Something to Tell You

by Lucy Diamond

  ‘I hope so,’ Frankie said.

  ‘And as for Julia . . .’ He sighed again. ‘You know, given the choice, I’d rather she had stayed away forever. Although I can see, for Fergus, that would have left this hole in his life, even if he isn’t aware of it now. So I guess we talk to her, like you said. Go back to Plan A and get round a table with her, see if we can thrash something out.’

  ‘As long as we introduce Fergus to the idea of her gently, and really manage it at first, so that we’re there too and it’s gradual . . . I’m sure it will be good for everyone in the long term,’ Frankie said. She risked a glance at Craig and saw that he was nodding, finally seeming to be considering the situation like a rational person, rather than through a filter of rage. ‘Today, talking to Julia, I was trying to get her to see the real picture of looking after a child – the practicalities, the difficulties – not to put her off, but to enlighten her.’ Now it was her turn to sigh. ‘Although I think I just ended up annoying her, because she flounced out, not wanting to listen.’

  She cringed, half-expecting Craig to chastise her again for what she’d done, but then he said, ‘She’s not an easy person,’ and it was as if they were on the same side again.

  ‘No,’ she agreed, remembering Julia’s hostility, her chippiness, the way she’d marched off as soon as the conversation took a turn she didn’t like.

  Craig reached out and took Frankie’s hand. ‘Sorry I had a go at you. You’re the last person in the world I want to fall out with.’

  ‘Same,’ she replied. ‘Let’s see this one through together. No more secrets.’

  ‘And no more sidelining.’ He squeezed her fingers and it felt as if the two of them were clicking back into place at last, allies and equals once more.

  ‘Deal,’ she said, squeezing back.

  Chapter Thirty

  A few weeks passed by, and July’s muggy nights and thunderstorms gave way to a sunny, pleasant August, with long, golden days. Since her go-getting conversation with Robyn, Alison hadn’t wasted any time in packing them full of action. The first and scariest thing she did was to book herself in to see the counsellor whom her client Molly had recommended, not sure whether to be pleased or horrified when told that the counsellor had a cancellation available the following week.

  Having duly taken the train over to Leeds for her appointment, Alison tracked down the counsellor’s address to the upper floors of a beauty salon just off Kirkgate, where she was shown into a bright, comfortable office space. A middle-aged woman with a calm voice and compassionate eyes introduced herself as Emily, then said simply, ‘So, Alison. Tell me a bit about why you’re here.’ The next thing she knew, she’d poured out the whole tragic story of Rich’s death, sparing nothing, and tears were dripping down her chin as she brought alive all the heartache once more. The shock, the pain, the blame. She’d never been able to say goodbye, she hadn’t been able to help him in time. She’d cut herself off from so many people, she’d built up all these walls because of her guilty feelings, the sense that she had failed her husband so badly.

  ‘I’ve never really talked about this before,’ Alison sobbed at the end, completely overwrought. ‘Because I never wanted my daughter to know. He was her hero. She’d be so upset.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell your daughter,’ Emily said, in her steady, wise voice. ‘The important thing is that you’ve told someone, that you’re not keeping these feelings locked up inside you any more. That’s what matters.’

  Alison had been crying too much to reply, other than to nod, and Emily leaned forward with a box of tissues. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Alison,’ she said kindly. ‘You know that, don’t you? It really wasn’t. You mustn’t blame yourself.’

  And there it was – the lifting of guilt at last, a chink of light pushing through the suffocating darkness. It wasn’t your fault. How she’d longed to hear those words, to receive their absolution. ‘Thank you,’ she managed to say in a quavering voice, replaying them again in her head. It wasn’t your fault. Then the two of them had just talked, and Alison had felt calmer and calmer, until to her great surprise Emily told her that the hour was almost up and their appointment was over.

