Chances

by Kate Field

  I sighed in defeat and Mabel looked up at me with sympathetic eyes. I cuddled her closer and her eyelids began to droop.

  ‘I suppose it’s like riding a bike, is it? You never lose the knack. How old is your daughter?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘Really?’ I caught Winston’s curious gaze on my face, as he clearly reassessed my age. ‘So is she at university now?’

  ‘She’s living in Paris, working as an au pair. I have an empty nest.’ I smiled, and reluctantly handed Mabel back to her father. ‘Make the most of this little one while you can. You’re lucky to have her.’

  *

  It took a great deal of willpower to walk through the doors of The White Hart at lunchtime, when every instinct urged me to scuttle on past and go home. The snug was empty, and I eventually found Paddy leaning against the bar in the dining room, chatting to Lexy, who was hanging on his every word. Another one bites the dust, I thought, wondering what other biting might have been going on during his extended stay here. Not that it was any of my business what – or who – he got up to, but I did feel a flicker of guilt that I hadn’t thought to warn Lexy first.

  About half the tables were occupied in the dining room, by locals and some unfamiliar faces, and I was pleased for Lexy that trade was picking up now the better weather was on the way.

  ‘Not a bad lunchtime crowd,’ I said, as I joined them at the bar. Lexy dragged her attention away from Paddy and switched her smile to one of friendship rather than flirtation.

  ‘It’s okay, isn’t it, for a Friday anyway. We have a few trippers in. Although they don’t seem big drinkers,’ Lexy added, with an accusatory glance at me, as if I was responsible for a temperance revival sweeping through the town.

  ‘Hello,’ Paddy said, breaking into the conversation – ten seconds without attention must have been too much to bear. He moved towards me, as if he planned to kiss my cheek, but I neatly sidestepped out of his way. ‘What can I get you? Gin and tonic?’

  ‘I don’t drink.’

  ‘Still?’

  That brief exchange almost floored me: the easy intimacy with which he offered my once favourite drink and remembered details that I would have expected him to have long forgotten.

  ‘Where would you like to sit?’ Paddy asked.

  ‘Oh, we’re not stopping.’ I brushed away the shadows of the past. ‘We’re going for a walk.’

  ‘A walk?’ He glanced down at himself. He was smartly dressed – I’d noticed that at once – proper trousers, not jeans, and a crisp blue shirt that looked good against his dark curls. He probably had a wardrobe full of identical ones. If I’d hoped to discompose him, I failed. He smiled, accepting the change without a murmur. ‘I’d better grab my walking boots from the car. Back in a minute.’

  He went through the rear door towards the car park, and I ignored the pointed look Lexy was giving me.

  ‘So tell me,’ she asked at last, when I refused to meet her gaze. ‘There’s no mistaking that atmosphere. What is he? The one that got away?’

  ‘The lucky escape,’ I responded sharply. I softened, seeing her surprise. ‘Don’t be sucked in by that charm, Lexy. It’s skin deep. It doesn’t reach his heart.’

  ‘It’s not his heart I’m interested in …’ she began, but stopped when the man himself walked in, clad in walking boots and an old fleece. This was closer to the Paddy I remembered than I had seen him so far, and an unwelcome pang of nostalgia threatened to breach my guard. I turned my attention back to Lexy.

  ‘One picnic, as ordered,’ she said, handing over a rucksack. It was part of the deal she was offering to hotel guests: a packed lunch and ideas for walks in the local areas. ‘A map and walking routes are in there, although I doubt you’ll need them. Have fun!’

  I wasn’t doing this for fun; it was necessity. I knew how persistent Paddy could be. If he had got it into his head that he needed to apologise, he was unlikely to leave me alone until he’d done it. Better to let him salve his conscience and disappear again. And perhaps it would do me good too, to blot out any bitterness that still lurked and finally put Paddy behind me. Caitlyn had encouraged me to have a fresh start. Perhaps I could only do that when I had cleared away the emotional detritus of the first start.

  I led the way out of The White Hart. Paddy plucked the rucksack from me and weighed it in his hand.

