A Note of Parting

by Liz Ryan

Genres: Sagas; Romance

Synopsis

When Aran Campion leaves her sleepy Irish fishing village for faraway London, she wants both to escape and to grow.  Soon her job, her music, her Saturday market stall make her life too full for the love and marriage that once seemed to be her destiny. Until she meets a struggling musician called Ben. Despite differences of race, religion, class and education, Ben and Aran seem destined for dizzying success. Until Aran has to deal, alone, with the child who could spoil all her dreams. 'Liz Ryan understands not only a woman's heart but a woman's mind' Terry Keane Sunday Times

Release date: June 20, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 480

Sample

‘Mr Campion, don’t do this. Please don’t.’

Eimear Rafter’s tone was beseeching, and it tore the guts out of Conor Campion. He hated what he was saying, deplored what he was doing. But he had gone through it all with Molly, over and over again, and they could find no alternative. Twisting his cap in his hands, he looked down at the floor, his shoulders hunched in defeat.

‘We wouldn’t do it, Mrs Rafter, if we had any choice in the matter. But things have gone from bad to worse this past two years, and we have the boys coming up . . . we just can’t afford it, ma’am, not all three of them.’

Eimear shifted on her chair, uncomfortable that he should call her ma’am, a man twenty years older than herself. But no matter what he called her, he knew he could command no respect in this damning situation. Education was the key to the future, everyone knew that. To deprive your child of it was a desperate resort, an admission that you could not even get through today for the sake of all your tomorrows. Mr Campion might as well have commandeered the pulpit down in the church and announced to the entire community that he was now officially a pauper.

Behind him, his daughter stood silently, hanging her head, her mass of fair hair hiding the eyes that were, Eimear guessed, filling with tears. Feeling the shame of the moment stamp itself on the girl like a seal on hot wax, she groped for some word of comfort.

‘But Mr Campion, education is free, you know you don’t have to pay to keep Aran at school. So if it’s just a question of the extras, of books, lunches, equipment, please don’t worry about those. We have . . . there are ways . . .’

Mrs Kelly should be here to handle this, she thought, properly and diplomatically. She would get the man to accept help without making him feel belittled. But the principal had left the building unusually early today, and so Mr Campion had insisted on seeing Mrs Rafter, his daughter’s favourite teacher, instead. Having made up his mind, Eimear supposed, he could not be delayed or deflected, forced to come back tomorrow and deliver his painfully rehearsed speech at Mrs Kelly’s convenience.

‘No, Mrs Rafter. It’s not just those things. Aran already has her sisters’ books, clothes, everything. The fact is that we can’t afford to support her any longer. We need her to go out and find work, start bringing some money into the house.’

There. He had said it, flat out. He had failed as a father. Burning with humiliation, he bowed his head before all three women: his wife, his daughter and the teacher who had always been adamant that Aran was the brightest pupil in Dunrathway school.

In three weeks’ time, according to Mrs Rafter, Aran would acquit herself with great credit in her Intermediate exam, and when the results arrived she would have at least eight, maybe all nine honours. Aran was indeed very bright, and he was proud of her. But after that he couldn’t keep her. Times had changed since Val and Sher were at school, and there were Achill and Dursey still to be got through to the age of sixteen. Aran was sixteen now, and must leave school so that her brothers could stay on until the law permitted them, too, to start work.

The girl understood that herself. She had seen those big foreign trawlers being towed into the harbour, time and time again, their crews laughing as the Irish coastguard impounded their nets and gear, tied them up to await the next sitting of the local court which would fine them some derisory sum already built into their budgets, and reluctantly release them to do it all over again. Far from repelling them, the new twelve-mile fishing limit imposed by the EEC merely attracted them, a joke and a challenge which proclaimed that Irish waters must hold something worth defending. The Spaniards and Russians were the worst offenders, blatantly encroaching well inside the limit, their floating factories scooping up more fish in an hour than the little native trawlers could catch in a week. The situation was a free-for-all, survival of the fittest, and Conor Campion recognised, as his daughter must, that he was far from the fittest.

