A/N So my laptop got a virus. To get this done I have had to endure several lectures from the resident IT expert (my husband) about safety when surfing the net, and then I had to surrender the laptop so it could be rebuilt with a new version of Windows that I am having to get to grips with.

On a positive note though, my baby has a first word. It's cheese. Although it sounds more like 'seese' when she says it. It's kind of disconcerting to open the fridge and have a little voice go "Seese! Seese! Mmm!" in the hope you'll dole out a cheese slice. But still, it's better than another lecture from her father on deleting emails...

Disclaimer: Not mine.

SPOV

On the days I worked it was a bit of a race to get home, dump my work van, drive to daycare, pluck a rather reluctant Felicia from out of the sandpit, and then get to school to get Amelia. So on the day of the trip to the zoo I was a bit out of breath by the time I made it to her classroom, but I beat the bell.

However that just gave me more time to stand around and look at the other mothers. Yeah, I didn't know how they did it. I was pretty sure some of these women didn't work and yet, there they all were in their really expensive skirts and pants, wearing pretty jumpers and cardis. And then there was me, in the yoga pants which were starting to ride low below the bump, the polo shirt I wore for work which was now getting a bit small, and my hair in a mess. And I had baby sick on my shoulder. It wasn't even from my baby, but from a small girl I'd been helping out during class who'd decided to repay me getting her to swing around a bar by throwing up on me.

I sighed and looked at Felicia. She was wearing a t-shirt that had seen better days, when it was Amelia's, and currently it was decorated with green paint and some unidentified orange stains which were possibly pasta sauce, despite the fact that Felicia had insisted she'd been given "Nothin'" for lunch. Her pants were covered in sand and her Dora sneakers were an interesting shade of grey rather than white. Somewhere during the day she'd lost one of her pigtails, but she seemed to have gathered some rather interesting felt tip marks on her face to make up for it. At least we matched.

Felicia roamed around the other mums looking bored by the whole experience. The other mothers eyed her as she passed them and I could see them judging just how likely she was to randomly place a sticky hand on their immaculate clothing. A few of them had similarly immaculate toddlers with them. How did they manage to stay so clean and tidy?

I was pondering this, while keeping one eye on Felicia's progress, she was edging towards the door in the hope of spying Amelia, when bits of the conversation around me drifted over. "So, did you go to the zoo this morning?" one woman asked another.

"Mmm, I did. It was dreadful. I'm not sure Mrs Garfield isn't too old to be looking after 5 year olds. There was NO control at all."

I just hoped that it wasn't Amelia running round and causing a problem, although quite frankly she'd be more likely to be standing there with Mrs Garfield yelling at everyone to settle down and be quiet.

"Connor was a handful, of course. I don't think even his mother can control him, and poor Debbie was struggling" the second woman continued. Good, while at least it was no one I could lay claim to. I'd seen Connor when I did parent-help and yeah, I'd felt sorry for the woman who'd been stuck at his table. He was one of those kids no one wanted to be responsible for on a school trip.

"Is Connor the one who has all those siblings?" the first woman asked.

"Yeah. I think there's about four or five in that family. Maybe six. The mother just looks stressed and obviously can't cope, and I guess Connor is the result of that."

"Mmm. Poor Debbie having to put up with him for the day."

"Well she said that dad helped her out and put the fear of God into Connor." I'd been watching Felicia again, but my ears kind of pricked up when I heard that.

"Oh, which dad?"

The woman snorted, before answering. "Only one came of course. I don't really know him, but he's American. Very good-looking. Tall. I saw him at the drinks thing."

At this point a third woman butted in. "Oh yeah, I saw him. I think his name's Eric. He's kind of lovely."

"He is, isn't he? Who's dad is he?" asked the woman who'd originally started the conversation.

"Um. Possibly Chloe's, you know the little blonde girl? The cute one?"

"Yeah, I think I do."

Well that was interesting, Eric had made a bit of an impression, but me, and Amelia, well we obviously weren't that memorable. I wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. In Amelia's case I guess it meant she hadn't embarrassed Eric or anything, but as for me, well. I kind of knew that I was always going to be in the background as far as Eric was concerned. I'd known that all along. But it still didn't feel very good.

