by KE Payne
“I just need headspace.” From work. From Anna. “To concentrate on getting stuff sorted up here.”
“Okay, I’ll leave you to it.”
“Sure.” Tag could picture Anna’s face. She’d be furious, she knew.
“Quick question before I go?”
“Yup?” Tag breathed in and fought the feeling of suffocation that always accompanied Anna.
“The blue file with the charts in it that I need for the Everson property portfolio,” Anna said. “Can’t find it anywhere.”
“Right.” Like she couldn’t look for them herself? “It’s in the cabinet to the left of the water cooler,” Tag said, “I put it in there myself the day before I came up here. I did tell you that. You must have forgotten.”
“Awesome.” Anna puffed a sigh of relief. “Did you tell me that? I don’t remember.”
“I did.” Tag reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose. She was suddenly weary. “Because I knew you’d need it today.”
“You’re the best,” Anna said. “This is why I can’t cope without you.”
*
“You’re happy.” Ellen came up behind Tag in the kitchen. She looped an arm round her shoulder. “You were singing. You never sing.”
“Is that a crime?” Tag nudged her with her hip.
Saturday was looking as though it was going to have the best weather since Tag had arrived. Now bright and breezy, with no hint of rain in the air, a visit to the park would be a definite. Tag had arrived at Glenside in the morning full of intentions to talk to Blair, only to find he’d rather be ploughing the top field than talk to her about the mill. That, Tag figured, was his lookout. He wanted to delay talking about the accounts and would rather take himself off than confront their problems, even though he’d specifically asked to see her? Fine. Nothing was going to spoil Tag’s day. An afternoon at the park with her two new best buddies loomed, and Tag couldn’t be happier.
“The way you sing is, yeah.” Ellen pulled a bottle of juice from the fridge. She opened it and sniffed it, then shrugged and drank some back. She wiped her mouth. “More to the point,” Ellen continued, intrigued, “why are you singing?”
“I’m going out this afternoon.” Tag liked to be mysterious. Especially with Ellen. It was fun. “Or, more specifically, I might have been asked out this afternoon.” She plunged her hands into the soapy suds in the kitchen sink.
“With?”
“Someone.” Tag held up a glass and inspected it.
“Spill.”
“No.”
“Now.”
“Freddie,” Tag said simply. “I’m seeing Freddie this afternoon.”
“From the cafe?”
“You know any other Freddies in this town?”
Ellen put the juice bottle back in the fridge. “Please don’t tell me you’ve been here five minutes and you’re hitting on all the local girls already.”
“Do you mind?” Tag rinsed a plate. “I’m not hitting on her, as you put it. I like her. She’s good company.”
“She knows you’re gay?”
“She does.” Tag bristled. “And hey, guess what? Her world didn’t tip on its axis.” She stacked the plate on the rack.
“So where are you going?” Ellen asked.
“Dover’s Park,” Tag replied. “With Skye.”
“Cute.”
“Not cute,” Tag shot back. “Something for me to do while you’re busy at your parents.” She grabbed a tea towel. “Anyway, Skye asked me to go.”
“Now that is cute.”
“What can I say?” Tag did a comical shrug. “She likes me. Kid’s got taste.”
“And Freddie?”
“Two girls can totally go to the park together with a kid without anyone thinking something else is going on, can’t they?” Tag flicked Ellen with the towel.
“Not when one’s a screaming lesbian and the other is as hot as Freddie, no.” Ellen lowered her voice.
“She is a bit, isn’t she?” Tag lowered her voice too.
“Is what?”
“Hot.”
“See? I knew it.” Ellen fell against Tag, the pair of them giggling like a pair of schoolgirls.
“Seriously, though”—Tag pushed Ellen away—“I appreciate her asking me. At least someone’s looking out for me while I’m back here.”
“Meaning?”
“Blair.” Tag came back to earth with a bump. “He’s ignoring me, isn’t he?”
“Blair’s being Blair,” Ellen said with diplomacy.
