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?’
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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
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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.’
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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
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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 want
ed 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
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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
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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
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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
tortur
e.
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.’
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‘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
A Dozen Second Chances (ARC) Page 2