I didn't have much time to think about it though, because the bell rang just then and I had to dive and yank Felicia out of the doorway where she was hovering before she got trampled by 30 or so kids.

Amelia bounced over to us. "Em's my friend" she announced. "We sat next to each other when we did reading this afternoon. Maisie looked sad because she had to sit with Chloe, but that's OK. I'm allowed to have other friends."

"Oh, well. Yeah, as long as you're still nice to Maisie."

"Em says her hair's a funny colour."

"Her hair's a pretty colour, Amelia. It's a very pretty red."

Amelia screwed her face up. "It's orange."

"No it's not. And anyway, how was the zoo?" I guessed that was a long time ago as far as Amelia was concerned and had kind of been eclipsed by this afternoon's jostling for position as most popular girl at the table.

Amelia sighed. "S'OK." She fell into step beside me as we started to walk towards the carpark.

"Did you see the giraffes?" I asked. "Da'raffes?" Felicia echoed.

"Yeah. They were tall. And ate some stuff. But I borrowed Em's pencil, the really nice one with the fuzzy stuff at the end; I used that just before to write my letters…" Amelia stopped talking as Debbie's voice drifted over "Sookie!" she called, obviously trying to remain ladylike and not actually scream my name. "That's you" Amelia prompted.

"Thanks" I said to her, but she kind of missed the sarcasm, and just said "You're welcome." At least Eric's politeness was kind of rubbing off on the kids.

"I'm so glad I caught you" Debbie said, as she came over to me pulling Sebastian in her wake. I idly looked at her clean, dark jeans, white t-shirt and silver cardigan with beading across the shoulders, all topped off with a pair of spiked heel boots, and wondered if she'd made it through the trip to the zoo dressed like that. Probably. I sighed.

"Um, Eric was very good with the kids today" Debbie began, looking a little nervous. "And it was very helpful to have a man there, for, um, toilet trips and for keeping some of the little boys in line. They're a bit, um…well; they're finding themselves at this age aren't they? Although Sebastian is a wonderfully grounded little boy, of course, so I don't have those problems with him. But then he's had such a stable life, so it's to be expected. But some of the others…well, Eric was a big help."

"Well, I'm glad" I said, with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. It was nice that Eric got the thanks from Debbie for his one morning and no one said anything about my on-going commitment to parent-help. But that was OK, I told myself. At least Eric is the dad who turns up.

I kind of hoped Debbie would get to the point soon as Amelia and Felicia were bored and had drifted off. Well, they'd drifted towards Sebastian who looked a bit panicked at Felicia eyeing him up like that. She grinned at him and said "Hi!" but he clung a bit tighter to Debbie's arm.

"So, anyway. I mentioned the next trip to Eric, the one to the museum" Debbie continued, "And he said he'd let me know. But I was hoping, well I was hoping you could make sure he kept that day free? And came with us? We'd all love to see him again." Debbie smiled as brightly as she could. "He got on very well with the other mums" she said, looking slightly starry-eyed. Oh good grief, were they going to start a fan-club?

"I'm sure he did" I replied. "I'll talk to him and see what he's doing, but if he's busy, you might be out of luck."

"Well, just do your best Sookie. And maybe I'll have another chat to him the next time I see him." Yeah, I bet Eric will love that, I thought.

"OK, well, see you Debbie."

"Bye Sookie."

Debbie and Sebastian walked off and I started walking back to the car again. "Sebastian likes Felicia" Amelia announced as we set off.

"Really?" I asked. I thought he'd looked terrified of her.

"Yeah, he let her draw on his hand."

I glanced back at Sebastian, and, sure enough, there were felt-tip marks on his hand. Terrific. "Where'd she get the felt-tip from Amelia?" I asked.

Amelia shrugged. "She went through my bag." Felicia held up her treasure and Amelia held her hand out for it. "Nah!" Felicia shouted and she ran off, with Amelia in pursuit. I had to admit, it was hard enough with two of them, I didn't fancy Eric's task that morning with a whole group.

