A Dozen Second Chances
KATE FIELD

One More Chapter

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Kate Field 2020

Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Kate Field asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008317836

Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008317829

Version: 2019-11-11

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

About This Book

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

About This Book

This ebook meets all accessibility requirements and standards.

Please be advised this book features the following content warnings and proceed at your own discretion: mental illness and bereavement.

To Catherine Bowdler, for being kind to herself

Chapter 1

Twenty minutes. The train would leave in twenty minutes, and time wouldn’t stop however hard I wished for it.

I looked at Caitlyn, sitting across a table littered with half-drunk coffee cups; caught her surreptitiously sliding her sleeve back down to cover her watch – not for the first time.

‘It will be fine,’ Caitlyn said. ‘No different than when I went on a school trip, only this one will last longer. I won’t be that far away. Nearer than Nan. It hardly takes more than an hour to fly to Paris.’

She would be over five hundred miles away. I’d looked it up. She’d been further on school trips, but they had been finite – a matter of days. Now she was leaving for twelve months, but really, what were the chances of her coming back? Once she’d experienced the glamour of Paris, why would she want to return to rainy Lancashire? And while part of me wept at the thought of losing her, when I had already lost so much, another part cheered her on. I’d had plans to travel once. I knew what it felt like, that heady mix of trepidation and excitement, the belief that the world was storing up opportunities with your name on, waiting to be discovered. I wouldn’t let anything get in the way of her discoveries.

‘Of course it will be fine,’ I said. I knew my allotted lines. We had played out a script all week: me trying to look pleased that Caitlyn was going, Caitlyn trying to look sorry. ‘Freedom! At last!’

I managed a smile. I shouldn’t have come. I should have dropped Caitlyn off at the local station to make her own way, not suggested driving down to Manchester and spending the night there before she caught her train. I had wanted to savour our last minutes together, not realising until now that sometimes a swift goodbye was a far less painful option after all.

‘Freedom for you too,’ Caitlyn said. ‘You could let Rich stay the night, without fear that you’ll corrupt my innocent young mind …’

I made a non-committal noise, trying to disguise my instinctive aversion to that idea. Rich in my bed … his face the first sight of my day … He wouldn’t expect that, would he? I thought we both had the measure of our relationship: it didn’t include whole nights together. Physical intimacies, yes; emotional ones, no. Besides, I’d spent years enjoying my independence. I might now have an empty nest, but filling it with a man wasn’t my idea of freedom.

Fifteen minutes. Caitlyn rummaged in her backpack and brought out a slim package wrapped in blue tissue paper. She held it out to me.

‘I’ve got something for you. It’s not much …’

I unwrapped the paper with deliberate care, eking out the seconds. It fell open to reveal a tiny gift box, and inside that lay a stack of rectangular pieces of card. I studied the top one. It was beautifully illustrated around the border with a variety of my favourite flowers – Caitlyn had inherited Faye’s artistic talent, as well as her looks. In the centre, a calligraphy message read:

BE KIND TO YOURSELF

VOUCHER ONE

I, Eve Roberts, have been kind to myself by …………………………

There were twelve numbered vouchers in total. I looked up at Caitlyn, bewildered.

‘It’s your challenge while I’m away,’ she explained, with a grin that was achingly familiar. ‘You’ve put me first forever. Now it’s your turn. You have to treat yourself, do some things that are purely for you. It doesn’t matter how small it is – even a soak in the bath with some fancy new bubble bath will count. But you have to fill in each voucher and send it to me, to prove you’ve done it. Promise?’

‘Promise,’ I replied, helpless to resist that grin, as I had always been. ‘Thank you.’ I forced myself to check the time. ‘Do you think we should …’

Caitlyn was out of her seat before the sentence was finished, wheeling her suitcase through the crowds to the platform for the London train.

‘We’ll still speak all the time, won’t we?’ she asked, hesitating at the platform barrier, ticket in hand. ‘I mean, I know it’s only Paris, we’re not going to be a million miles apart, but …’

‘Of course we will. You’ll get tired of hearing from me. Now enough of this. You can’t miss your train. Gemma will be waiting. Give me a hug and get on your way. There are amazing times ahead of you!’

I wrapped my arms around her, feeling in our embrace the memory of a lifetime of hugs, from the tiny child around my knees, to the embarrassed teenager, to the young woman who now stood over me. Who knew when the next one would be? Caitlyn was the first to draw back.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said. ‘For everything. I know I haven’t said it, but I do appreciate how much you’ve done.’

I hadn’t done enough. I could never do enough. I shook my head, dismissing such talk.

‘Still Mum?’ I said, though my heart tensed in dread at the possible answer. ‘Would you prefer it to be Eve now?’

‘No.’ Caitlyn lunged forward for a last, desperate hug. ‘You’ll always be Mum. Love you!’

I waited on the concourse, my cheeks aching with a smile she couldn’t see, watching until the last carriage of the train disappeared from sight, and wondered what the hell I was supposed to do with my life now.

*

It was late afternoon by the time I pulled on to the drive of my small, semi-detached house in the market town of Inglebridge in north Lancashire. The early March sun warmed the bricks on the front of the house as the light faded for the day, but I couldn’t help thinking it a cruel illusion: with Caitlyn gone, the inside of the house was going to seem horribly cold and bare. I glanced across the road to my friend Tina’s house, but there was no car on the drive, no sign of life – no chance of going through her front door for a while instead of my own.

The silence hit me as soon as I stepped into the hall. I was used to getting home from work before Caitlyn, and greeting an empty house, but this felt different; the silence was deeper, as if the bricks and mortar joined with me in mourning her absence. Before I’d even taken one step, I’d noticed the changes: her shoes were missing from the usual place by the front door; the peg where she hung her coat was empty; her house keys lay in the bowl on the table, because she had no use for them now. Would this ever feel normal?

The front doorbell rang, and I opened the door to see Tina.

‘I saw you arrive home,’ she said. Of course she did: Tina lived in the dormer bungalow immediately opposite my house, and missed nothing. She had brought over some sandwiches on the day we’d moved in, fourteen years ago, and we had been firm friends ever since. ‘I came to offer tea and sympathy, assuming I can’t tempt you to anything stronger. Forget the healthy living for today – your face says you need alcohol and plenty of it.’

‘That bad?’ I asked.

Tina nodded, without even a decent pause to consider her answer.

‘At least two wine bottles’ worth of bad. It’s what I needed when Liam went off to university. I needed three bottles when he boomeranged back here!’ She laughed. ‘You look like you might burst into tears at any minute. You can’t be on your own.’

‘I was going to come over, but your car wasn’t there.’

‘Graham’s gone to play golf. He’d better get back soon; the kitchen drawer has jammed, and I can’t get it open. It had to be the one with the corkscrew in, didn’t it? I’ve no screw tops left. It’s at times like this I wish my neighbour wasn’t teetotal …’ She grinned, and I laughed.

‘But you do have a neighbour with some basic DIY skills. Let me get my toolbox and I’ll have a look at the drawer.’

‘I was hoping you’d say that. You’re a lifesaver!’

And so was Tina; this was exactly the distraction I needed, as I suspected she well knew. I collected my toolbox from the garage and crossed the road to Tina’s. As soon as she opened the door, I was assaulted by the deep thrum of rock music pervading the house from upstairs; another reminder of what I was going to miss. Tina gave a wry grimace before bellowing up the stairs. ‘Turn that racket down! Eve’s here!’

The music faded by a barely perceptible notch.

‘There! Twenty-four and almost house-trained.’ Tina laughed and looked me up and down. ‘I’ll never get used to this. You look like a Boden model who wandered into the B&Q catalogue by mistake.’ She opened the cupboard under the stairs and plucked a bottle from the pine wine rack tucked away there. ‘I’ll drink your share. No one counts on a Saturday, do they?’

While she was making me a cup of tea, I examined the drawer that was stuck. It was a disappointingly easy job to fix it; something was obviously catching when I tried to open it, but jiggling the drawer wasn’t enough to move it. I’d brought over a metal coat hanger, and inserted this into the gap, manoeuvring it carefully until the contents shifted and I could open the drawer. I removed all the drawers and lubricated the runners while I was at it.

‘You’re better than a husband,’ Tina said, snatching up the corkscrew. ‘Graham would rather have a golf club in his hand than a spanner.’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t mind. I enjoy it.’ More than I’d expected. I’d signed up to lots of basic DIY courses over the years, in a bid both to save money and be self-reliant, but had found a real sense of satisfaction in learning how to identify a problem and to solve it – in some aspects of life, at least.

I followed Tina into the conservatory, a recent addition to the bungalow and her pride and joy. South-facing, and with views across the small patch of garden to the fields beyond, it made the most of the advantage of this side of the street. My garden faced north, and looked out on to Winlow Hill, the highest peak in the area, and one that drew ramblers and tourists to Inglebridge throughout the year. It was a view that I loved; I wouldn’t have switched sides of the street for any money.

‘Did Caitlyn get off okay?’

‘Yes. No delays, no cancellations. Where are leaves on the line when you need them?’ I glanced at my watch. ‘She’ll be in London now. One night at Gemma’s, and then they’ll catch the Eurostar first thing in the morning. They’ll be in Paris by lunchtime.’

‘Lucky them! It makes me wish I’d tried harder at languages at school. I’d have given my eye teeth to have had the chance to drop everything and work in Paris when I was twenty, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes.’ I gazed out through the conservatory windows, seeing nothing. I remembered too clearly how, at twenty, the world had seemed there for the taking; remembered the plans built on excitement rather than practicality, to travel the globe, to take part in ground-breaking archaeological digs across the continents. It had all been so possible, so tangible. But at twenty-one, my world had shrunk; it had all become impossible.

Tina must have read something on my face, as she stretched across and rubbed my hand.

‘Sorry. Me and my big gob. I didn’t mean …’

‘I know, it’s fine.’ I clutched my mug between my hands. ‘Sometimes life doesn’t take you where you hoped it would. Better a different life than none at all. I’m the lucky one.’ I sipped my tea, mentally pushing away the guilt that threatened to roll in like the mist over Winlow Hill.

