Free A Passionate Man by Joanna Trollope

Snoopy, stupid, stupid, stupid—’
    â€˜What is your baby’s name?’
    â€˜Oh, it doesn’t have a name. It’s just a baby.’
    â€˜Our baby’s called Oliver—’
    â€˜We had one but it grew up and now it’s Naomi—’
    â€˜Snoopy’s got a poo-face—’
    â€˜Mrs Logan, Simon said poo—’
    The crowd jostled its way through the orchard gate and dispersed to race about and scream in obedience to expectations. Liza and Blaise strolled to a central position and waited for someone to fall off something or be knocked over, and Liza, in addition, waited for Blaise to flirt with her. He did not. He said, instead, rather sadly, that he had been homesick for Ireland all weekend and couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it.
    â€˜Not Dublin so much, as the West. My father has a house in Connemara. I kept wanting to be in that house by the peat fire with proper Irish rain outside, not this milksop stuff.’
    â€˜Well, why don’t you go? At half-term. Why don’t you fly to Shannon and go?’
    â€˜I might,’ Blaise said, and looked straight at her.
    Two boys, in pursuit of a battered Bramley apple they were using as a football, came careering past, missed their footing in the slippery grass, collided and cannoned into Liza. She staggered back, off balance, and was caught deftly by Blaise.
    He said, ‘You idiotic, clumsy little sods,’ and restored Liza gently upright. Then he did not take his arms away.
    She said, ‘Oh, thank you, Blaise, but really I’m fine.’
    He said, ‘Me, too,’ still holding her.
    She twisted to look in his face and it wore a new and serious expression. He made a tiny movement and, realizing that he was about to kiss her in the midst of a hundred and eighty-three children, she made a sudden and determined effort and broke free.
    â€˜Blaise.’
    He said nothing. He merely gave her a long, hard look and then moved away, blowing his whistle to round up their charges. Liza felt breathless and strangely daring, a feeling not unlike the one she had experienced at breakfast when she told Archie he was behaving like a child. The two boys with the apple came up and said, looking at their feet, that they were sorry.
    â€˜It’s all right,’ Liza said. ‘You slipped.’
    They gaped.
    â€˜Didn’t you?’
    They nodded.
    â€˜Well, then. Off you go. End of break.’
    They cantered off, howling. Liza thought of Mikey doing the same thing on his well-ordered Winchester playground. Then she thought of Thomas.
    â€˜What is it?’ Blaise said, coming up.
    Her eyes were huge.
    â€˜Thomas.’
    â€˜May I comfort you?’
    â€˜I – I don’t think you’d better.’
    He took her hand. She removed it.
    â€˜No.’
    He sighed.
    â€˜Do you think I’m different today?’
    Liza shot him a glance.
    â€˜A little gloomier—’
    â€˜The thing is,’ Blaise said, ‘that serious lust has turned into serious love. I’m in real pain.’
    â€˜Nonsense.’
    â€˜Liza—’
    â€˜Come on,’ she said repressively, but her heart was very light. ‘Come on. We have to get this lot unbooted and into class.’
    Driving home after lunch, Liza stopped in the village to buy a postal order for a set of rubber dinosaurs Mikey had saved up for, from the back of a cereal packet. He had taught Imogen a dinosaur song that began ‘Hocus, pocus, I’m a diplodocus’ which she sang with the relentless repetitiveness of the Chinese water torture. When Thomas had had his dinosaur phase – as inevitable a part of childhood, it seemed, as losing milk teeth – he had suffered nightmares about a Tyrannosaurus rex which he could see circling in the beech trees on windy nights, clashing its leathery wings and gnashing its terrible teeth.
    Mrs Betts liked Liza. She approved of her clean, pretty appearance, the