Even though it’s my first day back, I’m going to have to leave the office early in order to meet Tom and Jessica from school. If I can’t get hold of Kati, how can I be sure that she’s going to be there to collect my children? I glance at the clock. Three-thirty. I try Kati’s phone for the millionth time. A big fat nothing. Now I’m going to have to explain my plight to Gavin and then fly to get to the school in time.
Just at this moment Lawrence bowls in. That’s all I need.
‘Amy . . .’
I hold up my hand. ‘Lawrence, I have to leave. Now. I’m really, really sorry. My au pair’s let me down and my children will be standing outside the school with no one to collect them.’
The full Holmes frown is bestowed on me again.
Then my mobile phone rings and his frown becomes a great line of furrows as we’re technically not allowed personal telephone calls during working hours either. ‘This could be from her,’ I say, and I pick up anyway.
‘Hello, Mrs Ashurst. It’s Wayne at Collier’s here.’ The estate agent.
‘I’m busy right now,’ I say reluctantly. I hope he’s phoning me to say that the sale of Helmshill Grange has finally been completed. That would certainly be a weight off my mind. ‘Can I call you back?’
‘I won’t interrupt your fun, Amy,’ Lawrence says with raised eyebrows. Then he strides away, slamming the office door as he leaves.
I sigh and speak to Wayne as I shrug on my coat, grab my bag and make for the door. ‘I hope you’ve got some good news for me,’ I say wearily.
‘Er . . . ’fraid not,’ he says, clearing his throat. ‘The Gerner-Bernards should have gone to their solicitors this afternoon to sign the contracts.’
‘But they didn’t.’
‘That’s a correct assessment of the situation,’ he agrees. ‘They said they needed more time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘I was unable to obtain that information, Mrs Ashurst.’ Estate agent speak for ‘I’m as clueless as you are.’
‘So when
are
they going to sign?’
There’s an uncomfortable pause at the other end of the line, then, ‘I’m not in a position to answer that.’
I puff down the phone at him. ‘I don’t need to tell you that I have to get this sorted out as soon as possible.’
‘I understand that,’ Wayne tells me.
‘Get back to me as soon as you can.’ I hang up and check the time. It’s nearly quarter to four already, so I fly out of the office and practically run up towards the Tube as fast as my heels can carry me.
It’s only a few stops but, at this rate, I’m not going to make it in time. Before I go underground, I punch the number of the school into my phone and, when the secretary answers, I explain my predicament. ‘Can someone keep an eye on the children until I get there, please?’
‘I think that the children have already left,’ she says. ‘I’ll dash outside now and call you right back.’
The train rattles through the tunnels while I stand and gnaw my fingernails to the quick. How can I have been so stupid, to have trusted someone else with my children? They’ll be outside in the dark waiting for Kati, terrified when she hasn’t turned up.
As soon as I burst out of the Tube station and am overground again, my phone rings. ‘They’re not here,’ the secretary tells me. ‘I’ve looked everywhere, but I can’t see them. I’m sorry, Mrs Ashurst. We’ll keep looking.’
Now my mouth is dry, my heart’s pounding in my chest and, suddenly, I can’t stop the tears from streaming down my face.
I kick off my heels and run down the road as fast as I can, arms pumping, calves screaming in pain. If they’ve decided to walk home by themselves, I might just catch them up. I thought I’d taught them so well. I thought they would have gone back inside to tell one of their teachers that no one had come to collect them. Why have they wandered off into the night alone? I think back to the time they went out onto the moors with Hamish. I hope they haven’t taken this opportunity to try to walk back to Yorkshire.
I’m almost back at the flat and I still haven’t seen them. They should be on this road if they’ve walked home. The lights of Lancaster Court are burning bright ahead of me. Then I see that there’s a light on in our window too. Did I leave it on this morning? My legs sprint faster and I can feel my blood pressure soaring through the roof.
I fumble with my key, then burst through the door. Hamish heralds my arrival with a frantic bark and frenzied bouncing. I fight my way past him.
