January 1951

There it was again, a little flutter inside me, as delicate as butterfly wings. I stopped typing for a moment and held my breath, hoping I'd get to feel it once more.

It was the most peculiar and the most heart-warming sensation.

I had tried to describe it to Mick, but words just didn't suffice to convey what it was like when the baby moved in my womb. He said it sounded like the most beautiful thing in the world, but he still had trouble really imagining it.

At five months, bending over was getting more and more difficult, I moved a little slower than I used to, and I had needed to get some new clothes to accommodate the growing bump, but otherwise I was surprised to find I was feeling just wonderful and actually enjoyed this new experience.

The baby had apparently decided it was time for a rest and did not move again. With a little smile on my lips, I returned to my typewriter and the journal article I was working on.

The distinctive click of a key turning in the front-door lock made me frown. I pushed a stack of paper aside to check the small clock on my desk and wondered what on earth Mick was doing home at half past three on a Wednesday at the height of the season.

With a bad gut feeling, I got up and went into the corridor.

"Mick?"

He was hanging up his jacket, facing away from me, but even so I could see he was trying way too hard to appear relaxed and casual.

When he turned and looked at me, I was startled by his sagging shoulders, his white face and dark disturbed eyes.

"Mick, what's the matter? Are you ill? Is it your leg? Did you take a fall?"

He shook his head mutely.

"Was there some incident at the shop? Did you get robbed?"

Again, he shook his head without a word, weakly touched a hand to his face and said in a terribly hollow voice, "Donnie's dead."

"What?" I exclaimed, utterly horrified.

"Donnie's dead", he repeated. "He went out around noontime to buy us sandwiches for lunch and got run down by a car on his way back. Bastard just drove off and left him there. Not that it would have been any use, the police said he was gone right away and never knew what hit him, but still …"

"Oh God."

I could hardly believe it. Donnie was one of those people you simply don't ever associate with mortality, a fun-loving, easy-going type of about Mick's age with a boyish charm and an eternal grin on his face.

Losing him, Mick did not just lose his boss.

He lost a friend.

His only close friend beside Joseph Schell, who had virtually become family, along with his two boys.

I went to put my arms around him without saying anything. He held on to me for a minute, stunned and silent, but broke away rather fast, murmuring, "I need a shower."

Of course. He needed to be alone with his grief.

I watched him sadly as he walked down the corridor to the bathroom, pretending he was as okay as he could be. It was his gait that betrayed him, the way he dragged his artificial leg and kept his back rigid.

I heard him turn the water on and went back into my study with a heavy heart.

The warm water flowed down my face, mingling with my tears, washing them away.

Only a few hours ago, Donnie and I had been discussing weekend plans while he was refilling the shelves of fishing gear with bait jars and lures and hooks from a large cardboard box tucked under his arm and I was tidying up one of the messy drawers beneath the counter. The weather forecast for Sunday was fine, and we had wanted to take the Maria, Donnie's pretty sloop he had named for his wife, on a trip up the coast as we often did on sunny weekends.

In my mind, I had already heard the snap of her white sails in the breezy wind and felt the exhilarating sensation that took hold of me every time she picked up speed.

If it hadn't been for Donnie's persistent cajoling, I might never have gone sailing again, but he had refuted all my objections until I had found myself in a rocking dinghy with Donnie rowing the two of us over to where the Maria lay moored. Somehow, I had managed to get on board and off again without taking an unplanned bath, and on the way back, Donnie had said with a disrespectful grin, "Didn't lose any of your sea legs, did you?"

The memory made me smile for the fraction of a second and then had me crying even more.

I couldn't believe he was gone. It was such a senseless waste.

Why did life have to be so bloody unfair so often?

I turned off the tap and towelled myself dry, rubbing fiercely as if trying to erase the solemn expression of the policeman who had broken the awful news to me, the shock registering in the face of the customers who happened to be around when the cop came in, and Maria's terrible anguished cry on the phone when I called her to say that the man she had married last spring was dead, killed on his lunch break by some coward in a sports car.

After making this dreadful call, I had locked up the shop and sat behind the counter for a long time, my head in my hands, trying to grasp what had happened and finding I couldn't.

