After collecting Alice from outside Alejandra's Hair Salon, Kate drives her campervan into the centre of Mettleham. Along the way, Alice manages to squeeze herself into the passenger seat at the front which has Oliver's carseat taking up most of the space. She and Oliver then have a riot of laughs and giggles, setting Kate in a good mood for the coming shopping trip in which she plans to spend the birthday money from her parents. Or, alternatively, simply deposit it into her bank account. She has a strong feeling she will not be able to resist spending the majority of it today even though a one-off £700 added to her household finances would certainly help to keep her head above water. She visits, one after another, all the usual places she suspects might have a parking space but is out of luck. "I guess it's busy in town today, guys," she says and decides she will try the large underground parking garage attached to a Morrison's supermarket. She hates going in there, finding the subterranean structure gloomy and depressing with its artificial lighting, but sometimes what one wants is not what is available. However, because of the condition that anyone parking there must produce a Morrison's till receipt no older than 24 hours and no less than £15 in order to exit without paying a hefty parking charge, there is a much greater chance of finding a space. Which she does, and she parks up. "Alice... Oliver... remind me to buy some groceries from Morrison's when we come back, okay?" "Come on, Ollie!" Alice laughs as she tickles his tummy. "Mummy's stopped the van so we can get out now and get ourselves some retail-based excitement!" "Hang on a bit, Alice," Kate tells her friend. "Let me get his buggy out the back first, then you can unstrap him and get him free." "Awww... Mummy's no fun, is she, Oliver?" Alice puts on a highly exaggerated pout, which makes Oliver lapse into another fit of fresh giggling as he watches her face contort into strange shapes. "We can escape when she's not looking and I'll walk you about. That'll be fun, won't it?" Kate gets out of the van and opens the side door so she can enter the back compartment and retrieve Oliver's baby buggy. She starts unfolding it as Alice exits the passenger side and lifts Oliver out of his carseat. She lowers him to the ground and keeps hold of his hands, which he has raised up to grasp Alice's fingers. "Ooh, Ollie! You've only got socks on, lad," Alice says as she notices what is on the young boy's feet. "I'd better watch out where I'm leading you. Don't want cuts and scratchies on our toesies, do we?" Kate looks over at her son as she finishes securing the wheels into position on the buggy. "Yeah, he absolutely hates shoes. I'm trying to get him used to wearing them but I didn't bother today because otherwise he'd only start screaming all the time and trying to pull them off." Alice tuts with a theatrical roll of her eyes. "Oliver Hewson... what a naughty boy you are. But you're still as cute as a button." She starts shuffling forward, holding Oliver up by his hands as he walks in front of her. "Al-eee, Al-eee, oher dere!" he shouts and Alice can feel him wanting to point with his right hand towards a red EXIT sign glowing brightly and attractively so she lets go and sees how steady he is being held by one hand. He points at the EXIT sign and Alice is delighted when she feels that his walking is steady and balanced with only one hand being used for support. "Kate, Kate, look!" she says urgently to catch Kate's attention. "Should I try letting go completely?" Kate is folding a blanket she intends to put over Oliver's legs once he is in the buggy and she looks at her son. "If you think he's steady enough," she says. "He's quite good at walking a few steps all by himself but he gets too excited and tries running and then he gets his feet all tangled up and usually falls so get ready to catch him if... or when, I should say... he does start to go over." She finishes sorting out the blanket and stands up to watch Oliver released from Alice's grasp. "There you go, Ollie, you're free!" Alice says as she moves her left hand away, leaving the little boy standing by himself. He takes a cautious step, followed by another, and then a third accompanied by the start of joyous laughter. All the while, Alice is walking behind him with hands at the ready to catch him at the earliest sign of stumbling. Rapidly, Oliver takes more and more steps, each one quicker than the previous until, as predicted, the motion gets slightly too much for his coordination and his foot does not lift far enough so that his toes do not clear the ground and they become folded underneath, starting a tumble. Alice sees him quickly list to one side and in an instant she swoops down and lifts him up, using the forward momentum of them both to swing around with a cry of "Whooooo... gotcha, my beautiful boy!" Oliver thinks this is most amazing thing ever and starts a frenzy of giggling. Alice pulls him tight into a hug, kissing him on the brow. "You are the cutest thing I have ever seen, Little Ollie. You're just so adorable!" Kate has come up beside the pair and she smiles at the scene in front of her. Alice notices and turns to her friend. "Kate... seriously... you are the luckiest woman alive having this amazing little boy in your life. I love him so much, he's just too much fun!" Kate grins with maternal pride. "Yeah, he's quite awesome. Most of the time, anyway. If I'd put shoes on him before coming out today, you'd be seeing a whole different side to him." "Nah, he'd still be lovely," Alice says. She hugs Oliver a few seconds more before lowering him into the baby buggy Kate has now got ready. She sighs as she watches Kate fasten him in. "I wish I had one of my own..." she says wistfully. Kate finishes securing her son so he cannot fall out and looks up at Alice. "You can still have one, you know? It's not like you're too old or anything!" she says. "And I know you're fully aware of how they're made. You certainly got lots of practice back in our Uni days, that's for sure!" "Hey, you!" Alice protests with a very light and playful tap of her foot at Kate's butt, conveniently close as Kate is still crouching down to tuck the blanket over Oliver's legs. "Less of that talk in front of my innocent little Ollie, if you don't mind!" "Oh, he's your Oliver now, is he?" It is Kate's turn to make an obviously fake protest in keeping with their current mood. She stands up and turns around to return to the van and close the doors. Alice shrugs. "Well... yeah... I'd take him off your hands in a heartbeat," she says. Kate pauses just as she is about to raise the keyfob to set the van's alarm and notices the levity that had previously pervaded their banter has disappeared from Alice's response. For a brief second, she feels an unexplainable chill but quickly dismisses it as overactive imagination kicking in at the wrong time. Only when I'm writing my novels, not when I'm having a laugh with a mate! she scolds herself and completes locking up her van. "Okay, Miss Cherwell," Kate announces, grabbing the handlebar of Oliver's baby carriage, "let's get out there and hit that high street. Those clothes are not going to buy themselves, are they!" (Posed and rendered in PoserPro 11, clothes and blanket---but not footwear---created in Marvelous Designer 9.5, postwork in PSP 2023.)