But at least he'd been appreciated for his efforts.

By the time Eric arrived home Felicia and Amelia had reached an uneasy truce and I was in the kitchen making dinner.

"What are we having?" Eric asked, getting to the bit that was most important to him pretty quickly.

"Meatloaf" I replied. It wasn't the world's most exciting dinner, but it usually got eaten.

"With mashed potatoes?"

"Yeah, they're boiling. I'll give you a shout when I need them mashed."

I was going to say something else, but Amelia stomped in, demanding Eric's attention. "You need to come and tell Felicia that it's not nice to scribble on other people's drawings."

"Do I?" asked Eric.

"Yes" Amelia said, emphatically, before she stomped off again. Eric sighed and walked out of the kitchen. "I'll just put my bag down" he called out to Amelia.

"Hurry up!" she yelled back. "Felicia's still being naughty."

"Daddy!" Felicia squealed, and I could hear her take off running down the hall, and a bit of an 'oof' from Eric when she tackled him, and then Amelia yelled "Are you COMING, Daddy?" and Eric yelled back "I've got Felicia here" so Amelia yelled "Tell her off then!" back to him. So mostly it was a standard night, much running around and yelling when daddy got home, followed by trying to get them all to settle down to eat dinner. I wondered about the wisdom of adding another one into the mix and whether I would in fact go deaf one day from all the shouting, but then I gave up on those thoughts and went back to slicing beans.

When the potatoes were done I yelled for Eric, figuring if you can't beat them join them, and then added some milk and butter. Then I added another blob of butter, because I wasn't getting any thinner anytime soon, so I might as well. Then I added a third, just a small one. The baby would thank me, I was sure of it.

Eric appeared and I handed him the potato masher. "So I heard you made a bit of an impression this morning" I said to him.

"What? Oh fuck. Those fucking rhinos. We might need to talk to Amelia again about not blabbing to all and sundry about sex."

"Oh. OK, that wasn't what I heard" I said, taking the meatloaf out of the oven. "So the rhinos were doing it?"

"Yes. With running commentary."

"Ugh."

"Exactly. I found out all sorts of things I fucking didn't want to know."

"About rhinos?"

"About everything. For instance that Tanya woman seems to be taking a lot of naps with a lot of men. She was horribly embarrassed by the stuff her daughter was saying."

"Oh. So she is a bit slutty then, is she?" I asked. While it wasn't nice to be branded the slut myself I maybe wasn't above finding out some good gossip, and I certainly had my suspicions about Tanya. Eric, however, wasn't buying it and only shrugged. Possibly because he was busy licking mashed potato off the potato masher like it was a giant popsicle or something.

"But anyway" I continued, while putting slices of meatloaf on plates and kind of ignoring the fact that behind me Eric was now eating mashed potato straight out of the saucepan with a spoon. I guess he'd worked up an appetite at the zoo. "Debbie was saying how useful you were at keeping the kids in line and how she really, really, really wants you to come with them to the museum."

"That many reallys?"

"Well, maybe I exaggerated. A bit. But you seem to have a fan."

Eric shrugged and just put his spoon in the sink. "I was a novelty."

"You certainly were" I agreed.

"I'll go and get the kids. I'm fucking hungry tonight" Eric said, conveniently forgetting all the mashed potato he'd just been eating. I peered in the saucepan. Yeah, there was quite a hole in there now. Looks like Eric had been enjoying the extra butter in there too.

EPOV

The trip to the zoo might have only been a few hours, but, fuck, I was exhausted at the end of the day. And really fucking hungry. I may have had a small taste of the potatoes as I was mashing them, just to check the texture really. They were good. I didn't know if Sookie had done something different, but they seemed particularly tasty tonight.

Sookie was fishing for details about the trip and it was obvious that she'd heard something at school, but I wasn't sure what. I really fucking hoped the details of the whole rhino incident weren't getting repeated too widely. And I was slightly concerned that Connor's father might be coming after me now, but mostly it seemed Sookie just wanted to know about Tanya's sex-life. Fuck, I didn't want to know so I wasn't about to relive it now.