Falling into the living room, I’m convinced that it will be as empty as the grave and, at the very least, Tom and Jessica will have been abducted by paedophiles on their way back from school. Instead, I find them sprawled on the sofa, amid the unpacked cardboard boxes, watching
Happy Feet
on the DVD with a glass of milk and a biscuit each. My sobbing is renewed and I rush to them, hugging my children to me.
‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’ Jessica asks, with one eye still on the dancing penguin in the background.
‘Your feet are bleeding,’ Tom tells me as he tries to prise me off him.
I look down to see that my tights are ribboned and my feet are raw.
Behind me a voice says, ‘Hello, Mrs Ashurst. You are home very early.’
I nearly jump out of my skin. ‘What are
you
doing here?’
Kati stares at me, confused. ‘I thought that was our arrangement. I have collected the children from school.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I’ve tried to call you all day and have just got your voicemail.’
More confusion. She shrugs. ‘I don’t know why.’
I punch her number into my phone. Kati’s phone doesn’t ring, but the robotic voice answers.
She takes the phone off me and looks at the display. ‘You have one of the numbers wrong, Mrs Ashurst. You have been calling another person.’
‘I have?’
‘Why are you crying?’ my daughter wants to know.
‘Nothing, nothing.’ I cry louder. How can I hold down an executive position when I can’t even get a simple phone number right? ‘I’m being silly.’
Jessica looks at me as if to say that’s nothing new.
‘Shall I phone Guy?’ Tom wants to know, his face anxious. Perhaps my son thinks that I’m going to pot again. Perhaps I am.
Pulling myself together, I wipe my tears away. ‘No. No. I’ve just missed you today. That’s all.’
They both look at me warily.
‘Our new school’s very smelly,’ Jessica says with a pout.‘I don’t think that I want to go back there tomorrow.’
How can I tell them that I feel the same way about my new job? How can I tell them that my new young, thrusting boss scares the life out of me? How can I tell them that I want to be at home for them, to care for them myself, not to leave them with an Estonian au pair, no matter how reliable she seems to be?
Hamish comes up and pushes his muzzle into my hands, whining as he does. Even the bloody dog looks miserable and I cry even more at the sight of his hideous metal frame poking through his skin. It’s my fault he’s in this state. It’s my fault that my children are at the mercy of strangers while I go out to work.
I’m a crap dog owner and a crap mother. Tears prick my eyes again. And I realise that I’m struggling to do this. I’m struggling to do this alone.
Chapter Ninety-Nine
A
my had called him last night. Completely out of the blue. They hadn’t been in contact since she’d moved back to London and he’d missed her more than he ever could have imagined. His joy at hearing her voice had, however, been short lived. ‘She sounded so miserable on the phone,’ Guy said.
‘So you’re just going to drop everything and go to London to see her?’ Cheryl asked incredulously.
‘Yes,’ Guy replied. Frankly, he was worried sick about Amy despite her reassurances that she was fine. She certainly hadn’t sounded fine. He was glad that she’d phoned him when she was feeling down, but it was torture to be so far away from her and unable to do anything useful to help.
His receptionist rolled her eyes. ‘It must be love.’
‘It must be,’ he agreed.
‘Good for you,’ she said with a smile. ‘About time.’ She leaned on the desk. ‘You realise that there’ll be a lot of very irate clients this weekend.’
‘Yes,’ he said.‘But it’s about time that I put myself first. Stephen and the guinea pig population of Scarsby can, I’m very sure, manage without me for two days.’
‘Is this really you?’ she teased. ‘Or have you been abducted by aliens and given a brain transplant?’
‘This is really me. The
new
me.’
‘Then you should be making tracks, otherwise you’ll spend the entire weekend sitting in traffic.’ Cheryl stood up and hugged him. ‘You’d better come back.’
‘I’ll see you on Monday morning,’ Guy assured her. ‘Bright and early.’
His spirit and heart felt light as he jumped into the Range Rover and headed out towards the motorway. It had been years since he’d been back to London. Five years, to be exact. He’d fled from Town after his relationship with Laura had broken up and he’d never looked back since. The big city lights no longer held him in thrall and he wondered if he’d feel differently, now that he was going to see Amy and the children. He couldn’t believe how much he’d missed them all in the time that they’d been away. How on earth was he going to cope with their absence longterm?