“He gave me the mill’s accounts on Thursday,” Tag said, “and then disappeared. I’ve been trying to collar him since yesterday afternoon.”
Tag folded her towel. Blair hadn’t so much as given her the files as flung them at her and told her to take the damn things and we’ll talk later. Very professional. Although perhaps more professional than her. The files were now flung on her room floor up at Four Winds. If Connie came in today to clean her room, Tag now thought dryly, she’d have some good reading matter to while away a few hours.
“Read them.” Was Ellen reading her mind? “Take a good look at the accounts and then perhaps you’ll understand exactly why Blair’s being the way he’s being.”
*
Skye was looking cutely shy all over again when Tag met them at the park later that afternoon. After Blair, Ellen, and Magnus had left for Stirling, Tag had returned to the B & B to find, much to her relief, her room untouched and the files still on her floor. The two hours that Tag had allotted herself to study them and get back over to Dover’s Park had instead passed in a flurry of showering and dithering over which clothes to wear. The all-too-brief flick through the spreadsheets inside the files had confirmed what Tag had thought on the drive back from Glenside after her chat with Ellen: the mill was in a mess.
Despite knowing she ought to stay and study them further, the prospect of seeing Freddie and Skye again was just too tempting. Two o’clock creaked closer, and now, finally, Tag was at the park, as arranged, waiting for them. Accounts, she figured, could wait for later. After all, it wasn’t as if Blair was busting a gut to discuss them with her, was it?
Tag spotted Freddie first, definitely dressed for a winter’s afternoon at the park: hooded waterproof jacket, the collar flipped up high around her ears against the cold, thick walking trousers, and a pair of robust boots with a pleasing amount of mud smeared across them. Freddie was also wearing a bright red beanie—the sort that Tag would normally wear when she wasn’t wearing her more favoured trapper hat—with matching gloves. Never one to be able to resist a girl in outdoor gear, to Tag, she looked awesome.
“Hey!” Freddie approached Tag. “Nice hat.” She pulled back and cast an admiring eye over Tag’s hat.
“You don’t think I look daft in it?” Tag lifted the flaps on her trapper hat. She pulled a face, then let the flaps drop again, making both Freddie and Skye laugh.
“No dafter than usual.”
“Hello, Tag.” Skye looked up at Tag, all eyes and woolly hat.
“Hey, Skye.”
“Tag?”
“Mm-hmm?”
“Why are you called Tag?”
“Because it’s my name, sweetheart,” Tag said.
“How spelled?”
“T-A-D-G-H.”
Skye frowned. She cast an impish look to Freddie. “Tah-duh-guh?” She emphasized every syllable.
“No, Tah-guh,” Tag said, laughing. “The D and H are quiet.”
“The D is quiet?”
“Yuh-huh.”
Skye thought for a moment. “As in dinosaur?” Her eyes twinkled.
“Dinosaur?”
“Well, they’re quiet, aren’t they?” A mischievous smile tugged at the side of her mouth.
“Dinosaurs are quiet?” Tag looked questioningly to Freddie, who just raised her eyebrows and shrugged.
“Yeah. Because they’re all dead.” Skye fell against Freddie, laughing.
“She’s teasing you.” Freddie pulled Skye upright again. �
�I remembered you telling me at the ceilidh how you spelled your name.” She placed her hands on Skye’s shoulders and swivelled her round to face the front. “And I made the mistake of telling this little monkey here.”
“Oh.” Tag was bemused.
“She’s been thinking up a joke to tell you ever since yesterday,” Freddie said. “Pete came up with that little gem last night.”
“Oh,” Tag repeated. “Okay.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it,” Freddie said, then immediately checked herself. Tag wouldn’t be around to get used to anything. Her heart squeezed at the thought. So stupid. Freddie looked out to an unseen spot and tried to quell the disappointment her thoughts had just conjured.
“Well, for telling me such a good joke…” Tag put her hand in her coat pocket and pulled out a small brown piggy bank, hastily bought in the newsagents on the way to the park, with the words Chocolate Fund written on the side. “You get this.” She handed the pig to Skye.
