A Dozen Second Chances

‘Don’t hold back! Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you. You really don’t like him, do you?’

‘I hate him.’

When Tina flinched at the word, I sat back against the cushioned chair, swirling my cranberry juice. I had given the instinctive answer, but was it true? I had loved him once, but I didn’t now. I had hated him once, but that had been seventeen years ago. I hadn’t spent the intervening years sticking pins in a voodoo Paddy doll and cursing his name. There’d been no time for that, even if I’d felt inclined; I’d had Caitlyn to look after. My life had carried on, a satisfying one in many ways, especially where Caitlyn was concerned. Paddy Friel had rarely entered my thoughts, except when I’d been unfortunate and switched on the television at the wrong moment.

So no, perhaps I didn’t hate him now. But if I was being forced to examine my feelings, I’d never managed to reach indifference either. As for forgiveness … there weren’t enough years in eternity for me to ever arrive at that point.

‘How long did you go out with him for?’ Tina asked.

‘Almost three years, from near the end of our first year at university. We moved in together after we graduated.’ A memory flashed up, of that tiny rented flat on the first floor of a semi even smaller than the one I owned now; of how ridiculously excited we’d been to have a place to ourselves; of how I’d felt safe there with Paddy, little knowing he would hurt me more than anyone outside that flat could have done.

‘I’m guessing it ended badly. What did he do? Cheat? I don’t suppose he’s ever been short of offers.’

‘He wasn’t.’ And yet I had never doubted his fidelity. He had told me whenever girls tried to chat him up; we had laughed together at some of the ridiculous things they had done to gain his attention. Perhaps it would have been easier if he had cheated. Perhaps I would have found it easier to forgive him if I was the only person he had hurt.

‘He wasn’t unfaithful,’ I said. ‘Or not in the sense you mean. But he did break my faith in him.’

I studied Tina, considered the confused expression on her face. I didn’t talk about those days; everything was too closely bound together, the loss of Faye and of Dad, and Paddy’s betrayal, all jumbling together into one twisted knot of pain, so I couldn’t think of one of them without being reminded of the absence of them all. The acute feelings had faded, but they could never vanish. The encounter with Paddy had brought them closer to the surface than normal, and perhaps I needed to give them a moment’s airspace before wrapping them up again. I took a long drink of my cranberry juice.

‘When Faye died,’ I began, my heart weeping as it always would at the sound of those words, ‘Caitlyn went to stay with my parents. She’d had no contact with her father since she was born, and we didn’t know who he was so couldn’t get in touch. But anyway, she was ours: we couldn’t have given her up to a stranger.’

She had been the most adorable child: thick white-blonde hair, huge blue eyes, and the ability to wrap us all round her finger. She was the image of Faye in every way.

‘My dad wasn’t strong after suffering a heart attack a few months before, and it soon became clear that the arrangement wouldn’t work. The toll of his grief and the demands of a child were too much. I was living with Paddy at the time, and so the solution was obvious. Caitlyn would move in with us.’

How I had loved Paddy for agreeing to it! Despite the dramatic impact on our lives, the end to our plans to travel, he had backed me at once. We had begun by taking Caitlyn out with us for the odd day, so we could all get to know each other better, and my broken heart sputtered back to life when I saw my devastated niece take hold of Paddy’s hand in the park one day, and whisper in his ear.

‘So five or six weeks later, we packed up all her teddies and treasures and took her home to our flat, to begin our life as a family. And eight days later, just after we had celebrated her third birthday, just when Caitlyn had settled in and begun to trust us, to believe that we would always be there for her, Nigel Friel decided it wasn’t the life he wanted, packed his bags and left.’

Chapter 4

I put down my pen and read back the note I had written to Caitlyn, hoping I had caught the right tone: cheerful, not wistful; entertaining, not embarrassing; missing her, but not too much. I was out of practice at this sort of thing. It was years since I had written a letter rather than sent a text or email. In fact, the last person I had probably written to was … I sighed. He had proved he was good at leaving, so why couldn’t he leave my thoughts alone?

‘Shh!’ Rich turned up the volume on the television. ‘I’m trying to watch the football.’