Mechanical routine had kicked in when I did the daily closing, switched off the lights, checked all the doors and windows and went to the bank to deposit the day's takings before I caught the bus home.

Routine would hopefully keep me going until I knew what was to become of the shop that I had grown to love almost as if it were my own.

I had no idea what its future would be. Donnie and I had never talked about these things because it had never seemed necessary, not for a very long time.

In the end, his older brother Elliott, the eldest living relation, inherited the shop, as Donnie had not made a will stating otherwise, and decided to quit his office job at a furniture factory to manage his new business.

He wasn't much of an expert in boating and fishing and the direct opposite of his brother in virtually every respect – withdrawn, tight-lipped, a typical number-cruncher whom I was happy to leave poring over the books in the back room most of the time while I dealt with the customers alone.

The regulars were simply glad that business went on more or less as usual, and I was thankful that I still had a job, but it wasn't the same without Donnie.

It was not that Elliot was unfriendly or impolite, but he remained so remote and distant, hiding behind an expressionless face. He didn't seem to have any passion for what we were doing here, or for anything else. His foremost concern was with the figures in his ledger, not with the people we served and the merchandise we handled. He went fishing with his sons occasionally, but more for their sake than for his own pleasure, and although he knew how to sail, he didn't seem to care for it.

At first, he only came into the shop in the evenings or on Saturdays because the company he worked for wouldn't let him leave immediately.

I didn't mind. I knew my trade well enough by now to keep things up and running, and I had taken on a fifteen-year-old boy, Dougal McKenzie, to help me.

Initially, I had simply wanted someone to lend a hand with all that was too much of a challenge for me physically, but he was clever, quick-witted and very willing to learn, so it wasn't long until I promoted him to shop assistant.

Elliott was wary of Dougal, foremost because he hailed from a less than respectable part of town, and often eyed him suspiciously when he was manning the cash register, but I never had cause for complaint about the boy, and the customers seemed to like him, too.

Sometimes I wished things could stay the way they were now, with Elliott only popping in occasionally to do the bookkeeping, as I sensed he didn't really fit in.

But as of March, he took over fully, apparently bent on performing the clean sweep he thought was expected of a new broom.

First of all, he declared that he didn't like people hanging around the shop and talk after they had made their purchase, and one day he actually had the nerve to turn out Stevie Pearson.

As was his habit, my old pal had been sticking around for a while after he'd bought some repair material for his boat, telling me some anecdotes from his colourful life.

Stevie gave me a long, meaningful look before he slapped his cap back on his balding head and shuffled off, muttering something unintelligible, and left me feeling like a coward for not interceding on his behalf, although it would certainly not have been wise to confront Elliott in the presence of customers.

I tried to talk some sense into him later, said he'd only succeed in scaring away all those who came not just to buy something but also in a way to meet old friends, but he wouldn't hear of it. "Let them go to the pub to chatter" was his sole comment. For him, work and pleasure clearly didn't mix.

Next, he got it into his head that Dougal and I ought to wear a tie at work.

I flatly refused. I didn't think we would sell any more fenders and fishing hooks than we did now just because the two of us tied strips of cloth around our necks, or rather, I didn't think any of our customers cared about our clothes at all, which was exactly what I said to Elliott. He stared at me in disbelief, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish out of water, and retreated into his cubbyhole behind the shop without speaking a word, shaking his head about my latest exhibition of fractious behaviour.

Dougal and I exchanged a glance that said more than a thousand words and continued to show up for work in our usual clean, neat, open-necked shirts. Elliott glared at us the next morning but kept his mouth shut.

I tried hard to maintain the old spirit in the weeks that followed, but it was difficult with Elliott around. He didn't show himself a lot in the sales room, but nevertheless there was a subtle but perceptible change in the atmosphere that had nothing to do with Donnie's loss.

I missed him more with every day that passed, missed his perennial good humour and laid-back manner, his friendship and his way of making anyone feel at ease. He had truly been the soul of the place.

I also missed my little chats with the regulars. Hardly anyone ever lingered at the counter any more like they usually had. Even Stevie ceased dropping by quite as often as he used to.

