The Ullswater Undertaking by Rebecca Tope (read dune .TXT) 📕

to her with every passing week. Once she had got as far as the pub in Patterdale, taking almost an hour to gather her strength for the return walk and feeding the baby quietly in a corner. She could not see how a dog would enhance this experience. An Irish setter would run across the road and get killed. A retriever would want her to throw sticks for it. A terrier would chase sheep and a spaniel would get under her feet.

It was a precious interlude, which she knew couldn’t last. Her flower shop down in Windermere was still functioning, with young Bonnie Lawson stepping up magnificently and a temporary woman brought in to help. That had been quite a moment, when Verity Chambers had come into their lives. In her fifties, with a broad Cumbrian accent, she was reassuringly compliant and co-operative. She let a girl less than half her age order her about with apparent contentment, never arguing or complaining. ‘It’s a miracle!’ Bonnie insisted. ‘I can’t get used to it at all. Ben says it’s all an act and she’s just biding her time before she takes over the whole business.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Simmy. ‘She’s just happy to let somebody else carry all the responsibility.’

‘But she does talk far too much, most of it total nonsense,’ Bonnie added.

Verity knew more than enough about flowers to be an asset in the shop. But when it came to taking orders, with the timing often quite crucial, she was useless. Bonnie forbade her from answering the phone under any circumstances, or from going anywhere near the computer. But she could drive and knew her way around the region, so she could be sent out with deliveries. Bonnie still showed no sign of learning to drive.

Christopher woke shortly before seven to find Simmy and his son dozing together in the chair on the other side of the very large bedroom. Simmy had insisted on sitting by the big new window when she fed the baby because it looked out on a most spectacular view. ‘Hey, you two, come back to bed,’ he called.

‘Not worth it now,’ she said. ‘Young Sir is dead to the world. I’ll go and do us some eggs. My mother’s coming later on, when she’s finished the breakfasts.’

‘I remember.’ He got out of bed and joined them. ‘Looks like a nice day.’

‘I watched the sunrise. It was very pink. Shepherd’s warning.’

‘April showers, that’s all.’ He bent over them. ‘He’s going to look like my dad, isn’t he? Same neat little features.’

‘Too soon to say,’ said Simmy. ‘I can see my mother in him every now and then.’

‘She’ll be pleased about that.’

‘She’s just pleased, full stop.’ Angie Straw’s relief at the safe arrival of her only grandchild had been startling to them all. For a whole day, she simply wept, as if a tap had got stuck in the ‘on’ position. Her husband had walked her round the streets of Barrow in an effort to distract her, but in vain. She had rushed back to the maternity ward to check that she hadn’t dreamt the whole thing.

Christopher left home at half past seven for the auction house in Keswick. The drive could take a full half hour if there was tourist traffic on the little road up to the A66. Already, since Easter, the volume of slow-moving cars was growing. The bidding didn’t start until nine-thirty, and Simmy never quite understood why he factored in so much time beforehand.

But she was too busy to worry on this particular Saturday. ‘I’m going to paint some doors,’ she announced. ‘Humphrey’s going to be here just for a bit, getting everything ready for the dining-room wall. He says I’ve made a lot of extra work, insisting on it being double thickness. He’s calling it the Big Undertaking, which I think he thinks is funny.’

‘I don’t expect he really minds the extra work. He can see the logic.’

‘I can’t understand why he ever thought a flimsy partition would be good enough.’

‘He’s lucky we’re not making him build it of natural stone, like the outer ones.’

Simmy grew thoughtful. ‘Did we even think of that?’ Despite her best efforts, the distractions of pregnancy, timings and inconvenient weather had forced them to take the quick and easy options in many instances. Christopher had shown little interest in the finer details. ‘I just want somewhere for us to live,’ he kept saying.

Now he said, ‘Too slow and much too expensive. Personally, I think you can have too much natural stone. It’s not as if we live in the Cotswolds, where it’s so much nicer than what they dig out up here.’

‘Sacrilege!’ she scolded him. ‘Anyway, I thought I might do a bit of paintwork upstairs, while Robin has his morning nap.’

‘You should let them do it, you idiot. That’s what they’re for.’

‘Not at all. They’re builders, not painters. And I like doing it.’

Christopher worried that paint fumes would be bad for his baby, or that somehow Simmy’s milk would be tainted. The entire Straw family mocked him for such needless worries. Once Robin had convinced them that he intended to live and thrive, they began to entertain very few anxieties. It was as if they’d used them all up before the birth, and now it was perfectly obvious that nothing could go wrong. Even Russell, who had slipped into a state of near paranoia in recent times, appeared to be cured of that condition now. He blithely approved of Simmy taking the child out in all weathers, of putting him near open windows or leaving him for ten minutes in the car. ‘That’s the way to do it,’ he yodelled. ‘Bring him up tough.’

Simmy spent forty minutes painting a door frame before Robin stirred. Angie arrived at eleven, to find her daughter and grandson nestled in the new kitchen. The room had been planned to resemble that of an old farmhouse. It lacked an Aga or Rayburn but had an area at one end with easy chairs