A Dozen Second Chances. Field Kate

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СКАЧАТЬ one will stop me.’ I laughed. ‘Paddy who?’

       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 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.’

      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 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 wanted 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 СКАЧАТЬ