Sunshine and Sweet Peas in Nightingale Square

by Heidi Swain

  ‘So perhaps,’ said Heather, ‘because your mum knew that you had parted on a reasonably amicable footing she could have thought there was a chance of getting you back together. Does she know the reason why you’re divorcing him?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, a tell-tale blush blossoming, ‘she knows. Everyone knows, but you’re probably right. Her soppy old heart no doubt thought there was a chance we could patch things up, especially as we’d been so polite during the break-up.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever want to shred his suits?’ Lisa asked incredulously.

  Clearly, she was having a hard time getting her head round the idea of a gracious parting.

  ‘No,’ I said truthfully, ‘I’d seen enough of that kind of thing courtesy of some of our friends, and worse. To tell you the truth I was just really, really sad about it all. I didn’t have the energy to turn what was happening into a vengeful free-for-all.’

  I felt my face go even redder as I thought about the real reason behind why I didn’t have the energy to turn our parting into Armageddon and Lisa looked at me and narrowed her eyes.

  ‘What?’ I frowned.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said with a shrug.

  ‘So, I take it David was rather shocked that you were less than pleased to see him when you answered the door at your parents’ house?’

  ‘You could say that,’ I sighed. ‘He insisted Mum hadn’t told him I’d be there, but it didn’t take a genius to work out I’d be home for the holidays. When I stormed out he followed me to the pub and within minutes started going on about putting everything back together, renewing our vows and making a fresh start.’

  I didn’t mention the baby he had dangled as if I were a donkey chasing a carrot.

  ‘But you weren’t tempted?’

  ‘Oh, I was tempted all right,’ I reluctantly admitted, avoiding Lisa’s outraged expression, ‘right up until the moment I watched him ordering drinks at the bar.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I shrugged, ‘absolutely nothing.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t take my eyes off him, could I?’ I sniffed. ‘I was watching his every move, taking in how comfortably he was talking to the barmaid and watching her flutter her lashes in response and that was when I realised.’

  ‘What?’ asked the pair together.

  ‘That was the moment I knew that if we got back together then I was heading straight back to waiting for him to do it to me again. If I put myself back in that relationship I would be watching him forever and just papering over the cracks that have run too deep to be filled.’

  ‘So, you finally figured out that what you really need to do is scrape it all back, sand and smooth those cracks away and paint yourself a brand new colour,’ Lisa said astutely.

  ‘Exactly,’ I agreed, looking at the dated décor around me. ‘Just like this place.’ I sighed as I swallowed a mouthful of fizz. ‘It’s not David’s fault,’ I tried to say, but heavy tears were suddenly threatening to fall and I shook my head to stop them. ‘It’s just the way he is. The way he’s always been.’

  I felt such a fool for believing that I had changed him.

  ‘Do not,’ said Lisa sternly, as Heather abandoned her glass and rushed to my side when I began to sob, ‘let that man’s personality explain away what he did to you, Kate. Do you hear me?’

  I nodded, but couldn’t speak.

  ‘And don’t look at me like that, Heather,’ she said crossly, ‘because there’s more to this story than we know. But it’ll keep for another night.’

  ‘Is there?’ Heather asked me. ‘Is there something else, Kate?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there is, but as Lisa said, it’ll keep.’

  As far as I was concerned it could keep locked away forever.

  I took myself off to the bathroom to compose my thoughts and when I came back the fire had been stoked and the DVD was cued up ready to go.

  ‘All right?’ Lisa asked, without looking at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘thanks. Much better.’

  ‘That’s two out of three now, isn’t it?’ she tutted. ‘I suppose it’ll be my turn next.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, Heather here blubbed the first time we met her and tonight it’s been all about you, so I reckon I’m due a sobbing session of my own sometime soon.’

  ‘You wait until I take you for your first run around Whitlingham Lake,’ Heather laughed, digging her sharply in the ribs. ‘Crying will be the only thing you’ll be capable of after that!’

  More tears followed her comment, but they weren’t sad ones.

  Chapter 10

  Thankfully, with the Nightingale Square New Year celebrations to organise, there was little time to dwell on my reacquaintance with David and, having shared the details of pretty much everything that had happened with my girls, it didn’t take me long to work out that my mother’s well-meaning meddling hadn’t turned me back into the wreck I had been in the summer after all.

  Had I really been back there I would have been wearing my dressing gown, sleeping in until the afternoon and then mooching aimlessly about the house until it was time to fall back into bed, but I hadn’t even considered sinking to those depths again and not only because I had Lisa hammering on the door at all hours, but also because I discovered I didn’t want to.

  ‘I can’t help thinking your mum actually did you a favour by inviting Mr Wrong round to stuff up your Christmas,’ the lady herself pronounced as we set about blowing up yet more balloons and counting out party poppers.

  My house had been designated as Party Central and was consequently filling up with all manner of celebratory accoutrements. Glen had offered his and Heather’s place, but Heather was worried about sodden shoes spoiling her carpets and there was no way Lisa’s house could be deemed suitable. The place was already stuffed with over-excited children so it certainly didn’t need piles of balloons and mini-combustibles cranking up the atmosphere. I had wondered if Carole might step into the breach, but her excuses had echoed those Heather had come up with and the role of warehouse stockist had been left to me.

