‘I said, despite it all, we agree your jam is good.’
Daniel could see that Jean Wilkes’s teeth were brown and he wondered if it was all the sweets that had ruined them.
‘No, before that.’ Minnie was still whispering but now she had her stomach pressed against the stall and was leaning towards Mrs Wilkes. She was leaning hard on the table and Daniel could see the white marks forming on her pink hands from the strain. ‘Can’t look after my own? Is that what you said?’
Jean Wilkes was walking away.
Minnie stood up again and pushed the hair out of her face. Daniel noticed that her fingers were trembling. She opened a box of eggs and slipped her red, rough fingers inside.
Thwatt.
Daniel was still standing with his hands in the pockets, but he opened his mouth as Minnie took aim and hit Jean Wilkes square between the shoulder blades with one of her own well-reared eggs.
Jean looked round, mouth turned down at the corners, but Minnie already had another egg in her hand. To Daniel’s joy and amazement, Jean Wilkes broke into a run, trotting crisscross in her navy heels in an effort to get out of Minnie’s firing range.
Daniel pulled Minnie’s elbow and punched a victory fist into the air. Minnie tutted at him and pulled her arm away.
‘That was ace. You showed her.’
‘Enough!’ Minnie said. Daniel did not understand why she was angry with him. Her cheeks were pink and her blue eyes were shot with rage. ‘Get tidied up. It’s too cold and it’s time to go anyway.’
Daniel’s fingers were almost numb with the cold, but he started to pack away the stall. She was working beside him, slapdash. The flasks were thrown back into the bag. Usually she would have emptied them in the gutter then carefully packed them away.
‘I’m sorry,’ Daniel said, but she didn’t hear him.
She was pulling her cardigan around her and straightening the leftover boxes of eggs in the boot of her car.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, louder this time, reaching out to tug on her cardigan.
She turned to him finally, confused, angry little darts of light shot through her watery blue eyes.
‘I didn’t mean to set her off, like,’ he explained. ‘I told her it was two pound fifty. The jam. Was just winding her up, like. Thought we might make a bit extra out of her. Didn’t mean for her to …’
‘Never mind, love.’
In the car on the way home, Daniel held the takings and looked out of the window. The small Brampton houses, the whiff of farms and the occasional sweep of undulating green was still surprising to him. Some part of his mind expected the tight red brick of Newcastle, its estranged estates and urban muddle. Some part of him still felt out of place here. He wondered about Minnie and the fight with Mrs Wilkes. He didn’t understand why so many of the locals disliked her. Some of them seemed to hate him too, because of her.
Minnie’s hands were clenched on the wheel. She drove sitting forward, her stomach against the bottom of the steering wheel and her chin reaching over the top. Daniel watched her as she licked her lips and pressed them together.
Minnie had her window down and strands of her curly grey hair fluttered in her face. Whenever Daniel had been in the car with her, she had kept her window down, regardless of the weather. She said that she felt claustrophobic in the car.
Daniel took a deep breath before he said: ‘Not a lot of people like you around here, d’you know that?’
She didn’t like talking in the car. She didn’t take her eyes off the road, but Daniel could tell that she had heard him as her hands tightened their grip on the wheel.
‘It doesn’t matter though,’ he said. ‘Ah like y’.’
Again, she said nothing, but she pursed her lips together in what Daniel knew was meant to be a smile.
*
It was the day of the court case. Minnie had told him that it was just a formality, that she would definitely be able to adopt him, but still he was nervous. He got up before the cock crowed and did his chores and was ready to go before she came downstairs for breakfast. He had put the porridge on already and fed the dog.
She rubbed his shoulder when she came into the kitchen, pushing a handkerchief into the pocket of her dressing gown. She made tea and put the radio on as Daniel set the table, putting out the butter and jars of her jam. She smiled at him as he milked and sugared their teas. Minnie liked three sugars and a lot of milk; Daniel liked one sugar and a little milk. He put her tea on the table by her bowl then stood in the middle of the kitchen, drinking his tea.
He looked around the kitchen as he sipped his tea. Blitz was asleep on a full stomach, his thin legs twitching in his dreams as he lay on the kitchen floor. Daniel watched the movement of Minnie’s hips as she stirred the porridge, the spangle of light that the old windows spilled on to the spoons. He knew the song that was on the radio and tapped his foot to its beat. The room was warm with the smell of morning and Daniel held it in his mouth, as if to taste it. This was his home; this was going to be his home.
He watched as she yawned over the porridge pot, hand on the small of her back. After today, she would be his mam, and they would live in this house for ever. Daniel almost could not believe it.
‘Why aren’t you eating your porridge?’ she said to him, scraping her bowl clean.
‘I am eatin’ it, look.’ He took a spoonful into his mouth.
‘You’re always first finished. What is it? Butterflies?’
‘Bit, like,’ he said, letting his spoon rest with a clatter against the porcelain.
‘You shouldn’t be nervous. It’s exciting.’ She reached across the table and tugged gently at his sleeve. ‘You do want this, don’t you?’
‘Aye.’
‘You know it’s up to you.’
‘I want to, like.’
‘Me too. Today I get to be your mum, not just your foster mum, but … your real mum.’
Daniel watched as her eyes filled, and her cheeks coloured. She gave him a big smile and it was only that, the rise of her cheekbones and the scrunching up of her eyes, which caused the tears to flash, instantaneous, thin, one down each cheek. Quickly, as if to brush away a crumb, she swept the palm of her hand across one cheek and the back of her hand across the other. The tears were gone and only her smile was left.
Real mam, Daniel remembered as he waited at the bottom of the stairs for her to get ready. Real mam, he reminded himself as he looked out of the bus window on the road from Brampton to Newcastle. They were getting the bus there and back so that Minnie didn’t have to drive in Newcastle city centre.
Daniel was wearing his school uniform and Minnie was wearing shoes. They weren’t proper women’s shoes. They were flat and brown and they laced up, but they weren’t boots and Daniel stared at the strange sight of her feet in them. He hadn’t seen her without her boots. She wore her grey skirt and green coat and a black top under it that was cleaner than some of her others.
Minnie had asked permission for Daniel to have a day off from school – for family business.
Family, Daniel thought looking out of the window, feeling the press of her hip against his body. He wasn’t sure if he had had a family before, or what that meant, but he was happy to go forward if it meant staying with her and being at the farm.
At the courthouse, Tricia was waiting. She was happy and restless, turning from side to side and asking if he wanted a can from the machine. She was holding files and telling them that the hearing would be quick.
‘All this time, Danny,’ said Tricia. ‘When was the first time we met? Were you five years old or something?’