Cuckoo by Julia Crouch Read Free Book Online Page B

the salad over. ‘He’s surrounded by females in this house. He’s going to love having someone to kick a ball around and do a bit of rough stuff with.’
     
    ‘Yeah, Anna’s a real girly girl,’ Gareth smiled.
     
    ‘Despite my best efforts at countering gender stereotypes,’ Rose chipped in. ‘I’ve bought her cars and balls and books with tomboy main characters. I scoured car-boot sales for those damn Action Men. But it didn’t work. She’s still seduced by pink.’
     
    ‘I think Rose had to reconfigure some of those feminist nurture/nature beliefs,’ Gareth told Polly, then he stood up and went to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Kids!’ he yelled. ‘Get on down here!’
     
    At the sound of his voice, the children thundered downstairs.
     
    ‘We were making too much noise to hear the bell,’ Anna panted. ‘Nico and Yannis, this is my dad, Gareth.’
     
    The two boys stood either side of Anna, suddenly a little shy in front of this towering man.
     
    Gareth squatted in front of them. ‘Hi guys,’ he said gently.
     
    ‘He’s great fun,’ Anna said. ‘When he’s not working.’ She rolled her eyes.
     
    ‘Hey, madam, less of that,’ Gareth said and scooped Anna up, swinging her up, over his shoulder and round again – a complicated manoeuvre that never failed to make her squeal with laughter.
     
    ‘Me! Me! I want a go!’ Yannis said.
     
    ‘All right, little guy, here’s yours,’ Gareth said, repeating the trick on him.
     
    Soon all three children – even Nico had begged for a swing – were collapsed on the floor in a giggling heap. The whole kitchen seemed to be filled with a new kind of energy.
     
    ‘Hey, come and have supper, you lot,’ Rose had to strain to be heard.
     
    ‘I guess we’d better do what the lady says,’ Gareth said, helping Nico and Yannis up.
     
    In his big pullover, sheepskin slippers and baggy cords, Gareth looked like a gentle giant set against the two boys. Nico and Yannis were so tiny Rose thought they would probably have had a social worker assigned to them, had they been born in England. She looked at her man and smiled. He was welcoming them all to the cave.
     
    Tucking Anna and the boys into their seats, Gareth kissed Rose and sat down.
     
    ‘You’re going to have your work cut out feeding this lot up, Rose,’ he said. And Polly – anorexic, hypersensitive about her size and eating, with a twisted relationship to food – Polly laughed. Such was Gareth’s gift at putting people at their ease.
     
    He had once told Rose that his charm was learned as a baby, when he was placed into strangers’ hands.
     
    ‘But Pam and John must have loved you instantly. They wanted you so badly,’ she had replied.
     
    ‘Then why did they lie to me?’ he said. And that was that. Rose could say nothing to that.
     
    They sat around the long oak table and Rose served up the beef stew that had been simmering away since dawn.
     
    For a while there was little sound except that of the boys’ noisy munching. It was as if they hadn’t eaten for weeks.
     
    Rose counted just two forkfuls that found their way into Polly’s mouth. She was performing her old trick of pushing food round the plate: a facade of eating that was pretty convincing.
     
    ‘What’re those?’ Yannis had bolted his food down and was cruising round the room, taking it all in. Normally, Rose would have told a child to wait until everyone else had finished before getting up. But she decided to make an exception for this one night.
     
    ‘My eggs,’ said Anna, after finishing her mouthful. ‘You can get them down if you like.’
     
    ‘Hey, let me give you a hand,’ Gareth said, getting up to lift the basket down from the dresser. ‘It’s pretty heavy these days.’
     
    Yannis took the basket of polished stone eggs over to Anna, who laid them out one by one on a space he had hurriedly cleared next to her by pushing his plate and cutlery back.
     
    ‘Careful, Yannis,’ Rose said,