So mostly I concentrated on eating my dinner, and maybe hoping that Felicia wasn't going to eat all her potato. There was a nasty moment when, after repeated prompting to talk about the trip from Sookie, Amelia told her that I'd gone to get coffee and they'd 'lost me', at which point she tried to deliver her lecture on not running away.

"I didn't run off" I told her, scooping the mashed potato off Felicia's plate. She'd finished her meatloaf and had been trying to use it to hide beans under. "Finish up your beans" I said to her. She sighed, and dropped some on the floor, hitting Bob on the head. "You guys all disappeared while I was gone."

Amelia thought for a moment. "It was Chloe's idea" she said, and then she went back to her dinner. Somehow I doubted that Chloe was really the architect of that particular scheme, but I wasn't going to get into an argument I couldn't win. Amelia could be a stubborn little thing when she dug her heels on something.

And if Sookie asked, I had no idea where that trait came from either.

I was just hoping that I wasn't going to come up against Sookie's stubborn streak anytime soon. We had a few things we had to do before the baby came, and, well, I just needed her to get on board really. I thought I was almost there with the car. I'd read up, I'd been out and looked, I'd taken a test-drive and now I had pretty much made a decision.

I just had to get Sookie to agree and we could sign on the dotted line. It surely couldn't be that hard, I thought. She'd been in quite a good mood recently. Maybe it was all the sex? That was certainly helping my mood. Even this morning's trip to the zoo hadn't quite ruined my mood completely, although bits of it had come close. Fuck, I really didn't want to go to the museum. I wondered how I could get out of that one.

I was still wondering about it three days' later when we had another appointment with the obstetrician. Sookie kept telling me how many of the mothers at school mentioned me and I'd tried to point out that it was because I was the only guy there. I wasn't sure how all the other fuckers had managed to dodge the bullet, but I was now token guy for the class.

Sookie would just purse her lips and say "Yeah, sure Eric" when I said that. "That's it. You're just a novelty because you're a guy. Not because you're you."

"I'm always me, Sookie. I'm not sure that makes any difference." Sookie always looked a bit sceptical at that point, but fuck, there wasn't much I could do about any of the attention I was supposedly generating. There wasn't much I could do to blend in, so I just hoped it would all blow over.

The visit to the doctor's was over in about 10 minutes which seemed a bit disappointing. I kept waiting for something to happen, but Russell just went over the results of the CVS and then we had another look on his ultrasound at Sam, while Felicia crawled all over me because she was bored.

It was still fucking amazing, though to see Sam in there. "He's bigger" I said to Sookie.

"Yep" she said. "It's all the mashed potatoes. Well, the bit we got to eat anyway."

Russell took some measurements while we watched the screen. The image was pretty fuzzy, but you could still get a pretty good look at him. "He's waving, I think" I said to Sookie.

"Yeah" she agreed, looking intently at the screen herself.

"That's your brother" I tried telling Felicia, pointing to the screen.

"Swings!" she whined. Yeah, she'd seen the little playground behind Russell's rooms while we were waiting. There was no persuading her she didn't want to go and play now.

"Um. That seems big" Sookie commented to Russell.

"It is" Russell replied "But it's still quite early on, so don't worry. Remind me next time and we'll start plotting the growth."

"OK" Sookie agreed.

Once our appointment was through we took Felicia over the playground. I'd have to walk back to the office soon, but it was nice being outside for a bit, even if I did have to push Felicia on the swings while she squealed "Higher, Daddy!" repeatedly and Sookie winced slightly when she saw just how high Felicia was going. "No wonder she hates it when I push her" Sookie commented.

"There's a seatbelt" I replied. "She won't fall out."

"Yeah, I know. But even so, I'm not quite that game."

"Higher!" Felicia interjected.

After her time on the swing, she moved onto the slide which meant less input from me. I decided to try to talk to Sookie about the car. "So I was thinking maybe this weekend we could go out and look at cars?" I said. "Because we need to replace yours."

