how did you end up with this place?’ said Kezzie.
‘By dint of being the only one left,’ said Joel. ‘My mum’s got Parkinson’s so though Uncle Jack left it to her, Claire and I did a deal where we took out a mortgage on this house, and bought Mum a warden-assisted flat in Chiverton. She always used to go on about the garden here, and I was intrigued. I came here a few times when I was a small child, and I remember breaking into the knot garden. It was like a secret place, all locked up. When Jack died there was no one else but Mum and me to leave it to. I fell in love with it immediately. Claire and I had so many plans …’
His voice trailed off wistfully, and Kezzie felt as if she’d walked in on some private grief. She wished she knew him well enough to give him a hug.
‘Claire never liked it though,’ he continued. ‘She thought it was gloomy. I took out the heavy oak panelling in the hallway and made it lighter, but what with work and looking after Sam, I haven’t really had time to finish what I started.’
He looked sad, as if something pained him.
‘You’re right about the garden of course, that was the one bit of the place Claire really liked. I should have got it sorted.’
‘Well, now you’ve got me here, you can,’ said Kezzie.
‘Really?’ Joel looked as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
‘Really,’ said Kezzie.
‘It’s masses of work,’ said Joel, ‘and I won’t be able to help you much.’
‘I know,’ said Kezzie. ‘But I think it would be amazing to restore it, a huge privilege. Please let me.’
Joel stood for a moment looking as if he were battling with some inner demon, then he gave Kezzie a huge, and charismatic grin.
‘You’re on,’ said Joel, and it was all Kezzie could do to stop herself from punching the air in delight.
It was a quiet evening in the Labourer’s Legs, only a few punters had wandered in. It was the middle of the month, so people were probably saving their money till pay day, there wasn’t any football on and the darts match scheduled for the night had been cancelled, leaving the sandwiches that Sally the landlady had laid on wilting on the bar.
‘Go on, take them home with you at the end of your shift,’ Sally said to Lauren, with a slightly patronizing, sympathetic tone, as if she’d never be so foolish as to have been left holding one baby, let alone two. She also seemed to assume because Lauren was young she couldn’t do anything for herself. Lauren had to bite her tongue from saying that it was most unlikely that two four-year-olds would be interested in stale prawn sandwiches, let alone risk a tummy bug. It was a battle at the best of times to get them to eat anything other than chicken nuggets and chips.
The clock dragged slowly towards 8 p.m. Two hours into her shift and already Lauren was losing the will to live.
‘Mind if I pop upstairs to put my feet up for a bit, love?’ Sally’s inevitable request came as it always did, early on in the shift. Then a bit later on she would wander down, and say, ‘You’re all OK for locking up, aren’t you, love?’ before disappearing again to leave Lauren cashing up alone.
Lauren’s mother was always telling her to stand up for herself, but jobs for single mums didn’t come easy in Heartsease and she couldn’t afford to give it up, much as she frequently felt like telling Sally to stick her job.
Bored, she half-heartedly let her eyes settle on the TV screen in the corner, which was tuned in to Sky Sport, and began to clean the bar surface down.
Phil Machin, one of the regulars, walked up to the bar. ‘Barrel’s gone, love,’ he said smiling cheerfully. So off she went down to the cellars to change it.
When she came back, she spotted a missed call on her phone, which she’d left at the bar. It wasn’t a number she recognized. Odd. She wondered who it could be. It was probably a wrong number.
Around 9.30 the place started to fill up a bit. The lads from the cricket club were on a pub crawl, so it was nearly 11 p.m. before she spotted another two missed calls. Who on earth could be trying to contact her?
As it had got busy, Sally and her equally lazy partner, Andy, had made their way downstairs, and Lauren was relieved that for once they let her go at just after 11. At least she’d be on time for her mum.
As she walked back up the road home, the phone rang again.
‘Who is this?’ she said.
‘Lauren? Is that you?’
Oh my God. Lauren stood stock still, her heart hammering wildly in her chest, as she heard a voice she hadn’t heard in a very very long time. ‘Troy?’ she said incredulously.
Chapter Six
Lauren pushed Sam up the road on her way back from the school run. It was nearly half term, the weather had turned from bright autumn golden days, to a wet, windy drizzle which was doing little to lift her spirits. She was dog tired. The phone call from Troy had unsettled her to say the least. Troy had spectacularly left her in the labour ward, claiming that because he lost his mother to cancer when he was very young, he ‘didn’t do’ hospitals, running out on her when she needed him the most. After which he had shown no interest whatsoever in meeting his daughters until he’d turned up out of the blue when they were eighteen months old. Lauren hadn’t wanted to see him, all the more so when it was apparent he was only after somewhere to crash after he’d lost the latest in a string of jobs and had no money and nowhere else to go.
Looking back now, Lauren couldn’t believe how naive she had been to be taken in again by Troy. But he had this trick when you were with him of making you think you were the only person in the world who mattered. It was terribly beguiling, and the months of loneliness without him had left her unprepared for the sheer animal magnetism of his presence. He had a sensuality about him that was hard to resist. She had told herself that it would be good for the twins if she let him move in. Lauren’s parents had split up when she was young, and she’d been desperate for her own children to have a stable family life. Lauren couldn’t admit to herself that she still had the hots for Troy, so had made the mistake of letting him stay a while. And if she was totally honest with herself, despite everything he’d done to her, she was still a little in love with him, even now.
It turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. The twins were unsettled by this strange man who sometimes wanted to play with them, but often shouted at them for no apparent reason. It was clear to Lauren, too, that he was quite happy to sponge off her, pay no maintenance, and had no intention of getting another job while his life was this cushy. In the end she’d had enough and chucked him out, and apart from the odd message via mutual friends, she hadn’t heard from him since. The twins barely remembered him, and used as they were to Sam not having a mummy, didn’t appear to find it odd that they didn’t have a daddy. And now their daddy was back and apparently he wanted to see them.
She had played the phone call with Troy over and over in her head all night.
‘Why?’ Lauren demanded. ‘Why now, after all this time? You can’t just waltz back into our lives and expect to become a dad when it suits you. I have to protect them.’
‘I know,’ Troy had pleaded. For
