Chapter Thirteen #2
Autumn and Marley arrived shortly afterwards and Daisy was taken from Maddie almost immediately.
Marley loved babies and hadn’t yet met Daisy, so he was desperate for a cuddle.
Maddie protested playfully, but her brother was so eager and it was so cute that, with Lilly’s approval, she relented quickly.
Marley sat back on the couch and rocked little Daisy slowly to sleep, reassuring a rather jealous-looking Benjamin as he did so.
He invited his son to sit beside them on the couch, but firmly requested Benjamin give the baby space.
“Daddy is cuddling Daisy right now,” Marley said, gently. “I’ll be done soon and then I’m all yours again, but for now you need to share me, OK?”
Benjamin nodded, but looked disheartened.
Maddie wasn’t surprised he was feeling envious.
He had been the centre of everyone’s universe for so long.
Maddie had experienced this, and she remembered the feeling well.
She had been the youngest until Pip arrived and she’d found it horrendously difficult sharing her parents and siblings with a new bundle of joy.
She’d been nine years old, which meant she was easier to reason with than Benjamin was right now, but it also meant she had been the baby for much longer.
Her parents had done everything they could to stop her feeling neglected, but thirteen-year-old Bluebell and fifteen-year-olds Bowie and Marley had all been obsessed with their new baby brother.
Maddie had been heartbroken about it. Even now when she thought about it, the feeling of rejection was raw.
She desperately wanted to swoop Benjamin out of the room and distract him, but she knew Marley was using this as a teachable moment.
Given how ardently he’d recently insisted they remove themselves from his choices when it came to parenting, she didn’t want to intrude.
* * *
Two hours later, they were all gathered in the living room nursing glasses of mulled wine when James arrived with Stevie and his mother in tow.
Maddie — who had given up any hope of him returning — had to work hard to make sure her reaction was measured and ordinary, especially now she knew Benjamin and Katherine were watching her.
She let her mother and father be the ones who went to the kitchen to greet them, preoccupying herself by talking to Autumn and Bluebell, both of whom, she knew, were humouring her.
After what felt like an age, James brought an anxious-looking Jennifer into the living room and introduced her.
“Everyone, this is my mum, Jennifer. Mum, this is Maddie, Autumn, Marley, Benjamin, Pip and... I’m sorry, I don’t know you guys.”
“I’m Katherine, Autumn’s mum. This is Lilly, Autumn’s sister, and that’s Daisy, Autumn’s niece.”
“Lovely to meet you,” James said, shaking Katherine’s hand.
He waved at Lilly, who was sitting in an armchair feeding the baby.
There was a moment of silence while everyone reset themselves.
Emma took Jennifer’s coat and passed it to Ben, gesturing to a chair by the fire.
Maddie, who was sitting on the rug nearby, threw Jennifer a hearty wave.
She nodded in recognition, and Maddie thought she caught a hint of a smile, but she couldn’t be sure.
By then everyone had resumed their conversations.
James joined Marley and Pip by the window, where they’d been talking about bands for over an hour.
Emma perched on the arm of Jennifer’s armchair. “We have met before, Jennifer, many years ago, when the kids were at school. I’m so glad you’re here. Would you like a glass of mulled wine? I made it myself.”
“By ‘made it herself’ she means she poured it into a pan and added oranges and cinnamon to it,” Marley said, laughing. “She didn’t squish the grapes or anything.”
“That’s more than you’ve done round here today,” Emma said, pointedly.
“Fair play.” Marley nodded. “I’ll get this round in. One for Jennifer. Who wants a top up?” One by one, every person in the room held up their glass, even those who still had wine left. Marley glared comically at them. “You’re all dickheads,” he said.
“Marley,” Autumn scolded, nodding pointedly towards Benjamin.
“Sorry. You’re all . . .”
Autumn put her hand over his mouth, pushing him towards the door.
“We don’t call people names, remember?” she said, following him out of the room.
