Free The First Time I Saw Your Face by Hazel Osmond Page A

ewe whose head was restrained in a wooden clamp. The ewe was becoming increasingly agitated about not being able to turn her head to see what was going on.
    ‘Hello, love,’ her dad said, with a quick smile. ‘You look nice.’
    She saw her brother gently show the lamb where it was meant to be aiming while trying to stop the ewe from kicking out. It was a delicate operation and it always surprised her how her large, often clumsy brother, could exhibit such co-ordination when necessary. After a few false starts the lamb started to suckle, its tail wriggling excitedly, and the ewe gave one more indignant shuffle and then stood still. For the moment the ewe, which had lost its own lamb, was accepting this one as hers.
    Danny straightened up and smiled, but it was a smile that morphed into something more mischievous and Jennifer knew that someone, some time today had been on the receiving end of a practical joke and Danny wanted to tell her about it. Ray had always been fond of a little gentle leg-pulling and Danny, the more robust variety. Jennifer took it as a sign of the rude, often extremely rude, good health of their relationship.
    ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘What was it this time?’
    Ray frowned. ‘Not sure we should tell you, Jen.’
    Danny grinned down at the straw.
    ‘I’ll just go and ask Mum then,’ she said pretending tomove away and heard her Dad’s quick, ‘Best keep it between the three of us.’
    ‘It’s about Mrs Chambers, see,’ Danny added.
    Jennifer felt her curiosity sharpen. Mrs Chambers was fantastically efficient, like some particularly virulent weed-killer – no piece of church brass was polished, no jumble sale hosted, without her being there to keep everyone right. Her behaviour as chair of the Luncheon Club made Jen’s mother and the rest of the committee feel as if they had been serving up swill to the local OAPs before she’d arrived.
    ‘Mum was hosting the Luncheon-Club meeting, see,’ Danny said, ‘so I’d kept out of the way until all the cars had gone and then nipped in to get a handful of biscuits. Turns out Mrs Chambers was still waiting for one of those daft sons of hers to pick her up. I just did a quick in-and-out, like, but not before I heard Wifey lecturing Mum on the proper way to cook beef. Should have seen the way Mum was pleating the edge of the tablecloth. Then I noticed the monitor for the lamb-cam was on.’
    ‘I’d been looking at it over breakfast with the sound down. Forgot to switch it off,’ Ray added helpfully.
    ‘She had her back to it, Mrs Chambers, and Mum was busy with the tablecloth,’ Danny’s eyes were twinkling at the memory, ‘so I came back out here and—’
    ‘He …’ Ray could not finish the sentence for laughing.
    ‘What? What?’ Jennifer said.
    ‘I mooned her.’ Danny was looking very pleased with himself.
    ‘Buttock-naked,’ Ray confirmed.
    Jennifer felt the laughter bubble up through her.
    ‘More a half moon really,’ Danny said in all seriousness, ‘it was that quick.’
    This set Ray off again and he had to go and sit on a straw bale.
    Their laughter had just died away again when there was a commotion at the door of the shed and Jennifer’s mother appeared, eyes blazing and a wide-awake Louise on her hip.
    Ray stood up abruptly.
    ‘Hello, pet. Jen didn’t say Louise was here.’ He tentatively raised his hand and waved at the little girl.
    ‘Never you mind Louise,’ Jennifer’s mother snapped, shifting her gaze to Danny and then back to Ray. ‘It’s very interesting what you can pick up on that lamb-cam.’
    ‘Oh bugger,’ Danny said, ‘the monitor’s on in the kitchen again, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes it is, and the volume was up nice and loud too.’
    ‘That was me,’ Jennifer said. ‘Sorry.’
    ‘Now, Bren,’ her father started, ‘it was just a bit of fun, no harm done.’
    ‘No harm done? She could have had you both for sexual harassment.’
    They were all waiting for the lemon-drop look, but it didn’t