Looking at the man, Eimear remembered everything her mother had told her about him while teaching his two older daughters, and thought much the same thing. Conor Campion had never been a fighter. After thirty-five years he didn’t even skipper a boat, let alone own one, because his hard work had never been fired by ambition. He was modest and honest, but those were qualities his peers had lately come to regard as superfluous; feeling that the government had betrayed and failed to protect them, they had turned their minds to all manner of ingenious scams and schemes, outwitting Dublin and Brussels in any way they could. Conor was by no means the only one of them in financial difficulty, but he was the only one who stood here now, hopeless.

Or was he merely the first?

Beside him, his small tense wife stood clutching her handbag before her, in both hands as if it might defend her from Eimear’s ire. Eimear had met Molly often before, and thought her a joyless woman whose horizons coincided with her laundry line. Tight and thin, her face and voice proclaimed a mind pre-shrunk by the media and the Church, the twin forces which dictated her every thought. Not that Molly read much, to Eimear’s knowledge, but she listened to the neighbours and the wireless religiously, righteously, taking all her cues from the society which depended on precisely such impressionable women. As soon as ‘they’ said something was right or wrong, Molly said so too. Bird-like, she reminded Eimear of a fledgling swallowing premasticated food from its mother’s mouth.

Even before poverty had begun to pinch and age her, Molly Campion had not been known to smile much, or laugh at all. Yet she worked hard, to augment her husband’s dwindling income, raising chickens and vegetables, knitting woollens for the co-op which sold them on to crafts shops which, in turn, sold them to tourists during the summer. Like Conor she was industrious, but she was certainly not garrulous. Eimear turned to her, feeling like a dentist pulling a painful tooth,

‘But Mrs Campion, what about your knitting? We’re just coming into the summer, won’t you make a little money then?’

‘I will. A little. Not enough to keep three growing children for the rest of the year.’

‘But if only Aran could stay on for another two years, and do her Leaving Certificate, she’d get a much better job than anything she might get with only her Intermediate Certificate. It’s an investment.’ Immediately, Molly fell back on what ‘they’ said.

‘They say the school certificates soon won’t be much use at all, Mrs Rafter. Aran can stay the few weeks till she does her Inter, but she won’t be coming back in September. Even if we could keep her on the extra two years, the Leaving will be worthless by then, it’ll be university degrees the employers will want. So where’s the point?’

‘But you kept the older two girls on until they were eighteen. They got both certificates.’

‘Aye. And where did that sorry struggle get us? Away to be married, the two of them, before they ever brought a penny into the house.’

It was true. Val and Sher had never worked at anything other than finding husbands. But perhaps they might contribute something yet?

‘Well, Mrs Campion, they did get married, as you say. Val married a newsagent in Cork city and Sher, I believe, married quite a prosperous American. Couldn’t they help a bit now? It really wouldn’t take much, would it?’

Eimear put as much wheedling encouragement into her voice as she could, attempting to inject some optimism into the woman’s dejected tone and Conor’s defeated stance. But he raised his blue eyes to her.

‘No, ma’am. It wouldn’t take much. But we wouldn’t ask them. It wouldn’t be fair, or right.’

‘But it’s not fair to take Aran out of school!’

‘We’re very sorry, ma’am. But Aran has got to get a job, as soon as possible. Will you tell Mrs Kelly for us, or do we need to put it in writing?’

His tone was weary, his wife’s expression resigned. They had done all they could for their middle child, and Eimear might as well save her breath. As she looked at her, Eimear felt the girl pleading with her, imploring her not to prolong this ordeal. Clearly battle had already been done at home, and lost.

‘Very well, Mr Campion. If there’s nothing I can say to change your mind, then I’ll tell the principal for you. There’s no need to put it in writing. We’ll give Aran references when she starts looking for work, and all the help we can.’

Thanking her, he nodded and shuffled away, taking his wife with him. As they left the room, Eimear could almost hear their daughter’s dreams crunching under their feet.

At home that evening, Eimear informed Daniel that the school was about to lose its star pupil, and was not much consoled by his pragmatic response. But then Dan was usually pragmatic; it was one of the things that made their relationship balanced and even.

‘She’s their child, Eimear, not yours. If the law says she can leave in June, and they say she must then you’ll have to accept it.’

‘I can’t let her go, Dan, just like that! She deserves at least as much education as her sisters got – and more.’

Teachers were not supposed to have favourites, so Eimear was careful to hide the affinity she had felt for Aran Campion since she had begun teaching her three years before. But there was little she hid from Dan, except when the cows were calving or the mares were foaling and he was exceptionally busy.