A whispered “thank you, Tag” accepted it.
“I put a few coins inside it just to start you off.”
“It’s very kind of you.” Freddie watched as Skye carefully turned it over in her hands, listening to the coins rattling inside. “But you didn’t have to—”
“Everyone needs to have a chocolate fund,” Tag said. “Right, Skye?”
Skye nodded enthusiastically, her pig clutched tight against her chest.
They moved from their meeting spot and headed towards the park, Skye running on some way ahead, her pig held in both hands in front of her.
“I’m glad you came along,” Freddie said. She cocked her head to Tag. “After yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” Tag acted like she didn’t remember. Of course she remembered.
“I thought I might have come across as a bit”—Freddie rolled a hand—“snooty. A bit, I don’t know. High and mighty. About the cafe.”
“Okay.” Tag nodded. Snooty hadn’t been the word. Pissed off, yes. But snooty? Tag had had the whole evening to replay their meeting up at the cafe, but despite analysing it to death, she still couldn’t think of how or what she could have said that would have made things better. The fact that Freddie had met her today with a welcoming smile and a joke from Skye had been a pleasant surprise.
“I just worry, that’s all.” Freddie walked with Tag towards the swings.
“As do I.” Tag was almost apologetic, but she wanted to stand her ground. If there was a problem with the cafe too, she needed to know. And fast. “Which is why I really need to know what’s going on up there.”
Freddie stopped walking. “But what if you don’t like what you find?”
“Then I guess I’ll cross that particular bridge when I come to it,” Tag threw back over her shoulder as she strode on.
*
The park was packed by the time they arrived at the swings. The first proper rays of sunshine they’d seen in days had encouraged everyone to spill from their houses, so it seemed, and descend on the one and only large park in Balfour.
The swings and slides glittered in the sunshine, just waiting for a small child such as Skye to fling themselves onto them. Freddie let Skye run further on in front once they neared the play area, grimacing as she tested out the robustness of three swings in quick succession and then hurled herself down one of the slides.
“Remember what it felt like to have no fear?” Freddie sighed, her heart in her mouth as she watched on.
“It’s like she’s desperate to test them all out as quickly as possible,” Tag said, “as though she’s worried they might take them away from her.”
They stopped walking, as if by an assumed agreement, and stood, side by side, a short distance from the play area. Skye waved to them from the top of a slide.
“Can I go down backwards?” Skye’s voice, normally so quiet, boomed out around the park. Her hands gripped the sides of the slide. She leaned back down it, her feet poking up in the air, her hair dangling downward, and grinned upside down at Freddie as she hurried over to her.
“No.” Freddie stood against the side of the slide. “On your bum, feet first, like always.”
“Aww.” Skye carried on looking at Freddie upside down.
Freddie pulled her best don’t mess with me face and helped her to right herself. She watched, shaking her head slightly, as Skye flung herself down the slide then ran across the grass to the next piece of equipment.
“Were you like that too?” Tag came and stood next to Freddie again. “A gung-ho little bundle of adventure?”
“No, she’s like her mother.” Freddie wrapped her arms around herself and gazed fondly at Skye. “Laura didn’t have a frightened bone in her body.”
“You’re…?” Tag’s brows creased.
“Skye’s auntie,” Freddie said. “Well, her legal guardian now.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Let’s sit.” Freddie signalled to an empty bench. “I’ll explain.”
They sat on the bench, one eye still on Skye. An occasional wave from her slowed Freddie’s story, only for her to start again.
“My sister, Laura,” Freddie said, “died eighteen months ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Cancer.” Freddie looked at her gloved hands. “It was a shock to us all.” She caught Skye’s attention and waved again. “Of course I knew Laura had named me in her will as Skye’s guardian, should ever anything happen,” she said, “but you never think anything is going to happen, do you?”
“No,” Tag reflected, “you never do.”
“So,” Freddie continued, “I have sole responsibility for her.”
