A Christmas Cracker: The only festive romance to curl up with this Christmas!. Trisha Ashley

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СКАЧАТЬ so it was your own fault, but I was to assure you the cat was perfectly all right.’

      ‘I hope so … and thank you for trying to find where he was,’ I said, but inwardly I was thinking of Pye – my awkward, demanding, adorable Pye – out there somewhere living with strangers … Was he happy and safe? A slow tear slid coldly down my face.

      ‘The other thing is, Tabby, that your belongings weren’t in the flat any more, but in boxes piled at the back of the garage. Jeremy said since obviously you and he didn’t have any kind of future together and your rent had run out, he was going to let the flat again. I can’t believe how mean and horrible he’s turned out to be!’

      I didn’t feel that surprised after our final argument … and anyway, it paled into insignificance compared with his arbitrary rehoming of Pye.

      ‘He let me go and rummage through the boxes and I found most of the things you wanted. He says he’d be grateful if you’d have them removed at the first opportunity,’ she added.

      ‘He’ll have to wait then, because I can’t do anything till I get out – and even then I’ll have nowhere to live, no job and a criminal record.’

      ‘Jeremy’s such a pompous, self-satisfied prig, though I couldn’t say so when you were in love with him. And I should know, because I married one myself,’ she said wearily.

      ‘Is Des being just as difficult?’ I asked sympathetically.

      ‘He gets worse every time he gets back from a contract and wants every second of my time accounted for. And the least thing that isn’t quite the way he likes it, or the way his mother used to do it, and he flies right off the handle. Even when Marco was a toddler, he didn’t have tantrums like that!’

      ‘He isn’t violent, is he?’

      ‘No, it’s all verbal bullying. I’d be straight out of there if he tried anything else. And I know I should stand up to him more, but I don’t want Marco to hear us arguing all the time. I could do with your sharp tongue to cut him down to size occasionally.’

      ‘My sarcastic tongue frequently gets me into trouble,’ I said ruefully. ‘I don’t think one or two of my smart answers to stupid questions went down well in court.’

      Emma was still following her own thoughts. ‘Sometimes he’s really sweet, just like he was when we were first going out. It’s since he started working away on longer contracts that he’s really changed.’ She sighed. ‘It seems to me we’re both in prison, in a way.’

      ‘I’ll get out in a couple of months, if I don’t blot my copybook.’

      ‘And Des is going to be back for only a couple of days and then he’s off for six weeks to Dubai,’ Emma said, then added, to my puzzlement, ‘And thank you for not saying it.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘“I told you so.” Remember when Des and I decided to get married only a couple of months after we met and you suggested I didn’t rush into it? I told you he was wonderful and I knew it was the right thing for me and Marco. But you were quite right.’

      I’d worried that it was too soon after she’d been widowed, even though I could understand her longing to be loved again and to give Marco a father. I hadn’t been sure that Desmond was the right man for her, either.

      ‘I’m a fine one to talk about making mistakes – I didn’t exactly choose wisely with Jeremy, did I?’ I pointed out.

      ‘We’re both poor pickers,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll catch up with you whenever I can and when I can’t phone you, I’ll write.’

      ‘That would be wonderful. I can’t tell you how nice it is to get good, old-fashioned letters!’

      I wished Jeremy felt the same way about letters but, not unexpectedly, I had no answer to the one I wrote to him, telling him I would pay him back for storing my belongings when I was released and asking him to give me the name and address of Pye’s new owners, so I could write to them, too, and make sure he was all right. Not getting a reply made me want to escape and go to find him – but I knew if I did that I’d be sent back to a stricter prison again and it would be even longer before we could be reunited. I had to bide my time and count the days until my release. But at least I now had a link to the outside world in Emma.

      Until the happy day that I met Cedric Lathom, I think she was the only person in the whole wide world who was prepared to believe I was innocent.

       Chapter 4: The Prisoner’s Friend

      Ceddie, as he asked me to call him during his first visit, described himself as a Prisoner’s Friend but he was also, as it turned out, a Quaker Friend, too.

      When it had been suggested to me that since I had no visitors of my own, I might like him to visit me, I’d thought, well, why not?

      This proved to be one of the best decisions I’d ever made, because not only did it give me access to the visitors’ rooms in a small separate building, where I could indulge in coffee, hot chocolate, fruit juice and even biscuits, but Ceddie was the most wonderful person.

      He was a tiny, elderly man with a pointed face, a mop of silvery curls and large, innocent grey-blue eyes – though perhaps the word ‘innocent’ implies a trusting simplicity, which he didn’t have. It was more an unshakeable belief that there was inner good in everyone.

      Over several visits I found myself pouring out my life story to him. I’d never had a significant male figure in my life, father or grandfather, but if I had I’d have wanted him to be just like Ceddie.

      ‘Looking back, my life seems to have been a bit sad, only it didn’t feel like that at the time,’ I said ruefully one day towards the end of my sentence, while I was drinking the cup of hot chocolate he’d bought me as usual.

      ‘Your mother sounds such an interesting and loving person that giving up everything to care for her was clearly something you did from love, not duty,’ he agreed.

      ‘When she was first diagnosed with MS we hoped that it might be the slow kind, but she deteriorated very quickly … But she was never a burden and I had the support of my best friend, Emma, and my childhood sweetheart, Robbie, so I didn’t feel totally alone.’

      ‘Ah, yes, I remember you mentioning Robbie before,’ he said, smiling at me benignly.

      ‘He went straight into the army from school and we were too young to get engaged really, especially since I’d never have left Mum, but he understood that. He was a really nice boy.’

      ‘You said he was badly wounded and married one of the nurses who’d looked after him?’

      ‘Yes, they just fell in love. I hadn’t been able to get down to see him much, because of leaving Mum, so I didn’t blame him in the least. In fact, I wished them both well.’

      ‘That shows a warm and generous heart, my dear,’ he said.

      ‘I think our engagement lasted only as long as it did because mostly we were able just to write to each other,’ СКАЧАТЬ