Birds || Fuenciado

Chapter 28: Evening Primrose

"Home schooling isn't that bad," Tony explains to us a week and a half later. As a display of him becoming increasingly comfortable in our home, he's sitting upside down on the sofa; head dangling off the cushion, legs waving in the air as they hang off the back of the seat. "You can go to lessons in your pyjamas. And you can bring your pets. On the downside, I guess you get more homework. Because it's all homework, right? See what I did there?"

"I see what you did there," Jaime laughs, pushing his legs slightly as he walks past, munching on a waffle as he goes, and I stop sketching and look up from my watercolour notepad.

"What'll he do about exams?"

"I doubt he'll be made to do any this year," he says certainly as Doug bounces over, squeaky toy in his jaws, begging to be played with. Amused, Tony reaches an arm back and wriggles the toy, a long, soft item meant to resemble a lion. "He should take this year to recover and catch up. Next year he'll probably have to do the standardised exams like everyone else, probably at a test centre. It's just the matter of finding a few other tutors, and I have contacts by the bucketful. I also wouldn't worry about pay, I'm fairly sure since your mom is unemployed at the moment and considering your financial status anyway you can claim on the state if you need to."

"We'll find a way," I nod, and then pick my pale blue watercolour pen from the packet, give it a quick shake and remove the lid, tentatively touching it to the paper. It touches the boundary with a soft, smooth tip, and when I drag it slightly it glides across the watercolour paper easily. Taken by the colour and the movement of the pen itself, I actually gasp, smiling. Fascinated, I follow the outline I've drawn along the edge with the pens, beginning to fill in the colour. "Sarah?"

"Yes love?"

I stop with the pen for a moment and look over to where she's sitting in the armchair, ball of wool in her lap, knitting needles clicking gently as she struggles with each stitch of string. "I haven't seen Andrew since he offered to tutor Mike. So please tell him I'm even more grateful now than I was when he offered."

"It's no problem, darling," she says gently, those lovely bright eyes sparkling as she smiles and then returns to her knitting. She casts off the next stitch and then frowns at the needles, seemingly baffled. "Although, by form of early payment, I don't suppose you know how to knit? I have more stitches than when I started."

"How many did you have when you started?" Jaime asks, sitting down beside Tony the right way up as he finishes his waffle.

"Twenty."

"How many do you have now?"

"Eighty," she says dejectedly, and all three of us burst into laughter. I put the lid back on the pen and set it down beside the notepad, getting up from my chair and walking over to her.

"Thankfully, I do actually know what you've done. You'll have the string hanging on the wrong side of the needle, so when you're knitting the stitches you accidentally make more by looping them."

"There's a wrong side?"

"Uh...yeah," I laugh, taking the needles from her and picking the stitches off the needle, discarding the scarf she was attempting to make. Due to the phenomenal increase in stitches, it seems to resemble a wobbly, woolly, severely slanted trapezium and definitely would not be a functional scarf. Settling down on the arm of her chair, I start winding the string back around the needle and making twenty new stitches. I'm on loop number eleven when she scoffs to herself, shaking her head, and I draw my attention away from the needles to look at her. "What?"

"Honey..." she says adoringly, taking my left hand and looking at the ring on it. I can feel the blush tingling, but in a good kind of way. "Ugh. Look at you."