‘What does Mrs Kelly say?’

‘I haven’t had a chance to tell her yet. But she’ll go a few rounds with the parents before she’ll let them do it.’

‘I dare say she will. Aran reflects a lot of credit on her school. But if Conor and Molly need the money their daughter can earn, what can she say to them? The fishing really is bad, Eimear. You know it is.’

‘But there’s the dole, and the children’s allowance. Conor isn’t even the type to drink it.’

‘The children’s allowance might well be what’s behind this, though. Now that Aran is sixteen, Molly won’t be getting it any more.’

‘No – but as long as Conor has a child at school, he can claim tax relief for her.’

‘Tax relief on what? He isn’t earning anything! Or not enough, at any rate.’

‘Oh, Dan . . . how is it that some of the other fishermen are coping? Look at Joey Devlin, building that big house up on Fenner’s Hill, and Rowan Farmer driving an Audi. A brand new one.’

‘Rowan and Joey are very different to Conor. They’re clever enough to take evasive action when times are bad, and speculate when times are good. Clever enough to go after every loan, grant and subsidy they can get, and then find ways to repay slowly if at all. Whereas Conor Campion wouldn’t know an opportunity if it leaped up and bit him. He has no imagination and no drive.’

No. Yet his daughter had both, and a cheerful spirit besides. Her two younger brothers wanted only to be fishermen like their father, yet her future was to be sacrificed so that their education could continue. Well, they were too young to be taken out of school, of course, at twelve and fourteen years of age. But neither Achill nor Dursey had a shred of their sister’s intelligence.

‘Conor had drive once, Dan. He stood up to the priest and insisted on having all his children baptised with those ludicrous names.’

Dan smiled as he thought of it: Valentia, Sherkin, Aran, Achill and Dursey, each one called after an island. When the priest had pointed out that children were supposed to be named after saints, not islands, Conor had retorted that in that case he wouldn’t let them be christened at all. They could become Moonies or Holy Rollers or whatever they liked. Shocked, Father Carroll had acquiesced; but it was a good thing that Conor’s pursuit of propagation had flagged after Dursey was born, because he was running out of islands. Had there been any more children, they might well have been called Whiddy, Blasket or Spike.

As Eimear said, the names had been Conor’s one rebellious gesture in an otherwise meek, watery lifetime, and Dan began to share his wife’s irritation. To put so much energy into such a pointless crusade, and so little into what was important! But the sea had eroded the man over the years, engulfing and quenching whatever spark might once have existed.

‘Maybe Aran has a perverse streak too, Eimear. Perhaps she’ll go to night school and get ahead in spite of everything.’

‘The nearest night classes are nearly thirty miles away, Dan, and the Campions don’t have a car, much less a driving licence between them. I’d give her private tuition myself, but history and English alone aren’t enough. Some of us here in Dunrathway – the other teachers, I mean – have discussed starting night classes locally. But not everyone is willing to do it for free. In fact I’m the only one.’

That was predictable, Dan supposed, and reasonable; the other teachers had children of their own to support, busy homes to run in the evenings. There was no call for Eimear to bang those plates away in their cupboards so loudly.

‘Look, Eimear, you’re going to have to face facts. You’ve got thirty-six years of teaching ahead of you before you collect the gold watch. During that time you’ll see many bright students going off to pump petrol or wait tables. You must learn not to take it so personally.’

‘I’ll take it any way I like. They’re my responsibility. It made me so angry today, to see Conor standing there so – so humble, at his age. I’d have screamed at him, if it hadn’t all been so pitiful. And the mother, with her mind as narrow as her mouth, and poor Aran looking ready to cry.’

‘It’s not their fault. They’ve done their best and they can’t help it if that’s not enough.’

‘Oh . . . I suppose you’re right. At least they’re not fraudsters or debtors, like some of those people who call you out to deliver a litter of piglets in the middle of the night and then take six or ten months to pay you.’

‘Farming can be just as hard as fishing, Eimear. You grew up here and it was you who chose to settle here after we graduated. You should know that.’

And you would know it, he thought, if we had children to feed and clothe ourselves. Perhaps a time will come when we’ll be up to our ears in bills and nappies like everybody else, too busy to worry about other parents’ problems.

Perhaps.

