Kaz finds me weeping at the kitchen table.
‘Hey! What’s up? Bad news at the clinic?’ Kaz sits down and puts her arm round my shoulders.
‘No. Your bloody mother.’
‘Oh dear.’ Kaz hands me a roll of kitchen towel.
‘Oh dear indeed.’ I blow my nose. ‘Sorry to talk about her to you like this, but she really is a cow of the first order.’
‘Tell me about it.’ Kaz sits down beside me. ‘So what’s she been up to this time?’
‘She’s been “up to” turning away Amos.’
‘Your bloke?’
‘Well, he never will be now, will he? Blossom told him no-one here had ever heard of me.’
‘Oops.’
‘He turned up — he actually came here looking for me. I left this address with my parents’ neighbours so that if he ever came looking for me, he’d know where to find me. I was out, and it had to be your mother who answered the door. Blossom never answers the door. Talk about sod’s law!’
‘God, I’m sorry Ruth. Didn’t he leave a message or anything?’
‘No. Because as far as he’s concerned, I don’t live here, do I? I suppose I’m lucky she didn’t tell him I was dead while she was about it.’
‘I knew she was upset with you all, but not that upset. Oh dear. I’m so sorry, Ruth. I really am.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ I tear off more kitchen roll and wipe my eyes. ‘But oh, Kaz! What am I going to do? Amos finding me here was my last chance, and now it’s gone. And so has he. He won’t come back here again.’
‘He mightn’t have been the right one for you. You said so yourself.’
‘Yes. But I wanted to decide. My decision. Not bloody bloody Blossom’s!’
‘I can see that.’ Kaz strokes my hair. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘Not really. An itinerant trombone player ought to be easy to find, particularly that one, but apparently not. Amos seems to have this knack of disappearing.’
‘How was the clinic?’ Kaz changes the subject.
‘Oh, fine. The midwife said about ten days to go.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘You know, Kaz, I don’t really care. I’m so tired, there’s been so much going on, what with Silas’s illness and everything. I’ve hardly had time to think about babies.’
‘Ruth, you have to. It’s ridiculous to say you haven’t had time to think about the baby. The truth is that you don’t want to think about it.’
‘That’s not fair!’
‘Isn’t it? You’ve had nine months to think about it, and you hardly ever mention it. It’s almost as though there isn’t a baby at all. You decided to keep it. You’ve had all your scans and things. Now you have to start planning for it. Looking forward to it, even.’
‘You sound like my mother.’
‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it? You need a bit of bossing about. You need someone to look after you.’
‘I need Amos.’ The tears start again. I imagine Amos’s big arms around me, Amos telling me everything’s going to be all right, Amos at my side while I give birth to our child, Amos bringing me flowers, and being proud. ‘I need him so much, Kaz. You’ve no idea how much.’
‘I can imagine.’ Kaz pauses for a moment. ‘Well, we’ll just have to find him.’
‘How? How are we going to find him?’
‘Let’s start with your friends. We’ll phone them all up and see whether anyone has any idea of where he is.’
‘But I did that ages ago.’
‘Yes, but that was when he’d gone abroad. Now that he’s back, you’ve got more chance of finding him. He must be somewhere, for goodness’ sake! Someone must know where he is.’
I fetch my address book, and together Kaz and I go through it. Of course, many of my friends don’t know Amos, but the musical world is a small one, and my friends from college and from the orchestra prove to be more help than I had anticipated. There have been several recent sightings of Amos, who has apparently been doing the rounds, looking up old friends. No-one seems to know where’s he’s living, or even to have his phone number, but Amos is apparently very much around, and looking for work in the London area.
‘That’s a start,’ says Kaz, when we call a halt for a cup of coffee.
‘London’s a big place,’ I remind her.
‘Yes. But it’s a lot nearer than Barbados, and you’ve left plenty of messages. I bet he’ll get in touch soon. Just you wait.’
I am not good at waiting, although given the amount of practice I’ve had recently I certainly ought to be. But I have no choice. If Amos gets any of my messages, I’m pretty sure he’ll be in touch, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll be soon. As for the baby, Kaz and I discuss this at length and we both decide that it would be best that he shouldn’t know about it at this stage. As Kaz says, it might scare him off, and that’s the last thing I want to do.
‘Though I don’t think Amos is the kind of person to be scared off by a baby,’ I tell her. ‘Or anything else, come to that.’
‘Why take the risk?’ Kaz asks me.
‘Good point. He’ll have to know some time, but perhaps not yet.’
Fortunately, at this point we are interrupted by several pilgrims who wish to adopt chickens, and since Lazzo is currently suffering from flu and Mum is out helping Dad choose kitchen units, the job falls to Kaz and me. Neither of us is good with Lazzo’s chicken-catching device, so it takes us an inordinate amount of time to trap three particularly scruffy specimens (it seems the fox chose all the better-looking ones).
‘But I wanted the ones with the little furry trousers,’ their putative owner objects. ‘These aren’t nearly so pretty.’
‘Little furry trousers are all very well,’ says Kaz, nursing some nasty scratches, ‘but they don’t lay well.’
‘Are you sure?’ The pilgrim/chicken-lover looks dubious.
‘Quite sure. Trust me. And these have all been blessed. By a bishop.’
‘Have they really?’ The woman looks impressed. I notice that she is carrying a rosary. Kaz says the religious ones are always the most gullible.
‘Of course. You’ve no idea what a difference it makes. Now, take them home and enjoy them.’
‘Kaz, really! You’re almost as bad as your mother,’ I tell her, as we return to the house. ‘Blessed, indeed!’
‘Well, I had to get rid of her somehow, and there’s no way I’m chasing little furry trousers all over the garden. Little furry trousers run very fast indeed. Only Lazzo can catch them, and I’m not even going to try.’
‘And is it true that they don’t lay well?’
Kaz laughs. ‘I’ve no idea.’
Today is not supposed to be a day for visits to the Virgin, but we receive three more lots of visitors before dark. Two are regulars, and know their own way around, and the third has brought a rather splendid pair of Rhode Island Reds.
‘My son gave me these for Christmas,’ he tells me. ‘My wife died in the summer, and the children think I’m lonely. But I’m not sure chickens will help.’
I agree, wondering what kind of people could conceivably imagine that chickens would be an antidote to grief. A dog or cat might at least be company, but chickens?
‘I’m sure we’ll find them a good home,’ I tell him, and then, because I feel sorry for him, I invite him in for a cup of tea. By the time I’ve heard his story of long years of caring for a wife gradually disabled by dementia (‘the long good-bye, they call it,’ he tells me) I feel ashamed for feeling so sorry for myself earlier on. After all, I’m still fairly young, I’m fit, and as Kaz points out, no-one has died. I resolve to pull myself together and start being responsible, beginning with an inventory of the pitifully small collection of equipment which awaits the advent of the baby.
‘Two vests won’t be enough,’ says Kaz, watching me.
‘Then I shall buy more.’
‘And nappies. You’ve forgotten those.’
‘Nappies, too.’
‘You’d better hurry up. Time is not on your side.’
‘Right. Tomorrow I shall go out and buy vests and nappies.’
‘That’s my girl,’ says Kaz. ‘I’ll come with you. And we can go to that new little café that sells wonderful cream slices.’
‘Aren’t I big enough already?’ I ask her.
‘No-one,’ says Kaz, ‘is ever too big for a cream slice.’