Guilt stabbed Gemma.
‘I did say you were welcome at ours, Dad!’
‘I know you did, love.
And I was very grateful.
Didn’t want to get in your way, though, did I?
Didn’t want to cramp anybody’s style.’
Spin, spin went the beer mat.
‘But anyway, I made a resolution this year that I needed to start again, to find a new wife.’
‘A new
wife?
’ Gemma spluttered on the unexpected word.
‘Well, not immediately, obviously.
But I do miss having someone to come home to, you know.
I don’t want to be on my own any more.
Judy’s a nice woman – we’ve had a
few evenings out together.
I like her.’
‘Hello, Barry.
Hello there, Gemma.
What can I get you both today?’
asked Kev, the pub landlord just then.
He raised a bushy eyebrow.
‘And is that your lady friend I see over
there in the corner again?’
he asked, followed by a wink at Gemma.
‘It certainly is,’ Barry replied, an air of pride about him as he began reeling off their order.
Gemma tried to wrest back control of her feelings.
Of course she was pleased for her dad that he’d met someone and seemed happy.
And of course she didn’t want him to be lonely, to
see out the rest of his New Year’s Eves alone.
All the same .
.
.
a wife, he’d said.
A
wife
.
It seemed such a monumental word to use.
Her dad had this habit of falling for
unsuitable women – her mum being a prime example.
The last thing she wanted was for him to be hurt all over again.
She sighed, wondering if her brothers knew about Judy yet.
Had they already
met her?
Mind you, they were boys; they wouldn’t feel the same way she did.
Sam, Luke and David would just be glad that they were off the hook when it came to making sure Dad was okay all the
time.
‘Thanks, Kev,’ her dad said at that moment, and Gemma realized there were three drinks now waiting on the bar.
‘Lovely,’ she said, grabbing some cutlery and her Coke.
‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘You’re welcome, sweetheart.
I’ve been looking forward to you and Judy meeting each other.
I know you’re going to get on like a house on fire.’
Two months after her mum’s death Caitlin had finally made the first few baby-steps towards dealing with her loss.
She had stopped wallowing in bed for hours on end.
She
had accepted some work from Saffron, the friendly woman she’d met at New Year, and was actually loving the experience.
She had booked a haircut, shaved her legs, done an enormous amount of
washing, including all her bedding, and thrown every last takeaway menu into the paper-recycling box.
She hoped the lady from Golden Dragon wasn’t missing her phone calls too much.
Even more remarkably, she had actually begun sorting through Jane’s belongings, one room at a time, in order to clear the cottage and get it on the local estate agent’s books.
How
poignant the little details of a life seemed, when that person had gone.
All those unopened bags of sugar Jane would never decant into the small crackle-glazed pot, to be used, two spoonfuls at a
time, in her milky coffees.
All those packets of twenty-denier natural-tan tights unworn in a drawer.
The bags of dusty bulbs for the garden, the neatly labelled envelopes of seeds she’d
never planted.
Candles never lit.
Letters never replied to.
All those empty spaces at the end of last year’s calendar that she hadn’t lived quite long enough to fill.
Jane had been a kind mum, a solid pillar of a person that you could lean against, confident she would bear your weight.
When Caitlin was much younger and had argued with Nichola, her best friend
in primary school, her mum had emptied out the dressing-up box and ransacked her own wardrobe, suggesting they both put on beautiful outfits and have a princesses’ picnic in the garden.
Adorned in one of Jane’s pink silk nighties, which hung around her ankles, beads, a flowery hat and some enormous red high heels, Caitlin had never felt more loved as her mum poured them
Ribena from her best china teapot and they ate cucumber sandwiches on the old tartan travelling rug, ‘just like real princesses’.
Another time, when Caitlin had split up with computer programmer Jeremy, she’d come back to Larkmead for the weekend, drooping with heartbreak, and Jane had known exactly what to do: drive
them both out to Aldeburgh to sit on the beach with fish and chips.
‘There’s nothing like the sea to blow away your troubles,’ she said, putting an arm around Caitlin, as they sat
together on the shingle.
‘Puts everything in perspective, doesn’t it?’
And every year, on June 1st, Jane had always baked a Victoria sponge with real strawberries, and she and Steve had drunk champagne and hugged each other, then Caitlin.
‘Just
because,’ she said with a smile, when Caitlin had first asked her why this was.