Putting down his newspaper, Dan got up and went to his wife, noticing how the setting sun brought out the dark sheen of her hair, the lustre of her warm, troubled brown eyes.

‘Term is nearly over, love. When the summer comes I want you to promise me you’ll stop worrying about Aran Campion, and relax. Will we take the car and tent to France, go camping again? Would you like that?’

Briefly, she smiled at him, but then turned away again, looking out the window across the garden to where Sammy their spaniel was chasing butterflies. Sammy had been a gift from a farmer, in lieu of payment as it turned out, and the man had said the little dog was a good luck token to the newlyweds, whose children would be wanting a pup to play with. Sammy was five years old now, but he still had no playmates.

‘I will relax, Dan. But I won’t go anywhere until I’ve thought what’s to be done about Aran.’

Silently he put his arm around her waist, and looked with her out over the sloping fields to the sea. On the horizon, the home-coming trawlers were black silhouettes, gliding into harbour on water calm and golden as buttermilk, the holds of the luckier ones half filled with fish.

With a mixture of relief and nervousness, Aran Campion made her way down the corridor to the staff room where, she had been told, Mrs Rafter wished to see her. As soon as she knocked on the door it opened, but rather than asking her in Mrs Rafter came out, wearing a duffle coat and a scarf around her neck.

‘Go get your jacket, Aran, and let’s have our sandwiches down on the beach.’

Surprised, Aran fetched her jacket and the waxed paper packet of sandwiches which looked so clumsy compared to Mrs Rafter’s neat plastic box. Not that the jacket was much better, but at least it fitted, Val having been of the same slight build and medium height as herself. Feeling it would be impolite to open the conversation, and incapable of raising the emotional subject of her terminated schooling anyway, Aran said nothing as they walked across the yard, out through the gates and down the sandy lane that led onto the long white beach.

Were her eyes red? Could Mrs Rafter tell that she had been awake all night, sobbing into her pillow, listening to the muffled voices of her parents assuring themselves that they had done the right thing, taken the only course? But at least Val or Sher had not been there to make fun of her, tease her for a boring little bookworm; nowadays she had the bed and the whole bedroom to herself. But then, even if Mrs Rafter could tell, she wouldn’t make fun of something so terrible. Even though Mrs Rafter was so much older than her, she sometimes seemed more like a sister than Val or Sher ever had.

Reaching a large rock after quite a walk that took them well out of sight of the school, Eimear sat down on it and motioned to Aran to do the same.

‘Do you like cheese, Aran? Have a cheese sandwich?’

Eimear held out the box and Aran gazed into it: four large sandwiches, for one person! Made with some kind of bread she had not seen before, lavishly filled with a kind of cheese that did not look at all like the kind that came in cellophane, from the shop. Unable to resist, she lifted one out, and shyly offered her own package in return.

‘Mine are lettuce and tomato. We have lots, at home.’

In fact this produce was meagre enough, but it made a vital difference to the Campion diet. At this time of year lunch rarely consisted of anything else, but Mrs Rafter was not to know that. In winter, it would have been worse: she would have had to offer her a fish sandwich, when the entire village was sick to death of the stuff. Yet somebody must like fish, because the iced crates of it went away in lorries to Dublin, some even went on as far as London, by ferry. And a Frenchman had moved into Dunrathway recently, to farm the oysters and mussels for which he claimed there was growing demand on the continent. That was the good side of the EEC, it had done away with export restrictions, even if it had also brought big ships which ransacked and polluted the clear waters in which the harvest grew. A simple question, her father said, of harmony and balance. Only it was not turning out to be simple at all.

Putting down her lunchbox, Eimear accepted the swop with a smile, wondering why so many people, evidently including Molly Campion, preferred the factory-made, ready-sliced bread to the nutty nutritious kind they could bake themselves. Her neighbour Annie McGowan did bake it, and made wonderful cheeses as well, but her attempts to market the two commodities locally had met with indifference. People only wanted what they saw advertised on television, shiny snazzy wrappers that often disguised bland industrial contents.

‘Mm. Delicious.’

