Bella Osborne - A Family Holiday - A heartwarming summer romance for fans of Katie Fforde

Felix slumped back into his chair and clapped his hands. ‘That is great news. Thank you. The solicitor I spoke to implied you didn’t want to look after the kids but kind of made it clear that one of us had to. So that is a huge relief.’

Ruth scowled, ‘The responsibility of guardian enables me to ensure they have a financially secure future and appoint a childcare professional to administer their care. And let’s be clear, I do not mean the current incumbent.’

Felix looked like he’d just been beaten at Scrabble. ‘What?’

‘Their current nanny will be leaving as soon as I can find a replacement. She isn’t qualified and the children are out of control. She is some stray that my sister took in. I queried it with Helen at the time. I told her she should do proper checks, but Helen was always too soft and naive.’ Ruth’s voice caught in her throat. ‘Anyway, I’ve done some investigating of my own and she’s not fit to care for those children but I’m sure she’s already looking for another job, so we’ll soon be rid of her.’ Ruth checked her watch again and moved her handbag onto her lap. ‘If you could inform the solicitor that you concur, I will notify Social Services of the agreed approach, and we should be able to get things wrapped up quite quickly.’ Ruth stood to leave.

‘Hang on, hang on,’ said Felix, waving her to sit down again. ‘Let’s get this straight. You will be their guardian, and you’ll administer the trust fund. There will be a new nanny … ’

‘A qualified nanny,’ interjected Ruth.

‘Yep, to do washing, cleaning and day-to-day stuff. But what’s missing is who is actually looking after them?’

Ruth pursed her lips. ‘A full-time nanny will be there to care for them, they’ll be fine. We could, of course, consider boarding school for the older children,’ said Ruth, with almost a smile. ‘I need to leave.’

‘Yeah, of course. Sorry I was late but I think we need more time to work something else out. I really don’t think Helen and Tobes would have wanted their kids to be left to manage by themselves like this, and certainly not just packed off to boarding school.’

Ruth stood up. ‘Very well, I’ll check my diary so we can discuss this further, but I assure you they’ll be fine. Children are very resilient. Good bye.’

Millie took a big breath for another rendition of the chorus. ‘All the birds of the air, fell a-sighing and a-sobbing, when they heard of the death of poor Cock Robin…’

‘Stop it!’ shouted Eleanor at close range before almost knocking over the high chair as she ran past. Eleanor’s temper had turned to tears before she’d reached the top of the stairs.

‘I’ll go,’ said Charlie, giving the others a wan smile.

‘Silly Billy,’ giggled Millie, thankfully oblivious to the impact of the upsetting faux pas before continuing with what she remembered of the old rhyme.

Eleanor lay face down on her bed, her small body shaking with the force of her sobs, her butterfly duvet muffling the pain. Wriggly sat on the pillow, looking worried and helpless, as he tilted his head from side to side and whimpered. Charlie got on the bed next to Eleanor, wrapped her arms around her and rocked her gently until the sobs turned to sniffles.

‘Mum and Dad…’ started Eleanor, but the noisy sobs returned and Charlie cradled her again until she could control them. At last they both sat up and Eleanor clung to Charlie, as she had done yesterday and the day before.

‘I know,’ said Charlie, ‘it’s total rubbish.’ She pushed a strand of damp hair off the eight-year-old’s face. Wriggly came to sit on Charlie’s lap and tried to lick Eleanor’s tears. A tiny smile appeared fleetingly on Eleanor’s lips.

‘That stupid song,’ grumbled Eleanor.

‘Granddad Roger taught it to her. She doesn’t know what it’s about, though.’

‘I know. Even Millie is being braver than me,’ said Eleanor, wiping her eyes with the tissue that was now permanently in her pocket.

Millie had been deeply affected by the emotions in the house and had cried constantly for the first few days after the accident. She had then moved onto calling out ‘My Mummy and My Daddy!’ and searching the house for them as if playing some twisted game of hide and seek. Thankfully, after repeated attempts by Charlie to explain that Mummy and Daddy had gone to Heaven, where they could see her but she couldn’t see them, she had calmed down a little and mercifully had now stopped looking for them and was very nearly back to her usual cheeky self.

‘You don’t have to be brave, Elle. It’s different for Millie; she’s only three. She won’t fully understand everything until she’s bigger. As long as Millie has food, drink and her Winnie the Pooh her basic needs are met. For the rest of you it’s a lot more complicated. You need to get through this however you can.’

‘I feel sad all the time and I cry… all the time,’ said Eleanor, looking wretched.

‘I know, sweetie, and that’s completely normal. Someone once told me that grief is like any wound, it needs time to heal. Thing is, it’s not a scab on your knee, so you can’t see how it’s getting on.’

‘It won’t get better though, will it? Mum and Dad are never coming back. We’ll never be a happy family again.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I know we argue sometimes but we did used to be happy.’ Eleanor pulled Wriggly onto her lap and he wagged his tail excitedly.

‘We did,’ nodded Charlie. ‘It will take time, lots of tears and lots of cuddles but I promise you you’ll get back to being happy. It’ll just be a different kind of happy,’ she said but Eleanor didn’t look convinced. ‘When you’re ready, come and get some food. Okay?’

The last couple of months had been a blur and too awful to put into words. They had all been suffering. It was probably Eleanor who worried Charlie the most as she had gone into her shell and spent all her time with Wriggly, barely speaking to anyone and surviving almost entirely on milkshakes.

The accident had hit Charlie hard too. She had learnt so much from the Cobleys. She’d learnt that if there was ever a cement shortage Weetabix was a viable substitute, having tried to remove it from a myriad surfaces, including her own hair. She’d learnt that you never leave a baby to play innocently with a thread in a Berber carpet, as it soon becomes a four-foot-long bald strip. She’d learnt to change a nappy at record speed, to avoid the horror of a poo-covered bottom rolling across a vanilla-coloured wool rug. But, most importantly, she’d learnt that whatever happens, you stick together as a family.

Charlie struggled to believe it herself, that Helen and Toby Cobley were both dead. When she heard a car stop outside she still occasionally had a quick look to check it wasn’t them. How quickly their world had been changed. A simple car accident on a wet motorway had become a multiple-car pile up, with the Cobley’s car somewhere in the middle.

Charlie’s immediate fear had been that the children would be taken into the care of Social Services. That fear still hung over her and it would do until the question of guardianship had been resolved. She knew too well what it was like to be a child in the care system and she was desperate for the Cobley children to avoid this fate.