"But you're going to the zoo tomorrow" Sookie replied. "Felicia! Remember to share nicely." Another little girl had turned up and Felicia was doing her best to sit on the slide rather than slide down it.

"Well, Sunday then."

"Mmm. Browsing car-yards with the kids doesn't sound like a fun way to spend a day."

"We could leave them with someone?"

"Yeah…but I don't know. We've got a while yet. We don't have to rush into anything. Hey, Felicia! Let her have a turn please."

That didn't go like I'd hoped. I knew we had a while, but, well, I wanted to be doing something, anything for Sam. I couldn't take him to the zoo yet, I couldn't carry him around, I couldn't even make sure he was getting mashed potatoes or KFC or whatever it was that Sookie kept insisting he wanted to eat. I was stuck with the few things I could do from the outside and buying a new car was one of them.

But only if I could get Sookie on board with that plan. I'd have to think of something else.

I went back to the office and thought about it for a bit, before I gave up and actually did some fucking work. I was still no closer to a plan that night, or the next morning when I took Felicia to soccer, or 'running around with balloony balls' as it really should have been named. Felicia was slowly getting the hang of it though, and I was pleased to see that she was pretty co-ordinated compared to some of the kids there.

Afterwards we continued on to the zoo. It had been raining in the morning but there was no putting this trip off, so we put on our jackets and braved the drizzle. It soon cleared up. Felicia didn't mind so much that she didn't see a lot of the animals; she mainly wanted to run around. I took her for a fluffy at the café and she amused herself by making lots of roaring noises at me and giggling.

As we were leaving I bumped into Andy with Ruby and Riley. "You only have one?" he asked me, nodding to Felicia who was now roaring happily at Riley.

"Yep. But I was here with Amelia's class on Tuesday. Fuck, that was hard work."

Andy clapped me on the shoulder. "That's where shift-work is a fucking joy" he said. "Sadly, I'm never available for shit like that."

"Yeah, good career-planning. Are you available for baby-sitting tomorrow though?"

Sookie was kind of surprised that I was taking her out for lunch on the Sunday. "Why Newmarket?" she kept asking.

I shrugged. "Why not? Somewhere different might be nice. And, if you're good, I'll let you look in some of the stores."

"Well, I suppose I could go to Egg." I had no idea what that was, but I nodded along anyway. "Exactly" I said. "That's what I thought."

We drove to Newmarket and found parking in one of the parking lots. "It used to be free to park here on a Sunday" Sookie sighed. "I used to work in a shop on Broadway on Sundays when I was at Uni; it's not there anymore of course."

"What it did sell?" I asked.

"Clothes. Old-lady clothes mainly. I used to use my staff discount to get clothes for Gran. She was happy I had that job." We'd started walking along, looking in shop windows. "What part-time jobs did you do?" Sookie asked me.

"Oh, all sorts of shit really. I worked in a restaurant for quite a long time."

"Really? Doing what?"

"All kinds of things. Bus-boy, waiter, behind the bar."

"As long as you weren't in charge of the food then, because, I hate to say it, but licking the potato masher isn't that hygienic Eric."

I laughed. "I only did that when I'd finished!"

"I know, but even so, can you imagine eating somewhere where the staff did that?"

We continued on past some more stores and Sookie dragged me into one that seemed to sell a whole bunch of tiny clothes that would have fitted Amelia and Felicia. "Look!" Sookie said, holding something that was perhaps a skirt, but seemed to be fashioned entirely from pink candyfloss. "Wouldn't Amelia love this?"

"Probably. You should get it for her." I figured if Sookie bought something we could leave.

"Oh, hell no. It's $200. Everything in here is waaay too expensive."

"Yeah. OK." Fuck, I had no idea what we were doing in here then if we weren't actually buying stuff.

"And this is so beautiful too!" Sookie exclaimed, pulling something else off the rack.

"Um. Are you hungry? I'm really hungry." It wasn't exactly a lie, but I hoped it would make Sookie leave the store.

"Yeah, I am actually. Or the baby is anyway."