The match looked no different to me than any other, but apparently it was crucial to the relegation positions and it was important enough to Rich that he had rushed through sex to be up in time to watch it. I hadn’t minded that so much, but it had ruined the shape of our afternoon. We were normally able to kill a couple of hours in bed, followed by a cup of tea and a cursory chat before I headed home – a decent length for a visit. Today the bed part had barely taken twenty minutes, and there was something seedy about me leaving for home so soon. So I’d taken out the herbal tea bags I’d bought for Caitlyn, wrapped them into a parcel, and written her a note.

I reached in my bag and took out one of the ‘Be Kind to Yourself’ vouchers. I needed to send her the first one, to show that I was keeping my promise, but what could I say? I had always been at pains to show no sign of regret at the direction my life had taken. I couldn’t stop the ‘what ifs’ occasionally sneaking into my head: when contributing to the wedding or baby collections at work; when I’d inadvertently caught stories on the news about amazing archaeological discoveries. But I’d kept them to myself. I hadn’t wanted Caitlyn ever to think I regretted giving it all up to be a mother to her. So how would it look that less than a week after she moved out, I had attended a talk on a subject that I had claimed not to miss? I decided to fudge it.

BE KIND TO YOURSELF

VOUCHER ONE

I, Eve Roberts, have been kind to myself by enjoying a night out with Tina!

That sounded suitably vague but fun, didn’t it? Although ‘enjoying’ was stretching the truth thin. I taped up the parcel. Rich was still engrossed in the football, oblivious to my presence other than the occasional tut as I unrolled a length of sticky tape. A rectangle of sunlight illuminated the carpet, picking out the fluff and crumbs that were scattered like confetti. I suddenly felt stifled.

‘I think I’ll take this to the post office and go for a run,’ I said. Rich pressed pause on the Sky remote control, and the football froze in mid-air. I was touched by this unexpected show of interest.

‘Are you coming back here?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’m leaving my car.’

‘Great.’ I smiled. How could I have thought he was oblivious? ‘Can you pick me up some cans on the way back? This is my last one.’ He waved a can of lager at me. ‘And if you take at least an hour, the match will be over, and I can join you in the shower.’

Clinging on to my smile as he winked at me and restarted the football, I changed into my running clothes and headed towards the post office in the centre of Inglebridge. The spring sunshine was surprisingly warm on my face, and as I jogged through the residential streets towards town, and relaxed into the rhythm of the run, I stamped out my irritation with Rich as my feet slapped against the pavement.

Had it always been like this? Such a one-dimensional connection, an arrangement more than a love affair? We had been seeing each other for two years now, a series of snatched afternoons and evenings that could just about be strung together and called a relationship, but it was a hollow one. I hadn’t met his children; he had only met Caitlyn because of an accidental encounter in the supermarket. We had never spent a whole night together or gone to social occasions as a couple. And I couldn’t complain, because wasn’t this exactly the type of casual relationship I had wanted, setting down the ground rules before we had even shared a kiss? He was a good-looking man, fit from playing football, and was single – quite a catch in a town that was popular with families. I’d done well to find him.

So why was I now feeling this creep of dissatisfaction with what we had? Because seeing Paddy again had reminded me what a real relationship could be like. The shared interests and mutual support. The conversation and the laughter. The excitement. And the pain. I should focus on remembering that.

Inglebridge town centre was bustling, as it always was on a sunny Saturday afternoon. It was a charming, slightly old-fashioned market town, with a mixture of stone buildings from various periods clustering round the market square. An elaborately carved market cross took pride of place in the centre of the square, open to the sides but covered overhead so that tired shoppers could shelter inside for a while and watch the world go by. I had fallen in love with the place on my first visit, enchanted by the independent shops, the traditional twice-weekly market, and the cobbled lanes and alleyways that led off the shopping streets down to the river, where a medieval drover’s bridge crossed the water. It had felt peaceful and safe, and exactly the sort of place where I wanted to bring up Caitlyn.