It was true that Amy’s phone call had worried him. She’d sounded on the verge of tears and it seemed that going back to her old company wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. The children didn’t like their new school and, according to Amy, even Hamish wasn’t being Hamish. Only Milly Molly Mandy, it seemed, was unfazed by the upheaval. But that was cats for you every time.
Guy had lain awake all night worrying about her, which prompted his decision to do his knight in shining armour impersonation. Cheryl had been suitably impressed and he only hoped that Amy would feel the same too. She’d certainly sounded relieved when he called her first thing this morning to tell her that he was planning to head straight down to see her.
It was dark now; he’d been sitting in traffic for hours and had long since developed hundred-yard stare. How different this was to pottering round the green lanes of the dales and moors. He’d forgotten that this number of cars actually existed.
Finding Amy’s flat was easy enough, but locating a parking space was less so. Frustratingly, he was still circling her place a quarter of an hour after arriving. He felt like abandoning his vehicle in the middle of the road. How did people do this every day? Then he got lucky and squeezed into a space that he didn’t actually think was big enough to accommodate the Range Rover. He was feeling ragged by the time he pressed her doorbell, but the sound of Hamish’s frenzied barking lifted his flagging energy levels.
The block of flats looked depressingly dreary and it was hard for him to form a picture of Amy and the children having a cosy family life in this bleak place. Then Amy opened the door and her smile nearly broke his heart. She looked drawn, pale - as bad as she had just after Will had died - and he wanted to take her in his arms right there on the doorstep. Instead, he just said, ‘Hi.’
Thankfully, Amy was less reticent. ‘You made it,’ she said as she hugged him. His muscles were tight, tense after the long drive, and her body felt soft and warm and oh-so-good against his. ‘I was so worried that you’d have a terrible journey.’
It had been fairly horrendous but he didn’t want to bother her with such trivia now. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, and it was alarming to hear his voice cracking with emotion.
Before she could say anything else, both of the children barrelled out of the living room and flung themselves at him, Jessica jumping into his arms, shouting, ‘Yay!’
‘Your biggest fans have missed you too.’
‘And I’ve missed you all.’
‘We hate London,’ Jessica said candidly. ‘We want to go home.’
And he wanted to take them home - back to Helmshill Grange - but he wondered whether Amy would ever buy into that one.
Chapter One Hundred
H
amish is bringing the place down. ‘Ssh, dog,’ I say, as I open the kitchen door a notch. ‘Calm down, for goodness sake. You’ll get us evicted.’
I hang onto his collar as he bounces out to greet Guy. ‘No pets allowed,’ I tell our newly arrived guest. ‘I can see why now.’
Every wag of Hamish’s powerful tail destroys something - albeit unintentionally.Though I have to say that this is the liveliest I’ve seen our hound since we arrived. If I’m honest, I could say the same for me and the children too.
I’m so glad that I called Guy this week and that there’s no bad feeling between us. I hadn’t expected him to rush down here, but I’m so pleased that he did.
Hamish escapes my clutches and bounds to give Guy his friendliest nose-up-the-bottom doggy version of a hug. Guy bends to fuss him and nearly gets knocked over in the process. Hamish is beside himself with excitement and we should take him out for his walk soon otherwise there’ll be a puddle on my already skanky carpet.
‘Hello, boy,’ Guy says, ruffling his ears. And to me, ‘He’s looking well.’
‘He’s been as miserable as sin since we got here,’ I tell him. As have we all. ‘You’ve certainly perked him up.’ Ditto the rest of us. But I don’t voice that opinion out loud.
It feels so good to see Guy here, if a little bizarre. His waxed jacket and checked shirt look strangely out of place in a Town setting, and he seems even bigger than I remember, in our tiny flat. He looks more stereotypical ‘country vet’ than I’ve ever seen him and, for some reason, that makes me smile.
He runs his hands over Hamish’s flanks. ‘Leg looks like it’s holding up well.’
‘He’s got a slight limp,’ I say, ‘but it doesn’t seem to be bothering him too much.’
‘The fixator might be niggling,’ Guy offers. ‘That’s why he might be a bit down in the dumps.’