‘Are you meeting Rich tonight? Is he taking you out to cheer you up?’

Tina’s attempt to lighten the mood wasn’t a huge success.

‘It’s his access weekend. His children are staying so I won’t see him.’ Despite my best efforts, there was more relief in my voice than regret. ‘Maybe we’ll go out during the week.’

‘You can do what you like now, can’t you? Life begins at almost forty! You’re lucky to have an empty nest while you still have the energy to take advantage of it. What plans do you have?’

‘Nothing special …’ And then I remembered Caitlyn’s parting gift, and I pulled the box of vouchers out of my bag to show Tina. ‘Although Caitlyn has made me these, and I promised to do twelve things to be kind to myself …’

‘Ooh, aren’t they pretty? She should sell these. I’d buy some.’ Tina inspected the cards. ‘Have you thought of anything yet?’

I shook my head.

‘I know the perfect thing to set you off,’ Tina said, reaching for her iPad. ‘Are you free next Thursday night?’

‘Maybe …’

‘I saw this advertised on my Facebook group for history teachers this morning. There’s a talk on Thursday night at a private school in Yorkshire about the Romans in Britain.’

‘A history talk? That sounds more like being kind to you,’ I said, smiling.

Tina laughed. ‘Hang on, I’m getting to your bit. The talk is a two-hander with a historian and an archaeologist speaking.’

I sipped my tea, feeling the first stirrings of disquiet. It was foolish – irrational. How many thousands of archaeologists must there be across the country? There was no reason to think it would be him …

‘Here we go,’ Tina continued, tapping at the iPad screen. ‘Jeremy Swann is the historian – you might not have heard of him, but he’s written some interesting books about life in Roman Britain. That’s your favourite time, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, when Tina paused for breath. It had been my favourite time. In the days when archaeology hadn’t only been about the past, but my future. Our future.

‘And they’ve done well to get this archaeologist,’ Tina continued. ‘He’s been on the telly – did you see that programme, Travels Through Time? Paddy Friel’s his name. Have you heard of him?’

Paddy Friel … My head began to spin. I put down my mug.

‘I’ll find you a photo. That’ll convince you to come with me.’ Tina laughed and swiped the iPad screen. ‘Here you go. Don’t tell me it’s not being kind to yourself to gaze at him for an hour …’

Tina held the iPad up towards me. A man’s profile filled the screen: a familiar face, if older than when I had last studied it in such detail, from the cleft in his chin, to the dark curls that tumbled around his face, still slightly too long for practicality. I thought I’d set aside my feelings many years ago, but as I stared at the picture, the emotions revived, flashing through my head like a spinning fairground ride: a dizzying blur of love, disappointment, hatred and anger.

‘He’s no expert on the Romans,’ I said. I turned away from the photo. Those twinkling eyes stirred too many memories, the good memories, not the bad. I didn’t want to remember those. ‘He was always more interested in the Vikings.’

And in himself – no subject was closer to Paddy Friel’s heart than Paddy Friel.

‘You know him?’ Tina looked more impressed than Paddy deserved. She smiled. ‘You’re a dark horse. How well do you know him? Academically or Biblically?’

‘Both, once. It was all over a long time ago.’

‘Blimey.’ Tina goggled at me. ‘I wasn’t serious. But, really? You had a thing with Paddy Friel? How could you not have mentioned that before?’

‘Because I’d rather forget all about him. I certainly don’t want to meet him again.’

Tina hesitated, tapping her iPad screen with her nail.

‘You won’t meet him. We can sit at the back and sneak out as soon as it ends. There’s coffee and biscuits afterwards, but we don’t need to stay for that. Come on, I don’t want to go on my own. And what about these?’ Tina pointed at the pile of ‘Be Kind to Yourself’ vouchers. ‘This is a perfect example of what Caitlyn had in mind. It’s time to start thinking of yourself again, and what you want to do. Archaeology was once your passion. You’ve no excuse not to pursue it now. You definitely can’t let some bloke put you off going to something that would interest you.’

Not just some bloke … but still, as I looked down at Caitlyn’s vouchers, a prickle of life stirred within me. I had loved archaeology once, had been fascinated by the opportunity to literally unearth traces of lives lived thousands of years ago. The Romans had been my favourite area of study. And why shouldn’t I attend a talk on them, even if Paddy Friel would be there? He was nothing to me now, and he would have long forgotten me. The time when he, or any man, had any influence over my actions was long gone.

‘You’re right,’ I said, picking up the vouchers. ‘My first act of kindness. I’ll go to the lecture, and no one will stop me.’ I laughed. ‘Paddy who?’

Chapter 2

Paddy Friel. Or Nigel Patrick Friel, to give him his full name, the name that only people who had known him in infant school days would know. And me – because once I had known him inside out, understood every shift and sigh of his body, comprehended every turn and contemplation of his mind. Until adversity hit, and I discovered that the man I thought I had known and loved was a sham in substance as well as in name.

We had met in our first year at university, both students of archaeology, but inhabiting very different social groups. He was part of the crowd of beautiful people, the sort of group my sister Faye would have naturally belonged to, but which was far out of my league. I’d noticed him at once – impossible not to, with those glossy dark curls, confident swagger, and the Irish accent that I only discovered much later was an exaggerated version of his real voice. Despite the small number of students on our course, I would have put money on him not knowing that I existed.

But then, in the third term of my first year, as I had wandered back to the halls of residence laden down with supermarket carrier bags that scored the flesh on my fingers, a shove in the back had knocked me to the ground, sending eggs smashing to the pavement and tins of baked beans rolling into the road. A hooded man had crouched over me, with a knife in his hand, and I had been too frozen with terror to react. And then, like a dark descending angel, Paddy Friel had appeared and knocked my assailant out of the way, making him run off. Paddy had picked up my shopping, escorted me back to my room and stayed with me until the police arrived. He had wiped away my tears, made me countless drinks, talked to me and, above all else, he had simply been there for me when I needed him.

Later that night, he had insisted that I join him at the local pub for a drink, determined that I had to leave my room again before the fear took hold and kept me prisoner. The next morning he had waited outside my halls to walk me to our lecture, and that had been the beginning of everything …

The memories swept relentlessly through my head as I drove through Inglebridge on my way to pay my regular Sunday visit to my grandmother, Phyllis. She had moved into the local nursing home, The Chestnuts, eight years ago, after her first hip replacement, and had loved it so much that she never moved out again. It was a not-for-profit home, where fees were low, happiness levels high, and the staff were universally kind to the old people in their care. Gran thrived on living there, and at eighty-seven, showed no sign of leaving any time soon.

The Chestnuts occupied an old manor house, extended several times as funds allowed, and as usual I found Gran basking in the sun in the large conservatory, a pile of magazines at her side. She smiled as I approached, and I relaxed, all thoughts of Paddy Friel effectively banished. With Caitlyn’s recent departure, and Mum having been settled on the Costa Brava for the last sixteen years, Gran was the only family I had left. I had never been so glad to see her.

‘Hello, Gran,’ I said, bending to kiss her soft cheek, and resting my head against hers for a moment too long. ‘You’re looking well.’

‘You’re looking thin,’ she said, never one to mince words. ‘Are you overdoing the exercise again? There’ll be nowt left of you by Christmas at this rate. I’ll be mistaking you for the turkey wishbone. You want plenty of best butter, chips cooked in dripping, and a good supply of gin. How else do you think I made it to my age?’

‘Certainly not by flattering your nearest and dearest.’ I laughed and pulled up a chair beside her. ‘I don’t know whether I should give you these biscuits now …’

‘All-butter shortbread?’ I nodded. They were her favourites; I brought them every week. Woe betide if I produced anything else. ‘I’ll ring for tea.’

Gran pressed a button on the plastic emergency necklace she wore and shortly afterwards an exasperated carer bustled in. She took one look at me and rolled her eyes.

‘You know the story of the boy who cried wolf, don’t you?’ she grumbled, but with a smile of undoubted affection. ‘One of these days there’ll be a real emergency and we won’t come. I suppose you’ll be wanting tea.’

‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ Gran said.

‘It beats some of the jobs I have to do round here …’

‘You shouldn’t take advantage,’ I said, when the carer had wandered off on her mission. ‘This isn’t a hotel.’

‘Nonsense. I’m one of the least demanding ones in here. You should hear what Mr Jacobs asks them to do. No one wants to be on rota to give him a bed bath …’

‘Have you heard from Caitlyn yet?’ Gran asked, when our tea had arrived and she had started on the biscuits. ‘Is she in Paris now?’

‘I don’t know. She said she would text as soon as she could.’ I touched the pocket where my phone lay, out of my handbag so I would feel the first vibration of a text arriving. ‘I’m sure she’s fine …’

So I said; but that hadn’t stopped me checking the news websites on a regular basis all morning, dreading reports of a fire in the Channel Tunnel, terrorist attacks in France, or a million and one other disasters that my imagination was all too happy to suggest. I was so perturbed by the ideas, that when Gran offered me her biscuits, I took one without thinking.

‘Of course she’ll be fine.’ Gran patted my hand. ‘She’s a sensible girl. You’ve done a grand job.’

But it hadn’t been a job – it had been love. Because Caitlyn wasn’t actually mine. She was my sister Faye’s child, the big sister I had adored with my whole being, until her sudden death when she was twenty-four, and Caitlyn just two. Faye had fallen pregnant around the time I started university, and she had never told us who the father was; it was all too easy to believe she didn’t know, given her lifestyle. There had been lengthy debate about what should happen to Caitlyn after Faye’s death, but it could only ever end one way. I had wanted her to live with me, whatever the personal cost – and it had been high, higher than I could have anticipated. But I had owed it to Faye. No price could ever have been too high.

‘I can’t help worrying,’ I said now, drawing back from the past. ‘Who knows what temptations she’s going to face in Paris?’

‘No more than I expect she’s faced already.’

‘Not on my watch!’

‘So I suppose your mum knew everything you got up to, did she?’ Gran laughed. ‘I thought not. You’ve done your bit, love, and more besides. Time to let go. It’ll do you both good to stretch your wings a bit. Here, have another biccie.’

