her on my knee before I’d answered, and pulled some papers out of the drawer. Mabel felt soft
and wriggly in my hands; it was a largely unfamiliar sensation, as I’d been away at university
when Caitlyn was this age, but it was not an unpleasant one. ‘I don’t think it can just be the
largest number of people to climb Winlow Hill in one day, or something as local as that. Or
that’s how I interpreted the advice.’ Winston waved the papers at me. ‘It needs to be something
that other people could try to beat – like the largest gathering of people dressed as pirates, or
wearing top hats.’
‘I suppose we could try to think of something like that … people wearing flat caps?’
‘Accompanied by whippets?’ Winston grinned. ‘Time’s too tight anyway. It can take
up to twelve weeks to get approval.’
I sighed in defeat and Mabel looked up at me with sympathetic eyes. I cuddled her
closer and her eyelids began to droop.
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‘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.
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‘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
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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
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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 delight
ed 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.
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‘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.
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‘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
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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.
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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.
&nb
sp; ‘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 …’
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‘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
A Dozen Second Chances (ARC) Page 9
