Kate Field - A Dozen Second Chances

‘Don’t hold back! Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you. You really don’t like him, do you?’

‘I hate him.’

When Tina flinched at the word, I sat back against the cushioned chair, swirling my cranberry juice. I had given the instinctive answer, but was it true? I had loved him once, but I didn’t now. I had hated him once, but that had been seventeen years ago. I hadn’t spent the intervening years sticking pins in a voodoo Paddy doll and cursing his name. There’d been no time for that, even if I’d felt inclined; I’d had Caitlyn to look after. My life had carried on, a satisfying one in many ways, especially where Caitlyn was concerned. Paddy Friel had rarely entered my thoughts, except when I’d been unfortunate and switched on the television at the wrong moment.

So no, perhaps I didn’t hate him now. But if I was being forced to examine my feelings, I’d never managed to reach indifference either. As for forgiveness … there weren’t enough years in eternity for me to ever arrive at that point.

‘How long did you go out with him for?’ Tina asked.

‘Almost three years, from near the end of our first year at university. We moved in together after we graduated.’ A memory flashed up, of that tiny rented flat on the first floor of a semi even smaller than the one I owned now; of how ridiculously excited we’d been to have a place to ourselves; of how I’d felt safe there with Paddy, little knowing he would hurt me more than anyone outside that flat could have done.

‘I’m guessing it ended badly. What did he do? Cheat? I don’t suppose he’s ever been short of offers.’

‘He wasn’t.’ And yet I had never doubted his fidelity. He had told me whenever girls tried to chat him up; we had laughed together at some of the ridiculous things they had done to gain his attention. Perhaps it would have been easier if he had cheated. Perhaps I would have found it easier to forgive him if I was the only person he had hurt.

‘He wasn’t unfaithful,’ I said. ‘Or not in the sense you mean. But he did break my faith in him.’

I studied Tina, considered the confused expression on her face. I didn’t talk about those days; everything was too closely bound together, the loss of Faye and of Dad, and Paddy’s betrayal, all jumbling together into one twisted knot of pain, so I couldn’t think of one of them without being reminded of the absence of them all. The acute feelings had faded, but they could never vanish. The encounter with Paddy had brought them closer to the surface than normal, and perhaps I needed to give them a moment’s airspace before wrapping them up again. I took a long drink of my cranberry juice.

‘When Faye died,’ I began, my heart weeping as it always would at the sound of those words, ‘Caitlyn went to stay with my parents. She’d had no contact with her father since she was born, and we didn’t know who he was so couldn’t get in touch. But anyway, she was ours: we couldn’t have given her up to a stranger.’

She had been the most adorable child: thick white-blonde hair, huge blue eyes, and the ability to wrap us all round her finger. She was the image of Faye in every way.

‘My dad wasn’t strong after suffering a heart attack a few months before, and it soon became clear that the arrangement wouldn’t work. The toll of his grief and the demands of a child were too much. I was living with Paddy at the time, and so the solution was obvious. Caitlyn would move in with us.’

How I had loved Paddy for agreeing to it! Despite the dramatic impact on our lives, the end to our plans to travel, he had backed me at once. We had begun by taking Caitlyn out with us for the odd day, so we could all get to know each other better, and my broken heart sputtered back to life when I saw my devastated niece take hold of Paddy’s hand in the park one day, and whisper in his ear.

‘So five or six weeks later, we packed up all her teddies and treasures and took her home to our flat, to begin our life as a family. And eight days later, just after we had celebrated her third birthday, just when Caitlyn had settled in and begun to trust us, to believe that we would always be there for her, Nigel Friel decided it wasn’t the life he wanted, packed his bags and left.’

I put down my pen and read back the note I had written to Caitlyn, hoping I had caught the right tone: cheerful, not wistful; entertaining, not embarrassing; missing her, but not too much. I was out of practice at this sort of thing. It was years since I had written a letter rather than sent a text or email. In fact, the last person I had probably written to was … I sighed. He had proved he was good at leaving, so why couldn’t he leave my thoughts alone?

‘Shh!’ Rich turned up the volume on the television. ‘I’m trying to watch the football.’

The match looked no different to me than any other, but apparently it was crucial to the relegation positions and it was important enough to Rich that he had rushed through sex to be up in time to watch it. I hadn’t minded that so much, but it had ruined the shape of our afternoon. We were normally able to kill a couple of hours in bed, followed by a cup of tea and a cursory chat before I headed home – a decent length for a visit. Today the bed part had barely taken twenty minutes, and there was something seedy about me leaving for home so soon. So I’d taken out the herbal tea bags I’d bought for Caitlyn, wrapped them into a parcel, and written her a note.

I reached in my bag and took out one of the ‘Be Kind to Yourself’ vouchers. I needed to send her the first one, to show that I was keeping my promise, but what could I say? I had always been at pains to show no sign of regret at the direction my life had taken. I couldn’t stop the ‘what ifs’ occasionally sneaking into my head: when contributing to the wedding or baby collections at work; when I’d inadvertently caught stories on the news about amazing archaeological discoveries. But I’d kept them to myself. I hadn’t wanted Caitlyn ever to think I regretted giving it all up to be a mother to her. So how would it look that less than a week after she moved out, I had attended a talk on a subject that I had claimed not to miss? I decided to fudge it.