"Same thing" I said, putting my hand on her lower back to steer her back past the racks of clothes again. Her head swivelled to the side as something caught her eye, but I kept the pressure on and she didn't stop walking.

I took her to a tapas restaurant I'd been to with a client once. Sookie was happy as it meant she could try all sorts of things which I knew she loved doing. It was nice, we hadn't been out by ourselves in a while and it was fun to be grown-ups again, even if we did mostly talk about the kids. When they weren't actually around fighting and yelling and running around and generally creating a disturbance in the restaurant it was easy to remember how much fun they were.

After lunch Sookie took me to the Egg store and I discovered it sold maternity clothing. "It's expensive in here too" she said, kind of sadly. I picked up a label hanging from one of the items "It's not that bad" I commented. "And at least here you're getting more fabric for your money that in the other store."

"Yeah. Thanks, Eric."

It took a bit of persuading but I managed to convince Sookie that she should buy the silk top she kept drifting over to look at. She also tried on a dress, muttering something about a dress she'd had when pregnant with Amelia that had been 'very useful at the end'. We were the only people in the shop so the two assistants both flocked around Sookie, asking her questions and commenting that at least they didn't need to strap the padding on to her so she could see what the clothes looked like with a bump.

They also found a few more items for Sookie to try on, and I reminded myself that they were genuinely trying to be helpful and not earn commission. The other stuff did look good too, and, after much indecision by Sookie over what she needed and what size she should buy, I told her to just get what she liked.

I may have been hoping that the shopping would put her in a good mood for the next part of the plan.

After we left Egg I suggested a walk past the stores to work off lunch. Sookie agreed and we carried on down Broadway towards the car dealerships. I hoped Sookie didn't notice that we were heading away from most of the stores, and, if she did, she didn't say anything.

Eventually we reached our destination. "Turn around and go back?" Sookie asked. "Halleigh and Andy will probably want to get rid of our two about now."

"Yeah…or we could just look at…cars…" Sookie turned around and looked at the rows of cars parked behind us in the dealership and wrinkled her nose. "Really? Now?" she asked.

"Well, we don't have the kids with us. And you said that they'd be a disaster in a dealership, so now's probably as good a time as any." Sookie sighed, and looked at her watch. "OK then" she said in the end. "But just quickly."

I took her hand and we walked in. There was a nasty moment when the salesman I'd seen during the week started heading over to talk to me, and I could hear him shout a greeting, but thankfully he got waylaid by someone else and Sookie was busy looking in the window of a rather dire looking used station wagon anyway. "Do you think we could get three carseats in that one?" she asked me. "I guess we really need to bring them along to try it, although Amelia is kind of big enough to just use a half-booster seat now so that's not quite as big."

"Sookie, I think if you try to fit three carseats to that thing it might just fall apart, it's a shit car."

"Oh. Well I was trying to look for something big enough. And not too expensive" she added, peering at the price listed in the window.

"I think there's something better over here" I said, pulling her hand.

"OK" she said, and she followed me.

"How about this one?" I said, when we reached the car I'd picked. Except that it wasn't really a car. I'd tried to figure it out, I really had, but the problem with three carseats, even if one was only a booster, was that they took up a fuck-load of seat space. And most cars, even SUVS, didn't really have that much space. So really, this was more like one of those people-carrier things with the extra seats. Which would be a bonus, because then the kids could have friends in the car. Maybe we could get a dog. And I'd tried to find one that didn't look too horrific. But which was also safe. In the end maybe safety had won out. Yeah, now that I looked at it again it was pretty ugly. Fuck, Sookie was going to hate it.

"This one?" Sookie said, looking from the ugliest fucking vehicle in the world, to me, and back again.

"Well…yeah. I mean, I did a lot of reading and it's really safe…" because everyone probably keeps their distance from it, in case the ugliness wears off, I thought. Maybe if it was in a better colour and not white, I thought, studying it. No, I was pretty sure it would be ugly whatever colour it was. Fuck.

"Um, you could pick another colour" I told her. "They have a chart of colours. Some of them are nice…" Sookie wasn't saying anything, she was just staring. Then she started to walk around the vehicle, touching it. Finally she opened the driver's door and got in.

