“I ought to get back to Rosie’s,” Courtney said, rising from her chair. “And you probably want to get back to your writing.”
“I’ve got a few more hours of work to keep me busy before I call it quits,” Travis said as he walked her to the door. “Thanks again for spotting the social media scammer. I appreciate it. And listen, if you ever want to chat about anything—not just the job, but about anything—I’m right here.”
She smiled, a mixture of surprise and gratitude. “Thank you, Travis.”
“Anytime.”
Stepping outside, she nodded to the little pots of pansies beside the doorstep. “You saved the flowers! Well done.”
“Yousaved the flowers. They’d be dead if you hadn’t told me to water them.”
“Haha, we make a good team.”
Yes, we do,he thought, and even although he knew she’d only been joking, just making a throwaway comment before departing, he couldn’t help pouncing on her words and holding them close.
He waved her off, watching her disappear from sight along Foxglove Street before he closed the door. Returning to his laptop, he sat down, wanting to get back to work, to fall once more into the story he was writing.
But thoughts of Courtney dominated his mind, and it took a long time before his fictional creation Maura Shaw and her latest murder mystery adventure tugged him out of one fantasy land and safely into another.
15
When you were broke,homeless, unemployed, and four weeks away from giving birth, there was an awful lot of paperwork to contend with.
Courtney squinted at the form she was filling out on the tablet device she’d borrowed from Rosie. The form was just the latest in a long line of them that she’d spent the morning working her way through. This one related to her redundancy and any money she might be entitled to once the company administrator had drawn up a list of creditors. She’d also filled out forms to find out if she was due any payments through the statutory redundancy service, along with yet another raft of benefit forms.
As she’d also moved from Southampton to Hamblehurst, she was applying to a new housing department at the local council, as well as registering with a new GP practice and midwife service. Her aunt and uncle had insisted she consider moving to Hamblehurst more permanently, questioning whether she really wanted to return to Southampton if the council there found a suitable flat for her once the baby was born. With her job gone in a puff of smoke, they reasoned, why not think about staying in Hamblehurst where she at least had some family around her?
Touched by their suggestion and seemingly genuine enthusiasm for it, Courtney had got the ball rolling on the form-filling. After only a week and a half spent living with Rosie and getting to know the Austin family better, she already couldn’t imagine leaving them behind to return to an uncertain future in Southampton.
At the same time, she also couldn’t imagine continuing to live at Rosie’s house once her child was born. That wouldn’t be fair to Rosie, who’d been so kind to share her house with her so far. Despite Rosie’s generosity in helping her to buy much-needed essential items for the baby’s arrival, Courtney understood that having a pregnant woman staying in your guest room was altogether different from having a newborn infant living in the house.
As a single woman with a great job and a new love interest on the go in the form of Adrian, the son of Rosie’s next-door neighbour, Courtney wasn’t about to inflict the total upheaval of a tiny baby and a clueless new mother onto her sweet and kind cousin. Poor Rosie hadn’t signed up for anything like that.
So, it made sense to get the form-filling started and hope the local council would find somewhere in Hamblehurst for her to live once her baby was born.
And failing that, Courtney would take her aunt and uncle up on their offer for her to stay with them once she’d had her baby. Their house was a little bigger than Rosie’s, and the guest room they’d shown her was larger than the one in Rosie’s house, which would give Courtney and the baby much-needed space. As the guest room was also at the opposite end of the first floor to where her aunt and uncle slept, Courtney hoped it would also mean there was less chance of disturbing them during the night with a fussy baby, unlike at Rosie’s house, where the two bedrooms shared a common wall and her cousin would besubjected to the inevitable night-time crying that was part-and-parcel of bringing a tiny infant into the house.
Knowing she had a safety net beneath her as far as her living situation was concerned was such a load off Courtney’s mind that she sagged with relief anytime she thought of it. She suspected that if she were still back in Southampton, she might have found herself stuck in the awful bedsit once her baby was born, even although the accommodation was completely unsuitable for an infant. At least now she had the luxury of options offered by her newfound family and the knowledge that she had somewhere safe for her baby once she arrived in the world.
Still, the best case scenario was finding a proper flat for herself, so she didn’t have to rely on the generosity of her family, and that meant filling out forms and getting them into the system and then keeping her fingers crossed for good news.
With her form-filling done for the time being, Courtney set aside the tablet device and stretched out a kink in her neck. She was stiff from sitting so long poring over the screen, on top of the time she’d already spent earlier working on Travis’s author marketing tasks. It felt good to have spent a productive morning, but now she wanted to get moving.
As her pregnancy progressed, she’d come to appreciate more and more how much she enjoyed, and benefitted from, staying physically active. Even just a few hours spent sitting down left her stiff and eager to flex her muscles and get the blood flowing.
And even although she’d be cursing her decision to go for a walk once she found herself waddling along the pavement and feeling out of breath, she wanted to do it just the same.
Encouraged by a gentle kick from the baby, Courtney grabbed a light jacket in recognition of the cooler air outside today and headed outdoors. After admiring the front gardensthat lined Foxglove Street, as she did every time she walked along the pretty road, she turned towards Peartree Park.
She looked forward to what had become her daily stroll around the lovely park. The twists and turns along the pathways, the gurgling water fountain, the grand oaks filled with birdsong… all these features, and more, were now familiar to her and enjoying them had become a welcome addition to her day.
So, too, had the recognition she saw in the faces of those she passed as she meandered during her walks. Coming here as she did at around the same time each day, she’d begun noticing the same faces of the dog walkers, joggers, young mothers with toddlers, and the others she passed along the pathways, and appreciated the friendly exchange of smiles and nods of hello.
Glancing along the path now, she saw Olive Nimmo walking towards her with the little dog Elsa at her side, Olive’s hand already raised in greeting as she approached.
“Hello, dear,” Olive said. “How are you feeling today?”
“I’m feeling good, Olive.” Courtney patted Elsa on the head and ruffled her soft ears. “How are you? Oh, did you chat with your grandson in Canada? The last time we bumped into one another, you said there was a problem with his wedding arrangements.”