‘Sometimes it’s good to celebrate your family, and think about how lucky you are.’
Her mum hadn’t been keen on Flynn, though, she thought now, as she filled boxes with stacks of well-thumbed Mills & Boons and all manner of gory crime novels.
‘Well, he’s
very good-looking, I’ll give him that,’ she’d said the first time they met, but Caitlin knew that ‘good-looking’ wasn’t up there with ‘kind’,
‘funny’, ‘loyal’ or any of the other attributes Jane had valued in Steve.
So there’s a silver lining to me dying, eh, chick?
she imagined Jane saying now.
You got to find out what a nasty piece of work that Flynn was, right?
Look on the bright side!
You could have been stuck with him for years yet, if I hadn’t gone and popped my
clogs!
‘You daft cow,’ Caitlin said aloud to herself at the thought.
She shoved the last few books into the box and got to her feet.
Enough wading through the past for one day, she decided.
She’d go out to the shop, stock up on bin bags, food and wine, and try again tomorrow.
Down in Larkmead’s Spar, Caitlin was just paying for her groceries when she heard the distinct sound of someone crying over the cheesy background muzak.
Pocketing her
change, she hesitated for a moment, then ducked back into the dingy aisles of the shop to see who it was.
There, in the Household Miscellaneous section, leaning against a shelf of washing-powder
boxes, was Gemma Bailey with tears streaming down her face.
Caitlin’s mouth fell open in a silent O of shock at this very public show of emotion.
Gemma was the last person she’d expected to see weeping over a Persil display.
She had that
perfect golden life – a big house, gorgeous husband and children.
What did she have to cry about?
Caitlin cleared her throat, feeling self-conscious.
‘Is everything .
.
.
Are you okay?’
Stupid question.
Oh yeah, I’m great, that’s why I’m sobbing over laundry powder.
Have a medal, Captain Observant.
Gemma’s shoulders heaved and she wiped her eyes with her knuckles.
‘No,’ she said baldly.
‘Not really.’
‘Can I help?
Do you want a cup of tea?
Mum’s place is just round the corner, if you want a chat?’
A cup of tea, for heaven’s sake.
She was so bloody British.
But what
else could you offer a weeping woman in the Larkmead mini-mart?
Gin?
Valium?
Gemma took a long, shuddering breath.
‘Would you mind?
I can’t face going home right now.’
Caitlin tried to hide her disquiet.
Couldn’t face going home?
What on earth .
.
.
?
‘Sure thing,’ she said.
‘Of course I don’t mind.’
They left the shop and began walking up the hill.
It was the first week of February now and the snowdrops and crocuses were shyly unfolding their petals, welcome splashes of light against the
wet ground and grey skies.
‘I suppose you’ve heard all the gossip,’ Gemma said dully.
‘No,’ Caitlin said, feeling stupid and apologetic for not being more in tune with the village news.
They’re splitting up,
she thought with a wrench of sympathy.
Oh no.
They had seemed so happy at New Year!
The way Spencer had looked at Gemma, his eyes soft and glistening with love, it was something Caitlin could only dream of.
‘What’s happened?’
she added cautiously.
‘Oh.
Well, Spencer’s been in an accident.
He’s a bit mangled and battered, but home now at least.
The doctors say he’ll be fine again eventually, but .
.
.
’ She
sighed, huffing out a cloud of breath.
‘I’m struggling, that’s all.
We’re all finding it hard to adjust.
He’s so unhappy – nothing I do or say seems to make a
blind bit of difference.’
They’d reached White Gables now and Caitlin opened the front door, hoping the cottage didn’t smell too musty.
She’d been sorting through all her mum’s kitchen appliances
recently and some of them – the elderly ice-cream maker, for instance, and the fondue set that looked as if it had come from the Ark – didn’t seem to have been touched for
years.
‘Speaking as someone who used to be a nurse,’ she said, ‘it’s often the case that the loved ones suffer almost as much as the patient, after a serious accident.’
Aargh, the kitchen was messier than she’d thought; the table covered with ageing crockery, piles of cookery books and a heap of photos.
‘Sorry about all of this, by the way.
I’m
having a bit of a clear-out.’
‘No worries,’ Gemma said, shrugging off her grey wool coat and sitting down at the table.
‘I didn’t know you were a nurse.’
Caitlin filled the kettle.
