Meet our daughter, Tarragon Parsley Sage and Onion.
No.
“So.” Luke pushes a hand back through his rumpled hair. “In two weeks’ time we’re homeless.”
“Out on the streets!” I say lightly. “Never mind.”
“I guess you expected to marry someone who could put a roof over your head, didn’t you?”
He’s joking, but there’s a wryness in his voice.
“Oh well.” I shrug, watching the baby’s hand unfurl like a little starfish. “Better luck next time…”
There’s silence and I glance up. Luke seems genuinely stricken.
“Luke, I’m joking!” I say hastily. “It doesn’t matter!”
“You’ve just had a baby. You should have a home. We shouldn’t be in this position. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s not your fault!” I grab his hand. “Luke, we’ll be fine. We’ll make a home wherever we are.”
“I’ll get us a home,” he says, almost fiercely. “Becky, we’ll have a wonderful house, I promise you.”
“I know we will.” I squeeze his hand tight. “But honestly…it doesn’t matter.”
I’m not just saying that to be supportive.(Even though I am a very supportive wife.) It really, truly doesn’t seem to matter. Right now, I feel like I’m in a kind of bubble. Real life is on the other side, miles away. All that matters is the baby.
“Look!” I say, as she suddenly yawns. “She’s only eight hours old and she can yawn! That’s so clever!”
For a while we both gaze into the crib, awestruck, hoping she might do something else.
“Hey, maybe she’ll be prime minister one day!” I say softly. “Wouldn’t that be cool? We could get her to do all the things we wanted!”
“She won’t, though.” Luke shakes his head. “If we tell her to do them, she’ll do exactly the opposite.”
“She’s such a rebel!” I run a finger down her teeny forehead.
“She has her own mind.” Luke corrects me. “Look at the way she’s ignoring us now.” He sits back on the bed. “So what are we going to call her? Not Grisabella.”
“Not Rhapsody.”
“Not Parsley.” He picks up 1,000 Girls’ Names and starts flicking through it.
Meanwhile I’m just gazing at her sleeping face. This one name keeps popping into my head every time I look at her. It’s almost as if she’s telling it to me.
“Minnie,” I say aloud.
“Minnie,” Luke echoes, experimentally. “Minnie Brandon. You know, I like that.” He looks up with a smile. “I really like it.”
“Minnie Brandon.” I can’t help beaming back. “It sounds good, doesn’t it? Miss Minnie Brandon.”
“Named after…your aunt Ermintrude, obviously?” Luke raises his eyebrows.
Oh my God! That hadn’t even occurred to me.
“Of course!” I can’t help giggling. “Except no one will know that except us.”
The Right Honourable Minnie Brandon QC OBE.
Miss Minnie Brandon looked radiant as she danced with the Prince in a floor-length ball gown by Valentino….
Minnie Brandon has taken the world by storm….
“Yes.” I nod. “That’s her name.” I lean over the cot and watch her chest rising and falling with each breath. Then I smooth back her tuft of hair and kiss her tiny cheek. “Welcome to the world, Minnie Brandon.”
TWENTY-TWO
SO IT’S HAPPENED. The Karlssons have moved in to our flat. All our furniture has been packed up and moved out. We’re officially homeless.
Except not really, because Mum and Dad are having us stay for a while. Like Mum said, they’ve got heaps of room, and Luke can commute from Oxshott station, and Mum can help out with Minnie, and we can play bridge every night after supper. Which is all true, except the playing bridge bit. No way. Uh-uh. Never. Not even with the Tiffany bridge cards Mum bought me as a bribe. She keeps saying it’s “such fun,” and “All the young people are playing bridge these days.” Yeah, right.
Anyway, I’m too busy looking after Minnie to sit around playing bridge. I’m too busy being a mother.
Minnie’s four weeks old already, and is a total party girl. I knew she would be. Her favorite time is one in the morning, when she starts saying “ra ra ra” and you struggle out of bed, feeling like you only fell asleep three seconds ago.
Plus she quite likes three in the morning. And five. And quite a few times in between. To be honest, I feel totally hungover and knackered every morning.
But on the plus side, cable telly is on all night. And Luke often gets up to keep me company. He does his e-mails and I watch Friends with the sound turned low, and Minnie breast-feeds like she’s some starving, deprived baby who wasn’t fed just an hour ago.
The thing about babies is, they really know what they want. Which I do quite respect. Like, it turns out Minnie doesn’t like the handcrafted crib after all. It makes her all cross and squirmy, which is a bit crap considering it cost five hundred quid. Nor is she impressed by the rocking cradle, nor the Moses basket, even with Hollis Franklin four-hundred-thread-count linen sheets. What she likes best is to be cuddled in someone’s arms all day and all night. And second best is my old carry-cot, which Mum got down from the attic. It’s all soft and worn looking but pretty comfy. So I returned all the others and got a refund.
I returned the Circus Tent Changing Station too. And the Bugaboo and the Warrior — in fact, loads of stuff. We don’t need them. We don’t even have a house to put them in. And I gave all the money to Luke, because…well, I wanted to help. Even a little bit.