Everyone laughed at the look of disgust on Alicia’s little face. Her boy cousins responded by prancing around like monkeys and chanting that boys were better than girls, which prompted a predicable response from the two older girls, who stuck their tongues out and shoved the boys away when they leapt too closely.
“That’s enough you lot,” Brad and Shaun said in unison.
“Calm down boys before you knock something off the dining table and upset your Grandma Kate,” Donna told her sons.
“I think it’s time to serve dessert,” Kate said, turning for the kitchen and squeezing Amber’s arm affectionately as she passed.
“Good idea, Mum, give the kids more sugar,” Shaun quipped. “That will calm them down.”
Peter followed his mother into the kitchen to help dish up dessert, happy to leave everyone to their excited chatter about the new baby news. While Kate pulled the sticky toffee pudding from the oven, Peter organised plates and brought the ice cream out of the freezer. His mother sliced the pudding into portions and spooned it into the plates and Peter added scoops of ice cream. Brad appeared in the kitchen doorway in time to carry the pudding plates through to the dining room.
“We make a good team,” Kate said with a smile once Brad disappeared with the last of the plates. “Thanks for your help.”
“My pleasure.” He returned what was left of the ice cream to the freezer as his mother set the pudding tray into the sink to steep. “Come on then, let’s get back through there and find our plates before those greedy boys finish their own desserts and start on ours.”
“Which greedy boys do you mean? Your brothers or your nephews?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in league together.”
Kate laughed. Peter turned for the kitchen door but his mother stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“It’s great news about the new baby, isn’t it?” Kate asked.
“It’s brilliant news,” Peter replied and meant it. “I couldn’t be happier for them.”
Kate’s smile softened. “I know you want what your brothers and sister have, a family of your own. And I know you’ll find it.”
His mother’s words, said so simply and with such confidence, hit him square in the chest. “I’m sure there’s some unsuspecting woman out there somewhere who I can convince to take pity on me.” Humour was Peter’s default setting when it came to talking about this stuff, because the idea of being honest with his mother about his true fear—that he’d never have what his brothers and sister had—was too embarrassing to contemplate.
But his mother always saw through him. Of course she did.
“The perfect woman is out there for you, Peter,” she said, her tone still soft but certain. “You just haven’t found her yet. But you will.”
There were so many things he could say in response, so many flippant comments he could blurt out to ease past the tender moment and mask his embarrassment and his feelings of failure. Instead, he offered a bright smile and gestured towards the kitchen door.
“Let’s go through and get our pudding,” he said. “You know I love your sticky toffee pudding, Mum.”
Kate gave him a thoughtful look before planting a kiss on his cheek and pulling him into a quick hug. They walked back to the dining room together, where everyone was still chatting loudly as they tucked into their desserts. Peter took his seat and picked up his spoon and dug into his mother’s signature pudding, which everyone was quick to compliment.
Half an hour later everyone was getting ready to leave, pulling on jackets and searching for misplaced toys and talking loudly over one another. As usual, it took about fifteen minutes before everyone was actually ready to leave.
There was another round of congratulations to Amber and Mikey as they left with Alicia, with yet more hugs and well-wishes and happy moments. Peter’s nephews raced up and down in the front garden as they waited for their parents to leave the house and his nieces played a complicated game of skipping out on the pavement before being shepherded into the car by their parents. As his brothers and sister drove away from where they’d parked on the street, tooting their horns in farewell, Peter turned to his mother and father who stood in the front doorway.
“Are you sure you don’t want some help clearing up after dinner?” he asked.
“No, I’ll manage just fine,” Tommy replied. “I like to potter around and take care of it all while I listen to my radio programme. And anyway, you’ve got some marking waiting for you at home, and that’s a better use of your time than dealing with dirty dishes.”
Peter hugged his parents and said goodbye and then climbed into his car. They waved him off as he pulled out into the road and Peter gave his horn a soft toot, knowing his father liked it when they did that as they left.
It was only a short drive across Hamblehurst to where Peter lived on Victoria Road. As he reached the junction with Riverside Road at the end of his parents’ street, he thought of an errand he could usefully deal with before going home.
In the boot of his car was the squash racket he’d borrowed from a friend at the weekend. He got together with friends most Saturday mornings at the leisure centre for a few games, and the strings on his racket had snapped during their most recent session. The friend who’d loaned him a spare racket had left early to pick up his daughter from football practice and Peter had promised to drop the borrowed racket back to him during the week, because he’d be too busy the following Saturday working on the final arrangements for the school careers fair to make it along to their usual game. As his friend lived on Foxglove Street, just a couple of streets down from his parents’ house on Juniper Avenue, it was a good opportunity to deal with the errand and return the racket.
Peter turned onto Foxglove Street and parked at his friend’s house, where it turned out to be the kids’ bathtime. With his friend up to his neck in wet kids and other parental responsibilities, Peter didn’t linger after returning the squash racket. Back in the car, he set off again for home.
He was halfway along Foxglove Street and heading towards the high street at the opposite end when something made him look away from the road and at one of the terraced houses on his right-hand side.
And as he glanced at the house a memory hit him, a memory from a summer long ago when he’d been eighteen years old and had fallen in love with a girl who’d made his head spin.