Occasionally, when there were no other customers to take care of and Elliott had holed up in his office, I would go outside with Stevie for a quick smoke and a chat before I'd slip back inside again, half hoping my new boss had not noticed, half hoping he had and the underlying tension between us would finally erupt in a clash of tempers, ending this coolly civil keeping up of appearances that only masked our growing dislike for each other.

Only trouble was that this man didn't seem to have a temper. He was the kind of guy you cannot even quarrel with, apparently incapable of any show of emotion.

Evelyn noticed something was off, too, but I didn't want to bother her too much with what seemed like petty complaints about work and didn't much go into detail when she asked what was wrong. I told myself to be glad that the shop still existed at all after Donnie's untimely passing and I hadn't found myself unemployed at this crucial point in my life when I needed a job more than ever.

I tried not to think of Elliott too much outside of work and focused on the good things in my life, on Evelyn and the unborn baby, when I was home.

Joyful anticipation of the baby's arrival now vastly outweighed my doubts and fears. With the pregnancy progressing textbook-style and Evelyn so radiantly happy, I dared to look forward to the little one without worrying too much about what could still go wrong.

She was fairly round meanwhile with just six weeks to go, and she once said she felt like a penguin when she walked.

"I'm afraid I look the part, too, waddling about like that", she added with a wry grimace as she critically checked herself in the hall mirror.

I stepped close to her and said, "Doesn't that make us a particularly lovely couple, you waddling and me limping? Walking together, I bet we are quite a sight!"

She laughed, and I wrapped my arms around her from behind, rested my head on top of hers, eyed our reflection in the mirror and added, "Really, joking aside, you're prettier than ever."

"I'm not", she protested. "I'm looking like a barrel on legs!"

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I am! Just look at me!"

"Fine, if you insist, you do look like a barrel. But I never knew barrels could be so cute."

She elbowed me playfully in the ribs in response, and both of us grinned broadly.

Looking down over her shoulder, I placed a hand on her belly, and she covered it with hers and moved it further to the side. "Keep it there for a minute. The baby's rather active today. Maybe you'll be lucky this time and finally get to feel it."

And there it was, not much later, a distinct little kick against my palm.

"Oh my God, I've finally felt her! She kicked me! That's … that's amazing, Evelyn – she kicked me! That makes it so … real." I tapped my fingers softly on the place where I had just felt my baby's tiny foot. "Come on, love, give your dad another kick."

Evelyn laughed at my excitement. "Better not. Those kicks can actually be rather painful. Oh, and you still seem to be dead sure it's a girl, aren't you?"

I nodded. I didn't know why, but from the first moment on, I had imagined the baby to be a daughter, not a son.

"Have you given the name another thought?" she asked as we walked outside to sit in the garden.

"Yes. I think we should stick with it. It is a lovely name, and I like that there's no one called the same in either of our families. You know I don't like the idea of naming a baby for another person, much as I loved my parents and my grandparents. I wouldn't want her to grow up the namesake of an Alice or Mary she never knew. I want her to be an independent person, down to her name."

"And if it's a boy after all?"

"Well, certainly not Michael or anything. We're not a royal dynasty or one of those posh families who call it tradition touse one name over and over, so much that they have to attach numbers to it to keep things straight. Any suggestions?"

"What about Lucas, or Martin?"

"Mmm … honestly, I don't think so."

"Felix?"

"Um … no."

"What about Rufus?"

"Rufus? You're not serious. Where did that one come from?"

"It's not that bad, is it?"

I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes and said slowly, "No, it isn't … if you happen to be a Roman emperor. When he gets a little brother, I'd suggest we go for Julius Caesar."

"I see, you're not convinced of my taste in boy's names." She chuckled. "Well, we'll find something else, then. Or, if we don't, we will simply have to hope you're right and it's really a girl."

I grinned. "Trust me, it is. A lovely little lady, just like her mother."

"Or a cute little boy, just like his dad. Shall we take a little walk?"

I nodded, and she rose and stretched a bit, pressed her fists into the small of her back and groaned, "Whatever it is, it definitely getting heavy. Good that it won't be too long now."

"Right", I said, leaning forward to wrap my arms around her middle, gently laid my cheek against her belly and kissed the spot where I had felt the baby kicking earlier.

"Can't wait to meet you, little princess", I murmured softly.