  ‘Come back next week and tell me about something you’re really looking forward to in the future,’ she said, as Alison thanked her and dabbed at her eyes, ‘and think about one small way in which you can physically let go of your grief. It might be sorting through old photographs, or putting away possessions that hold sad memories. It might be simply trying to reset the way you think about your late husband each time, so that your angle is “We had some lovely times together” rather than “How I desperately miss him”. Even if it’s just one tiny change you make, I want to know.’

  Alison had thought about this all the way home, sitting still and quiet in the train carriage as she was rocked along the track. Something to look forward to: well, Robyn had invited her to come on holiday to Portugal with her and the children, taking John’s place, which would be lovely. She hadn’t been much of a holidayer in the past – going away on her own made her feel lonelier than if she’d stayed at home, and she worried about the house being left empty. But she’d already mentioned it to her neighbours, Liz and Vince, and they’d fallen over themselves to assure her that they’d keep an eye on the place. Seeing as Liz had been newly promoted to sergeant in the police force, Alison was pretty sure that she could rely on her.

  Another thing she was looking forward to – to her great surprise! – was meeting up with Jeanie and her knitting group again. For when she’d cut the other woman’s hair a fortnight earlier, they had fallen into easy, friendly conversation, and it had turned out that the two of them were like-minded about all sorts of things, not least how wonderful their grandchildren were. Alison had never had a problem chatting with her clients – you couldn’t be a hairdresser and not be good at talking to other people – but this particular cut and blow-dry was punctuated with laughter and all sorts of shared confidences, more than she’d been expecting. And at the end, Jeanie had said, ‘Alison, I don’t suppose you’re a knitter, are you? Because you would love the girls – and token fella! – in the knitting group that I go to every other Thursday. I promise they’re not a bunch of old farts; they’re really good company. If you ever fancy joining us, you’d be very welcome.’

  Not all that long ago Alison would have said no, out of habit, just like she’d said no to every other similar invitation. Thursday evenings? No, she couldn’t possibly. She’d miss EastEnders and that reality show she liked! But to her surprise, she found herself saying yes, okay – and then enjoying one of the giggliest, most entertaining evenings she’d had in a long while, despite the fact that her knitting skills were pretty awful. ‘Some of us are only here for the cake and gossip, don’t worry,’ one of the women assured her with a cackle. ‘Not to mention the gin.’

  So yes, she was definitely looking forward to seeing them again. The evening had actually been better than watching telly. As for Emily’s instructions about doing something to let go of the grief in a physical way . . . Well, Alison had had an idea about that, too.

  Once back at the house, she went straight through to the garage, where Rich’s car had been standing since the day she’d moved in – undriven, unappreciated, unused. If you didn’t count her sitting in it every now and then and having a little cry, that was.

  Glancing around the garage, she realized – for the first time, really, if she was honest – that the space there was pretty decent. That if she sold the car, and got rid of all the boxes of junk lining the walls, she could easily slap on a few coats of emulsion and maybe put a proper warm carpet down over the concrete floor, to cheer it up a bit. With better lighting – maybe even some windows – this could become a usable extra room in the house: an office, perhaps, for sorting out her paperwork, or a sewing room, where she could spread out her fabrics and leave her machine rigged up in one place, rather than having to clear the dining table every time she wanted to make somet
hing. She could even put a treadmill in here, use it as a little gym space to keep herself fit, she thought, her eyes widening at the possibilities; at all these productive, energetic new versions of herself that had come strolling into her imagination. In fact the more she thought about it, the more she decided that the garage was absolutely wasted on this old car, however sentimental she might feel about it.

  And at the end of the day the Jensen was only a car: pieces of metal, tyres, mechanics. It wasn’t Rich, and it wasn’t going to bring him back. The truth of the matter was that having it under her roof just made her feel sad. ‘We had some lovely times together,’ she said, using the words Emily had given her, with one hand on the bonnet. ‘But now it’s time for us to go our separate ways.’ She waited for the pang to hit her, as it had done in the past whenever Robyn had gone on at her about selling. This time it was more of a twinge, though. She could live with a twinge.

