The baby was crying. Penny listened. Would her mother hear? She opened her eyes wide but could see nothing in the deep blackness of her small bedroom. She rolled over to face the closed door. The perfect line of light from the landing barely illuminated the carpet. She heard the door of the drawing room open downstairs and the soft tread of her mother ascending. There was the comforting ‘shush’ of her mother’s stockinged legs as they brushed together approaching Penny’s door, walking past, then headed into her baby sister’s room.
‘Have you had a bad dream, darling?’ her mother murmured.
Penny listened and caught the rustle of baby Suzie being gathered from her cot and into her mother’s arms.
Suzie had stopped crying and was snuffling. Penny heard the kisses and imagined them being dropped onto Suzie’s soft scalp and downy hair.
‘Mummy’s here, darling. It was just a naughty old dream. Now where’s Bunny?’
Penny, five years old, tightened her hold on her own teddy, Sniffy. She pulled him into her arms and sniffed his flattened, furry ear. She whispered to him, ‘Suzie has had a bad dream. She’s only got Bunny but I’ve got you.’
Eventually Suzie was soothed back to sleep and her mother walked back and past Penny’s room. Penny called, ‘Night-night, Mummy.’
She got no reply.
Penny Leighton didn’t feel right. She hadn’t been feeling right for a long time now. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she had felt right.
She was lying in her big marital bed. The Cornish winter sun had not yet risen and she could see the dark sky through a crack in her exuberant poppy curtains. She’d thought them so cheerful when she’d bought them. She looked at them now and closed her eyes.
She had to get up. She had an important call to take at eleven o’clock. She opened her eyes and squinted at her phone. Ten to seven.
‘Morning, my love.’ Simon stirred and reached under the duvet to put his hand around her waist. ‘How did you sleep?’
She closed her eyes. ‘Hm.’
‘Is that a hm of yes or a hm of no?’
‘Hm.’
‘Did Jenna wake up?’
Her look said it all.
‘Oh dear. Why won’t you wake me? I’m more than happy to see to her.’
‘Then why don’t you?’
‘I don’t hear her.’
‘There doesn’t seem any point in us both being awake then.’
Simon thought better than to reply. Penny had not been herself recently, quick to criticize, withdrawn and moody. He’d felt the sharp side of her tongue too often of late. He decided to make some coffee and bring it up to her but the act of shifting the duvet, even slightly, caused her grievance. ‘Why do you always pull the bedding off me?’ She pulled the duvet tight around her chin. ‘It is winter, you know.’
‘I didn’t mean to. Coffee?’
Penny knew she’d been unkind and rolled over to face him as he sat on the edge of the bed, back towards her, slipping on his T-shirt from the day before. She reached out and stroked the side of his hip. ‘I’m sorry. Just a bit tired. I’d love some coffee, thank you.’ He stood up and she let her arm fall back onto the sheets.
She said, ‘I do love you, you know.’
He ran his hands over his bald head and picked his glasses up from the bedside table. ‘I know. I love you too.’ He smiled at her and, putting a knee onto the mattress, leant over to kiss