I did, telling myself that it was my own small act of stretching. I usually tried to stick to a healthy diet, but already my worries about Caitlyn were eroding my good intentions. I didn’t know how to stop, however old she was: I had a sudden vision of myself in Gran’s position in fifty years’ time, my phone clutched in my gnarled old hand, waiting for news of Caitlyn. Perhaps she was right, and I did need to learn to let go, but I didn’t know how to do it.

‘Here, you’ll never guess who I saw t’other day,’ Gran said later, when our teas were drunk, and I was getting ready to leave. She reached for a tatty magazine on the table at her side. ‘I saved it for you. Have a look at the page folded over.’

Perhaps the unexpected sugar consumption had addled my wits, because I flicked to the marked page without a glimmer of suspicion. Oddly, it was the young woman in the photograph that I noticed first: luscious, thick blonde hair cascaded over bare shoulders and brushed against a large bust that could have earned her a place as a centrefold. I felt the familiar twinge of regret over my own boyish figure and chin-length brown hair, hastily wiped away when I turned my attention to the man attached to the woman’s side.

‘It’s the fella you went out with, isn’t it?’ Gran asked, making it sound as if I had only had one boyfriend over my entire lifetime. It wasn’t true: there had been several boys before Paddy. Not so many after, but that was hardly surprising, and not only because all my focus had been on Caitlyn. Paddy had taught me many things that I had been delighted to learn, and one thing that I hadn’t. A broken heart can be broken a second time, and a third, until only the crushed fragments remain.

‘And look who he’s with!’ Gran continued, oblivious to my discomfort. ‘She was in Emmerdale until she ran off with someone’s husband.’

I assumed she meant in the TV programme, rather than in real life, but who knew with these showbiz folk? Much against my will, my eyes strayed back to the man in the photograph. Here was Paddy Friel again, thrust to my attention for the second time in as many days, and no more welcome this time. It was a good photograph, I couldn’t deny that: he was wearing black tie, which suited his colouring, and with his raffish curls and hint of five-o’clock shadow he looked like a pirate trying to infiltrate polite society. It was hard to believe that this confident, well-dressed man had once been the boy who left dirty underpants under my bed. Hard to believe, too, what weakness lay behind that charming smile.

I flicked the magazine closed and noticed the date on the front cover.

‘This is six months old,’ I said, dropping the magazine on the table as if it were soiling my fingers. ‘He’ll have moved on by now, probably several times. Doesn’t he have a failed marriage behind him? Commitment was never his strong point.’

‘He always was a handsome devil,’ Gran said, with a wistful smile. She’d had a soft spot for Paddy, and he had given the appearance of being fond of her, but that was the trouble with Paddy: it was all style over substance, appearance over truth. ‘You could forgive a man a lot who looked like that.’

I said nothing. Some things were impossible to forgive, however attractive the face. Not that I found him attractive any more: those feelings had died a long time ago, the least mourned of all my losses at that time. I picked up my bag and bent to give Gran a kiss.

‘I thought I might have seen you as Mrs Friel.’ Gran was on a roll; I wished she’d never seen the blasted magazine. ‘I’d have liked a chance to get dressed up as grandmother of the bride. I’d have out-glitzed the lot of them. I still would. Where there’s life, there’s hope, eh?’

She looked at me with such pride and hope, that all I could do was smile back and kiss her again, too kind to tell her that life in my heart had been pronounced extinct many years ago.

*

I offered to drive Tina to the talk on Roman Britain the following Thursday night. As a longstanding teetotaller, I was used to being the designated driver, and I knew that Tina was hoping that to make up for missing tea and biscuits, we might find time for beer and crisps in a country pub on the way home.

‘It’s almost the weekend after all,’ she said, as I turned off our street and headed towards the main road that carved through the countryside, leading to the southern Lake District in one direction and to the Yorkshire Dales in the other. I loved this patch of north Lancashire, hidden away from the hustle and bustle of city life; loved the fact that I could climb Winlow Hill behind my house and see no towns but Inglebridge, and beyond that, only fields, moors, and the occasional stone-built village.

I had moved here within six months of Caitlyn coming to live with me, desperate to escape our home county of Warwickshire, and all the familiar places where memories seemed to hang like cobwebs on every street lamp. I had known nothing of the area except that Gran lived within an hour’s drive and that property prices were cheap. I had seen on the map that it was well away from any cities – any temptations – and that had been recommendation enough. Save for whisking Caitlyn away to a remote Scottish island – something I had briefly considered – it had appeared to be as safe a place as I could find to raise a child. And it was a fresh start for us, a place where we had no history. For someone who had spent her life wanting to uncover history, I had felt no compunction about covering ours up.

It had been a glorious spring day, and the setting sun was gilding the fields around us as we drove towards Yorkshire. Usually the view would have soothed away even the greatest anxiety. But tonight, not even the finest landscape could settle the nerves that jangled around my limbs. The talk sounded exactly the sort of thing I would have enjoyed many years ago, before my life twisted in a different direction. Was it wise to remind myself of that other possible life, when it might open up regrets that I had fought for years to keep at bay?

And then there was Paddy … How would I feel to see him in the flesh, to hear his voice without the distance of a television set, for the first time in seventeen years? Why had I wasted one of Caitlyn’s vouchers on this? This wasn’t being kind to myself; it was more like voluntary torture.

The school we were visiting was a well-regarded grammar school, where the central building dated back centuries. It was a far cry from the 1960s comprehensive where Tina and I worked.

‘Fancy working here!’ Tina whispered, as we climbed an ornate wooden staircase towards the hall where the talk would be held. It seemed appropriate to whisper, as if nothing we could say would be erudite enough for this environment. ‘Imagine teaching history in a place that has history of its own! I bet it’s haunted.’

‘I’d be happy to have a few ghosts helping me, as long as they could use the photocopier and knew how to fix printer jams.’ I laughed. ‘It would have been much easier to keep tabs on Caitlyn with a team of invisible spies at my beck and call.’

I hadn’t worked at all for the first couple of years after Caitlyn came to live with me: it had been too new, too strange for both of us, and we had each needed time to adjust to the unexpected life we had been given, and time to get to know each other properly and cement our bond. When Caitlyn went to nursery, I had filled my days taking online courses to learn everything I could about computer software and office management until I was the most qualified PA I could be. I had then taken on part-time jobs until I saw the perfect role advertised: PA to the head teacher of the secondary school that Caitlyn would attend. The term time hours were convenient, and I could keep a discreet eye on Caitlyn and any trouble she might face: an ideal arrangement, as far as I was concerned, and I don’t think she had minded it too much.

Tina and I took our seats at the back of the hall. It was a decent-sized crowd, and I was impressed by the local interest in Roman history until I realised that a large proportion of the audience were female, and particularly well-groomed ladies with shiny hair, smart clothes and full faces of make-up. Only a handful of parents would have made such an effort for our local comprehensive. Perhaps things were done differently in grammar school society. Or perhaps things were done differently in Paddy Friel’s society, whispered a mischievous little voice in my head. I stamped it down, not before a pang of regret had flashed through me about my faded, knitted dress and barely there make-up. But I wasn’t going to meet him. I didn’t want to meet him. So what did it matter?

The historian, Jeremy Swann, spoke first and Tina was proved right: he was a witty, engaging speaker, skilled at throwing out titbits of information about how the Romans had lived, in the style of Horrible Histories, so his talk appealed to all ages. I leant to the side, so I could see him from between the assembled heads, hanging on his every word as my long-abandoned interest blossomed back to life. I had missed this, more than I wanted to admit.

I was still leaning, rapt, when Jeremy introduced the next speaker. I shot upright, not before seeing a familiar flash of dark curl. Tina gave me a nudge and a smile, but I stared at the ruddy, bald neck of the man in front of me and refused to look. I couldn’t block my ears though. The first sound of that Irish lilt set my thoughts racing through the years, dredging up memories I had hoped never to revisit: the good memories, the tender memories of love, that made the bad memories so much more painful.

He was good, my objective self was forced to admit it. His enthusiasm covered the room like a silken net, gathering us all in, captive to the power of the story he was telling. Even I, who knew too well what a sham this was, what a false show concealing his true nature, felt the tug of excitement as he described the experience of working on an archaeological dig, of making a discovery that contributed to our knowledge of ancient times. But then he mentioned working at Vindolanda, a famous Roman site in Northumberland, and I couldn’t listen any more. We had volunteered there together during the first summer we had been a couple, and the archaeological discoveries during the day took second place in my memories to the nights spent tangled together in a sleeping bag in a tiny tent for two.

‘Wasn’t he amazing?’ Tina said, rousing me from the mental repetition of my shopping list – a surprisingly effective distraction, as it had reminded me that I was now shopping for one, and turned my thoughts to how much I was missing Caitlyn. ‘He’ll have inspired a few new archaeologists tonight. Inspired a few sweet dreams too for some of this audience. Phew! I think I’m having a hot flush. Can you hang on while I find a glass of water? There’s sure to be a water fountain along the corridor somewhere. Back in a mo …’

She scuttled off down the corridor, and I lurked at the back of the hall, safe in the knowledge that everyone else was leaving by the doors at the front, presumably in search of refreshment – a cup of tea with an extra splash of artificial Irish sweetener. I checked my phone for messages as the footsteps faded, the chatter died away, and the room fell silent. And then one voice carried the length of the hall, a voice I had heard more than enough of tonight.

‘Eve?’

Chapter 3

Impossible not to turn, though my first instinct was to run out of the door. There he was, Paddy Friel, striding down the aisle formed between rows of chairs like a joyous bride dashing towards the groom; smiling in a way he had no business to, as if he was delighted to see me – as if it hadn’t been his choice, oh so many years ago, to stop seeing me.

He paused, looked me up and down, and shook his head in apparent amazement. Curls bounced around his face, and he swept them back with a gesture that was so familiar it was as if he had swept the last seventeen years away too.

‘I thought it was you. Eve Roberts. I can’t believe it. How are you?’

