Keira's POV:
After the scare of losing Charlie and Ellie, I don't leave them for the rest of the evening. After our walk and Charlie spotting someone watching us we all head back to the main building of SGP. Once we're all inside and are chatting to Niamh and Katie about their adventures of the afternoon on our way to our room, I notice that Ellie has fallen asleep in Lucy's arms and nudge Lucy to tell her. We both look down at the sleeping toddler in her arms, with her tiny fingers wrapped around one of Lucy's fingers. Charlie comes over to us and snakes her way in between us hugging Lucy. "When's dinner ?", she asks quietly, "we have a meeting with Sarina first and then we can go to dinner", I explain to her quietly, while Lucy continues chatting to Niamh and Katie. I whisper to Lucy that I'm going to grab Ellie's stroller. Charlie looks up at me as I say this and grabs my hand, gesturing that she's gonna come with me. We head down the hallway to the storage room, where we were keeping Ellie's stroller. I also nip into our room and grab her blanket and my hoodie. Me and Charlie walked back down the hallway with the stroller. When we reached Lucy, we noticed that a lot more of the team had arrived back from wherever they were and were all chatting in the hallway. Lucy smiled over at us and slowly walked over to us, she carefully bent down and lowered Ellie into the stroller and detaching Ellie's hand away from her finger, then she took the blanket from the handle of the stroller and lay it on top of Ellie and kissed her temple gently to avoid her waking up. "Enjoy your snooze, Effie", she whispered to her before, slowly standing back up straight again. She stood next to me and wrapped her arm around my waist i leant on her. We stood like that for a few minutes, until Arjan, the assistant coach told us to head to the meeting room. I gently pushed the stroller, while talking to Leah and G. Charlie walked behind me with Lucy, who was talking to Lucy Staniforth as we all headed to the meeting room. Before Le could open the door to the meeting room , one of the staff members came up to Lucy and asked to speak to her, Lucy walked to the side and began speaking to the staff member. Charlie just stood there not sure whether to come with me or wait for Lucy. She didn't have to wait long before Lucy came back over to us and told Charlie to head in with me and then gave me a quick kiss on the cheek before telling me to head on in and she said "tell Sarina, I'll be a few minutes late to the meeting, but tell her to start without me", before quickly heading back down the hallway. I just shook my head and decided to let it go. I followed Leah through the door she held open for me and Charlie followed in behind me. We sat down near the back and left a seat free for Lucy, for when she came back. I handed Charlie my phone and she immediately started playing whatever games I had on it.
15 minutes into the meeting and Lucy finally opened the door and slide into her seat beside me. She placed her hand on my knee and rubbed it gently to get my attention. I turned to look at her and she slowly leaned in and whispered "we need to talk later, but don't worry about it", before quickly pecking my lips and turning her head back to focus on what Sarina was saying. I just nodded my head, so she understood that I'd heard her and turned back to listen again.
At the end of the meeting, everyone started heading to dinner, I quickly checked to see that Ellie was slowly waking up from her nap. Once I picked her up out of the stroller she immediately cuddled into me, Lucy came over to us after speaking to Sarina, "look who's awake", she said talking to Ellie. The minute Ellie realised it was Lucy talking to her she immediately started squirming and reached her hands out "mumma", she said while trying to grab Lucy. I handed her over to Lucy who started tickling her. Ellie just giggled and tried to stop Lucy, I just looked over adoringly at them both. I then looked around as we were walking to dinner and spotted Charlie racing Millie, Jill, Rachel and Hempo down the hallway. I thought to myself 'this is how I like it, seeing the 3 most important people in my life, smiling and laughing, made me smile'.
After dinner most people went to the chill room, except for me, Lucy, and the two girls. We headed up the stairs to our room. Once inside Charlie changed into her pj's and Lucy changed Ellie and we all headed back downstairs again. Tonight's team bonding was a movie. Everyone sat down either on beanbags, chairs or the floor. I sat down on a beanbag with Lucy beside me and Elleã snuggled into her chest, Charlie sat on the floor in front of me as I twirled her hair round my fingers. Before the movie started I went to the kitchen to heat up Elleã's bottle, just so I didn't have to disturb anyone during the movie to do it. I came back and handed it to Lucy who thanked me, before showing Ellie the bottle, whispering "look what mama has brought you", Ellie just smiles up at her.
During the movie I turn to look over at Lucy who is holding the bottle up for Ellie who is holding onto Lucy's jumper while watching the movie. Everyone decided to watch Cheaper by the Dozen and then G turned to me and asked "are you and Lucy gonna have 12 kids ?", I reply quickly "no, 2 is perfect for us". Everyone just laughs and we continue watching the movie. Sometime during the movie, Charlie comes over and moves onto my bean bag and leans into my side. When the movie ends, she slowly gets up and waits for me to stand up. Lucy carefully stands up with Ellie in her arms fast asleep and all four of us head out while saying our good nights to everyone. We start to head in the direction of the lift, but Charlie pulls us away and we then go up the stairs. Once we reach our room Charlie heads into the bathroom to brush her teeth and then gets into her bed, looking exhausted. Me and Lucy go in and Lucy puts Ellie to bed, I whisper to Charlie " I love you so much Charlotte Tough Bronze", she then mutters "Walsh", "what" I ask her, "it's Charlotte Tough Bronze - Walsh", she replies with her eyes closed. I smile widely and lean down and kiss the top of her head, "goodnight, sweet dreams". I then give Ellie a kiss and whisper "good night, mama loves you baby girl". Lucy says goodnight to Charlie and we slip out of the room, quietly closing the door.
We both get ready for bed and once we're both in bed Lucy turns to me and begins to talk.
Lucy's POV:
"When you were in the meeting earlier, I was told that there was someone looking for me at reception, so I headed down and when I got there I was introduced to a woman named Louise Clark", I pause for a second before continuing, "she introduced herself and then explained that she is a lawyer and that she was there to tell me that Mr and Mrs Lowry were going to fight me for custody of Charlie", I stopped there and looked over at Keira, she looked shocked to say the least.
Keira's POV:
Once Lucy mentioned the name Lowry I knew who she was talking about, Charlie's dads parents. I'd met them once back when me and Lucy and Charlie were out for dinner, I was pregnant with Elleã at the time. They came into the same restaurant as us and immediately recognised Lucy. Mrs Lowry tried talking to Charlie, but Charlie climbed under the table and squeezed herself up onto Lucy's lap and hid her face in Lucy's shoulder. They left soon after that and Lucy explained to me how Mrs Lowry especially, had blamed Lucy for her sons death, even though he overdosed after telling Lucy he wasn't going to have anything to do with Charlie. They never got in contact again after that interaction. So when Lucy told me right there that they wanted custody of Charlie I was shocked, but most of all I was angry. I looked up at Lucy and said "we're not letting her go", Lucy just wrapped her arms around me and lay down with my head on her chest. We lay there for a few minutes with Lucy stroking her fingers through my hair when I whispered "she's ours and she's not going anywhere okay ?", Lucy replied with "she's ours", she then kissed my hair and we both said goodnight.