The quaintness of the town and the beauty of the surrounding countryside, not to mention the challenge of climbing Winlow Hill, drew a steady stream of tourists, particularly during the warmer months. As I jogged past The White Hart Hotel, a gorgeous Georgian building overlooking the market square, I came across the hotel’s owner, Lexy, updating the posters in the smart glass frames on each side of the entrance.

‘Tourist season begins!’ she said, waving at the poster. I paused to read it: a special deal for dinner, bed and breakfast with a picnic and guides to local walks thrown in. ‘At last! It felt like winter was never going to end this year. Let’s hope this sunshine is here to stay. What do you think? Is it a tempting offer?’

‘Sounds great.’ I wondered about who would come: retired couples perhaps, able to enjoy a midweek break, or younger pairs escaping real life for a relaxing weekend in the countryside. It was something else I had never experienced with Rich; neither of us had shown any desire to go on holiday together. Was that normal? Normal for me. And the other sort of normal hadn’t worked out well, had it?

‘Now that the nights are getting longer,’ Lexy continued, locking the glass display case, ‘I’ve been thinking about ways to attract people in to the town centre again in the evening. You know the sort of thing – gin tastings, special menu nights – things I tried over winter but that weren’t enough to tempt people out in the snow. We could do with some regular events too, so what do you think about setting up a community running group?’

‘But you’re not a runner.’

‘Not yet, but I could do with getting more exercise. And you must know every possible route around here, so I thought that you were the ideal person to lead the group!’

I’d certainly run right into that trap. Lexy was smiling in what she no doubt hoped was a winsome way. It reminded me, fleetingly, of Faye. Even now, after so many years, the combination of grief and guilt felt like a fist thumped into my chest.

‘What would it involve?’

‘Not much! You would just lead everyone on a circular run – nothing too far, as we need to appeal to all abilities – or lack of ability. It won’t be much trouble, will it, as you go running most days anyway. And now you can have company!’

It was tempting to point out that I didn’t need company; that one of the benefits of running, apart from the physical exercise, was the freedom to switch off my thoughts and be truly alone.

‘What’s in it for you, if you’re not going to run?’ I asked instead.

‘I’ll join in sometimes, if it’s not raining. And not too cold. I thought everyone could meet at The White Hart, so the run would start and end here. Then I could offer a discount on food and drink to anyone who had taken part. What do you think? It would be more fun for you than sitting at home on your own, now Caitlyn’s gone. You’re allowed to enjoy yourself! Although I still wish you’d enjoy yourself with a bottle of wine in my bar …’

Something about Lexy’s words made an unconscious echo of Caitlyn. Be kind to yourself, she had instructed me – and this would fall within the spirit of her rules, wouldn’t it? Perhaps it would make a change to run with other people. What harm could it do? I had navigated the best part of seventeen years keeping a wary distance from people, with Tina being the only exception; making acquaintances but not engaging my emotions, so that I wouldn’t have to face the pain of loss again. Lycra and sweat were unlikely to change that.

By the time I had run a couple of miles out of town, as far as the ugly 1960s secondary school where I worked and which was surrounded by a barricade of conifers to prevent it blotting the landscape, I was beginning to warm to the running group idea. My dad’s premature death from a heart attack had galvanised me to change my diet and increase my exercise levels; I wasn’t obsessed with keeping fit, but I tried to encourage healthy living where I could. This running group could be good for Inglebridge, and perhaps I could put posters up around the corridors and encourage some of the students to take part too. It was worth a try, wasn’t it?

Mentally designing the poster, I didn’t stop to check the driveway into school before crossing. It was Saturday afternoon – who would be there? A reckless idiot was the answer. I had taken two steps from the pavement when a racy, low-slung sports car tore down the drive at top speed, clipped me with the wing mirror, and roared off with an elongated hoot of aggression from the horn. As I tumbled to the ground, I caught sight of a scowling woman, a similar age to me, raising her hands in irritation and mouthing words that I was glad I couldn’t hear.

I landed in doggy-style on my hands and knees, winded but otherwise unscathed, apart from some light grazes. My cheap leggings, on the other hand, had given in at the first hint of trouble and now sported a large hole in the knee; all the fashion in some quarters, but I guessed I was too old to pull off the ripped look. The perpetrator was long gone, having hit and run without so much as a backward glance.