He stepped forward, arms outstretched, as if to offer a kiss to my cheeks, the traditional greeting for long-lost acquaintances, I supposed. I folded my arms and moved away, wanting no contact with him. He could have stayed lost for all I cared.

‘Hello, Paddy.’

His smile wavered. He could hardly misinterpret the coolness in my tone and action. Surely he couldn’t have expected anything else?

‘You’re looking fantastic!’ he carried on valiantly. ‘Hardly changed at all. What are you doing here? Do you have a child at the school?’

‘No.’ I hadn’t planned to say more, but when he continued to look at me, a growing question on his face, I was spurred into further speech. What if he thought I was there to see him? I couldn’t allow that.

‘I came with a friend.’ Soon to be an ex-friend, I decided, glancing over my shoulder and seeing no sign of Tina. Where had she gone to find the water, the North Sea?

‘I wish I’d known there was an expert in the audience.’ He smiled. ‘How did it sound? No glaring clangers?’

‘It seemed okay.’ He couldn’t hold back a grimace at that faint praise; no doubt he was accustomed to gross adulation wherever he went as part of his celebrity lifestyle. I aimed a vague nod in his direction and edged towards the door, determined to wait in the car for Tina rather than endure this torture for a moment longer.

‘Hey, wait. Don’t rush off. What have you been up to? Did you carry on with the archaeology?’

‘No. How would it have worked? It was impossible, wasn’t it?’ It was the word he had used in his parting note to me, seventeen years ago, but he didn’t appear to make the connection.

‘And how is everyone? Wendy? Douglas?’

‘My dad’s dead.’

The expression of shock and sadness on Paddy’s face might have fooled anyone else. My dad had never for a second made me think he was disappointed with a second daughter – we were two of a kind, like Faye and Mum had been – but he had loved Paddy like a son, and the feeling had seemed mutual. But then I’d thought Paddy had loved me too, so what did I know?

‘I’m sorry.’ He reached out a hand, but I drew further back. ‘When? How?’

‘Another heart attack. Three months after Faye died.’

Briefly, his face crumpled with something like grief. My resolve to be indifferent shattered.

‘You must know this! I wrote to you … gave you all the details … told you when the funeral was.’

He hadn’t come. I had waited at the door of the crematorium, certain that despite everything, despite what he had already done, he wouldn’t let me down on this; wouldn’t let my dad down. He wouldn’t leave me to face this on my own, when I had lost two of the people I loved most in the world within a few short months. Three, if I counted him. But I had learnt beyond doubt that day that Paddy Friel didn’t think about anyone but himself; didn’t care about anyone but himself, whatever lies he told to the contrary. I took a deep, juddering breath, and managed to control my emotions. I had wasted enough tears on this man.

‘Ah, jeez, I wasn’t at home. I didn’t get the letter …’

I shrugged; a convenient excuse if ever I’d heard one.

‘It doesn’t matter now. It’s old news.’

I ignored his surprised expression at my apparent callousness. He had no right to judge me for being hard-hearted.

‘And your mam?’

‘Alive and well, and living in Spain. One of the advantages of my dad working in insurance. He left her a very comfortable widow.’

Paddy’s puzzled gaze roamed over my face. Was he trying to work out where this bitter woman had come from, how she had grown out of the girl he had known? He didn’t need to look far. I could hold up a mirror, let him see the answer for himself, but he would probably be too distracted by the view.

‘And …’ He hesitated, scratched his cheek, pushed the curls back although they were hardly out of place. ‘Caitlyn. How is she?’

‘Fine.’

‘How old is she now? Twenty?’

‘Yes.’ I was surprised he remembered.

‘Is she here?’ He started looking round. ‘Is that who you’re waiting for?’

‘No, she’s …’ I stopped short. Why was I wasting my breath? He’d made it plain enough when he left that he wasn’t interested; that she was my niece, my problem. ‘She’s not with me.’

‘Eve …’

His hand landed on my arm and for a moment I was too stunned to shake it off.

‘Hello! Sorry to be so long.’ Tina returned at last, no sign of water, but a glass of wine in her hand. ‘But I see you’ve managed perfectly well without me …’

‘And I see you’ve managed to turn water into wine,’ I said, jerking my arm away from Paddy’s hand.

‘Sorry! I was looking for a water fountain, but then I ran into the teacher from my Facebook group and she dragged me away for something better.’ She smiled and stepped around me, her eye on more interesting company. ‘Hello. Pleased to meet you. What a fascinating talk! I could have listened for hours.’

‘You should have been on the front row. I might have gone on longer if I hadn’t faced a bored kid who seemed more interested in what he could excavate from his nose …’

The sound of Paddy’s laugh grated on my nerves. I didn’t look, didn’t want to see how that cleft in his chin deepened when he laughed, see how many more laughter lines he had earned around his eyes during our time apart. I studied a black and white school photograph that was hung on the wall, rows of young faces, of students who would probably now be grandparents; the prime of life behind them, whereas mine sometimes felt as if it had never started. Unlike the man I could sense was watching me. What a lot of living he had squeezed into the last seventeen years.

‘Are you ready to go?’ I asked Tina.

‘There’s no hurry …’ She crumbled under the look I sent her and swiftly downed her wine. ‘Of course, I can’t miss my taxi.’ She turned to Paddy. ‘Do you do many school talks? I’d love it if you could come to ours.’

‘There’s no money in the budget for that,’ I said. What on earth was Tina thinking?

‘I don’t charge for school talks. I’d be happy to come. Where is it?’

Before I could instruct Tina not to tell him – although I hadn’t worked out how I could do that – she gave him what he wanted.

‘Inglebridge High in north Lancashire. Would you travel so far?’

‘Sure. I’d be happy to.’ Paddy pulled out his wallet and took out a business card. ‘Here. Get in touch when you’ve worked out some dates.’ He held out another card to me. ‘What do you teach?’

‘I don’t.’

The card dangled between us. I put my hands in my pockets, indicating as clearly as I could that I had no intention of taking it.

‘Eve, can’t we catch up sometime? There are things …’

‘No.’ I cut him off. ‘I have nothing to say, and there’s nothing I want to hear. Not every bit of the past deserves raking up, does it? You should know that better than most.’

*

Tina was unusually quiet as we returned to the car and set off home, and I was too busy concentrating on negotiating the country roads in the dark to break the silence. I was glad to have something to focus on other than the past few hours. The sight of Paddy had knocked me more than I had anticipated, stirring up all the old feelings for him. Feelings of hate, not love – that had died long ago.

‘Pull over here,’ Tina called, banging on the dashboard like an overenthusiastic driving instructor. ‘This pub’s nice. A bit gastropub with the menu, but fine for a couple of drinks.’

I turned into the car park obediently, and we wandered into the pub. It was an attractive place, tastefully decorated with a wooden floor, expensive wallpaper and cosy fabrics. A roaring fire and an abundance of lamps gave the place a romantic feeling – the sort of place where lovers might curl up in a corner, oblivious to the rest of the world. Or so I imagined. Romance played no part in my life. But that’s what I’d chosen, so how could I complain?

I found a table within range of the fire, and Tina brought over a glass of wine, and a cranberry and lemonade for me. For the first time in many years I longed for a shot of alcohol to numb my feelings.

‘I’m only having the one,’ Tina said, conveniently forgetting the one she had already had at the school. ‘I have 8B first period tomorrow. I need my wits about me. If I have to teach them in Year 9, I may stage a one-woman revolt. Hannah White never stops rubbing it in about how brilliant 8A are. Apparently, some of them can even spell medieval …’

I laughed and began to relax, glad that we didn’t appear to be heading towards a post-mortem of the earlier part of the evening. Although I wouldn’t be sorry to hear of Paddy Friel laid out on the mortuary slab … I sipped my drink, batting away the unworthy thought. I’d suffered too much loss to know that death wasn’t something to be flippant about.

‘Talking of Year 9,’ I began, remembering a piece of school gossip I had overheard today. ‘Did you know that the Biology lab …’

Tina put down her glass with a decisive bang.

‘Stop changing the subject,’ she said. I had thought I was continuing the subject, but she gave me no time to protest. ‘You and Paddy Friel. Come on, spill the beans. I’ve never met anyone who’s dated a celebrity.’

‘He’s not a celebrity.’

‘He’s been on the telly.’

‘So have thousands of other people. That means nothing, nowadays. You can’t be impressed by him. His only talent is putting on an Irish accent and waving his hair around.’

‘You mean he’s not really Irish?’

‘His name is Nigel, and he was born and bred in London.’

Tina looked crushed and I felt a fleeting twitch of guilt, but not enough to stop me continuing. ‘It’s an image he cultivated – calling himself Paddy, drinking Guinness, laying on the thick accent – all he needs now is to start talking about leprechauns. I bet he hasn’t set foot in Ireland for years. The whole thing is a sham, to make him more popular and presumably richer. Cut open Paddy and you’ll still find a weak and cowardly Nigel inside.’

‘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.

A woman stood in the doorway, looking me up and down in a swift appraisal that immediately raised my hackles. Not that they needed to be raised much further – even without the scowl I recognised the driver who had knocked me over at the weekend. What was she doing here?

‘Ms Roberts?’ She buzzed the ‘Ms’ in an unnecessarily emphatic way, and glanced at her watch – another unnecessary affectation, when there was a perfectly good clock on the wall between us. ‘Eve?’

‘Yes?’ I waited to see if she would remember me as her weekend victim, but there was no hint of recognition.

‘Jo Blair.’ She approached and stretched out her hand for me to shake, smiling in a way that seemed calculatedly hearty, putting me on edge rather than at ease. ‘I’ll be interim head for the next few months, until a permanent head is recruited. I’m glad you’re early. I’m told that you’re a wonder and will be my right hand. Come in and have a chat.’

