As he dropped by his home for tea and came into the kitchen David was struck, as he had been on many occasions, by the changes in his wife, Monica. Almost five months gone and feeding Katie in the highchair, she looked every inch a very average (though uncommonly attractive) and very satisfied housewife. It was hard to believe that she had ever been “Monkey Guts,” that solitary and unhappy stranger.
Kissing his wife and his daughter’s forehead in passing, responding to his child’s toothless grin of delight, he said as he made his own tea and switched on the wireless for the news, ‘Lynn taken Sarah somewhere?’
‘Her mother’s,’ Monica told him, scooping errant baby food from Katie’s chin and having another go at getting it into her mouth. ‘Richard took her there to spend the day.’
‘Why didn’t you go with?’
Monica smiled. ‘I needed some excuse to get her out of the house long enough to get her birthday planned! Here, there’s no need to cut that bread- you’ve a couple of sandwiches already made. They’re on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator- no, on the left side. But anyway, Mum is coming by in an hour with the presents: she’s been hiding them for us.’ Monica had a year ago taken to calling David’s parents Mum and Dad and now thought of them as her own parents. ‘When-’