*Days of happiness go by and Ste and Brendan spend the time buying things for the holiday, taking the kids out and having sex whenever they can. It's almost a week until the holiday and the kids have come over one last time before the holiday. The kids sit there side by side drawing and colouring*
"Look Daddy's! Look what I drew" Leah says holding up her picture. Ste and Brendan look at the picture closely. It's a family painting. Ste and Brendan in the middle with Leah holding Ste's hand and Lucas holding Brendan's. There's an odd green spiky monster or pet thing in the corner.
"What's this?" Brendan says pointing
"My pet iguana"
Ste laughs "Leah you're not having a pet iguana"
"But they're soooo cute !"
"No, kittens are cute. Puppies are cute. Not scaly lizardy things"
"Can I have a puppy then? And a kitten?"
"Maybe one day but when you get a kitten or a puppy he takes a lot of looking after and then we wouldn't be able to go on our holiday"
Leah thinks about it for a minute. "Ok maybe when we get back?"
"Maybe" Brendan says smiling and rolling his eyes at Ste. He bends down to Leah's level. "Tell you what sweetie, how about you bring that picture here and I'll put it up on my wall?"
"Yay!" Leah says as Brendan picks her up.
"Where should we put it? How about here?" He says indicating a plain bit of wall. "Pass us the sticky tape Steven"
Ste hands him the tape and watches proudly as Brendan and Leah put her picture on the wall. "Wanna go and do me another picture for my wall? It needs plenty of bright pretty pictures"
"Yeah!" Leah says excitedly as she's put back down and runs over to do more drawings.
"Lucas, when you're done do you want to give that picture to me and we'll hang yours up too?" Brendan says as he looks at the skinny boy who's concentrating so much on his picture that his tiny pink tongue sticks out slightly.
"uh huh" Lucas mumbles in confirmation.
"Can we do pictures for mummy?" Leah says busy colouring in frantically
"Of course"
"Cool. I'm doing mummy a flower then I'm gonna do more pictures for Daddy Brendan's wall!"
When Amy comes to collect the kids Leah and Lucas run over and hand her their pictures the second she's through the door.
"Look what we did mummy" Leah says dragging Amy over to the wall that's now plastered al over the wall.
Amy admires each and everyone of them. "They're great kids." She turns to Ste and Brendan "Who would've thought Brendan Brady would be all fatherly?" She says with a smile.
Brendan understands what she means. He doesn't look like the daddy type. In fact he looks like he'd scare any kids of any age but inside he's a big softie. People in the village see him as some hard man, someone you wouldn't mess with, but when they see him with Ste and the kids they know that he is only human and has fallen in love and taken on the roll of second daddy like a pro. If only Eileen would let him be a father to his own kids. Brendan shakes his head a little as if to shake the thought out of his head. He misses those kids but Eileen won't let him anywhere near them so he puts all his focus and love into his new family.