Kate Field - A Dozen Second Chances

‘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 sugar consumption had addled my wits, because I flicked to the marked page without a glimmer of suspicion. Oddly, it was the young woman in the photograph that I noticed first: luscious, thick blonde hair cascaded over bare shoulders and brushed against a large bust that could have earned her a place as a centrefold. I felt the familiar twinge of regret over my own boyish figure and chin-length brown hair, hastily wiped away when I turned my attention to the man attached to the woman’s side.

‘It’s the fella you went out with, isn’t it?’ Gran asked, making it sound as if I had only had one boyfriend over my entire lifetime. It wasn’t true: there had been several boys before Paddy. Not so many after, but that was hardly surprising, and not only because all my focus had been on Caitlyn. Paddy had taught me many things that I had been delighted to learn, and one thing that I hadn’t. A broken heart can be broken a second time, and a third, until only the crushed fragments remain.

‘And look who he’s with!’ Gran continued, oblivious to my discomfort. ‘She was in Emmerdale until she ran off with someone’s husband.’

I assumed she meant in the TV programme, rather than in real life, but who knew with these showbiz folk? Much against my will, my eyes strayed back to the man in the photograph. Here was Paddy Friel again, thrust to my attention for the second time in as many days, and no more welcome this time. It was a good photograph, I couldn’t deny that: he was wearing black tie, which suited his colouring, and with his raffish curls and hint of five-o’clock shadow he looked like a pirate trying to infiltrate polite society. It was hard to believe that this confident, well-dressed man had once been the boy who left dirty underpants under my bed. Hard to believe, too, what weakness lay behind that charming smile.

I flicked the magazine closed and noticed the date on the front cover.

‘This is six months old,’ I said, dropping the magazine on the table as if it were soiling my fingers. ‘He’ll have moved on by now, probably several times. Doesn’t he have a failed marriage behind him? Commitment was never his strong point.’

‘He always was a handsome devil,’ Gran said, with a wistful smile. She’d had a soft spot for Paddy, and he had given the appearance of being fond of her, but that was the trouble with Paddy: it was all style over substance, appearance over truth. ‘You could forgive a man a lot who looked like that.’

I said nothing. Some things were impossible to forgive, however attractive the face. Not that I found him attractive any more: those feelings had died a long time ago, the least mourned of all my losses at that time. I picked up my bag and bent to give Gran a kiss.

‘I thought I might have seen you as Mrs Friel.’ Gran was on a roll; I wished she’d never seen the blasted magazine. ‘I’d have liked a chance to get dressed up as grandmother of the bride. I’d have out-glitzed the lot of them. I still would. Where there’s life, there’s hope, eh?’

She looked at me with such pride and hope, that all I could do was smile back and kiss her again, too kind to tell her that life in my heart had been pronounced extinct many years ago.

*

I offered to drive Tina to the talk on Roman Britain the following Thursday night. As a longstanding teetotaller, I was used to being the designated driver, and I knew that Tina was hoping that to make up for missing tea and biscuits, we might find time for beer and crisps in a country pub on the way home.

‘It’s almost the weekend after all,’ she said, as I turned off our street and headed towards the main road that carved through the countryside, leading to the southern Lake District in one direction and to the Yorkshire Dales in the other. I loved this patch of north Lancashire, hidden away from the hustle and bustle of city life; loved the fact that I could climb Winlow Hill behind my house and see no towns but Inglebridge, and beyond that, only fields, moors, and the occasional stone-built village.

I had moved here within six months of Caitlyn coming to live with me, desperate to escape our home county of Warwickshire, and all the familiar places where memories seemed to hang like cobwebs on every street lamp. I had known nothing of the area except that Gran lived within an hour’s drive and that property prices were cheap. I had seen on the map that it was well away from any cities – any temptations – and that had been recommendation enough. Save for whisking Caitlyn away to a remote Scottish island – something I had briefly considered – it had appeared to be as safe a place as I could find to raise a child. And it was a fresh start for us, a place where we had no history. For someone who had spent her life wanting to uncover history, I had felt no compunction about covering ours up.

It had been a glorious spring day, and the setting sun was gilding the fields around us as we drove towards Yorkshire. Usually the view would have soothed away even the greatest anxiety. But tonight, not even the finest landscape could settle the nerves that jangled around my limbs. The talk sounded exactly the sort of thing I would have enjoyed many years ago, before my life twisted in a different direction. Was it wise to remind myself of that other possible life, when it might open up regrets that I had fought for years to keep at bay?

And then there was Paddy … How would I feel to see him in the flesh, to hear his voice without the distance of a television set, for the first time in seventeen years? Why had I wasted one of Caitlyn’s vouchers on this? This wasn’t being kind to myself; it was more like voluntary torture.

The school we were visiting was a well-regarded grammar school, where the central building dated back centuries. It was a far cry from the 1960s comprehensive where Tina and I worked.

‘Fancy working here!’ Tina whispered, as we climbed an ornate wooden staircase towards the hall where the talk would be held. It seemed appropriate to whisper, as if nothing we could say would be erudite enough for this environment. ‘Imagine teaching history in a place that has history of its own! I bet it’s haunted.’

‘I’d be happy to have a few ghosts helping me, as long as they could use the photocopier and knew how to fix printer jams.’ I laughed. ‘It would have been much easier to keep tabs on Caitlyn with a team of invisible spies at my beck and call.’

I hadn’t worked at all for the first couple of years after Caitlyn came to live with me: it had been too new, too strange for both of us, and we had each needed time to adjust to the unexpected life we had been given, and time to get to know each other properly and cement our bond. When Caitlyn went to nursery, I had filled my days taking online courses to learn everything I could about computer software and office management until I was the most qualified PA I could be. I had then taken on part-time jobs until I saw the perfect role advertised: PA to the head teacher of the secondary school that Caitlyn would attend. The term time hours were convenient, and I could keep a discreet eye on Caitlyn and any trouble she might face: an ideal arrangement, as far as I was concerned, and I don’t think she had minded it too much.