Page 50 of A Recipe for Romance in Brambleton

‘I know. And I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

Lauren marvelled at his matter-of-fact tone. It never ceased to amaze her how resilient children could be. ‘Would you like to try to do another picture? We could give it to Dad with the cupcakes.’

‘Maybe.’ Liam’s tone was now carefully noncommittal, but in Lauren’s book, that was better than upset.

‘Well, if you think you might change your mind, you can keep the sketch pad and the colours.’

‘Thanks.’ Liam slid off the window seat. ‘When can we decorate the cakes?’

‘Steady on.’ Lauren laughed, flummoxed but relieved by his sudden change of emotional direction. ‘They’ve got a bit of time left in the oven, and then they’ll have to cool down.’

‘Lauren, I’ve finished!’ Luca’s voice called from across the kitchen. Proudly, he held up the sketch pad, with a vivid green rendering of a stegosaurus, complete with different-sized spikes.

‘That’s fab, Luca,’ Lauren called back. ‘We’ll have to work out how to make it a bit smaller, to put it on a cupcake, but I’m sure we’ll sort it somehow.’

Luca beamed and turned back to his sketch book, murmuring about doing a T-rex next.

‘So, shall we check how long the cakes have got, and then we can wash up?’ Lauren turned back to Liam.

Liam nodded and picked up his sketch book and pencils. Then, not saying another word, he wandered back to the kitchen island.

‘That’s a really good dinosaur,’ he said, as he looked at Luca’s work.

Lauren smiled. The brothers had a relationship that defied her understanding: loving one minute and conflicted the next. She wondered if it was because they were twins, or because they were Hathaways.

They all sat at the island for a few more minutes, Luca drawing dinosaurs and Liam even picking up a pencil to draw something, with his brother’s encouragement. When the oven beeped, they jumped up expectantly.

‘Hang on, hang on.’ Lauren laughed. ‘I’ll take a look.’ She pulled out the tray with the cupcakes and nodded approvingly. ‘They look great, boys. Well done. Now, we have to let them cool a while before we decorate them. Why don’t you finish your designs, and then we can mix up some batches of different-coloured icing.’

Excited at the prospect of painting the cakes all kinds of colours, the boys went back to their seats. Lauren carefully put the cakes on a cooling rack, and as she moved the local newspaper that was sitting on the counter by the oven, a piece of paper fluttered out from underneath it, landing face down on the floor. Picking it up, she realised at once that it must be Liam’s missing picture. Her heart ached for the second time when she saw the colourful drawing of Liam, Luca, Marc, and with angel’s wings on her back, a figure representing Tessa, their mother.

She was in a quandary. Should she put the drawing back where she’d found it, and hope it didn’t get swept up with the paper on the way to the recycling bin, or should she let Liam know she’d found it? Or Marc? For a long moment, she stood there, drawing in hand, indecisively looking at it.

In the end, it was Luca who made the decision for her. He slipped off his chair and came over to look at the cakes. When he caught sight of the drawing, Lauren immediately recognised a look of guilt flitting across his features. She put two and two together.

‘Luca,’ she said gently, ‘did you hide Liam’s drawing under the newspaper?’

Eyes like saucers, incapable of lying, Luca nodded.

‘Why?’ She knelt down to be at eye level with the boy.

Luca bit his bottom lip. ‘It made me sad.’

‘Why did it make you sad, Luca?’ Although she already knew the answer.

‘It made me think of Mummy.’

For the second time that afternoon, Lauren desperately wanted to give one of the boys a hug, but again she held back. Maybe, when she’d known them for longer, she wouldn’t feel reticent. She hoped she would get the chance to get to know them better, and their dad.

‘I understand,’ Lauren replied, making do with giving him her most encouraging smile. ‘But do you think that Liam might’ve been sad because he didn’t see his drawing up on the fridge like yours was?’ She glanced at the picture of yet another dinosaur.

‘Maybe.’ Luca looked at his feet.

‘Do you think that, if you knew it would make Liam happy to have his drawing on the fridge, it might make you feel less sad about seeing it there?’

Luca considered this, then nodded again.