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.
The good news is, things are looking up a tad for Luke. And the best bit of all is that Iain Wheeler lost his job! Luke didn’t hang around — the day after we had Minnie, he paid a visit to Iain’s bosses, along with his lawyer, and they had a “short conversation,” as Luke put it. The next thing we heard was that Iain Wheeler was announcing his decision to move from Arcodas. It’s nearly a month later and Gary, who knows these things, says he hasn’t had any job offers yet. Which is apparently because everyone has heard the rumor of some incriminating dossier on him. Ha.
Luke won’t work with Arcodas, though, even with Iain gone. He says their attitude is just as obnoxious as ever. And he still hasn’t got any money out of them. He’s just closed down another three European offices and things are still pretty tense. But he’s OK. He’s thinking positive, already planning new pitches, new strategies. We sometimes talk about them at night, and I tell him everything I think. And then somehow the conversation always drifts to Minnie and how amazing and beautiful and gorgeous she is.
And now I’m standing in Mum’s driveway, joggling her in my arms, watching the delivery men unload all our things. Most of our stuff has gone into storage, but obviously there were a few essentials we had to bring with us.
“Becky…” Mum approaches me from across the drive, holding a teetering pile of old magazines. “Where shall I put these, love? In the rubbish?”
“They’re not rubbish!” I protest. “I might want to read them! Can’t they go in our bedroom?”
“It’s getting a little full….” Mum looks at the magazines and seems to make a snap decision. “I think we’ll have to give you the blue bedroom as well.”
“OK.” I nod. “Thanks, Mum.”
