“Sorry,” Toby said, pulling off his helmet and ruffling up his hair. He wore it in a ponytail these days, or loose around his shoulders, but never hiding his face. Fatherhood had stripped away many of Toby’s insecurities.When you’re this happy, and this tired, he’d told Oliver once,it’s really hard to care about forehead acne.
Aspen’s phone rang before she could contest the result, which was probably for the best, since Toby had won by at least two donkey lengths.
“Brianna,” she said to Oliver’s unasked question, answering on speaker as they offered their donkeys carrots from the barrels waiting at the finish line.
“Hey, so, are you still riding a donkey like the island nutter you have become?” Brianna said.
She sounded out of breath, or a little strained, perhaps, as though she’d just climbed a hill.
“No, why?” Aspen said, glancing at Oliver.
Tourists milled around them, clutching cinnamon-spiced coffees and pumpkin-shaped buns, squinting at the sky as the inevitable autumn drizzle began.
“Just that I’m having some…contraction-like sensations,” said Brianna, “and I wonder if you could drop by the B&B for—Whooo…”
Aspen’s eyes widened as she listened. She scanned the crowd, then waved a frantic hand at Kim, gesturing for her to take their donkeys.
“You’re in labor, you wally,” she said into the phone.
“Not possible,” Brianna said, once her contraction-like sensation was over. “My babies are always late.”
“Well, this baby’s an early bird, just like her auntie,” Aspen said, already heading down the Rue at a jog. “Can Galoshes hold the fort for another few hours?” she asked Oliver, who was reaching for his phone to check. “I need you, too, Eliza’s on holiday. Rog, where’s the ambulance?”
“Parked up behind the pub. We used it to tow up the last batch of wines for the— Why, do you need it for an actual ambulance-type thing?” he said, jerking to attention.
“My sister’s birth plan says,Get me to a hospital and give me all the drugs,” Aspen said grimly. “So if we don’t have time for part one…she’s going to really want the gas and air cannister.”
—
Aspen’s new nephew arrived screaming and belligerent in Rosie and Marly’s living room three hours later. Brianna had invented several new swear words during labor; when Rosie had innocently asked if she’d had acetaminophen yet, Bri had roared at her so loudly that Charlie had called from up at the farm shop to ask whether one of the cows was trapped in the fence again.
Now Brianna lay with her third child in her arms, sweaty and queenly and convinced that this situation was everybody else’s fault.
“We didtellyou it was risky to visit at thirty-eight weeks,” Aspen called from the utility room, where she was tugging warm towels out of the dryer.
“Do youwanther to kill you?” Oliver muttered under his breath.
“She would never kill me,” Aspen said. “I brought the pain relief.”
Aspen had been magnificent, in fact. It had been a long time since Oliver had seen her at work—he’d attended one inadvertent home birth before, when she’d called him to bring her bag from the medical center at short notice, and had fallen more in love with her with every second she’d spent coaxing a stranger to do the hardestthing she’d ever done. Today he’d been banished by Brianna—“I still have some dignity left,” she’d yelled at him—but had heard everything from where he and Marly sat in the kitchen, Stuart on speakerphone between them. Aspen had a gift. Within ten minutes of her arrival, Brianna’s blood pressure dropped to safe levels again, as though her sister’s voice had magical properties.
“Darling!” came a loud voice from the hallway. One withdifferentproperties.
“Oh, now you turn up, Mum!” Brianna yelled over her new son’s head.
“You know I don’t do the blood and guts part,” Bridget Denby said, as she swanned in with two large paper bags. “But I brought pastries, made by that handsome doctor. What a silver fox! And Berty wants to know if there’s anything you need? He said witnessing one birth with Aspen was enough—he’s hovering outside in that fancy new tractor of his.”
Bridget and Brianna were visiting together for Aspen’s birthday—they’d come a month early, because of Brianna’s due date, and were insisting on throwing Aspen a large party, which she had largely ended up organizing herself.
“Coward,” Brianna said, taking an enormous bite from a cherry Danish. “You can tell him Aspen’s finished sewing up my—”
“Brianna!” Bridget squealed, covering her mouth.
“Oh, just tell him to come in, half the bloody island’s here anyway—and his wife’s in the kitchen making me some sort of broth that’ll heal my womb, or whatever hippy shit Charlie’s into these days. God knows who’s running that shop. None of you ever seem to do any work here. Every time I visit it’s all seasonal festivities and endless biscuit-fueled committee meetings, which I’m starting to think are just excuses to—Mum, back off, will you, I’m like twenty minutes postpartum, I do not need mascara on!”
“For the photos!” Bridget protested. “For Stuart!”
“He’ll be here in an hour,” Marly said from the doorway. “He chartered a boat from Portsmouth, apparently.”