I hauled myself up, brushed off the dirt, and hobbled a short way down the drive to check the school. The gates to the playground were shut and locked, as they should be, so it didn’t look like the girl racer had been a burglar, unless she was casing the joint for a proper attempt. It was probably just someone misdirected by a sat nav, I decided, and didn’t give the incident another thought as I ran back to Rich’s house.

*

It was obvious that Gran had something on her mind within minutes of my arrival at The Chestnuts the following day. She didn’t press her emergency button for tea with the same relish as normal and showed hardly a flicker of enthusiasm when I pulled out the all-butter shortbread.

‘What’s up with your hand?’ she asked, as I tore open the packet.

‘Oh, this?’ I held out my palm. There was a red, grazed patch on the fleshy pad above my wrist, a legacy from my fall yesterday. ‘It’s nothing, only a scratch. I had a tumble yesterday while I was out running.’

I spared her the details; I didn’t want her to worry, and it sounded unnecessarily dramatic to say that I had almost been run over. After a night’s reflection I was ready to concede that I wasn’t entirely blameless, by running off the footpath without checking first. It was a lesson I had spent years drumming into Caitlyn, so I had no excuse for ignoring it myself.

‘Have you dabbed it with TCP?’

That made me smile. TCP had been Gran’s answer to all our childhood complaints, from cuts and scrapes to sore throats. Even now the smell could take me back instantly to those carefree days, when we had stayed with Gran during school holidays; when we had run wild in the nearby park, and cycled around the streets with children we had never met before but who shared a common goal to have fun; when summers had always seemed long and sunny, and we had believed our whole lives would be the same.

‘Yes, of course.’ It was a lie. I couldn’t bear to smell it now. ‘It’s nothing. But what’s the matter with you? You don’t seem your usual mischievous self. You haven’t harassed the nurses yet or criticised the other residents.’

‘It’s the minibus,’ Gran said, shaking her head. ‘We’ve lost it.’

‘It’s been stolen?’ I immediately thought of the woman in the sports car yesterday. Perhaps I should have been more concerned, if there was a crime wave sweeping town.

‘No, it’s conked out. It’s been on its last legs for a long time, but last Wednesday it wouldn’t budge. It was cinema night too, the most popular outing of the month. You can imagine the to-do.’

I could; I knew how important the monthly trip to the cinema was at The Chestnuts. It wasn’t a real cinema – Inglebridge wasn’t cosmopolitan enough for that – but the old playhouse held weekly screenings of classic films and the best seats in the house were reserved for The Chestnuts when it was their night out.

‘Can it be mended?’

‘No, it’s knackered. Fit for nowt but the scrapheap, like the rest of us. On the up side, it’s been a good week. The minibus is the only loss we’ve had.’

I hated it when Gran spoke like this, making light of mortality. Death held no fear for her; she was fond of telling me that she’d had a good innings, and wouldn’t grumble when her chips were up. She wanted to go while she still had full control of her mind and her bladder, she would say, and I could understand that. But I wasn’t ready to lose anyone else. I wouldn’t ever be ready.

‘So what will happen?’ I asked. ‘Will the minibus be replaced?’

‘Aye, but only if someone snuffs it and leaves money to this place. There’s nowt spare in the kitty at the moment.’

I didn’t ask how Gran knew the financial situation of The Chestnuts. She knew everything.

‘Could you use taxis for the time being?’

‘We’re banned since Mr Craig had an unfortunate accident in one a couple of months back.’ Gran wrinkled her nose, and I didn’t press for more details. ‘We need to raise some money, but heaven knows how we’ll do that. There’s barely one fully functioning body between us.’

‘There’s the summer fair,’ I reminded her. It was well supported by the town, as so many of the locals had sent relatives to The Chestnuts at one time or another. ‘That will bring in some money.’

‘That’s earmarked for a new bathroom on the second floor. We need summat else. Come on, our Eve. You were always the clever one. Can you not come up with something?’

Like what? My gaze roved around the room, seeing all the dozing residents. A sponsored sleep? Then I paused at a painting of Winlow Hill over the fireplace. It wasn’t one of the famous Three Peaks in the area, but it was still a popular climb, and one that walkers liked to tick off the list.

