Chapter 73
Friday, 3 August 2012
KNIGHT HEARD FEET padding around at seven-thirty that morning. He opened his eyes and saw Isabel holding her Pooh Bear blanket.
‘Daddy,’ she said in high seriousness. ‘When am I three?’
‘August the eleventh,’ Knight grumbled, and glanced at that picture of Kate on the moor in Scotland. ‘A week from tomorrow, honey.’
‘What’s today?’
‘Friday.’
Isabel thought about that. ‘So one more Saturday and one more Friday, and then the next one?’
Knight smiled. His daughter always fascinated him with the out-of-the box way her mind worked. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Give me a kiss.’
Isabel kissed him. Then her eyes widened. ‘We get presents?’
‘Of course, Bella,’ Knight replied. ‘It will be your birthday.’
She got wildly excited, clapping her hands and dancing in a tight circle before stopping dead in her tracks. ‘What presents?’
‘What presents?’ Luke asked from the doorway. He was yawning as he came into the room.
‘I can’t tell you that,’ Knight said. ‘It won’t be a surprise.’
‘Oh,’ Isabel said, disappointed.
‘Lukey three?’ his son asked.
‘Next week,’ Knight assured him, and then heard the front door open. Marta. Early again. The world’s first perfect nanny.
Knight put on a tracksuit bottom and a T-shirt, and carried the twins down the stairs. Marta smiled at them. ‘Hungry?’
‘It’s my birthday two Fridays and a Saturday from now,’ Isabel announced.
‘And Lukey,’ her brother said. ‘I’m three.’
‘You will be three,’ Knight corrected.
‘We’ll have to plan a party then,’ Marta said, as Knight set the kids down.
‘A party!’ Isabel cried and clapped.
Luke hooted with delight, spun in circles, and cried, ‘Party! Party!’
The twins had never had a birthday party, or at least not on the exact date of their birth. That day had been so bittersweet that Knight had moved cake and ice-cream celebrations to a day or two later, and had kept the celebration deliberately low-key. He was torn now over how he should reply to Marta’s suggestion.
Luke stopped spinning and said, ‘Balloons?’
‘Mr Knight?’ Marta said. ‘What do you think? Balloons?’
Before Knight could answer, the doorbell rang, and then rang again, and again, and again, followed by someone pounding the knocker so hard that it sounded like a mason chipping stone.
‘Who the hell is that?’ Knight groaned, heading towards the door. ‘Can you get them breakfast, Marta?’
‘Of course,’ she said.