Stupid. There was nothing wrong, no need to be this jumpy. All the same, she crept downstairs, just to check on them.
They were so involved with what they were doing that they didn’t see her. Isaac was sitting on the edge of the sofa, next to Edward, with the coffee table pulled up in front of him so he could reach the keyboard of Edward’s laptop. Edward, leaning back on the sofa, was concentrating hard on the screen.
‘Way to go, partner!’ Edward’s face lit up and Isaac threw his arms up above his head, bouncing up and down on the cushions. Edward leaned forward, hitting a key. ‘Do you want to try the next one?’
‘That’s all my teacher told me to do...’ Isaac turned to him.
‘Well, we don’t need to do exactly what she says.’ Edward shot him a look that mirrored the mischief on Isaac’s face. ‘You don’t have to stop unless you want to. You’re pretty good at this.’
‘Okay...’ Isaac giggled ‘...partner.’
Edward chuckled and pressed another key. It looked as if the two of them were fine without her for a while, and Charlotte could take her time in the shower.
When she got back downstairs, showered, dressed and feeling better than she had for weeks after a good night’s sleep, she smelled coffee. The patio doors were open, and Isaac’s voice drifted in from the garden.
‘Is that a fresh pot of coffee I smell...?’ She followed the aroma into the kitchen and found Edward there.
‘Yep. Want some toast?’
‘You are a wonderful man.’
He looked over his shoulder, shooting her a rakish half-smile. ‘If I’d known that it just took a pot of coffee and some toast...’
‘And a good night’s sleep. Where’s my alarm clock?’
He nodded at the clock, sitting innocently on the kitchen table. ‘I happened to wake up early. I heard Isaac rambling around, and I sent him into your room to get it. I reckoned you could do with a bit of a lie-in.’
‘Oh, so you’ve been enlisting my son in your machinations, have you?’
‘Yep. He seemed to think it was a good idea, too. And I reckoned that if you did wake up, then you’d probably be a little happier to find Isaac creeping into your room.’
A good deal more relaxed, maybe. Happier...? That would depend on what Edward was there for. Charlotte dismissed the thought, and with it her fantasies of waking up to find Edward there.
‘Has he had breakfast?’
‘Yep. I told him that I’d be in trouble with you if we didn’t keep to the straight and narrow, and he took me through the procedure step by step. Cleaned his teeth, had a wash, showed me where his clean clothes were. Do you always let him have chocolate biscuits for breakfast?’
‘No!’ Charlotte supposed it couldn’t hurt just for today.
Edward chuckled. ‘Gotcha. We had toast with peanut butter, and banana smoothies. Then we did some number games on the internet.’
So that’s what they’d been up to. ‘Isaac’s homework?’
‘Yes. He showed me the sheet that his teacher had given him. I found a game on the internet that made it a little bit more fun.’
‘Thanks.’ That feeling of dread she had when Edward did anything either for her or Isaac had almost completely disappeared now. Maybe because Edward so clearly enjoyed playing with Isaac.
‘No trouble.’ He buttered the toast and set it down in front of her, adding a jar of marmalade and one of apricot jam. Then coffee, hot and aromatic, with a dash of milk. Just one cup.
‘I’ve got to go out...’
He was searching for his car keys and Charlotte pointed to the hook under the kitchen cabinet, where they were supposed to be.
‘Right. Thanks. I’ll be back shortly.’
‘Shortly’ could mean practically anything with Edward, and generally did. Charlotte opened her mouth to ask whether he’d be home for lunch, but he was already gone.
He returned an hour later, and appeared in the doorway between the hall and the living room carrying a long, thin parcel. He dumped it on the coffee table and sat down next to Charlotte on the sofa with an air of anticipation.
‘What’s that you’re reading?’ He craned over her shoulder, and Charlotte hugged the library book to her chest.
‘Nothing... What’s that you’ve got there?’
‘Hmm...nothing.’
Another moment of quiet, and Charlotte returned to her book.
‘Looks interesting. I haven’t been there for ages.’
He was reading over her shoulder again, and Charlotte snapped the book shut.
‘It’s the summer holidays soon, and I thought I’d take Isaac out on a few daytrips. This book’s got some really great ideas.’ It seemed that—for the moment anyway—the plan that they should just get on with their lives without disturbing each other too much had gone by the board.
He grinned. ‘The Natural History Museum’s great for kids.’
‘And for adults.’ Charlotte had been looking for places which would interest her and Isaac—something that they could share—as well as a few fun places where he could work off his energy.
‘And the Science Museum’s just down the road, of course. There are some wonderful things there.’
‘Yes.’ He was going to be volunteering to come along any minute now, and the thought of Edward and Isaac together in the Science Museum sounded far too much like hard work. ‘So what’s in the parcel, then?’
‘Ah! Thought you’d never ask.’
‘So did I. Looks as if you’ve worn me down.’ She grinned at him and he was suddenly seized with motion, grasping the parcel and tearing the wrappings from it.
‘What do you think?’
‘It’s a...’ Isaac had run in from the garden and nosed his way in between them. ‘What is it?’
‘Here—see?’ Edward pointed to the picture on the label. ‘It’s a kite.’
It wasn’t just any old kite, but then Charlotte doubted that Edward would be much interested in anything that didn’t have a complex structure of cords and an unlikely shape. He began to unwrap the collection of disassembled struts and sails, fishing out a small booklet.
Isaac watched open-mouthed and confused, looking to his mother for an explanation. ‘Edward has to put all of those pieces together, sweetie, before it’ll fly.’
‘Yeah, shouldn’t take long.’ Edward was already laying the pieces out on the coffee table. ‘Then we can go and fly it, eh, buddy?’
Charlotte left them to it and went to make drinks for them both. When she returned, Edward had already snapped into the fearsome concentration with which he approached almost any task, leaving Isaac shifting restlessly from one foot to the other. Charlotte placed his coffee on the table and he nodded absently.
‘Thanks... Don’t touch those, Isaac, I’ve put them all out in order.’
Isaac’s hand shot away from the metal strut as if it had suddenly become red hot, and he hid it behind his back.
‘Come here, sweetie.’ Charlotte motioned her son towards her and put her arms around him. ‘We’ll just watch, shall we?’
Isaac nodded, obviously wishing that he could be a part of the construction project, craning to see what was happening. Edward seemed almost oblivious to