  Having made the decision, she acted quickly, contacting the next day a local dealer who specialized in classic cars. Serendipitously, it turned out she’d been cutting his daughter-in-law’s hair for years, and so she knew he wasn’t about to stitch her up. Indeed, once he saw the car himself and had taken it for a test run, he offered Alison such a good price that she thought she might pass out with shock. A lump sum like that would mean she could retire a bit earlier, if she felt like it, she realized in a daze. It would mean she could help out Robyn financially too, if things became tricky following her marriage breakdown. And bugger it, she could even treat herself to a new runaround, seeing as the ancient Honda Jazz she drove had been so temperamental last winter.

  ‘You’re on,’ she’d said, shaking his hand and not feeling the slightest ache of guilt or sadness as he drove the car away. Quite the contrary, actually – she stood there in the empty space of the garage and could almost feel the air trembling with expectation. Whatever Fate offers me next, I’m going to take it, she found herself thinking with a smile on her face. I’m going to say yes.

  Fate, like Alison herself, did not muck about, in this instance. Later that evening, she was tackling her accounts at the kitchen table when a notification flashed in the bottom right corner of the laptop screen, letting her know that she had a new friend request on Facebook.

  Alison didn’t have much time for Facebook, truth be told: the whole thing seemed like one never-ending parade of people showing off about some achievement or other. ‘Bully for you,’ she found herself muttering sardonically whenever she bothered to look at her timeline, wading through the stream of information that, more often than not, only served to make her feel inadequate. Clicking through now, to see who had sent the friend request, she found it hard to muster up any real enthusiasm; it would almost certainly be a client or maybe someone she’d been at school with in Bournemouth, about whom she hadn’t thought for fifty years. Yeah, whatever. She would accept the request, like she always did, without it really meaning anything.

  But then she saw the name there in her notifications list and found herself gasping aloud and peering closer, in a classic double-take. Thomas Naylor? Gosh. It couldn’t be, could it?

  She squinted at the small photograph onscreen beside his name, before putting on her reading glasses to make absolutely sure. Thomas Naylor! It was him, her very first boyfriend – she recognized him immediately, despite the salt-and-pepper hair he now sported at the temples, because there was his dear wide smile, those laughing grey eyes and yes, the same cute jug-ears he’d had as a teenager. ‘Well, I never,’ she murmured, feeling a blush surging in her cheeks. He’d sent her a message, she noticed, and she opened it, heart pounding:

  Dear Ali,

  Has it really been forty-eight years? I don’t know where the time goes. I was listening to the radio the other day – one of those ‘Golden Oldies’ shows, you know – and our song came on. (‘Our what?’ you’re probably thinking. ‘Who is this old codger anyway?’) Well, I’m talking about ‘Without You’ by Nilsson, and suddenly there I was, back in Queen’s Park with you, and a young man of seventeen again.

  Alison had to blink a few times, because she was finding all of this hard to process. Queen’s Park, with Tom Naylor. Warm spring days, daffodils and cherry blossom, and ‘Without You’ – their song – playing from every café radio and car stereo for weeks on end. Of course she remembered it. Of course she remembered him.

  Ali Brealey, I thought to myself. Whatever happened to that lovely Ali Brealey? So I had a little look – had to get my grandson to help me, to be honest, he’s much better at these Internet things than me – and here you are; or, rather, here’s Ali Tremayne, as I see you are nowadays.

  Well, Ali Tremayne, I hope you’ve had a good life. I hope the world’s been kind to you! And if you’re listening to the radio one day and ‘Without You’ comes on, I hope you’ll remember me as fondly as I remember you.

  Love from your old pal Tom

  Alison realized that she’d put a hand up to her heart. Her mouth had fallen open, like a trapdoor swinging. Tom Naylor, the one who’d got away! He’d joined the navy and they’d split up (oh, the buckets she had wept!) and then, by the time he came back, she was going out with Rich and the two of them were talking about setting up home together and moving to the Midlands for Rich’s new job. Tom Naylor, though. Oh my. Was he still in Bournemouth? Was he married? Was this her reward from the universe for selling Rich’s car, at long last?