Without waiting for my agreement – as my working hours hadn’t technically started yet – she turned and walked back into Mrs Armstrong’s office – or her office, as I supposed I would now have to think of it. I followed on behind, feeling uncomfortably like a naughty child about to learn my punishment. It was a pleasant room, with windows on two walls overlooking the playing fields, but as Jo took a seat behind the desk, I could sense that the atmosphere had changed already. Mrs Armstrong had made it warm and welcoming, so even the most wayward pupil or anxious parent had felt at ease. Now all that warmth seemed to have been sucked out through the open window. The room felt cold and impersonal; even the desk had been cleared, so all that remained on it were a computer and keyboard, telephone and a paper coffee cup from the petrol station on the Yorkshire side of town.

Jo waved at me to take a seat opposite her.

‘I didn’t think you were due to start until next week,’ I said.

‘I was due to go on holiday, but cancelled when this job came up. It was clear when I looked at the figures and statistics that I couldn’t start a moment too soon. The exam results aren’t impressive, are they? You must be aware of that.’

‘We’re low in the league tables, but …’

‘Exactly.’ Jo interrupted before I could point out that the school excelled in so many other areas – in sport, in music and, most importantly, in sending confident, well-rounded young adults out into the world. ‘That’s going to have to change. There’s been too much slack management. We need to see streamlining and efficiencies. I’m meeting the staff this morning to outline the vision for the way forward. Good teachers and good results will be at the heart of it.’

‘We have some excellent teachers here. They couldn’t be more dedicated …’

‘Some? That’s not enough. We need all the teachers to be excellent.’ Jo leant across the desk towards me. ‘The governors assure me I can rely on you. You’ve been here a long time. You know all the staff – who isn’t on their game any more, who has lost their motivation, who is letting standards fall. You’ll hear things that I won’t. I’m counting on you to help me, for the good of the school. I need you to be not only my right hand, but also my eyes and ears.’

It normally worked like a magic charm, someone asking for my help – I could rarely resist. But this? Spying on my colleagues, who I had worked alongside for years? Betraying the teachers who had taught Caitlyn, kept an eye on her for me, shaped her into who she was? I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t.

‘I’ll help in any practical way I can,’ I said, choosing my words carefully. ‘But I won’t spy on my friends, or tell tales about hardworking teachers who care passionately about this school and their students, and who are doing their best in difficult circumstances. That’s not in my job description, and not in my nature either. But if there’s anything else I can do, you need only ask.’

If I’d thought the atmosphere was cold before, it was nothing to how low the temperature dropped now. Jo sat back and crossed her arms, sending me a patronising smile.

‘I think you misunderstand, Eve. I never suggested you should spy, only to work with me to identify areas of improvement. Of course, if you don’t want the increased responsibility, I respect your decision. It is disappointing, when I had heard such good things about your commitment to this school.’

Jo tapped at her keyboard, and I took this as a sign that I was dismissed. I stood up, feeling bizarrely as if I had done something wrong. Had I? If nothing else, I’d clearly annoyed Jo, and that would make working in such close proximity awkward. But I couldn’t regret my decision. I hesitated, wondering whether I ought to say something else, to try to smooth things between us.

‘Oh, Eve?’ Jo didn’t look up. ‘There’s a box on your desk. It contains Mrs Armstrong’s belongings. Please get rid of it. And on the subject of your desk …’ Now she looked at me, and it wasn’t a friendly look. She clearly wasn’t in the mood to smooth things out. ‘I intend to introduce a clear desk policy. Have you any idea how much a data protection breach would cost, financially and reputationally? Everything confidential must be locked away. Your first job this morning is to clear your desk.’

She focused on her screen and started typing before I could tell her that I was fully aware of the rules and regulations concerning data protection, and that whilst my desk may look untidy, there was nothing confidential on there. I walked back out to my cubbyhole and glanced over at the desk. Perhaps untidy was an understatement. How long had it been since I last sorted through the piles of stationery catalogues, magazines and junk mail? Mrs Armstrong had kept me too busy. Well, I would soon show Jo Blair that a clear desk policy held no fear for me …

It was lunchtime before I could catch up with Tina, and she did a double take when she saw me sitting behind my immaculate desk. I had reproduced Jo’s minimalist look to perfection, with the exception of the photo of Caitlyn beside the computer monitor. No amount of arm-folding or disapproving looks would persuade me to part with that.

‘Have you been fired?’ Tina asked, goggling at the expanse of clear desk between us. Not even a paperclip besmirched the tidiness now. Of course, the desk drawers were bulging, but Jo couldn’t take control of those too, could she? ‘Have you managed to irritate our new boss already?’

‘It wouldn’t take much, would it? She’s not fired me yet, but I’m wondering if it’s only a matter of time. We’ve worked together for one morning, and so far, she’s objected to the state of my desk, the smell of my peppermint tea, that I didn’t divert my phone when I nipped away for two minutes to go to the loo, and that she doesn’t like the way the computer files are labelled and arranged. She’s also told me that I won’t need to do any more typing for her, as she has a digital dictation system on her computer, which is more efficient. If I hear the word efficient one more time, I’ll …’

The door to the corridor was flung open and Jo strode in, abruptly cutting off my rant.

‘The lunch system is inefficient,’ she said. ‘There’s a queue halfway down the corridor, and staff members are wasting time having to police it. Make a note for the next staff meeting.’

I nodded but didn’t move, and she continued to stare at me until I reluctantly opened a drawer a crack to try to remove a notebook and pen without her noticing the untidy state of the drawer.

‘Can I help you? Mrs Wade, isn’t it? History?’ she said to Tina. Assuming Tina had only come around to gossip, I began to give a spurious excuse for her presence, but she waved at me to stop.

‘I have some excellent news, Ms Blair,’ she said, in a fawning manner that I thought unworthy of her. She held up a sheet of paper that I hadn’t noticed before. ‘The popular TV archaeologist Paddy Friel has agreed to come and give a talk one evening. It’s excellent publicity for the school, and a great enrichment event for the students.’

‘We won’t be able to fit it in,’ I said, glaring at Tina. How could she go ahead with this, after what I had told her about Paddy? ‘Next term is too busy already, with the prize-giving and end-of-year musical evenings, and the hall will be set up for exams for most of the time.’

‘I know all that, so I begged him nicely and he’s agreed to come in the last week of this term. Isn’t that great?’

The last week of term? There were only two weeks left until we broke up for the Easter holidays, which meant Paddy would be coming in next week. That was too short notice to arrange an event with anyone, let alone with someone I didn’t want to see within twenty miles of here.

‘That doesn’t give us time to organise it,’ I said. ‘It’s not just a question of advertising the event, but we need to make arrangements for school to be open late, and for staff members to stay behind … Think of the costs for the small benefit it might have.’

I thought that pointing out potential financial implications would bring Jo over to my side, although it seemed incredible that we were battling over her. But Tina sent me a smile full of mischief.

‘I’ve thought of all that. We could have it a week on Wednesday. There’s a Year 10 Information Evening at six, so we could invite Paddy to start his talk at seven-thirty. As the school will be open late anyway, and staff present, it would be an efficient time to do it. You could include it in the newsletter tomorrow.’

I had to smile, and acknowledge her skill, even though my heart sank as Jo nodded in agreement.

‘It’s an excellent idea, Mrs Wade, well done. We can charge for tickets and drinks, to make a profit from the event. This is exactly what we need to see – initiative and positivity from the staff.’

I didn’t know why she looked at me when she said that: I could be extremely positive when I chose. Just not where Paddy Friel was concerned. I was still smarting over the whole business at the end of the day when I met Tina at my car to share the drive home.

‘You deserve to walk,’ I said, unlocking the door and throwing my bag onto the back seat. ‘How could you have arranged this with Paddy behind my back? You knew I didn’t want him here.’

‘But you heard how good he was at the other school. We hardly ever have events like that here. We’re too out of the way to draw big names. Why should our students always miss out? If it inspires one of them it will be worth it.’

I shrugged and reversed out of my space with unnecessary speed. She was right, and I couldn’t argue with her. I just wished it had been anyone but Paddy who was offering this golden opportunity.

‘Besides, you don’t need to come,’ she added. ‘He won’t turn up until long after you’ve gone home. If you really don’t want to see him, you don’t have to. Forget you ever heard about the event.’

If only it were that easy.

*

Caitlyn telephoned at the weekend, brimming with excitement about her new life in Paris and her job as an au pair. Everything was fun and interesting; the family she was working for were lovely, and the children she was looking after were adorable. The weather, the food, the flowers, the improvement in her accent already … she was enthusiastic about every detail.

My heart ached to hear her. She was so happy – happier than I ever remembered hearing her before. Was that my fault? Had I held her back, in our quiet Lancashire town, taping up wings that were twitching with the urge to fly? Had I held her close, when she wanted to be set free? Protected her, when she needed to test herself and learn from her own mistakes? I had done what I thought was best, for Faye’s sake, but it was agonising to think that I might have promoted her safety above her happiness.

‘How are you getting on with the Be Kind to Yourself vouchers?’ Caitlyn asked at last, when even her enthusiasm for Parisian life was exhausted. ‘You’ve only sent me one so far.’

‘There will be another one on the way soon.’ I laughed. ‘You might not think it exciting enough. I had to buy some new running clothes, and I didn’t go for the cheapest own brand this time.’

In a moment of mouse madness, I had clicked on a hi-tech outfit that apparently could breathe, sweat and possibly even do the running for me, or that’s what I expected for the price. It was due to arrive on Monday, in time for the first running group meeting on Tuesday. After a sustained campaign of persuasion from Lexy, I’d given in and agreed to lead it for her. I was trying not to worry about what I had let myself in for.

‘Is it going to make you look young, gorgeous and athletic – unlike the baggy things you’ve worn in the past?’

‘I don’t think it can perform miracles, even at that price.’ Caitlyn’s laughter floated down the line. I closed my eyes, and for a bewitching second it could have been Faye on the other end of the phone. ‘I thought I ought to look the part, if I’m leading the group. That’s if anyone turns up. Lexy has set up a Facebook event, but no one has signed up yet. No one has even said that they’re interested.’

‘But the middle-aged people who need exercise might not use Facebook.’

‘That’s a fair point. I’ll tell Lexy that we need to write out flyers on parchment with our quill pens, and send them off attached to a pigeon …’

‘I didn’t mean you. You’re not middle-aged. Not yet.’

