"Are you sure you two are comfortable?" Peter asked, watching his wife and son as he pushed their suitcase on top of the wardrobe.

"Of course we are" she replied, smiling at the boy who was asleep, draped over her on the double bed of their cabin for the sail to Madeira. They had been on board barely half and hour and as the boat slowly slipped out of port, Fred had immediately fallen asleep, utterly comfortable using his mother as a pillow.

"I seem to remember this before", Peter responded properly turning to them, recalling the rather uncomfortable return from Sierra Leone where Mother, Father and Son crammed themselves together in bed through simple lack of choice. At least this time her father paying for the passage had afforded a touch more leg room.

"Except when his elbows get too sharp this time I can actually put him in a cot!" Chummy joked, also remembering the then unborn boy who would punch and kick away if his Daddy got too close to his Mummy in that squeeze of a cabin.

"Speaking of which, shouldn't be be in his cot?" Peter asked, taking a pace or towards them, knowing if Freddie was there a minute longer, he would be there for the night and their supper was pending.

"Actually yes", Chummy replied. "He's getting rather heavy on the old belly too". Gently Peter lifted his son from his wife's chest and the boy barely murmured as he was laid into the cot a few feet away.

"Camilla?" he asked, tucking a blanket around Freddie.

"Hmmm?" she replied, sitting up, doing up her cardigan from where it had become rumpled.

"You know that your Dad paid for this passage?" he asked, turning to her leaning against the cot sides.

"Yes", she replied, knowing where this was going. "And he didn't pay for my brothers?" She looked up at him, eyes wide.

"Yes", Peter responded, unable to shake the feeling of awkwardness surrounding the obvious fact that had they had to pay for this trip themselves, well, they would simply not be going.

"Ronnie and I were talking about it" she continued, shuffling over so she was seated on the edge of the bed. She stretched out a hand to him which he gladly took and sat down himself. "One could say, perhaps, that he so desperately wished for us to be there that he paid to make sure we came or he knew we wouldn't be able to afford it thinking he was helping us or perhaps he wanted to make me feel guilty that he still had to pay my way for me? You are welcome to guess which one and I really haven't the faintest!"

Peter sighed. "I do so wish you had a family that…."

"Were a family?" she questioned, seeing him nod.

"There is so much I missed. I know that, Peter" she continued. "That's why I get so scatty. I want to pack in as much as I can now Freddie's here. Well, now they are both here. To make it up. I owe them that I don't allow them to turn out like me" she said, frankly but truthfully.

"We, you and me, are a family Camilla, even if we didn't have the children. I just hope you remember that always". She felt a feather like kiss on her cheek.

Chummy smiled about to say something when there was a polite knock on the door. Quickly for want of feeling unladylike lounging about she stood up. Peter too got up and went to the cabin door, seeing his wife out of the corner of her eye to go to move her handbag from the table.

To her side she heard wheeling of a trolley.

"I thought you might not want to sit in the dining room", Peter said after closing the door again.

Chummy smiled. "I don't and we will probably get frowned upon for Freddie being in there anyway as though every child should be kept locked away". She said it with such force of jollity that she hoped he had not picked up on the comment and how true it had been at one point in her life.

"Well there's enough there to feed the five thousand!" Peter remarked, inspecting the trays.

"Mumma" a voice piped up.

"Oh what-ho!" Chummy remarked, turning around again, knowing the smell of food had got to her son. "Is that little tum of yours rumbling?"

"Have biscuits?" Freddie inquired, pulling himself up off the cot mattress, arms outstretched.

"Do you know I do think there might be a biscuit or two there young man" Chummy replied. "But if you want to have some dinner with us, you have vegetables and fruit and what could well be chicken to eat first".

Chummy, in her heart, knew he might only have understood the minutest part of what she was saying, but she did not believe in baby talk and as much as she would tell him every moment of the day how handsome he was, he was not using those brown eyes to get around eating his vegetables.

"Vegt...tubbles" Fred repeated stuttering slightly trying to get his tongue around the word. "'ave veg...tubbles"

"Yes you are having your vegetables!" she replied, noting that he was dropping his haitches more and more recently.

"No" Fred added, vigorously shaking his head, before Chummy saw her husband smile indulgently at them both, removing the saucer stacked with biscuits to a dresser behind them. Temporarily out of sight out of mind.

