Lindsay Armstrong - He's My Husband!

There was also a garden for the children, a shed and a kiln for her pottery, and a shady, secretive courtyard outside the front door that was definitely Oriental in design and a delight to Nicola. More of her pottery pots and most of her statues ended up in it, and she grew herbs, lemon trees in tubs, impatiens, and miniature capsicum and chillies beneath a magnificent tree that was at present a blaze of bloom and spreading a pink carpet on the uneven tiles that surrounded it.

The sight of a small face at her bedroom doorway, which was instantly whisked away, alerted her. She waited a couple of moments, then padded back to her room silently and sneaked up to the bed that now had two still mounds beneath the covers. She fell on the bed, causing screams and loud gurgles of laughter to emanate as the mounds wriggled joyfully and they all ended up in a heap.

‘Who’s been sleeping in my bed?’ Nicola demanded, feigning utter surprise.

‘You knew, you knew!’ Chris, short for Christian, chanted.

‘How could she know?’ his sister contradicted, coming up for air. ‘We didn’t make a sound. We didn’t even breathe!’

‘I bet you she knew—’

‘OK.’ Nicola gathered them on either side of her and plumped up the pillows. ‘Let’s not start the day with a fight. How about a song instead? Let’s see...’

They sang ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’, then, because The Wiggles were such a hot topic, embarked on one of their songs about a dog that barked all day and night. They sang the chorus with great gusto and much hilarity, alternating from basso profondo to a shrill, scratchy falsetto.

‘All right, all right!’ Brett Harcourt appeared at the doorway with his hair hanging in his eyes, wearing only a pair of sleep shorts and with blue shadows on his jaw. ‘Doesn’t anyone in this house believe it’s Sunday?’

Nicola said through her laughter, ‘Sorry, but they both have perfect pitch, you know!’

Sasha and Chris leapt off the bed to besiege their father, and presently to partake peaceably of a late breakfast, and then get through the whole traumatic business of being dressed and groomed for an outing without one squabble.

‘There.’ Nicola slung a large bag into the back of the BMW between the children and stood for a moment with her hand on her hip.

She wore a filmy beige and white paisley overshirt and white linen drawstring pants. Her hair was in a simple knot and she had beige canvas rope-soled espadrilles on her feet. She held up a finger for each item. ‘I’ve got two spare sets of clothing, sun-cream, hats, togs, buckets, spades, toys in case they get bored, books—I’ve got the lot.’

She swung herself into the front seat and exchanged a wry glance with her husband, who said, ‘It’s like moving an army.’

‘You’re not wrong. Now listen, kids,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘we’re going to visit Mr and Mrs Mason for lunch. Don’t forget your manners, will you?’

‘I never do,’ Sasha said proudly and pointedly.

“Course you do,‘ Chris responded. ’Who threw a plate of jelly at—?‘

‘That was because he pulled my hair! And don’t forget the time you spat at—’

‘Kids,’ Brett said, mildly enough, but they subsided—as they always did for Brett, Nicola thought ruefully.

‘Wish I had you around more often,’ she murmured with a faint grin, and glanced at him expressively.

Gone was the dishevelment of earlier. He was shaved, his brown hair was orderly and he wore a brown and white striped T-shirt, off-white thin cotton jeans and white deck shoes. The hairs on his arms, she noted, glinted chestnut in the sun.

‘I might not be so effective then—familiarity could dull the edge.’

‘I doubt it. They’re always good for you.’

‘Do you find them such a handful, Nicola?’ he asked after a moment. ‘By the way, I presume I’m forgiven?’

‘For last night?’ She shrugged. ‘Yes. You know I don’t find them a handful,’ she added with more warmth. ‘And on the odd occasion that I do,’ she said honestly, ‘I’ve always got Ellen to fall back on.’ Ellen doubled as housemaid and babysitter, and had been with the children since birth.

‘I just wondered,’ he said slowly, ‘whether they had anything to do with your seeking counselling. Whether you felt tied down, were yearning for a career or something like that,’ he said, before she could speak.

Nicola paused. ‘I never could decide whether I wanted to be a potter, a pilot or a musician—that’s strange, isn’t it? No. It’s not that, Brett.’

‘But what would you do if you left us?’

The question hung in the air—air that rushed by as they drove up the highway past Palm Cove towards Buchans Point with the roof down. And it was a question that affected Nicola suddenly and curiously. Was it because, she wondered, it was the first time Brett had actually asked her? Not in the context of pointing out her lack of purpose in life, or her unwisdom et cetera, but just as a simple, genuine enquiry?

And it came to her with a little stab of shock that perhaps he was entertaining the idea of her leaving...

‘I...I could start my own gallery,’ she said at random. ‘A lot of people are very taken with my pottery.’

‘Anything else?’

She cast around in her mind a little desperately. Before anything presented itself, she remembered suddenly that Brett had gone out the night before, alone, and come home very late. Well after midnight, in fact, as she’d seen on the luminous dial of her bedside clock when the opening and closing of the garage doors had woken her briefly—something she hadn’t recalled until now.

Not that there was anything particularly unusual in it. She often went out with girlfriends, and he didn’t always include her in his socialising, but...had this been a different kind of socialising, with a woman? she found herself wondering. A woman he was serious about? Serious enough to be contemplating putting an end to this marriage of convenience. But what about Marietta? she thought. And...

‘Nicola?’

She jerked her eyes to his to find his gaze narrow and probing, but all he said was, ‘We’re here.’

‘Oh, sorry.’ She shrugged, but it was a long moment before she could tear her gaze away from his. Then she got out of the car and helped the children out.

‘Now, let’s see.’ She straightened Sasha’s pretty sun-dress and smoothed her red-brown curls. ‘You look gorgeous, darling,’ she said, and turned to Chris. ‘Whereas you are very handsome, young man!’

Both children exuded gratification and put their hands into hers, leaving their father to deal with the large bag.

And that was what the Masons, Rod and Kim, as well as their resident guest, saw advancing up the garden path as they opened their front door, causing Kim Mason, in her forthright way, to say, ‘Nicola, dear, welcome! But how can you possibly be old enough to have two children this age?’

‘Oh, she’s not our mother,’ Sasha piped up with a world-weary air. ‘She’s our aunt.’

‘Sasha.’ Nicola frowned down at her. ‘I’m not your aunt, I’m your stepmother. Where did you get that idea?’

‘Excuse me—how silly of me,’ Kim murmured, but Sasha was not to be denied.

‘I ’scussed this with my friend Emma, and we decided you can’t be any kind of a mother, Nicola, because you don’t do the things mummies do.’

“Course she does,‘ Chris said witheringly. ’Who makes us clean our teeth three times a day and washes our ears and makes us eat our crusts?‘

‘That’s not all mummies do,’ Sasha replied with a superior air. ‘They look after their kids’ dads as well. They kiss and cuddle them, and they sleep in the same bed with them—’