My Uncle Charlie by Julie Shaw

Author:Julie Shaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-10-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

December 1953

Charlie was besotted. There was no other word for it. Not only did he have the wife of his dreams in Betty, but now he had this perfect little princess as well. This perfect daughter that had only been a few weeks on the earth, and who he could already see was going to be as beautiful as her mother, however crumpled and red-faced she’d been when she’d arrived.

He gazed down at her, and offered her a little finger to hold on to, marvelling at the way her own impossibly tiny fingers gripped with the power of a vice. It stirred something in him that he couldn’t quite articulate – and never would out loud, because he’d sound like the soppiest bugger on the planet. But he didn’t need to. Betty knew. She’d said as much, over and over. ‘Charlie Hudson,’ she’d say, grinning at him, ‘you’re as daft as a brush, you.’ Then she’d shake her head, but at the same time smile a contented little smile. And she was right. Baby Elizabeth hadn’t stolen his heart. She’d just swelled it like it had never been swelled before. Swelled it so much that at times he felt it might burst out of his chest.

Not that he’d gone soft. Things had certainly changed since his marriage – he’d discovered how it felt to be properly happy, for one thing – but it was business as usual in all other respects. This all-consuming love might have melted him a little, but just as powerful was the protective rage that sometimes came over him, thinking that anyone might hurt her. And as he rocked his daughter now, he made a solemn and silent promise that he would kill anyone who ever tried to harm her.

Betty was napping on the sofa. It was a Thursday and she’d had a long and broken night nursing the baby, so when Charlie got up from where he was sitting, Elizabeth having drifted off to sleep, he was careful not to wake either of them.

He smiled as he noticed the sprig of mistletoe that had appeared in the doorway, dangling from a nail that had been bashed in. Betty must have put it there only recently, ready for Christmas. The big day was only three weeks away and she’d been thinking of little else. She had a childlike enthusiasm for everything to do with it, and this year, with a baby, she had gone into overdrive – making Charlie almost dizzy with her festive preparations.

Elizabeth needed to be put down in her cot, back upstairs, and on his way out of the room with her he paused under the sprig of hanging greenery, and placed a kiss on her fat little cheek. He then tiptoed upstairs with her, and placed her gently in her crib; a present from old Mr Cappovanni, who had made it himself, it was just about as beautiful a crib as either he or Betty could imagine, and set off by

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