The three sat around the small fold out table, Chummy with the boy on her knee, periodically feeding him from a side plate that she had collected together of a good mix of tastes and textures.

"Peter?" she asked. "Do you think that Pa was having an affair? After everything that was said?"

Peter stopped for a moment, turning his tea cup on its saucer. He too had spent many an hour entertaining her mother with cards, and the newspaper and just talking and, in the haze of morphine, she had told him things that perhaps under normal circumstances would never have crossed her lips. Things that he knew his wife was not party to.

"She said…." he started, wondering to tell her but quickly realising that he had to be truthful with her of all people in the world. "She said that she thought he was having an affair with a Mrs Lishman. Grace I think she said her name was".

"Oh! That's one of their old neighbours in India" Chummy replied immediately dismissing it, holding a fork just too far away for her son to reach. Freddie stretched out his arms with a quick scold of his mother for not paying attention. "When I left India the last time she gave me a 'good luck' charm. That gold cloverleaf?"

Peter nodded having seen it tucked into her jewellery box.

"I think that probably was the morphine talking. As far as I know she was dead and buried years ago and she didn't have any sons so there could not be a daughter in law".

Peter nodded.

"There's something else" Chummy continued suddenly. "I know that look".

"What one?" he replied trying to sound innocent.

"That one" she responded. "The one where you look at me so quickly and think I don't see. Your bottom lip twitches".

"Do I do that?" he replied, surprised.

"You do. Tell me!" she asked earnestly, wondering what had just shot through his mind.

He frowned. "Peter…tell me". She heard a short puff of air.

"She said that she thought that the housekeeper's youngest daughter was his too", he enunciated quietly, wondering whether, as soon as it left his mouth, if he should have just kept his trap shut.

"Oh!" Chummy replied, feeling her skin turn white.

"She was coming out with all kinds Camilla" he added quickly. "Somethings were obviously the painkillers". He could see her digesting what he had announced, unsure as to how she may react. "She thought Fred was called David and then Daniel at one point!" he added desperately trying to make her feel better.

"Camilla?"

"I only met her once. The daughter" she said. "Josephine. From an angle I thought she looked like Pa, but I dismissed it. It was only a split second. Whatever Pa did he always did it with discretion, I will give him that. Business, home, he never tried to draw attention to himself. Mater did that for him".

"What if she is his daughter?" Peter asked.

Chummy laughed sharply. "He probably pays her so little attention that it might make no difference!"

"No…will that mean anything to you? Personally?"

"Not particularly" Chummy replied. "One supposes that one should feel put out or perhaps betrayed that he found so little in this family – my family – that he had to stray and find solace elsewhere, but no, we were so splintered that one simply has no capacity to feel hurt by it. There was nothing to protect, to feel threatened by if he suddenly had another branch on the tree".

"What would you do if you found out something like that about your Pa?" she asked, curious.

"I'd be furious" Peter replied, bluntly. "I'd never be able to look him in the eye again".

"You see I wish I could feel that towards them" she said, helping her son take a sip of water. "Anger, fear, hurt. I wasn't allowed to show it and now, well…..I can't because if I do, if I become angry and upset you, you'll leave". She hesitated before her mouth ran away with her.

"Camilla? Where on earth did that come from?"

She knew precisely where it originated. That feeling of worthlessness, of why should anybody be concerned about me? I hold no place where anyone should, frankly, waste their time loving me or wanting me safe. No-one can. You were the only one that did and if I lose that, where am I left?

"You are very sadly mistaken if you think that you throwing a fit once in a while is going to put me off. You're going to have to kill me to get rid of me you know…" he warned in a good natured tone.

"Poison you with my dinners?" she suggested.

"Or throw me into the Thames" he offered, shrugging his shoulders, hearing Fred protest again that is mother was being interminably slow between forkfuls.

"Never" Chummy whispered, not able to look him in the eye, instead placing the empty fork down and picking a crumb from her son's pyjamas.

"No, never, exactly Camilla" he said, seeing she could not hold his gaze. "Look at me".

Her head shot up the direct request.

"I love you. He loves you. Whoever that one turns out to be will do as well because you make it that way" he reassured, leaning across the table to rub her hand. "Have I ever ask much of you? Really asked anything of you just to be my wife and his Mum?"

"No" she replied, knowing that in truth he had no expectations of how she should be. It was really quite plain, simple and easy.

No judgments and she was eternally grateful.