  ‘Disappointingly light,’ he said. ‘I’m guessing there isn’t a four-pack of Guinness in here. What sort of picnic is this?’

  ‘A healthy one.’ I had to look away, to resist the treacherous urge to smile at the horrified expression on his face. ‘Are you going to do this for the whole walk?’

  ‘Try to make you smile? Sure. Almost had you, didn’t I?’

  ‘I meant grumble. You’re not going to make me smile.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. So you say. But you know I can’t resist a challenge.’

  I marched off, heading across the marketplace and towards the snicket that led behind the shops and towards the river. It wasn’t the route I’d planned to take, but if he wanted a challenge, he could have one. We crossed the drover’s bridge, allowing no time to admire the view, and after a few minutes of taking the relatively flat riverside path, I turned left up a stony trail that rose steeply up the side of the hill, not stopping until we reached the top, where a grassy ridge gave gorgeous views across Inglebridge in one direction and endless countryside in the other. It was one of my favourite views.

  I watched as Paddy struggled up the last few metres, hands on his hips and sweat shimmering across his forehead.

  ‘Jeez, Eve, this isn’t a walk, it’s a marathon hike. What’s with the pace? Are you trying to kill me?’

  ‘It was too good an opportunity to miss.’

  He stared at me and then, unexpectedly, he roared with laughter. How I had loved that laugh – the way his eyes crinkled up, the way his whole face absorbed his amusement. How I had once delighted in teasing it out of him. How times had changed.

  ‘Take pity on me,’ he said. ‘Tell me you’re at least a little bit out of breath.’

  ‘Not in the slightest. Imagine what you could achieve without the Guinness.’

  ‘Life without Guinness doesn’t bear imagining.’

  He hadn’t found it so hard to embrace life without me. I didn’t point that out. No bitterness, I reminded myself. No begrudging the life he’d made for himself. I sat down on one of the huge rocks that lay amongst the grass, and Paddy perched on the one next to me.

  ‘It’s lunchtime, surely to goodness?’

  ‘Okay.’ See? I could be reasonable. I could treat him kindly. It wasn’t so impossible, was it? I picked up the rucksack from where he’d dropped it on the ground, took out a foil parcel and handed it to him.

  ‘This had better be good …’

  Despite everything, I couldn’t prevent a smile as he peeled off the foil and revealed a spinach and feta wrap. I passed over a bottle of water.

  ‘Not quite the pie and pint I had in mind …’ He picked up the wrap and prepared to take a bite, but I put out my hand and stopped him.

  ‘Actually, that one’s mine. Here’s yours.’

  I gave him the other foil parcel and he eyed it with trepidation.

  ‘I’m not sure I dare … Just tell me it’s not egg. You wouldn’t do that to me, now would you?’

  I didn’t answer, and watched as he opened the package and gingerly lifted the top half of the soft white roll inside, to reveal two thick sausages smothered in brown sauce. It had always been his favourite, and when he paused, not speaking, I wondered if his tastes had changed. But then he smiled and looked across at me.

  ‘My favourite. You’re too kind to me.’

  ‘Kinder than you deserve.’

  ‘I wouldn’t argue with that.’

  I broke the gaze first, unsettled by the unexpected rawness of his answer, stripped of all the layers of charm. Was this the moment of apology? I turned away and bit into my wrap as I studied the view across town,
feeling suddenly unready to hear whatever he had to say.

  We ate our lunch in silence, which might have been comfortable if I weren’t acutely conscious that this harmony couldn’t last; that our time together was running on and sooner or later Paddy would spoil it by speaking. I had almost decided to force the issue, and demand to know what he wanted, when he stood up and wandered over to the other side of the ridge, looking down over the fields on the opposite side of the river to Inglebridge town centre. He moved backwards and forwards, scrambling around the side of the hill a short way to get a better look before he returned to where I was still sitting on the rock.

  ‘Have you seen the land down there, to the left of the clump of trees?’ He indicated in that direction. ‘Do you see the area that looks like a small hill? Could that be a ditch round it?’