‘Thanks!’ Of course, I spoke too soon.

‘Not until August, when you turn forty and officially go over the hill …’

I clutched the phone more tightly to my ear, staggered by the overwhelming nature of how much I missed her, felt in every fibre and follicle of my being. Her absence was like a physical force, buffeting me from all angles.

‘I can tell you’re not missing me at all,’ Caitlyn said. ‘You’re having too much fun with your running club and nights out with Tina. Where did you go? You didn’t say. I hope it wasn’t just cinema night with Gran Gran and the Chestnuts gang.’

‘No, we went to Yorkshire.’ I realised that probably didn’t sound much of a treat to someone currently living in Paris. ‘We attended an evening lecture.’

Caitlyn’s silence confirmed that the extra detail hadn’t helped elevate the outing in the excitement stakes.

‘You did get the concept of the vouchers, didn’t you?’ she asked. ‘You were supposed to be having fun.’

‘It was fun!’ Or it had been until a certain fake Irishman had barged into my personal space. ‘It was all about Roman Britain and what the archaeological evidence tells us …’

I trailed off. I had deliberately not given Caitlyn any details of the talk when I filled in the voucher. She knew my history, of course, and knew about my degree, but I had tended to play it down as a subject in which I had a passing interest, not one that I had intended to make my career. I had never told her about the plans Paddy and I had made before she came to live with us; the plans to take time out and join archaeological digs across the world. We had both been juggling a variety of part-time jobs to fund our travels; my share of the money had ultimately been used to fund time out with Caitlyn and our travels to Lancashire.

I had never mentioned Paddy to her at all, and as far as I knew she had no memory of him. I hoped not, anyway. But I certainly didn’t want her to think that I’d been desperate for her to leave home all these years, so I could pick up my old life again.

‘It was only …’ I began again, but Caitlyn interrupted.

‘That’s fantastic! I didn’t realise you were still interested in all that old stuff. Are there any more talks you can go to?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ I conveniently forgot the fact that one was taking place at our school.

‘That’s a shame. What about going on a dig? Is that the sort of thing you used to do? You should definitely have another go. I bet you could volunteer for something over the holidays. Why not?’

‘Well …’ Caitlyn was reminding me of someone again, but it wasn’t Faye this time. It was me. Wasn’t this exactly the same cajoling voice I’d used countless times to encourage her to join in with things she wasn’t keen on? Since when had our roles reversed?

We said our goodbyes, and Caitlyn returned to her busy, delightful French life while I slumped on the sofa in front of the television in my empty house. I had no plans for the rest of the evening, or for Sunday either. Rich was busy with his children, Tina was away, and even Gran had told me to keep clear of The Chestnuts or face the consequences of a nasty gastric bug. I had no plans for the rest of the year. No plans for the rest of my life, whispered an impish voice in my head.

I thought about Caitlyn’s suggestion of volunteering on a dig and the stir of excitement I had felt when she had mentioned it. Could I pick up where I had left off all those years ago? Could I volunteer on a dig over the summer? Why not, Caitlyn had asked. I thought about it all night, and couldn’t think of an answer.

Chapter 6

Jo Blair didn’t improve on further acquaintance.

‘Is that business-related post?’ she asked, when she caught me during morning break on Monday, with the parcel containing my new running clothes. I had just finished writing out a voucher to send to Caitlyn.

BE KIND TO YOURSELF

VOUCHER TWO

I, Eve Roberts, have been kind to myself by buying state-of-the-art new running clothes!

I would have denied it if I could, but the bag was covered with the name of the sports shop, making pretence futile.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘It’s an urgent parcel I need for tomorrow.’

I chose not to elaborate; she looked wiry under her power suits, as if she worked out, and I didn’t want to risk her turning up to join the run.

‘It’s not school policy to allow personal mail to be delivered here. I thought you would have been aware of that. Don’t do it again.’

I was half inclined to think she was making it up – Mrs Armstrong had never mentioned the existence of such a policy, and her gin club parcel used to turn up here every month without anyone batting an eyelid. But I told myself it wasn’t worth fighting over. I had my clothes and wasn’t expecting any other deliveries, so there was no point falling out over it. We had to work together, and though our working relationship had been strained so far, never recovering from our initial chat, I didn’t want to risk making it worse.

That was what I thought at break. My good intentions didn’t last beyond lunchtime, when I returned to my desk and found a pile of posters dumped on it. I picked them up and marched into Jo’s office without knocking.

‘What are these doing here?’ I asked, waving the stack of posters at her. A piece of dried Blu-Tack flew through the air and landed on her desk, in bold defiance of the clear desk policy.

‘I found them scattered around the school, ruining the walls. Have you any idea how much it costs to paint the corridors in this place? Send an email to all staff telling them not to put posters up other than on the official display boards. Blu-Tack is banned with immediate effect.’

My blood, which had been lukewarm already, quickly escalated to boiling point.

‘This has nothing to do with any staff member,’ I said, thumping down the posters onto her clear desk. ‘I put these posters up. Mrs Armstrong gave permission. They are all anti-drug posters. It’s an important message.’

‘Mrs Armstrong is no longer here and I’m withdrawing permission. It’s sending out the wrong message to parents and visitors. We have an important event this week, with Paddy Friel’s talk taking place, and the press will be here. We don’t want to give the impression that we have a drugs problem in school.’

The reference to Paddy did nothing to calm me down.

‘What does it matter what visitors think? Any decent parent would be pleased to know that the school was taking a stand – that we have a strong anti-drugs policy,’ I said. She was usually a stickler for policy and procedure, so why not this one? ‘Who cares about the cost of repainting the walls, if the posters make one student think twice before experimenting with drugs?’

Jo leant forward, and if I hadn’t already concluded after a week’s acquaintance that she was an efficient machine and incapable of human feeling, I would have sworn she was trying out a sympathetic expression.

‘I understand, Eve, why you feel so strongly about this crusade, but you need to pursue it in your own time and not let your obsession …’

I froze. She was giving me a pointed look – a look that suggested she knew things about me, about my background, that I certainly hadn’t told her.

‘My obsession?’ I repeated. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She clearly didn’t understand at all. This wasn’t an obsession. It wasn’t a crusade. I wasn’t charging into battle for my own glory, far from it. But what did this woman, with her own obsession for policies and efficiencies, know about the things that were really worth anything in life? ‘Call it what you like. This is a million times more important than exam results and budgets. This is a chance to save lives. I can’t think of any better way to spend my time.’

I was still shaking when I reached the staffroom, and Tina took one look at my face and shepherded me into the nearest empty classroom.

‘What’s up?’ she asked, pushing me down onto a chair. ‘Is it Phyllis? Caitlyn? Your mum?’

‘No, everyone is fine. It’s Jo …’

‘Oh crikey, what’s she done now? The staffroom is still up in arms about her decree that we need permission to photocopy more than ten sheets of paper. What has she planned next? We can’t cope with another of her bright ideas yet.’

‘She’s taken down all the anti-drugs posters.’

I didn’t need to say more. Tina understood, more than Jo ever could, and immediately leant forward to give me a hug.

‘Oh, love. What’s she done that for?’

‘Because posters might damage the school walls. And she doesn’t want parents to think there might be a drugs problem here …’ I stopped. Jo’s concerns were so trivial, when compared to what was at stake. How could she think any of that mattered?

‘So what, we ignore the issue, and keep our fingers crossed that nothing like that happens here?’ Tina said. ‘She’s more of an idiot than we realised.’

‘She called it my crusade.’ I looked at Tina. ‘How does she know?’

Again, Tina needed no more explanation about what I was asking. She shrugged.

‘I suppose it must be on your personnel record somewhere. Mrs Armstrong knew all about it, didn’t she? About Faye, and how you came to have Caitlyn …’

So Jo Blair had been snooping, grubbing round in our private lives – for what reason? Looking for the weak links, who she could then remove in a round of budget cuts? Perhaps I wouldn’t have minded if it were my secrets she was raking over. But not Faye’s. I didn’t want her to know anything about Faye, didn’t want someone like her to judge my sister. There had been enough judgement already. And what had Jo found out? The truth about Faye, and how she had died, presumably. Because Faye had died unexpectedly, but not from an accident or a freak illness. She had died from taking a pill – a drug – that had turned out to be a bad one, and that had killed her.

But that wasn’t the real truth about Faye. It wasn’t how she deserved to be remembered. She had been so much more than the tawdry tale of her death that had featured in the local and national newspapers for days afterwards; sleazy journalists hadn’t been able to resist front-page photographs and stories about the beautiful young woman who had thrown her life away because of drugs. She had been vibrant and funny, a wicked impressionist, a talented artist, and the most wonderful sister I could have wished for. Hardly a day went by without me regretting what I had lost, and even more, what Caitlyn had lost. I had done my best for Caitlyn, but it could only ever be second best to what she should have had.

I stared out of the window, nails digging into my palms as I forced my thoughts to stop there, not to prod at the memories of that time, at the bruise that would never heal. Tina took hold of my hands and uncurled my fingers.

‘Sod Jo Blair,’ she said. ‘Print me out one of your posters and I’ll put it up on the history display board. She doesn’t have a key to open it, so it will be safe there. I’m sure I can convince some of the other teachers to do the same. A bit of rebellion will boost staff morale no end.’

*

By the time Tuesday evening arrived, I was in the mood for a fast and furious run, so it was disappointing to see a motley collection of people arrive for the inaugural running club event. Lexy’s advertising on Facebook and in The White Hart had paid off in the end, and ten people turned up, ranging from a veteran of half-marathons to a lady who admitted with a cheerful grin that she hadn’t run since her baby was born eighteen months ago, but she was keen to get back in shape.

One of the fitter runners, Winston, was vaguely familiar and after an extensive guessing game as we jogged along at an infuriatingly slow pace, we established that we had crossed paths at The Chestnuts, where his grandmother was also a resident.

‘You’re Phyllis’s granddaughter?’ he said, when we paused on the crest of the drover’s bridge that spanned the river to the south of the town centre, to allow the others to catch up. I wouldn’t have stopped if I’d been alone, but I couldn’t deny the charm of the scene, or how peaceful it was to watch the water meander below us.

