Daniel walked back to the kitchen, filled a beaker with juice and gave it to Posy. Glancing idly out of the window, he looked towards the stable, wondering what Stella was doing.
Then he gave a hollow laugh. Stella would be asleep, snuggled under a warm duvet, and one thing he knew for certain—she wouldn’t be dreaming of him. Not unless she was having a nightmare.
Moving back to the living room, he rummaged through the pile of DVDs that Alfie had left strewn on the floor, found one with a cartoon on the cover and slid that into the player. Then he settled himself on the sofa in the darkness, with Posy half dozing on his lap.
At seven, Alfie appeared, yawning.
‘Dad never lets her get up this early.’ He curled up on the sofa next to Daniel, his hair ruffled and his feet bare. ‘He makes her stay in her bed and play with her toys if she wakes up.’
‘I’d like to know how he makes her do that,’ Daniel muttered, his eyes closing again. ‘Your sister is a woman who knows her own mind.’ He felt exhausted. The house was a mess and he honestly had no idea how he was going to occupy two small children for one entire day, let alone four.
As if to increase his feelings of inadequacy Posy grabbed her juice and the lid flew off. Orange liquid poured over the sofa.
‘Posy, no!’ Daniel made an abortive grab at the beaker and watched in horror as an orange stain settled into the fabric. ‘Oh, for—’
‘Don’t say it,’ Alfie urged. ‘She’ll copy you. She’s like a parrot at the moment. She’s more effective than my spy toys. I can plant her in a room and get an exact reply of everything that was said.’
‘How am I going to get the orange out?’ Daniel dabbed in effectually at the stain while Alfie offered advice.
‘She’s supposed to have milk in the morning, not juice.’
‘She asked for juice.’
‘Dad only bought that sofa in the summer.’
‘Thanks for reminding me of that, Alfie.’
‘He doesn’t let us bring drinks in here in case we spill them.’
‘Right.’ Daniel gritted his teeth. ‘Anything else?’
‘My pyjamas are wet.’ Resigned, Alfie slid off the sofa. ‘I’ll go and get dressed.’ His body language was so forlorn that Daniel felt a pang of guilt.
‘Alfie—what do you want to do when you come back down?’
Alfie looked at him hopefully. ‘Can you make pancakes?’
His confidence at rock bottom on the domestic front, Daniel seriously doubted it, but he didn’t want to disappoint Alfie any more than he already had. He could perform the most technically challenging procedures in the emergency department—surely he could make pancakes?
‘I can make pancakes.’
Alfie cheered up. ‘I can do the mixture if you can cook them.’
‘Deal.’
But after the fifth pancake had turned to a scrambled mess in the pan, Daniel wished he’d stuck to cereal.
‘It doesn’t look like that when Mrs Thornton makes them. Maybe the pan isn’t hot enough.’ Alfie dragged a chair up to the cooker, clambered up and reached for the pan. ‘Ow! Ow, the handle was hot.’ Bursting into tears, he jumped off the chair, sobbing and holding his hand.
Daniel felt a white-hot flash of panic and for a moment he couldn’t think.
‘Cold water,’ he muttered, scooping the child up and sprinting to the tap. ‘Hold it under cold water. Is it bad? How bad is it? God, I’m sorry, Alfie. That was my fault. I shouldn’t have let you touch that pan.’
‘It was my fault,’ Alfie sobbed, trying to pull his hand away from the stream of water. ‘Can we stop this now? It’s so cold.’
‘It’s meant to be cold. It will help the burn,’ Daniel said through gritted teeth, discovering that his own hands were shaking. ‘Just hold it there a bit longer. Good boy.’
Posy started crying and Daniel felt his head pound.