‘What about a sponsored climb of Winlow Hill?’ I said.

‘Aye, that’s one solution. Kill us all off and then there’ll be no need for a minibus …’

I laughed. ‘I didn’t mean the residents. Relatives, people from the town, and perhaps tourists too … We could sell drinks and cakes at the bottom. I wonder if we could try for a world record, for the most people to climb the hill in a day? If we could find an angle to interest the press, we might draw a good crowd. How much would we need, do you know?’

‘Beats me. Do I look like a used bus salesman?’

I took out my phone, and quickly searched the internet for an idea of the cost of a relatively new minibus. My heart sank.

‘It could be £20,000, depending on how many seats you need,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise it would be so much. We’d need hundreds of walkers to raise even a fraction of that sum.’

‘We’re not beaten yet,’ Gran said. ‘What we need is someone famous to head the campaign.’

‘We don’t know anyone famous,’ I said, still flicking through minibus adverts on my phone. ‘Old Fred Taylor from Fell Farm appeared on Countryfile last year, but I can’t see him drawing a crowd …’

I trailed off as a horrible suspicion crept into my head. I looked up. Gran was grinning at me and wagging her finger in my direction. How could I have missed where she was heading?

‘No.’

‘Why not? Your Paddy would be perfect. Send him up the hill and you’ll have dozens of lasses running up after him.’

‘No.’

‘Don’t be so stubborn. We need that minibus or we’ll all go doolally cooped up here over the summer.’

‘I’m not asking any favours from Paddy Friel.’ I couldn’t believe she had even suggested it. But Gran didn’t know the full story behind his departure. She had been so fond of Paddy that I hadn’t wanted to upset her. As far as she was concerned, we had mutually agreed to separate, a platonic break with no hard feelings. She knew nothing of his heartlessness, or my heartbreak.

‘Why not? He’s not shy of anything that brings him a bit of publicity, is he?’ She reached over and patted my knee. ‘Besides, I think he owes you, don’t you?’

Chapter 5

The last thing I expected to see, when I pulled into the school car park the following morning, was a racy, low-slung sports car occupying a space. And not just any space; it was parked in mine. We didn’t have official named spaces, but by convention we all had our regular spots and would stick to them, unless there was a torrential rainstorm in the morning, in which case it was every staff member for themselves in parking near the door.

‘Look at that,’ I said to Tina, who shared the journey in with me. I pointed at the offending vehicle.

‘Graham would love one of those,’ she said, referring to her mild-mannered husband. ‘He fancies himself as James Bond in disguise.’

It was an excellent disguise: plump, quiet and kind, he suited his ancient Volvo estate more than a sports car.

‘I wasn’t admiring it,’ I said, pulling in to the space next to it, and already dreading the backlash from the head of languages. ‘It’s in my space.’

‘So it is. Who do you think it belongs to? Has someone been on a spending spree this weekend? My money’s on that new maths teacher. I’ve caught him using my mug, and he definitely has an inflated notion of his own sex appeal.’

‘I saw it here on Saturday, and it wasn’t the maths teacher driving. It was a woman, but I didn’t recognise her. We’re not expecting a new teacher, are we?’

‘Only the interim head, and I’m sure she wasn’t due to start until next week.’

Tina promised to send me a text if she discovered a stranger in the staffroom, and I headed the opposite way to my desk in what was laughingly called my office, although it was no more than a cubbyhole outside the head’s room, and the enormous multi-function printer took up more space than I did. This morning, I was surprised to see a scruffy cardboard box occupying the centre of the desk, in the one area that had been free of detritus when I had left on Friday night.

As I was staring at it, wondering where it could have come from, and what unpleasant task it must contain if someone had dumped it and run, the door to the head’s office jerked open, giving me another surprise. Our head teacher, Mrs Armstrong, had gone off on long-term sick leave a couple of weeks ago, and we’d bobbed along in rudderless fashion since then as the deputy head had also moved on at Christmas and not yet been replaced; for some reason, our middle-ranking school buried in the Lancashire countryside wasn’t attracting many applicants for the role.