Only the discovery of another photograph succeeded in switching my thoughts to something less frustrating. My grandmother again, an enormous baby bump stretching her cardigan as she pressed her hands against her back. She stood, grinning, several metres in front of the cottage. There was a chicken pecking at the neat gravel path by her feet, to the side a vegetable garden, runner-bean vines wrapped around a row of canes. Overflowing hanging-baskets either side of the door.
Tears pricked my eyes as I gazed at the hopes and the dreams contained in that picture. The cottage had been a home, back then. Without a single weed or crack or smear. I propped the photograph up against the kitchen window, more determined than ever to make it a home once again.
* * *
Saturday, after a morning bustling with walkers wanting to make the most of the sunshine, I helped Sarah clean up the café.
‘Got any plans this evening?’ Sarah asked.
‘Um… a cosy night in with a book and a packet of crisps. Maybe a bath?’
I didn’t add that the book, a heart-thumping bestseller by author Hillary West, was curling from damp, the crisps would be my evening meal and the bath wouldn’t have any water in it.
‘Fancy a girls’ night?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never been on one. What happens?’ I swiped the hair out of my eyes with one arm.
‘We’ll have a drink and eat pizza. Crank up my girl-power playlist. Discuss why we don’t need duds in our lives. Or, I dunno. Whatever you want. I’ve never been on one either.’
Another night away from Grime Cottage? Yes, please.
I cycled back to said cottage, hurrying past Mack’s side. Going straight upstairs to look for potential girls’-night snacks, I took a moment to realise that the bedroom was different. With a start, I spun around and stared, goggle-eyed, at the bedstead.
Or, should I say, the mattress on top of the bedstead. The thick white duvet on top of the mattress. The brightly coloured patchwork quilt on top of the duvet. The massive pillows.
I touched the duvet. Smelt it. Leant over and pressed my cheek against the pillow. Turned it back and found a crisp white sheet underneath. Climbed on top, my muscles trembling, and lay staring at the ceiling, tears trickling into my ears.
This was exactly what I was talking about. A man who said nothing to my face about discovering my circumstances, but broke into my house and made me a bed with a trillion thread counts and the scent of vanilla. Whowasthis man? Did he like me, or feel sorry for me?
Right then, I was finding it very hard to care.
* * *
I sprang awake several minutes later, jumped in and out of the shower, flung on a nearly clean pair of jeans and jumper and used my rested and refreshed muscles to power myself to the Common in record time.
I sat at the breakfast bar in Sarah’s little flat while we sprinkled cheese on homemade pizzas, chatting about nothing much.
Once we’d taken our glasses of wine to the squishy sofas, she got serious. ‘So, what about this bloke who broke your heart, then?’ Sarah counted the questions off on her fingers. ‘How did you meet? Why did you fall for him? How long were you together? Why did it end?’
I took a gulp of wine. ‘Do you want GCSE grades and medical history, too?’
‘Not unless it’s relevant. I’ll go first, if you want.’
I nodded. ‘I do want.’
‘Edison’s dad – Sean – wasn’t bad-looking before he turned into a slob, but reckoned himself to be a demi-god. And, being sixteen and an idiot, I believed him.’
She went on to describe how, after a turbulent, on-off relationship, she became pregnant, ditching her college plans and moving in with Sean in the hope that they could make a go of things. That lasted until the day Edison was born when, during a flaming row in the hospital, she told him it was over. With her mum’s help she just about balanced motherhood with working at her grandma’s café, becoming manager after her gran retired and moving into the flat. By that time, the food was ready. We ate in comfortable silence for a while before Sarah decided it was my turn.
‘Okay.’ I took a deep breath, and a large bite of carrot cake. ‘Richard was my boss.’
‘Oh, no.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘That is never going to end well.’
‘It certainly didn’t. I’d been a PA at the law firm where my sister worked for a few years, when he joined. He was the youngest partner, and all the clichés – charismatic, arrogant, flashy. He took about four months to make a move. I couldn’t believe the office hunk had kissedmeof all people. So I didn’t protest about spending the next eighteen months sneaking around, meeting up in secluded restaurants, fumbling behind locked office doors.’
‘Yuck.’ Sarah grimaced.‘Eighteen months?’
I puffed out a sigh. ‘I wanted to believe he really cared about me. I clung to every glimmer of hope: the expensive gifts; secret looks across the conference table; the times he called late at night because hehadto see me; saying he couldn’t manage without me.’