At least this lettuce was fresh and homegrown, but if Molly had heard that chemical pesticides were good for her vegetables then that, Eimear realised, was what she was eating. Forcing herself to take another bite, she studied Aran, wondering where such a mother could have got such a daughter. In the May sunshine the girl’s fair curls gleamed like silver, her skin pale and smooth as ivory, tinted only by natural colour. The wind and sea roughened most complexions in these parts, but they had as yet given her only a rosy glow. Where her parents were husked and bent she was supple and lush, her grey eyes clear and innocent. Small white teeth nibbled busily at the food she ate, and Eimear saw that she was hungry. Well, that was normal; all the children always were, even Joey Devlin’s and Rowan Farmer’s.

Childhood ended quickly in this village, as in most rural villages, there were few teenage boys who did not already help their fathers on the boats, few girls who got beyond twelve or thirteen without having raised a clatter of siblings. And of course they had all seen lambs and calves being born, knew about the mating ritual which, therefore, their parents felt little need to explain in human terms. For most, life simply happened to them as dictated by nature; but for Aran Eimear was determined to find a less brutal fate.

‘So, Aran. We’re going to lose you.’

‘Yes, Mrs Rafter. Thanks for not making a scene with Mam and Dad yesterday. It was hard enough for them.’

‘You’re not angry with them, then? Even though they won’t ask Val or Sher for help?’

‘No. I’m not. Sher’s in America, she’d worry herself sick if she knew how bad things were, and Mam says she mustn’t be worried when she’s pregnant. Val would . . . Val wouldn’t . . . well, she doesn’t come here very often.’

No. She didn’t. Eimear had heard all about Val Campion’s attitude to Dunrathway, now that she had escaped to Cork and left the smell of fish well behind. The fish that had put her through school until she was eighteen, old enough to marry her newsagent and, rumour had it, serve him with steak four times a week. Cork and Dunrathway were little more than an hour apart, but Val preferred the members of her family to visit her in the city rather than go out to them. That way she only had to see them one at a time, because the whole family never had bus fare all together, and so it was Molly who usually made the pilgrimage to the hallowed shrine of prosperity, where Val would meet her at the terminus in her little white Mini. And how Molly loved that! Even if her own neighbours never got to see the Mini, Val’s did.

‘Is there anything I can do, Aran?’

‘Oh, no, Mrs Rafter!’ Aran looked alarmed. ‘Mam and Dad wouldn’t hear of it! I’ll be all right, really!’

‘What will you do?’

‘I’ll – I’ll try the hotel. It’ll be busy for the summer, they’ll be looking for staff.’

Dismally Eimear thought of the hotel, an ugly concrete affair built in the sixties by a developer who had misunderstood what tourists were looking for in Ireland. It had turned out that this was the very type of architecture they were seeking to escape in their own countries, and the hotel had been sold twice since, its paint scruffy now, its manager surly and discouraged.

Even if he took Aran on, the girl could not be allowed to begin her young life anywhere so hideous, so hatefully dispiriting.

‘Tell me, Aran, what would you really like to do? If you could choose?’

Aran finished her cheese sandwich and took a first bite out of the one that remained in the paper wrapper. It did not taste nearly so good, but her face radiated enthusiasm as if she had stumbled on something delicious.

‘I’d like to get an honours Leaving Cert, and then go to college. Business college.’

Business? Eimear was taken aback. Certainly, the girl’s grades were equal to it, but what about the poetry she wrote, the oboe she played so sweetly in Mr Lavery’s music class?

‘Well – that’s a surprise! I thought I had a young Keats on my hands, and Mr Lavery thought he had a young Mozart on his.’

‘Oh, I love poetry, Mrs Rafter, you know I do. But people only laugh at it, it’s not much use for anything. And even if I weren’t leaving school I couldn’t keep on asking Mr Lavery to lend me the oboe to practise at home, when it’s meant to be shared between everyone. Lucy Reilly plays it much better than I do, and her Mam doesn’t – doesn’t say what mine does.’

‘What does yours say?’

‘That music gives her a headache, especially when it’s me who’s playing, and that it’s not a proper subject like maths or geography, it doesn’t get you anywhere.’

‘Look where it got Beethoven, and the Beatles.’

‘Oh, yes! If I thought I had talent like theirs . . . but I haven’t, Mrs Rafter. I can play pretty well, and I can make words sound musical on paper, but I can’t hear music in my head. Not real music. The best I could ever do is sing or play somebody else’s, and I don’t want that. I want something of my own.’

‘Such as?’

‘Something that – that doesn’t depend on the weather, like fishing! Something I could control.’