“We’ll bring a jug of wine in,” she called back to them.
Benjamin jumped off the couch and tore after them.
Maddie knew he was seizing his opportunity to bask in their undivided attention.
He wanted a few moments with his parents alone.
Maddie couldn’t say she blamed him. Stevie was hot on their heels.
“I think your dog might not be your dog anymore,” Bluebell said to James. He laughed.
“Nonsense,” Emma said. “I’ve never seen a dog love a human like that dog loves James. She just knows Benjamin drops food on the floor all the time.”
“I think the truth is somewhere in the middle,” James said. “She’s my dog, but she certainly views you all as family now.”
“Well, that’s grand,” Ben said. “Because we very much view you as family, too.”
James smiled gratefully. Maddie took her opportunity to steal a glance at Jennifer, who looked surprised by Ben’s declaration of fondness for her son.
Maddie felt James’ eyes upon her, but she made a point of ignoring him.
There were too many people in the room, too many opportunities for them to be discovered.
It was nearly impossible, of course. She was desperate to stare at his beautiful face.
But the rate at which people were figuring out there was more to their relationship than they were letting on was alarming her.
She picked at her fingernails until she was sure he’d gone back to talking to Marley and Pip.
When she looked up, Jennifer was watching her son joking with the two men, insisting he had not abstained from buying them gifts because of the ‘no gift’ rule, but because he wasn’t being paid enough to buy gifts and they were jovially calling his boss — her — a real tight arse.
Jennifer was looking at James like it was the first time she’d ever seen him.
Perhaps it was, Maddie thought. James said Jennifer had been permanently distracted since Harry had died two decades ago.
She never went out and socialised and hardly spent any time with James when he was home.
Maybe this was the first time she’d seen him properly as a grown adult.
Maddie wondered if she was proud. She didn’t look it.
She appeared irritated, if anything. Maybe she was angry she’d missed out on so many fabulous times with such a wonderful young man.
“Can we play Carrot in a Box?” James was asking.
“What’s that?” Bluebell asked.
“It’s a two-player game. Each person has a box.
There’s a carrot in one of them and the other one is empty.
At the start of the game, one person gets to look in their box, so that person will know which box has a carrot in it.
The other player, the one who doesn’t know, gets to choose whether they switch boxes or keep their own.
The person who knows where the carrot is has to persuade or dissuade them from swapping.
The winner is the person who has a carrot in their box at the end. It’s great fun.”
“Sounds really easy,” Pip said.
James laughed knowingly. “It’s not.” He sold the idea to Autumn and Marley when they returned with the jugs of mulled wine, then insisted he and Maddie be the ones to retrieve boxes from the recycling bin and a carrot from the pantry.
“We’re being really obvious,” Maddie said, closing the pantry door behind them.
“I do not care,” James said, pulling her towards him and pressing his lips against hers.
They only had a few minutes before they’d arouse suspicion, so Maddie fully understood the urgency.
She ran her hands all over him and they kissed like they might never see each other again, before breaking apart as though nothing had happened.
“I’m drinking today,” Maddie said, looking for carrots while James pulled two boxes out of the recycling bin.
He eyed her, quizzically. “So I am telling you now, while I am of sound mind, that I want to have sex with you later,” she explained.
“Do not reject me. Unless you don’t want to, of course. ”
James chuckled. “OK, just don’t get too drunk,” he said. Maddie nodded.
They’d overdone it and taken far too much time, so they hurried back to her family without defining the conditions further. Maddie saw Autumn and Bluebell side-eye each other knowingly, but she was relieved to see everyone else seemed none the wiser.
Pip pointed to the broccoli Maddie was carrying. “That’s not a carrot,” he said.
“All of the carrots have already succumbed to the pot, so this was the best I could do,” Maddie said.
“Can you play Carrot in a Box with broccoli, James?” Pip asked, downing the rest of his mulled wine.