‘I’m not any more.
I went into it, really, to please my parents, but I bailed out about five years ago and started designing websites instead.
Better
money, no more having to remove strange implements jammed into orifices, and no one showering you in puke on a Saturday night.’
Gemma had picked up an old family photo and suddenly her face cleared.
‘Wait – your mum was
Jane?
The midwife?’
‘Yes, that’s right.
Why, did you .
.
.
?’
‘She delivered my babies!
Both of them.
Oh, Caitlin, she was such a lovely woman, I’m so sorry.’
For some reason, whenever anyone said anything nice about her mum, it seemed to sap Caitlin’s energy, as if she was forced to realize all over again just what she’d lost.
‘Thanks,’ she said, sagging against the worktop as she made them each a coffee.
‘And she saved Darcey’s life, you know.
My little girl.
She really did.
I rang her when Darcey was three days old and didn’t want to feed, and she leapt into action.
Phoned the
hospital to say we were on our way, and drove me there herself.’
‘Really?’
Caitlin loved imagining her mum swooping to the rescue like that.
A capable, practical woman, with her sleeves permanently rolled up, Jane had often returned from a
night-shift in tired triumph.
‘A lovely wee boy this morning, eight and a half pounds, beautiful home birth,’ she might say, helping herself to a slice of toast from the rack, as
Caitlin and Steve ate their breakfast.
Or ‘A bonny baby girl for the Finches, such a head of hair on her.’
Her eyes would shine with the announcement of each infant, safely brought into
the world.
It was amazing that she hadn’t had twenty babies of her own, she loved them so.
‘Really,’ Gemma said.
‘We spent four days in hospital, with Darcey on a drip and me fearing the worst, but she was fine eventually, thanks to Jane’s quick response.
She
was an absolute angel when I needed help.’
An absolute angel.
Everyone had loved Jane.
All those mothers she’d helped, the babies she’d saved, the way she’d taken lonely old Gwen next door out to bingo and Zumba
every week.
It was a shame she hadn’t passed on the angelic gene to her awkward, antisocial daughter.
‘What happened with Spencer, then?’
she asked, changing the subject.
‘Sounds like you’ve been through a bit of a trauma.’
‘Fell from a first-floor building – shoddy scaffolding gave way,’ Gemma said.
You could tell she’d had to recount this a number of times; her voice had become brisk and
emotion-free.
‘Bust his ankle and a few vertebrae, massive bang on the head.
Not great, basically.’
Her mouth twisted unhappily.
From what Caitlin remembered of Spencer at school, he’d been boisterous and energetic, playing on the football team, bombing around on a BMX, the sort of person who’d leap off a wall
for a dare.
He was the boy who, aged eight, climbed to the top of the highest tree in the school playground and got stuck.
Mr Winch, the deputy head, had to scramble up there after him to bring him
down; it had been the most exciting thing ever to happen at Larkmead Primary.
‘Poor him,’ said Caitlin.
‘And poor you.’
‘Thanks,’ Gemma said with a wan smile.
‘He’ll be all right, and so will I,’ she went on.
‘He’s just not a very easy patient to live with right now, and
I’m probably the worst nurse.
But it won’t go on forever, right?’
She tapped the photograph of Jane.
‘As your mum said to me when I was screaming blue murder in the throes
of childbirth, “You won’t remember the pain once it’s over.”
And she was right.
Hopefully that goes for injured husbands as well.’
Caitlin smiled back.
‘Undoubtedly,’ she said.
‘By the way,’ said Gemma, perking up a little.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but is something going on with you and Harry Sykes?’
Caitlin’s heart leapt, like an over-enthusiastic Labrador.
Stupid heart: stay where you are.
‘No,’ she said.
‘There’s nothing going on with me and Harry Sykes.
Why?’
‘He just mentioned you the other week.
Said something about going to Cambridge?
We were on our way to the hospital when he told me, but I wasn’t really paying attention.’
Did that mean ‘just mentioned’ or ‘just
mentioned
’?
Was his tongue in or out when he said her name?
Now she was thinking about Labradors again.
Get a grip, you
moron.
‘He gave me a lift,’ she said.
‘Helped me move my stuff out of my ex-boyfriend’s flat.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing.
That was it.
He said something about giving up proposing to women, as his New Year’s resolution.
He’s got a new Ten-Date Rule, apparently.’