  I didn’t need to look where he was pointing. I had walked up here countless times in the past. I had studied the view in every direction. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

  ‘It looks like a bowl barrow,’ I said, referring to a type of Bronze Age burial mound that took its name from its resemblance to an upturned bowl. ‘I know.’

  ‘You knew it was here?’ Paddy looked confused. ‘And have you never investigated it?’

  ‘No. I don’t do that any more. I have a real job. I have Caitlyn and Gran to look after.’

  ‘It can’t have been completely impossible to keep up your interest, surely? Isn’t there a local archaeological group? This could be important …’

  It was too much. My resolve to be calm, collected and not bitter collapsed. What did he know about what was important in life? He thought nothing of humiliating himself on television for money; he thought nothing of abandoning a child who had already lost the most important person in her world.

  ‘How can you ask that?’ I said. ‘It was impossible to carry on with the plans we’d made. Isn’t that exactly why you left us?’

  I stood up and faced him, hands on hips, voice rising with every word, all sense of pride or self-preservation gone. I hadn’t wanted this conversation, but how could I run away from it when it had been waiting for me for seventeen years? How could I not want to challenge him, get him to admit what he had been too cowardly to say to my face before?

  But it turned out that Paddy still had the capacity to surprise me. He flopped down on his rock and ran his fingers through his thick curls.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t why I left.’ He stared at me, and I might have read pain in his eyes if I was prepared to believe him capable of any human feeling. ‘It wasn’t because I thought Caitlyn would be in the way. Jeez, Eve, how could you believe that was true? How could you think that of me?’

  ‘What else was I supposed to think? Nothing else had changed. You didn’t give me any proper reason for leaving.’ He had waited until I had taken Caitlyn to nursery one morning, and then packed his bags and gone, leaving a note to say that he couldn’t live like this. There had been no warning; the three of us had been growing more tightly knit by the day, and Caitlyn had been especially close to Paddy, even copying his accent when she said certain words. Nothing had prepared me for his sudden departure.

  ‘I got that wrong. I’m sorry.’ He stood up, scuffed his foot in the grass, and avoided looking at me. ‘You deserved better than that crass note I left, but I took the coward’s way out instead of explaining …’

  ‘No!’ I jumped up, holding up my arms as if they could physically block his words from reaching me. Because it was all achingly clear now, and my blood ran hot with humiliation. Nothing else had changed, I had said it myself. So if he hadn’t left because of Caitlyn, it could only have been because of me. Paddy must have no longer wanted to be with me. All these years, I had blamed him for his weakness, for not being willing to adapt his lifestyle to include Caitlyn. I thought her arrival had been the catalyst for his departure. But, in reality, it had been so much simpler than that. What a fool, what a self-satisfied fool I had been to never have considered it before.

  He was watching me, frowning at my interruption. He was waiting to explain, but I couldn’t bear to hear him spell it out. This man had been everything to me once: my past, my present and my future. It didn’t matter how many years had passed. I had learnt to live with the fact that he hadn’t loved me enough. I didn’t want to hear that he hadn’t loved me at all.

  ‘You don’t need to say any more,’ I said. ‘None of it matters now, does it?’

  And I grabbed Lexy’s rucksack and ran back down the hill, ignoring the sound of Paddy calling my name.

  Chapter 9

  Winston was leaving The Chestnuts when I arrived to visit Gran the following Sunday. We met in the car park and he introduced his wife, Cheryl.

  ‘Good luck in there,’ he said, raising his eyebrows. ‘We seem to have an unelected committee of volunteers to help with the sponsored walk.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – my gran’s the ringleader?’ Winston nodded. ‘Dare I ask what they have in mind?’

  ‘They’ve come up with a wide-ranging list of ideas. For a start, they expect all the local businesses to offer sponsorship. They also want to know if we’re organising Portaloos as they might not be able to manage otherwise.’

  I groaned. The event might be on behalf of The Chestnuts, but I hadn’t expected the residents to actually turn up. The last thing we needed was a bunch of incontinent, trouble-making pensioners.