"It has a new-car smell" she said, quietly. Well, at least it had something fucking going for it. "Yep" I agreed.

I walked around the car and got into the passenger seat. Sookie was busy studying the dashboard. I just watched as she ran her hand over it. Then she swivelled around and looked in the back. "There are a lot of seats" she commented.

"Could be useful I thought, you know, if Amelia wants to bring Maisie home or something."

"Or Em."

"Whoever."

Sookie went quiet again, which was a real fucking worry. I just knew she was trying to figure out how to tell me my choice fucking sucked. "Are you sure?" she said in the end, turning to face me. "This one?"

"Well, you know. It's my pick, but you could test-drive it. See what you think" I was doing my best to give her an out.

Sookie stared straight ahead out the windscreen. I could see the salesman heading our way. Fuck, now he did work on commission so we'd be in for a hard-sell any minute now. "Look" I said, turning to face Sookie "I thought this might be a good idea, but if you really hate it then it doesn't have to be this one. We can find something else."

"But…it's so expensive?" Sookie said quietly.

"Oh, yeah. Well I'm pretty sure we can get a deal, they're always looking to move the stock. In fact if you want to take this one off the lot, I'm pretty sure I can get quite a bit knocked off. And they said they'd trade your car in…" I was suddenly aware that was a change in the atmosphere of the car. Fuck. The salesman arrived at my door. "Eric!" he said jovially. "Nice to see you. You still interested in this model?"

"Yeah, uh. Just give us a minute would you?" I asked him.

"Sure, just let me know when you're ready" he said, before walking off to find someone else to prey on.

I turned back to Sookie. "Hey" I said, "Don't cry. I just…well, I thought this was a good choice, but if you really hate it then we'll go back to the drawing board." I put my arm around her and pulled her over to me.

"It's not that" she sniffed. "It's just…I've never had a new car before. Not a brand new one, that's never been anyone else's."

"Oh." Fuck, that wasn't what I expected the problem to be. "So, this car's OK then? Well, people-carrier, or whatever the fuck it is."

"Yep, it's great" Sookie said, leaning her head on my shoulder.

"So do you want to test-drive it?" I asked her after a few moments.

Sookie sat up and smiled at me, wiping her eyes. "Guess I should" she said, brightly. "Just to make sure I really like it."

I called the salesman back over and the three of us set out with Sookie driving. And talking. I was a bit worried that no person who was actually paying attention to the road should be talking that much, but the salesman, who was sitting in the back, didn't seem to worry that she might dent his vehicle.

When that was over, we parked it back on the lot and got out. "It's so shiny and white and…clean-looking" Sookie said, admiringly, running her hand over the paintwork.

"Yeah" I agreed. I thought it looked like a fucking barn on wheels but there was no accounting for taste sometimes. So long as she wasn't crying things were good.

It seemed to take a long time to negotiate the price. I could feel Sookie wanted to butt in a few times, but really, there was a lot of margin in car sales, I was pretty sure they could give me a decent discount for something that had been sitting on the lot for a while. So after we were all signed up, and we'd gone over things like window tinting options, and we'd agreed to collect the car on Tuesday evening, we finally started to walk back to the parking lot where we'd left my car.

Sookie hung onto my arm. "That's the nicest car I've ever had" she said. "It smells so good! And it doesn't have crumbs. Although I guess it will soon. Maybe I could ban eating in my car?"

"Yeah, good luck with that one."

"True, but it will be nice while it lasts. The kids will be excited when they see it."

"Yep, they will."

We reached our car and got in and Sookie started looking through her handbag for the ticket to get out. I knew this could take a while, so I didn't start the engine. "Oh, there it is" Sookie said in the end, pulling it out and handing it to me. I started the engine and reversed out of the spot.

"You know there's just one question I have" Sookie said to me.

"Uh-huh" I replied, hoping that the fucking idiot who was having several attempts at reversing into a space was going to hurry up and move soon.

"How did the car sales guy know your name?"

Fuck.

Thanks for reading!