‘Yes. Do you know her?’

Winston laughed. ‘Everyone knows Phyllis. She’s the Queen of The Chestnuts, isn’t she? Nothing goes on there without her knowing, and no one comes and goes without her noticing.’

‘Noticing or interfering?’

‘Maybe both,’ Winston acknowledged with a grin, as we set off again. ‘I hear you’re organising a sponsored walk to raise money for a new minibus.’

‘Am I? I did suggest it, but I hadn’t realised it was definitely going ahead.’ I hadn’t raised the subject again with Gran, in case she dropped any more hints about a celebrity endorsement. I wanted to help The Chestnuts, but there were limits.

‘It’s definitely happening. Phyllis has even decided on the date. The third Sunday in May. She had wanted it to be the Bank Holiday weekend, but then she decided that people might be going away for half-term, so she brought it forward.’

‘But that’s only seven weeks away! How am I supposed to sort it out in that time?’

‘I did hear her mention that the Easter break was coming up, and you would have nothing else to do.’ Winston laughed as he repeated what was undoubtedly one of Gran’s bon mots. ‘Tell you what, why don’t I give you a hand? I’m on paternity leave for a couple of months. It will be good to keep my brain active. Only if you need the help,’ he added, as I slowed to let him go first where the riverside path narrowed to single file. ‘I don’t want to butt in.’

Did I need the help? Probably, if I only had seven weeks. But I wasn’t used to accepting it. I was the one who offered help, not took it. I had many acquaintances around Inglebridge, people who I would happily pass time chatting to, but in the seventeen years I had lived here, only Tina had slipped through my barriers and become a true friend. My Christmas card list was extensive, my Christmas present list short. It was the way I had chosen it to be. I prided myself on being independent, and on not relying on anyone else. My history had made me cautious; if I didn’t get too close to people, I wouldn’t go through the pain of losing them. But a sudden thought struck me, as I ran along the uneven path. I might be spared the pain – but was I losing out on happiness too? And why had a simple question about a sponsored walk turned the spotlight on my whole way of life?

The path widened again, and Winston slowed until I caught him up.

‘Sorry,’ he said, as we carried on running. ‘I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. Have a think about it. If you need some help, I’m here. Strictly speaking, me and a seven-month-old are here, but I’m probably better with a spreadsheet than she is.’

It could have been the embarrassed smile, or the reference to the spreadsheet that swung it – or perhaps I recognised in him the same urge to help that drove me. Before I could think better of it, I heard myself giving him an answer.

‘I’d love some help,’ I said.

*

I definitely seemed to have swapped roles with Caitlyn. Not so long ago, I had been encouraging her to stretch her wings and try new opportunities. She had taken childcare qualifications at a local college after A levels, and then found a job at a nursery in Inglebridge, but it had been obvious to me that she had been restless. She had always loved languages at school, and longed to travel, but I knew she hadn’t looked for jobs abroad, and I knew why. She was worried about leaving me. So I had researched a huge variety of jobs in near and far-flung places that I thought she might enjoy, printed them off, and circled a few that she seemed most qualified for. She had chosen the au pair position in Paris, and I had polished my acting skills to feign delight when she won the job, comforting myself with the reminder that she might have ended up much further away.

Now she was playing me at my own game. I arrived home from work one day to find a large envelope postmarked from Paris. Inside, I discovered a sheaf of papers, listing a range of volunteering opportunities to work on archaeological digs over the summer, from Peru to Penzance. Caitlyn had circled one in the Cotswolds and added a message: ‘Sounds perfect! Be kind to yourself!’

Flicking through the details she had sent, I couldn’t deny it: it was perfect. The dig was taking place over two weeks on a site south of Cirencester, carrying on the excavation of a Roman villa. The photographs of what had been discovered so far were tantalising: tiles from a hypocaust system that would have been used to heat the villa, numerous coins and pottery pieces, and an amazing mosaic floor that I longed to see for myself. It was an area I knew relatively well, as I had been brought up in Warwickshire and had volunteered at another dig in the Cotswolds in the summer holiday before I started university.

And as my gaze roved over the details, soaking it all in, trying to keep a check on my growing excitement, I saw who was in charge of the dig: Christopher Porter, my former university tutor, the man who had taken my raw enthusiasm and polished it. I had learnt so much from him, and my heart fizzed at the prospect of working with him again, even as a humble volunteer. Some might call it a sign, but not me: I was no longer romantic enough to be superstitious or to set any store by fate. Even so, I moved the details to the top of the pile and left it on the kitchen table. I was curious, that was all. I already had a job, one that kept me quite busy enough. I wasn’t going to do anything about it – was I?

Chapter 7

It was normally one of the most boring parts of my day – sorting through the post, allocating it into piles for each department, and filling the recycling bin with the junk mail the school inevitably received. I did it on autopilot. The last thing I expected to find was an envelope addressed to me, in the barely legible handwriting that I had once known so well, when I had eagerly pored over every loop and dot and cross of the letters that Paddy had sent me during those never-ending days of university holidays when we had been apart.

Now I looked at his scruffy scrawl and felt nothing but resentment that he had bothered me here, in a place where there ought to be no reminders of Paddy. Wasn’t it bad enough that he was giving a talk at school tonight, against my wishes? Had I not made it perfectly clear that I wasn’t interested in renewing our acquaintance?

The envelope sat on the edge of my desk throughout the morning, as I dithered over whether to open it or throw it straight in the recycling bin. In the end, and despite my better judgement, curiosity won. I opened the envelope and pulled out a postcard. The picture side showed Lindisfarne and my heart gave a few uncomfortable thumps, because we had visited there together during the glorious summer we had spent working at Vindolanda in Northumberland. He must remember, surely – so what was the significance of him choosing that card? I turned it over and read the message.

Dear Eve

Remember that summer? Happy times, weren’t they?

I know I screwed up. I’m the biggest idiot going. But can we meet after the talk on Wednesday? There’s something I need to explain – something I should have explained years ago.

Give me a chance.

Paddy

I read it three times, and it still made no sense. What good were explanations now? The moment was long gone, gone seventeen years ago, gone the moment Paddy had chosen not to attend my dad’s funeral. A stubborn streak of love had lingered, to my shame, even after he had walked out on me and Caitlyn, but it couldn’t survive a second rejection. And he really didn’t need to explain his behaviour. I’d figured it out for myself. He cared about no one but Paddy Friel. What more was there to say?

‘Personal mail again, Eve?’

Jo Blair lurked in the doorway of her office, staring pointedly at the postcard in my hand. My hand was trembling; I hoped she couldn’t see that from where she stood.

‘Junk mail,’ I replied, and without a second’s hesitation I crossed to the recycling bin and dropped in the postcard. ‘Nothing important.’

‘About the event tonight,’ she said, with an unexpected degree of awkwardness. ‘It would be helpful if you could be on hand for the Year 10 presentation, to set up the screen and the PowerPoint slides. I haven’t had a chance to familiarise myself with the system yet.’

‘Why me?’ I asked, my head still too full of Paddy’s message to make a show of good grace. ‘Can’t one of the IT technicians do it?’

‘They both have other plans. And I’m told that you are the expert on such things.’

That was true, but I wasn’t going to be won over by a titbit of flattery, especially when she hadn’t scrupled to let me know that I was her last choice.

‘I have plans too,’ I said.

‘Really?’

Of course I didn’t. That sceptical inflection in Jo’s question was infuriatingly justified. Rich was working away, Tina would be at school drooling over Paddy … My plans consisted of nothing more than a run and a night in front of the TV – an identical night to every other. Jo sniffed my weakness.

‘It will all be over by seven o’clock. It will hardly eat into your night at all. I’m sure you will be keen to support school events. It’s exactly the sort of thing I’ll be looking at in the annual Performance Management at the end of the year. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it’s in your job description to help out.’

She smiled and retreated to her office, no doubt pleased with herself for that parting shot – because wasn’t I the one who had relied on my job description when she had suggested I spy for her? How could I refuse now? Especially if our annual reviews were coming up. Reviews with Mrs Armstrong had been an opportunity to ignore the phone and have a natter for half an hour. I suspected Jo Blair would take it more seriously. And what if she appraised me and found me wanting? Did she have the power to sack me, as an interim head? What would I do without my job?

Determined to show my commitment, however much it pained me, I behaved as the model assistant at the Year 10 talk that evening, keeping my face neutral as Jo baffled the parents with talk of SPaG and cohorts as she tried to explain the exam system. Everything went so well that she even managed a ‘thank you’ as she wandered off to prepare for the next event of the night – Paddy’s talk – leaving me to tidy up and make sure the hall was ready. I didn’t mind. I glanced at my watch. One good thing about Jo’s love of efficiency was that she had finished bang on time. I had forty-five minutes to make my escape before Paddy’s arrival. He had never wasted time in the past by turning up a minute before he needed to, and I didn’t expect he had changed. There was no danger of seeing him.

With thirty minutes to spare, I was about to grab my bag and leave when running footsteps echoed through the hall. I looked up, expecting to see a Paddy fan dashing for a seat on the front row – she or he would be disappointed to find they were already reserved for governors and members of staff. I was half right – it was Tina, and she was dashing my way wearing an anxious expression that immediately worried me.

‘Have you finished?’ she asked, grabbing the back of the nearest chair as she gasped for breath.

‘Yes. He’s not here already, is he? He’s never usually early.’ I pulled my bag from under my chair, assuming she had come to give me a warning, and touched by this evidence of Tina’s friendship. I hadn’t thought she understood my aversion to Paddy. ‘Where have you put him? Is it safe to use the main doors?’

‘Put who? Oh, Paddy. No, he’s not here yet.’ Tina glanced at the clock on the wall, and her anxious expression deepened. ‘I asked him to be here for seven so we could chat through the arrangements. He’s cutting it fine. Is he not good at punctuality?’

He wasn’t good full stop – I thought I’d already made that clear. But I simply shrugged in response, accepting no responsibility for his faults.

