Picnics in Hyde Park. Nikki Moore

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СКАЧАТЬ their heads, a thud sounded.

      ‘Everything all right?’ Zoe frowned at the ceiling, and put a hand on Jasper’s back.

      Turning his head, he stared at her with solemn green eyes. ‘Don’t like sirens,’ he answered in a tight voice, trembles rippling through him. ‘Mummy went when sirens came.’

      ‘Oh.’ There were some residual memories of the accident then, even though he’d been so young. ‘Well, there’s nothing to be worried about now, okay? We’re here, your sister is upstairs with her book, and your dad is safely at work. Besides, ambulances go to help people, right? They nee-naw like that to move cars out the way so they can get to people in trouble as quickly as possible. Everything is okay,’ she soothed, stroking his back until the sirens faded away. ‘See? They’ve gone.’

      With a nod, he dipped his brush in the blue paint and started outlining swirling clouds. Zoe gazed down at his ruffled hair, marvelling at how freely he’d shared his fears with her, so soon after she’d arrived in his life. Still, that was kids for you, especially younger ones. They were open books. They barely had filters at this age and blurted out pretty much everything they thought.

      ‘Stay there for a minute, all right? Just keep painting. I need to check on your sister.’ Thinking of the thudding noise. Racing upstairs, she knocked on Aimee’s door, pushing it open gently when there was no reply. ‘Everything good up here?’ she asked, hoping Jasper didn’t get into too much mischief while she was gone. She stared at Aimee’s downturned head, nose only a few inches from the page. ‘I thought I heard something hit the deck,’ Zoe said, ‘was it in here?’ There was no answer, just a slight tightening of the little girl’s pink lips. ‘Oh well, I must have imagined it then,’ she added lightly, ‘never mind. I’ll leave you to it. Lunch is in a bit, by the way.’ Aimee’s gaze flickered upwards and she nodded once, but Zoe could see that her eyes were suspiciously bright. Maybe Jasper wasn’t the only one affected by sirens. ‘If you need anything, we’re in the kitchen.’ She backed out of the room, leaving the girl alone with her thoughts. When she was ready to talk about it, she would.

      Zoe wandered down the spiral stairs, hand clutching the curved white rail. She could still remember the horror she’d felt when Mel had told her over Skype, brown eyes tear-filled, that both children had been in the car crash that killed their mum. Mel had only arrived with the family a few days before, and Matt had been battling along without help for three months before hiring a nanny. It had been a difficult time for all of them and Zoe knew that her sister, who could be emotionally fragile at times, had found it hard to deal with their grief. Slowly however, she knew things had gotten better. Or thought they had.

      When she sloped back into the kitchen, heart weighed down with the sad thoughts, Zoe halted, mouth opening. ‘Jasper,’ she breathed, fighting not to laugh, ‘what did you do?’

      Grinning proudly, he pointed to his face, which was painted a bright shade of blue, save for a crooked, naked stripe down the middle over his nose. ‘I’m Braveheart. It’s one of daddy’s favourite films. He won’t let me watch it but ‘Ncle Stephen lets me sneak peeks sometimes. This is what they do when they fight.’

      ‘It is.’ Shaking her head, she tried to be serious but sniggered instead. He looked so earnest, and more like a haphazard smurf than a warrior. The fact he’d managed to miss his hair was a minor miracle. ‘But that kind of paint is for paper, not for faces,’ she pointed out. ‘If you want to do this again, please let me know and we’ll buy some proper face paints.’ Reaching for her phone from one of the shelves, she held it out in front of her. ‘Can I take a picture?’

      ‘Yep! To show Daddy!’

      ‘That’s a great idea,’ she said, deftly pressing two buttons and taking a selection of photos. ‘We won’t tell him you didn’t ask permission, but I’ll send him a picture if you promise that next time you will.’

      He nodded decisively, blue dripping off his chin and plunking onto his plastic red apron. ‘Deal.’

      Grinning, she sent Matt a picture via WhatsApp, with the caption Your son has the same movie tastes as you. ‘Right, done.’ A reply wasn’t necessarily something she expected, but a minute later a smiley face icon and Lol, that’s my boy comment pinged her mobile. Smiling, she tucked her phone away and dampened some kitchen roll, standing Jasper at the sink to wash his face off.

      After cleaning him up, they made fresh bread for lunch. At the end of the bread-making session, Jasper had managed to get little white-flour finger marks over himself, Zoe and most surfaces in the kitchen. With a chuckle Zoe wiped the sides down and they got the kitchen roll back out, turning the radio up and bopping around while they got clean again, before setting up a picnic in the garden. This time Jasper helped her without complaint.

      When Zoe called Aimee for lunch, it took a full ten minutes to coax her from her bedroom at the same time as trying to keep an eye on Jasper, who was banging something about in his jam-packed room across the hall.

      ‘Aimee,’ she resorted to quiet authority after nice requests and cajoling had failed, ‘you can’t starve, and I’ll be more than happy to discuss your favourite books with you or let you carry on reading after lunch, but if you don’t come downstairs and eat with us before all the food gets swarmed by ants, I’m going to have to withdraw a privilege.’ The girl looked at her with wide eyes, waiting to see what she’d do. Zoe knew it was a test. So she let out a big sigh, shaking her head sorrowfully. ‘I would really, really hate to have to take one of your books away, because I understand how much you love them. I’m a big reader too,’ she confessed. ‘There’s nothing better than getting lost in another world and making new friends. But you have to live in the real world sometimes, okay?’ Throwing the door open wider, gesturing to the staircase. ‘Come on. You can have a quick bite then sit in the shade and read some more, or you can have a longer lunch and we can talk books while your brother plays on his swing set. The choice is yours.’

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