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Jock, rather optienial cartoon character, stayed put He had been denied
the chance to get his teeth into the leg of the washing-machine repair his duty to protect his s were not supposed to sulk but Jock went off in a huff if he was denied the delights of chasing male individuals from the premises
Marco gave a gurgle of delight and began crawling under the sideboard to join his favourite played by silky black lashes as long as fly swats reproached her for her interference Marcoarms and when that failed loosed a noisy shout of annoyance
Vivien steeled herself for a battle ‘No…’ she told Marco quietly and steadily, all too painfully aware after a recent very public humiliation at the supermarket that it was time that she learned how to handle her son’s fits of temper
No? In visible disbelief, Marco gazed back at the fair-haired woreen eyes No? His nanny, Rosa, used that unpleasant word to him, and his father too But he knew his e of eighteeninstincts of a tyrant, who had already discovered that he needed only the most basic of weapons to triueable tantruan to draw in a deep, deep breath in preparation for screa victory
Barely five feet two inches tall and of slender build, Vivien laid her solid little son down inside the playpen Marco was strong and when he flailed around in a temper, she found it very difficult to hold him Once he had fallen off her lap and bu him down for his own safety
‘He’s a spoilt brat!’ her sister, Bernice, had condemned with a shudder of distaste that had cut Vivien’s tender maternal heart to the quick
‘De little chap, isn’t he?’ Fabian Garsdale, her friend and colleague in the botany department, had remarked with an air of shocked disapproval when he’d witnessed such a display ‘Have you thought of applying a spot of good old-fashioned discipline?’
‘You must try really hard to be firm with him,’ Rosa, Marco’s part-tie rarely subjected her to the sa-willed’
Vivien performed a handstand beside the playpen If she was quick off theMarco worked a treat Mid-wail, her son paused for breath and then chortled with delighted surprise at the sight of his lorious smile shone forth
Flipping back upright again, Vivien swept hiht and blinked back thelove that she had once felt for Lucca had been transferred to their son Without Marco, she was convinced that she would have gone out of her e It had been her baby’s needs that first forced her to confront unpleasant realities and carve out a new life for the pain of Lucca’s betrayal was still locked up inside her and she had to live with it daily She had always felt things too deeply and had learnt as a child to conceal the es behind a quiet façade To do otherwise made people uncomfortable
The noise of a car pulling rather too fast into the gravel driveway outside announced Bernice’s return Jock ele bark, looked nervously at the sitting-rooain A es to fraly lovely had it not been for the angry hardness of her blue eyes and the clenched set of dissatisfactionher mouth
Indifferent to Bernice’s, entrance for his aunt never gave him attention unless it was to laly ie sleepy yawn and rested back heavily in his mother’s arms
Bernice sent the curly-headed toddler a look of irritation ‘Shouldn’t the kid be having his nap?’
‘I was just about to take hi sympathetically if her sister had suffered yet another disappointment in the employment stakes, Vivien went upstairs and tried not to worry about her own increasingly strained finances
After all, it would be downright cruel to preach econoain to Bernice, as already utterly ne breakfasts and the like Vivien was also guiltily conscious that her own personal reluctance to take anything other than the barest minimum financial assistance from Lucca after their separation was ultimately responsible for her overdraft at the bank She had put pride ahead of co the literal price
At least, the cottage was small and, now that all the repairs had been done, economical to run Of course, Bernice said it was only fit for dolls But in the dark days of late pregnancy when Vivien had been alone and struggling to bear a life that did not contain even occasional glimpses of Lucca, the little house had seemed like a sanctuary Ee lay in pretty countryside not too far froe where Vivien currently worked three days a week as a tutor in the botany department