‘What did you want me for, if it wasn’t about Paddy?’ I asked.

‘We have another crisis brewing – or more accurately, not brewing,’ Tina said, with a rueful grin. ‘Bev has had to go home because one of the kids is ill, so …’

‘No.’ I knew where this was going, and I didn’t like it. ‘I’m not doing the teas. No way.’

‘I wouldn’t ask if there was anyone else. But you know what Jo Blair is like. She’s expecting to make some money tonight, even if it’s only a tenner. It will be on one of her spreadsheets. And she’ll want to put on a good show as the press are supposed to be coming.’

That job had left a nasty taste in my mouth – having to ring up the local paper and invite them to the event, gushing about what a coup it was to have the renowned celebrity archaeologist Paddy Friel visiting our school. Part of me had hoped they would say, ‘Who?’ Unfortunately, I had spoken to a female journalist who had hardly let me finish my patter before she had begged to come.

‘Surely there must be someone else …’

Even I could hear the resignation in my voice. Tina pounced on it.

‘You’d be in the canteen during the talk, so you wouldn’t see or hear him,’ she said. ‘And I’d fetch him a cup of tea myself, so he wouldn’t come anywhere near you.’ She reached out and rubbed my arm. ‘I know you didn’t want to be here, but I have to make it work tonight. Jo has already been dropping hints about my Performance Management next term. Please help.’

I nodded. What else could I do? Tina had been a good friend to me over the years, and had saved my sanity on more occasions than I could remember. Friendship trumped personal inclination every time.

It wasn’t a taxing job to set out the tea things; I’d done it countless times before. But when all the cups and saucers were set out, the biscuits displayed on plates and the ‘50p per cup’ sign prominently displayed, I still had thirty minutes to kill before the first of the thirsty hordes were likely to descend. I messed around with my phone for a while, checked my emails, replied to a text from Rich and generally did everything I could to distract myself from what was going on in the hall.

I straightened a teacup and looked critically at the display. Were there enough cups? There were more in the cupboard that I had judged unnecessary – but what if my prejudice was underestimating the popularity of this event? What if I let Tina down?

It was a matter of seconds between the thought creeping into my head and my feet carrying me to the door of the hall. Standing to one side, I peered through the glass panel, focusing only on the rows of chairs stretching back down the length of the hall. It was far busier than I had expected, with the rows occupied to at least halfway; I would need more teacups after all.

I turned away and was about to return to the canteen when a familiar burst of laughter stopped me in my tracks, the sound slinking into my reluctant ears and pinning me to where I stood. I tried to ignore it, but his voice carried through the door as he spoke about the Viking occupation of Lancashire and the Cuerdale Hoard that had been found by workmen repairing the banks of the River Ribble near Preston in 1840; it was one of the largest Viking silver hoards ever found, and we had once been to see it at the British Museum. The Vikings had always been Paddy’s favourite era, and his genuine enthusiasm was clear, to me at least; the Irish accent dimmed, and he sounded less like the TV star and more like the boy I had known. I closed my eyes and listened.

The scrape of a chair along the wooden floor brought me to my senses, and I dashed back downstairs, my heart pounding with renewed fascination about archaeology, and frustration that Paddy had helped inspire it. I set out more cups, filled the urns with tea and coffee, and prepared to lurk at the back of the room, out of sight.

It wasn’t long before the audience arrived, laughing and smiling as if they’d had a good time – although the realisation that they had to pay for refreshments wiped a few of the smiles away. I sensed rather than saw Paddy’s arrival; I was well hidden behind a group of parents, and a gaggle of Year 9s who thought they could pilfer biscuits without me noticing. But the sound in the room changed when he walked in: conversations dimmed; feet shuffled as people turned to get a better look. The air was thick with the consciousness of his presence, and with anticipation of who he might talk to.

It was sickening. All this, because he had appeared on television, and was objectively what some might consider handsome? I thrust a teacup into a waiting hand, sloshing the contents onto the saucer as I seethed at the shallowness of today’s society. And then I smiled to myself for sounding more like someone of Gran’s age than my own, and as I looked across the room, Paddy caught my eye and returned my smile.

Damn the man! He was as bad as the Year 9s, pilfering things that weren’t meant for him. I focused on dispensing refreshments again, but the queue was drying up, and at 50p per cup, no one was coming back for seconds. I felt like a sitting duck behind my table as the crowd thinned around me. Spotting that Jo Blair was engaged in earnest conversation with a governor, I grabbed the almost-empty urn of tea and carried it into the kitchen, with the spurious intention of filling it up while hiding for as long as I could.

‘Eve?’

My hand slipped, and scalding water splashed over it, making me yelp. Paddy was at my side at once, switching on the cold tap and holding my arm so that the cold water ran over the back of my hand. As soon as the pain was replaced by a heavy numbness, I shook my arm free.

‘I can manage.’

‘You should leave it under for fifteen minutes.’

‘I am aware of that. I’m one of the school’s designated first aiders.’

I didn’t know why I added that. If we were going to trade achievements since our time together, it was hardly going to trump anything he could offer.

‘Well done,’ he said, and I glanced up, expecting sarcasm, but his smile appeared genuine. But then it always did. A line from Caitlyn’s A-level Shakespeare text floated into my head: ‘that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.’ It summed up Paddy perfectly.

‘You’re not supposed to be in here,’ I said, turning off the tap and drying my hand on a paper towel. I had no intention of being trapped here for fifteen minutes. ‘What do you want?’

‘Did you come and hear the talk?’ he asked.

‘No.’ I threw the paper towel in the bin. ‘Don’t you have enough adoring fans out there? Are you so desperate for praise that you have to follow people, hoping for a bit of flattery?’

‘I don’t give a stuff about adoring fans. None of that matters.’

‘Really? Is it just the money you care about, then?’ I said. ‘Something must have motivated you to take the part in Celebrity Speed Dating, as it certainly can’t have been for the critical acclaim.’

Caitlyn had been hooked on the show, and I’d been unlucky enough to catch a few minutes of it – fortunately not a segment featuring Paddy. It had been one of the worst things I’d ever seen on television, and had picked up scathing reviews – so of course, it had been a huge ratings hit.

‘Sure I did it for the money. I’m not ashamed of that.’

The old Paddy would have been, the Paddy I thought I’d known: he was passionate about his subject – devoted to it, as I knew to my cost – and wouldn’t have risked degrading it with tawdry TV shows. Briefly, I wondered what had happened to wreak the change, but I soon let the thought slip away. I had better things to do than waste a second of my time on Paddy Friel.

‘Did you get my postcard?’

‘Yes. It went straight in the recycling bin. We have nothing to talk about. I made that perfectly clear before. You were happy enough to leave me alone once, when it suited you. Why can’t you leave me alone now, when it suits me?’

Paddy leant against the stainless steel work surfaces, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

‘There are things we need to talk about,’ he said. ‘Important things. Don’t be like this. I know this bitterness isn’t you. What’s happened to you?’

My mouth and my eyes gaped wide. Was he criticising me? Who had made me bitter? Why had I ended up this way? He knew nothing about me, about who I was now.

‘Life happened,’ I said – no doubt in a bitter fashion. ‘It doesn’t always go the way you want it to.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Something in his face, in his voice as he said that, caught my attention – something undoubtedly real. But before I could process that, my second least favourite voice cut through the kitchen.

‘Eve? What are you doing? Why have you left the tea money unattended?’

Jo Blair stopped when she noticed Paddy, and her frown quickly changed to a smile.

‘Mr Friel! Have you lost your way? Eve, couldn’t you have shown him where to go?’

‘I tried.’

Paddy’s eyes glittered with amusement from behind Jo’s back, and all at once, I remembered how different things had once been between us. How laughter had bound us together; how he had acted the clown, never satisfied until I collapsed, clutching the stitch in my side; how I had stored up stories from my day, exaggerating the absurdities in the hope of hearing his laughter; how our radar for comedy had been so finely attuned that it had often taken only one shared glance to set us both off. I had never experienced that with anyone else. It felt like I hadn’t laughed like that in years. Seventeen years, if I was inclined to count.

‘Hurry up with the tea,’ Jo said, oblivious to the atmosphere in the kitchen. ‘There’s time to sell a few more cups.’

I nodded and picked up the urn, but before I could take a step, Paddy removed it from my grasp.

‘Watch your hand,’ he said.

He headed towards the kitchen door, and I hurried after him, with Jo Blair close on my heels. And as we made our procession into the canteen, I took a moment to analyse my feelings. Paddy’s condemnation had been uncomfortable and unarguable. I did sound bitter, and it wasn’t me. It had been my head talking, not my heart. When I looked there, I found no bitterness. I had hated Paddy once, but somewhere over the years it had gone, leaving mere indifference behind. Or not quite indifference. As I had been reminded so recently, there had been good times between us. The best, I had thought back then. Dig far enough down through the years, and there was a layer of our relationship where things had been perfect. Despite what had happened afterwards, I could never forget that. With my training, I should know better than to think that history could ever be irrelevant.

Paddy put the urn down on the table. I spotted Tina across the room, looking at me with concern. I shook my head at her. I didn’t need rescuing. It was time to face up to this.

‘What is it you want to talk about?’ I called after Paddy, as he started to wander away. He turned back.

‘Not here,’ he said, gesturing round. The guests had started to leave, but too many remained, hovering in the hope of a moment with Paddy. ‘Are you free later?’

‘Not tonight.’ It was too soon. I needed time to prepare for this.

‘Tomorrow?’

‘I’m working.’

‘Friday? Term will have ended, won’t it?’

I nodded. ‘But you won’t be here …’

‘I’m staying at The White Hart tonight. I can extend my stay.’

‘There’s no need to do that …’

‘There is. It’s important. Meet me for lunch on Friday. Please, Eve.’

Was I a fool to agree? Maybe. Maybe I had always been a fool where Paddy was concerned. But when he looked at me with the same expression of wordless appeal that I had fallen for hundreds of times before, I couldn’t resist now any more than I had then. I nodded again, unable to say the words, and Paddy smiled and walked away.

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