the same age she was when she’d given birth to him. She tried to imagine her beloved son as a parent – not that there was any sign of him settling down yet.
He’d be a gentle and thoughtful dad, she thought. He’d been the tallest of his class for years, built like a rugby player but totally lacking the rugby player’s ferocious sporting instinct. She’d always thought he’d work with animals in some way. She remembered the gentleness of him when he was sitting in the dog’s basket, stroking her silky ears. Instead, he’d turned that sensitive, thoughtful side into political analysis.
And he was happy. That was all she wanted, really.
She was lucky, despite everything that had happened. She must remember that.
Rae’s mind roved about, flitting into Titania’s and the morning ahead. Patsy from the hair salon wanted a table for ten at lunchtime and a cake for a birthday.
‘Candles?’ Rae had asked on the phone.
‘Definitely no candles,’ Patsy had answered in her raspy, smoker’s voice. ‘She’s gone beyond candles. But something with shoes would be nice. She loves shoes. They love you back, too.’
Rae laughed. She liked Patsy and her sharp, dry humour. Patsy was another person who hadn’t been brought up in happy-familyville, Rae was sure of it. There was a sense of kinship between them, even though neither had ever said a word about their past to the other. But sometimes, you knew.
Patsy never looked at Rae as if she were a comfortable married woman who helped out with Community Cares to fill her spare time. She understood that Rae was helping herself by helping other people, in the same way that Patsy helped the women who turned up at Patsy’s Salon sporting red eyes, black eyes and faces full of pain. Patsy welcomed them in, put the kettle on and made them beautiful. Beauty, like cups of tea in Titania’s, was sometimes more than skin deep.
‘I was thinking…’ Will put down his book.
Rae struggled out of her half-dream and sat up against the pillows. ‘You don’t want to hurt yourself, love,’ she teased.
In retaliation, Will stretched his long fingers under her armpit and found the tickliest place.
‘You win,’ she said, laughing.
‘I was going to suggest a fabulous holiday to cheer us up after the winter,’ Will said, ‘but seeing as you think I’m Mr Thicko…’
Rae leaned up and nibbled his ear. ‘Go on, Mr Thicko,’ she said, ‘you know I love you.’
‘Well, I was thinking – before I was rudely interrupted, that we haven’t had a holiday for two years. What about a cruise?’
Rae gave a little gasp of shock. She’d always wanted to go on a cruise, but cruising holidays always seemed too expensive whenever she’d idled away time looking at the prices on the internet.
‘Do you think we could afford it?’ she said. Inside, she was thinking that they must be able to afford it. Will was the finance person in their marriage. Even though she managed Titania’s, the café belonged to Timothy. He gave her budgets and sorted out cashflow. Rae herself had never been that comfortable about money.
Left to her, she and Will would never spend anything in case some catastrophe occurred and they ended up penniless. Her parents had been permanently broke. Her work with Community Cares showed her nothing but people who lived on the edge of the abyss.
‘I was looking at the bank statements on the internet last night,’ Will said. ‘We could do it this year, for sure.’
‘Yes, but would it be wise?’ she asked. ‘Who knows how long the economic downturn’s going to last. You’re not that busy, Timothy might turn round and close Titania’s…’ Rae felt the familiar twinge of money worries overcoming all thoughts of the holiday she’d always wanted.
‘Listen, we are doing fine financially, love,’ Will said. ‘We don’t spend money, Rae, we’re so careful. The downturn is here and, yes, I’m doing half the work I was a year ago.’ Will worked as an architectural technician for a local business and, as building work was at a standstill, he was working only on the company’s projects in the Far East. ‘But we’re fine. We have no mortgage, we could survive on half the money we’re earning now.’
Rae thanked God silently for the bequest from Will’s father that had allowed them to pay off their mortgage fifteen years previously. They’d bought the house long before the property boom, so they’d paid buttons for it compared to what it was now worth.
‘Rae, how long have we been talking about a cruise?’
She allowed herself to relax. ‘Since Anton was small and we knew there was no way in heck that he’d cope with being closeted on a boat,’ she said fondly. ‘Think of all those seaside holidays.’
‘Crazy golf,’ Will said.
They both groaned.
Anton had taken a mad passion for crazy golf when he was ten and no holiday was complete without a trip to a course. Will and Rae had spent many hours trying to whack golf balls into clown’s mouths and windmills.
‘Disney in Florida?’ It had taken them three years to save up for that holiday.
‘That was amazing,’ Will said with a sigh. ‘I don’t think I could do any of those rollercoaster things again.’
‘You were brilliant for going on them all,’ Rae said. She was terrified of heights and just looking at some of Orlando’s rides was enough to make her central nervous system go into shock.
‘I’d love a cruise,’ Rae said, and suddenly she wanted it so much she felt as if she might burst out crying with the sheer joy of it all. She was so lucky. She had her wonderful son, her wonderful husband, and now this unexpected treat. When she thought of how sad her life had looked all those years ago, she’d never dreamed she could have this happiness.
‘I love you, Will,’ she said, winding her arms round him.
‘Mr Thicko loves you back,’ he replied, kissing her. ‘That’s a very sexy outfit you’re wearing,’ he murmured, moving the neckline of her definitely unsexy fleecy pyjamas so he could nuzzle her neck.
‘It’s designed to drive men wild with lust,’ Rae agreed. ‘If it’s disturbing you, I could take it off.’
‘There’s a thought,’ he murmured, and then they didn’t talk for a while.
Forty minutes later, they were up, dressed and getting breakfast. They moved easily around each other in the kitchen. Rae turned the coffee machine on, Will laid out cups and plates. She toasted some wholegrain bread; he found the marmalade she liked and put out plum jelly just in case they were in the mood for that.
It was the precise opposite to the way Rae had grown up; mornings then had been taut as a violin string, the air trembling with arguments that might erupt at any moment. One wrong word was all it took for Glory Hennessey to start throwing plates and insults at Paudge, with him throwing them right back. Rae had hated it, and had learned how to blend into the furniture so she didn’t get involved.
As