‘Some kind of business, then? At a desk, in an office?’

‘Yes.’

Surprised by such pragmatism, which sounded almost as worldly-wise as Dan’s, Eimear leaned back on the rock to consider the student who, she always thought, had such a much more romantic streak. Her essays were wildly imaginative . . . but then, was it just her own lack of imagination, that found the concept of business so dull? After all, many people found commerce very challenging, and money altogether fascinating. Some of them might even say that teaching was far less interesting, repeating the same things year in and year out, that it would drive them round the bend. Personally she loved all the children with their lively, funny ways, even the slow ones who always seemed to compensate with such charm or earnest effort. But much of the curriculum they studied was dry and dated, yes, even redundant in 1975.

‘What about marriage, like your sisters? Does a husband come into the picture, or are you going to get to be a corporate magnate all by yourself?’

Aran smiled mischievously.

‘If I could find a nice husband like yours, I’d marry him. But not till after I’d got my career going.’

‘Well, Aran, that’s not always so easy to control. You can decide who you don’t want to marry, but only fate can send someone you do.’

‘It sent you Mr Rafter. He’s lovely. All the girls think so.’

‘Do they now? Aren’t they the grand bunch of little gossips.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry – I only meant—’

Eimear laughed.

‘Never mind, Aran, I’ll take it as a compliment. Daniel is a good, kind man and it was a very lucky day I met him.’

‘Definitely. Was it love at first sight?’

Aran gasped at her own audacity. Mrs Rafter was still her teacher! How could she have said such a nosy, cheeky thing? But Eimear only laughed again.

‘Well, not the very moment I saw him. But the moment he opened his mouth and we got talking, I knew he was the right man for me.’

Just in time Aran grabbed back the next question that sprang to mind: everyone knows you don’t have any children, Mrs Rafter, and why is that? We all like you easily the best of our teachers, and we reckon you’d make a great mother. Your classes are strict and hard work, but they’re fun too, and you’re always so kind when anyone is in trouble, like I am now.

And I’ll be in a lot more, if I ask another word about your private life that’s none of my business.

‘Well, I hope I’ll know the right man for me, when he opens his mouth.’

‘And then what? Children, I suppose?’

‘Oh, no.’

‘No?’

‘No thanks. I mean – not all women want them, Mrs Rafter, or have to have them. My own Mam often says little Dursey was a big mistake, that she should have got a cat instead. Cheaper to run, she says.’

‘But Aran, you can’t put money first when it comes to children.’

‘But look where the lack of it has got me.’

‘Oh, Aran! If your parents had thought about it, you probably wouldn’t have existed at all.’

‘Maybe not. But since I do, I’m going to make my own money somehow, and keep them in comfort when they’re old. I’ll be too busy for children. I’ll have a nice husband and a career instead, like you, with no hungry mouths to feed.’

And what can I say, Eimear wondered, to that? Where she’s coming from, it’s no wonder she wants to go where she does. She’s only sixteen, and has no idea of the turns life can take – or not take, sometimes. She has no idea what children can mean to a woman, or to a marriage. She doesn’t know how Dan and I – nor is it my place to tell her, or dampen her ambition, her wonderful energy. Ten years ago, I might have said exactly what she’s saying now.

‘Well then, Aran, we’d better get you started, hadn’t we?’

‘We?’

‘Yes, of course, the two of us. I’m not going to let my best student wander out into the world all by herself. If I can’t get you through to college, then at least I can help you find a job that might teach you something about business.’

‘God, would you really, Mrs Rafter?’

‘I would and I will. For the moment, I don’t want you to think about what it might be, because for one thing I don’t know yet myself, and for another you have your exams coming up. Concentrate on those, and I promise you I’ll have something by the time they’re over.’

‘Oh, Mrs Rafter . . . if you really could, I’d never be able to thank you enough. You couldn’t be nicer to me if – if you were my own mother!’

Now, Eimear thought there’s a compliment.

Conor Campion paused, a hunk of bread halfway to his mouth, and put it down again. At the other side of the kitchen table, his daughter sat fresh and neat in her blue pullover and grey skirt, eating her porridge with one hand while the other turned the pages of a book. It was the morning of her first exam and she was, he supposed, cramming some last-minute information into her head.

‘Child.’

Reciting something in a low murmur, she did not hear him, her