  Third time lucky, Mum, Robyn teased in her head and she rolled her eyes. ‘Ridiculous,’ she muttered under her breath, but she was smiling all the same and reading through his message again. Oh, but she’d been so desperately in love with him, back in the day. How she’d idolized that boy! No doubt he had been married forever by now, though, she reminded herself sternly. He’d probably be madly devoted to his beautiful wife – he’d mentioned a grandson, hadn’t he? A whole gang of jug-eared kids as well then, she bet. The good ones were always married.

  Still, was she going to accept his friend request? Of course she blooming well was. And was she going to write back to him? You bet. And were those actually butterflies flipping and flapping in her stomach, a giddy feeling as if she’d just been on the waltzers at a fairground? Yes. Yes, it was. Who would have thought?

  Fired up by nostalgia, she typed back a message immediately:

  Dear Tom,

  Goodness me, yes, of course I remember you. I am delighted to be reminded of you! How lovely to hear from you, after all these years.

  Life has been pretty good to me on the whole, barring a few shocks along the way. I am widowed, but have a lovely daughter, Robyn, and two wonderful grandchildren, and live in Harrogate. I run my own business empire . . . well, I’m a self-employed mobile hairdresser, anyway. Same difference!

  How about you? Tell me more. Are you still in Bournemouth? Are you happy? I still hear from Deborah Grayling sometimes – do you remember, my best friend with the blonde bob who worked in the tea rooms. She’s in Poole these days, running a little gift shop.

  She paused and then backspaced through the lines about Deborah, frowning and thinking he might not want to hear a load of old woman’s gossip. Then she remembered the vow she and Robyn had made each other about being brave – the pact she’d made with Fate, too, about saying yes, and dared herself to up the ante. Well, why not? If this was the universe presenting her with an opportunity, then the least she could do was make it clear she was interested:

  Funnily enough, I was thinking about you (fondly!) the other week when I went on a blind date. I was quite nervous about the whole thing, as I felt horribly out of practice, but then, for some reason, I found myself remembering our first date at the cinema – and it reminded me how much fun dating could be, with the right person. Sadly, this recent date was a complete disaster – very much NOT the right person! – but never mind!!

  Oh dear, did that make her sound desperate? Frivolous? She bit her lip while she read it all back through, trying to imagine what his wife would think, if she saw it. Maybe it
was a bit flirty, on second thoughts. She deleted the whole paragraph, not wanting to give the wrong impression.

  Then a thought occurred to her. Now that they were Facebook friends, she should be able to see his profile and timeline anyway. Leaving her message as a draft, she clicked on his image and his details came up, along with a gorgeous big photo of him, handsome and smiling, with a small child perched on his shoulders.

  Let’s have a look then, she thought, scanning busily for details. He was living in Nottingham these days, she read – so that answered the Bournemouth question, although he’d left several comments about ‘The Cherries’, which was the nickname for the Bournemouth football club, so clearly he hadn’t abandoned his roots completely. What else? A nice picture of a grandson graduating, with Tom looking proud to bursting beside him, one hand clapping the young man’s shoulder. Some pictures from last Christmas: various excited-looking small children in a living room with a big tree all lit up. Photos of a black Labrador in woodland. Somebody – his daughter, maybe? – celebrating her fortieth birthday. No sign of a wife, though, thought Alison, her interest piqued as she scrolled further down. And further. And further still. No sign of a wife at all. Which was interesting.

  She went back to her half-written message and read it all through once more. Then she added:

  I would love to know how you are, and what you’ve been up to all these years. And if you’re ever up in Harrogate, do come and say hello!

  Love Alison

  There, that would do. She pressed Send before she was tempted to tinker any more and sat there, a smile spreading on her face as she thought about him reading her message, a hundred miles or so away. Tom Naylor, eh? Tom Naylor! Was life about to take an interesting turn? she wondered, going to pour herself a drink. If Tom Naylor was involved, she really hoped so.