  ‘Oh, really?’ I gasped between puffs. ‘How do you work that one out?’

  I already knew what she was going to say, having felt my way to the same conclusion, but I had no intention of stealing her thunder.

  ‘Well, look at you,’ she said, nodding at my freshly polished nails and recently re-coloured hair. ‘For a start you’ve been sale shopping in the city, you’re wearing make-up and your sweet breath is minty fresh.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So,’ she continued, precariously balancing another balloon on the steadily growing pile, ‘that goes to prove that you aren’t wallowing, doesn’t it? You’re getting on with things in spite of the setback. If you were as broken by seeing him again as you initially thought you had been, you’d still be sitting around in your sweats with the curtains closed.’

  ‘Not that there would be much chance of actually doing that,’ I tutted. ‘Not with you hanging on the bell every two minutes.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ she said firmly. ‘If you really weren’t ready to move on you wouldn’t let me in. You would have opened a window and told me to f—’

  ‘Not that you would,’ I interrupted.

  ‘No, of course I wouldn’t,’ she laughed, ‘but I’m just saying, you should be proud of yourself, Kate. I’m not sure I’d be where you are right now if John had done something to me like David did to you.’

  I was surprised to hear her say that. I hadn’t thought there was anything in the world capable of stopping Lisa in her stride or knocking the wind out of her bubbly and exuberant sails.

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ she groaned, slumping back against the sofa for support. ‘I’m going light-headed here. If anyone wants more balloons they can blow the bloody things up themselves. Now, let’s check we’ve got enough of everything we need for everyone to join in with the first footing.’


  New Year’s Eve was bright and dry and I was grateful that the weather was kind because the party turned out to be far larger than I had expected. Lots of people had turned up from neighbouring streets, including Poppy, the pretty girl from the grocers, and they were all happy to congregate on the green where John, Rob and Graham had set up a collection of gazebos and braziers to warm hands at a safe distance.

  The dozens of balloons Lisa and I had lent our puff to were strewn in the trees, along with strings of brightly coloured lights, and Carole was standing guard by the punch bowl to stop the enthusiastic revellers adding even more alcohol to the occasion. Thanks to the amiable weather it was all a far more welcome set-up than having the hordes traipsing through my little house, even if I did have well-worn out-of-date psychedelic carpets rather than new cream pile.

  ‘Are you all right sitting there?’ I questioned Harold, who had asked John to fetch the garden chair he kept by his front door to watch the world go by.

  ‘I’m grand, thank you, Kate,’ he smiled, tucking a tartan blanket tighter around his knees. ‘How did you enjoy your Christmas?’

  ‘Let’s just say it’s nice to be home,’ I shouted down at him as Graham wandered up with some plastic half-pint glasses of punch on a tray.

  ‘Can I tempt you?’ he asked. ‘I’d have a couple now before it’s too lethal, if I were you,’ he advised.

  ‘But I thought Carole was keeping watch,’ I said, looking back in her direction. ‘She’s in charge of drinks, isn’t she?’

  I was amused to see Poppy was engaging her in conversation, while a chap with thick blonde dreadlocks, whom I didn’t recognise, was emptying what looked like a hipflask into the fruity concoction on the table behind her.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, quickly taking one glass from the tray for myself and another for Harold. ‘I see. Thanks, Graham.’

  ‘We’ll all be half-cut by midnight,’ Harold chuckled, taking the drink from me and downing half of it in one big swallow. ‘Just as well it’s a bank holiday tomorrow and a Sunday, so no one has to go to work.’

  Graham and I nodded in agreement.

  ‘That’s actually something I’ve been meaning to ask you about, Kate,’ said Lisa, who had joined our little group with a slightly squiffy-looking John draped around her shoulders.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Work,’ she said. ‘What is it that you do for a living?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, trying to find the words to explain succinctly what it was that I did, or used to do. ‘My field is history. I’m enthralled by the past. I work with antiques mostly.’

  ‘Restoring them?’ Graham asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, dismissing the image of David sitting in The Mermaid and offering me the chance to stick us back together, ‘not restoration. I used to run a business sourcing specific antiques that people wanted to buy. I had a list of clients who paid me to find particular pieces they were looking to fill their homes with.’

  ‘Nice,’ slurred John, attempting to give me a thumbs up, but not quite making it.

  ‘That sounds exciting,’ said Lisa more soberly, her eyes shining.

  ‘It was,’ I said. ‘My searches often took me all over the world. It was great fun tracking down certain pieces.’

  ‘Some folk have more money than sense,’ Harold tutted in thinly disguised disgust.

  I couldn’t disagree with him there. Some of the figures involved made my stomach roll. I wondered if David had convinced Francesca Lucca to give him a chance to furnish her latest Italian abode yet. The loss of her account alone would be quite a blow to the business I had left behind, and it wouldn’t take many deserting clients for the little empire we had worked so hard to create to crumble. Not that that was my problem.

  ‘I’m not sure you’ll find much call for that sort of thing around here,’ Harold added.

