight of the little girl clinging to her. Before she’d met Rosie, Millie had never been hugged by a child in her life – had never really been on the receiving end of much physical affection at all. There was no way she would ever take it for granted and no way she would let a dress get in the way of it.
Libby groaned. ‘But you spent days with El picking it out and planning the whole outfit because you were so worried about making a good impress …’ Libby trailed off as she realised what she was saying and who was in hearing distance. ‘Sorry, hun,’ she whispered.
Pav watched as heat hit Millie’s cheeks and his mama’s face softened even more. Rosie’s sobs had quietened down to a low whimpering now, but she was showing no signs of emerging from Millie’s neck.
‘What happened, Little Louse?’ Millie asked as she stroked Rosie back.
‘I’m afraid there was a five-year-old short circuit when she saw the chocolate fountain. We found her face-first, upside-down, trying to ingest the entire thing.’
‘Everyone does it that way,’ Rosie’s muffled voice said from the depths of Millie’s neck. ‘Tell them, Millie.’
‘I think,’ Millie said carefully, ‘your mother would just prefer you eat some protein and complex carbohydrates before you consume refined sugar.’
‘Don’t wanna eat commix barba–hybate! Want chocwate!’
‘A bit of chocolate’s fine, Rosie. But long-term consumption of refined sugar can lead to changes in your hippocampus.’
Rosie stopped crying and leaned back to look in Millie’s face with a frown on her little face. ‘My hippo–bampus?’
‘Your brain. It could stop you reaching your full IQ potential.’
‘My what?’
‘Stop you being super-smart.’
‘Bu-but Iamsuper-smart! You tell me that all the time.’
‘Of course you are,’ Millie said, her voice conveying that any other possibility was entirely ridiculous.
‘I do my numbers with Millie,’ Rosie told the group around them. ‘And we learns bout baccy–eara.’
‘Bacteria,’ Millie corrected. ‘And that’s all great. But if you want to fulfil your maximal cognitive potential, then you need to eat what Mummy says.’
Rosie tilted her head to the side. ‘Idowanna ill my co-go-live-ential.’