Freddie didn’t take her eyes off Skye all the while she spoke, her thoughts a mixture of love and concern. Would Tag understand the sacrifice she’d made? Could she relate to just how difficult it had been—and still was—to play the role of mother, auntie, and protector all rolled into one? Freddie cast a look in Tag’s direction and wondered, as she had done frequently over the days, whether someone like Tag would have done the same.
“Your parents?” Tag asked.
“Live in Portugal,” Freddie said. Her eyes returned to Skye. “They offered to have Skye but, well, Laura’s last wish was for me to raise her.”
“Can I have some water?” Skye rushed up to Freddie and launched herself against her. She tilted her head back and panted in exaggeration. Despite the cool of the day, her cheeks were rosy from playing, making the smattering of freckles across her nose appear even more pronounced than normal.
“Come and sit down for a bit.” Freddie took Skye’s hand. “The park will still be there after you’ve had a rest,” she added, as she met resistance.
They sat, the three of them, and gazed out across the park, Skye in between Freddie and Tag, occasionally commenting excitedly about a particular tricky manoeuvre on a swing, or the durability of the ropes she’d just been hanging from. In between gasping her tales of daring, she drank noisily from a bottle of water, the exertion from hard playing apparently giving her a thirst. When she’d had enough, she wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, then waggled the bottle at Tag, who politely declined.
The sun got warmer as the afternoon progressed. Now it brightened the whole of the park, its arms embracing each blade of grass and each slide and swing, warming both the cold metal and the children using them. Freddie threaded her arm across the back of the bench and tilted her face upward, contented. She could get used to this. Sitting in the sun, listening to the wonderful sound of an excited child explaining to Tag, in intricate detail, the finer points of a roundabout. Company, sunshine, and friendship. It had been a long time, Freddie thought, since she’d been as happy as she was right then.
“Can I go now?” Skye swivelled her whole body round on the bench to face Freddie. She pressed pleading hands together in front of her and made huge puppy-dog eyes. “Please?”
“Go on, then.”
On Freddie’s bob of approval, Skye propelled herself off
the bench and headed for the first available swing she could find.
“So where’s Skye’s father?” Tag asked, when Skye was out of earshot.
“Michael?” Freddie grimaced. “He buggered off when Laura was pregnant. Last I heard, he was backpacking across Thailand.”
“Does he know?” Tag lifted her head to Skye.
“Father unknown,” Freddie said. “That’s what Laura had put on the birth certificate.”
A sudden gust of wind chased Michael away.
“So what about you?” Freddie finally asked. “How did the married girlfriend thing come about?”
“By my own stupidity, probably,” Tag replied ruefully. “I was new to Liverpool. She gave me a job. We dated. I thought she was the real deal.”
“You didn’t know she was married?”
“Nope. Not a clue,” Tag said. “Oh, I knew about this guy called Stefan who worked with us. Anna told me he was her ex, and they just worked together.”
“But she was still with him?” Freddie could sense the hurt.
Tag nodded. “Married, four-bedroom detached house in the suburbs, one dog, two cats,” she said. “I only found that little gem out six weeks after we started dating.”
“But you stayed with her, even after you found out?”
“Do you think me bad for that?” Tag asked. “She wasn’t a woman who was easy to say no to.”
“Any kids?”
“No, they didn’t have kids.” Tag’s face blackened. “Actually, the subject of kids was what brought about the end of us.” She waved to Skye and nodded to her as Skye gestured that she was moving onto the next set of swings.
“She never wanted them?”
“No.” Tag rested her elbows on her legs. “I thought I was in love with her.” She pitched Freddie a look. “I saw my future as being with her. Thought she’d leave Stefan for me. Set up home with me. Two point four kids. The lot.”
“Like me and Charlotte.” Freddie’s voice was quiet. “I was with a girl called Charlotte.” She felt like she needed to explain. “Before Laura died.”
“The Charlotte that Skye mentioned the other day?” Tag sat back.
“Mm.” Freddie focused on a point across the park. “Skye adored her. I adored her.”