  On that point I could correct him, but I didn’t. In my experience the world was full of wealthy people happy to pay the price for what they thought they couldn’t live without but they, and their demands, didn’t much interest me any more.

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said, taking an exploratory sip of the punch and quickly discovering that the smell alone was enough to make my head spin. ‘I’m not going to do that now. I’m going to take some time out to work on the house and I want to explore the history of the city, get to know the Castle a little better and perhaps even offer my services there as a volunteer at some point in the future.’

  ‘And help us find somewhere to grow our greens,’ John reminded me. ‘You did say you were still going to help with that.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘It’s a shame you won’t get the chance to go and have a nose around Prosperous Place before it’s had the guts ripped out of it,’ Harold sniffed. ‘The house and grounds over there are packed with enough history to keep you entertained for years.’

  ‘It’s an absolute disgrace that it’s all going to be lost,’ sighed Poppy, catching the conversation as she wandered over to join us.

  The house was in darkness, but its silhouette stood tall and strong. Its solid presence was a comforting full stop to the Square, but for how much longer? How long before it would be bedecked in tactless spotlighting and was housing ill-informed residents who harboured the illusion that their hi-tech abodes were preserving a part of Norfolk history, when in fact their very construction had ripped the heart out of an important piece of it.

  ‘Have you heard anything else from that woman at the council?’ Lisa asked.

  Neil and Mark had joined us now and as one we all looked towards the house.

  ‘No,’ I confirmed, ‘not a word. I really think the place is done for.’

  A little later, as I was taking a moment to check the bags of coal, bread and miniatures of whisky for first footing at midnight, Neil came and found me.

  ‘You know, don’t you?’ he said, his handsome face twisted with worry and his eyebrows knitted together.

  ‘That you work for the firm who are responsible for drawing up the plans to decimate Prosperous Place, you mean?’

  He nodded and looked over his shoulder to where Mark was standing with Heather and Glen. Mark was looking adoringly at Evie who was strapped to her father’s chest in some sort of snug-fitting sling. Clearly the late hour suited her as she was giggling and kicking her little legs with abandon.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know.’

  ‘So why haven’t you said anything to any of the others?’

  ‘What would be the point?’ I shrugged. ‘It will all come out sooner or later and anyway, it’s not really any of my business, is it?’

  ‘You’re a Nightingale Square resident now,’ he reminded me. ‘Of course it’s your business, and between you and me, Kate . . .’ he went on, lowering his voice to little more than a whisper.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘. . . The whole development is balanced on a knife edge now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I reckon,’ he swallowed, ‘if there’s enough objection to the plans to hold them up for any length of time then the whole project will fold. It wouldn’t take much. The finances are already far tighter than they should be, not that I should be telling you that, but I can’t say I’m as enamoured with the project as my boss thinks I am, and not just because it’s happening right outside my front door.’

  This was interesting news indeed, a definite beacon of hope, but only a temporary one of course.

  ‘But if this project goes to pot then the place would be back on the open market,’ I hissed, my voice as quiet as his. ‘And we’d be back where we started.’

  ‘Well, there is that possibility I suppose,’ he shrugged, ‘but I thought you’d like to know. In truth I don’t want to see the heart ripped out of the place any more than anyone else, but I wouldn’t want to see it razed to the ground either.’

  ‘What?’ I squawked.

  ‘It’s prime building land,’ he said darkly, ‘if it i
sn’t developed, the only other option would be demolition.’

  ‘Surely you’re not serious?’ I demanded.

  ‘I’m afraid I am,’ he told me. ‘And, if it is flattened to make way for more bog-standard flats, then the entire area will be changed forever.’

  I felt my stomach drop to the floor. That sounded even worse than the current development plans. At least the proposition on the table at the moment meant that, in one guise or another, some part of the original structure of Prosperous Place would remain in situ.

  ‘What are you two whispering about?’ demanded Mark, who had sneaked up unnoticed.

  ‘We were just trying to work out the alcohol content of the punch,’ I said creatively, my mind reeling as I imagined Prosperous Place reduced to a pile of rubble, my body trembling at the thought.

  ‘Oh, it must be millions of units by now,’ Mark laughed with a hiccup. ‘Squillions.’

  ‘Are you drunk?’ Neil tutted in amusement.

  ‘A bit,’ Mark sniggered.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said, ducking away. ‘Happy New Year.’

  ‘And to you my lovely,’ Mark slurred as Neil steered him away from the punchbowl.

  ‘If I come round to your house,’ I asked Harold, who was still holding court with quite a crowd around his chair, ‘will you tell me a bit more about Prosperous Place and your family who worked there? Will you show me those photographs you said you had?’

  I was determined to build a picture of the place and its past in my head before it was changed beyond all recognition.

  ‘Absolutely, dear girl,’ he said, sounding delighted. ‘I would be honoured. I’m surprised you haven’t been before now.’

  I did feel guilty about that. He had invited me to look on my very first day living in the Square.

  ‘It’s a shame you never met Doris.’

  ‘Doris?’

  ‘The lady who lived in your house before you.’