  ‘Some of the ideas weren’t too bad,’ Cheryl said. She was a smiley, petite blonde, and from first impressions seemed like one of those exhausting people who were unfailingly positive about everything. ‘Like the refreshment stall and the event T-shirts. And they are all desperate to find a celebrity to start the event, although there’s a lot of squabbling about who it should be. One of the BBC weather presenters is a popular choice.’

  Cheryl laughed, but I wasn’t in the mood for it. I could easily guess where this celebrity idea had originated, and Gran had better start behaving if she expected me to keep her in the all-butter shortbread to which she’d become accustomed.

  ‘This is getting out of hand,’ I grumbled. ‘We’re raising funds for an old folks’ minibus, not Children in Need …’

  ‘Good luck going in there with that attitude.’ Winston grinned and nodded towards the box in my hand. ‘I’m not even sure that those biscuits will guarantee your safety if you repeat that.’

  I was heading towards the doors when Cheryl called after me. ‘Does your gran have a sweet tooth?’ she asked. ‘I’m events manager at the Fairlie House Hotel, and we’re holding an Easter Afternoon Tea next Saturday. Are you free? Why don’t you both come?’

  ‘I don’t know …’ It didn’t sound appealing, if Gran was likely to use the occasion to nag me about celebrities.

  ‘You’d be doing me a favour. It was my idea, and we’re not fully booked yet, so I need to fill the tables. I’ll give you a discount. And,’ she continued, before I could reply, ‘if it will help tempt you, I can offer you a staff discount at the spa too. How about a massage and a facial – shake off the winter pallor?’

  How bad did she think I looked? I was about to refuse, when Cheryl smiled at me and carried on.

  ‘Go on, treat yourself. We all need to be kinder to ourselves, don’t you think?’

  It was as if her words cast a spell over me, with the echo of Caitlyn. Before I could give it another thought, my mouth opened, and I heard myself agreeing to it all.

  *

  Caitlyn took two days to return my latest call, during which time I’d convinced myself that she was lying at the bottom of the Seine – and that was the least disturbing scenario I’d come up with.

  ‘Hello!’ I bellowed when I heard her voice at last. She could probably hear my relief – if she could hear anything; the phone was practically vibrating with a deep thrumming sound at her end. ‘Where are you? Are the children at band practice or something?’

  Band practice! How old was I? I’d clearly been spending too much tim
e at The Chestnuts. Caitlyn must have been distracted, as she wouldn’t normally have let me get away with such a clanger.

  ‘I’m off duty tonight,’ she said. My imagination rapidly filled in the rest of the sentence in ways that I didn’t want to dwell on.

  ‘How have you been?’ I asked. I meant, ‘Are you okay and why did it take you so long to ring back?’ and I should have known that with Caitlyn’s language skills she wouldn’t have any trouble with the translation.

  ‘Everything’s great. You don’t need to worry about me.’ She sounded great – there was none of the artificial brightness in her voice that I could hear in mine. Of course, that only strengthened my worries. What was she up to, now that she was away from my watchful eye?

  ‘I’m behaving perfectly well,’ she added, laughing, translating my silence as easily as she had my words. ‘Good as gold. Squeaky clean. An absolute angel.’

  ‘Okay, I get the picture.’ I laughed, determined not to let my anxiety spoil these precious minutes. ‘Tell me what you’ve been up to.’

  She did – or what I suspected were the edited highlights, at least. Perhaps she would have told me more if I had merely been her aunt; perhaps then we would have had the sort of relationship where she would have confided in me about things she couldn’t share with a parent. I felt a pang of regret about what we had missed – as if I needed anything else to mourn.

  ‘How are you getting on with the vouchers?’ she asked, sharply changing the subject when my questions must have veered too close to a sensitive subject. ‘Are there any more on the way?’

  ‘There will be soon. I’m taking Gran Gran out to a posh hotel next weekend for afternoon tea, and I’m booked into the spa while I’m there.’

  ‘That sounds more like it. Is Gran Gran not joining you in the spa?’

  ‘I asked if she wanted to. She said she used to enjoy a bit of man-handling, but those days have long gone.’

  ‘Urgh, I’m not sure I wanted that image in my head … But while you’re talking about man-handling, has Rich moved in with you yet?’