style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Just till the end of the week, until Guy gets home,’ said Kate, sipping her coffee
Taz smiled a broad predatory smile, ‘Yum, yum, yum. Isn’t he just the cutest little thing? It’s such a shame he’s into older women.’ She glanced across at Maggie. ‘I can’t believe that your mum wouldn’t marry him, she must be crazy to turn a man like that down. I mean, mad or what? If he’d asked me, Christ, I’d have snapped him up and dragged him off squealing to the back of the cave.’
Kate felt the breath catch in her throat but she smiled, turned away quickly, and took another sip of coffee as if her complete attention had just been grabbed by the pile of cut-price hardbacks featuring World War Two bombers, which were stacked up on the table beside them. It gave her just enough time to try and compose herself. When she looked back at Taz, Kate had fixed on what she hoped was a, ‘well, of course Mum and I tell each other everything because we’re very close and I support her decision wholeheartedly,’ expression, while her mind struggled to work out what the hell was going on. It felt as if her whole life had transformed into one of those intricate domino games where the first one is pushed over and sets off a complex and confusing chain reaction.
She glanced round the shop; Maggie was still parked up in the gardening section and laughing with one of the other sales staff. She looked great when she laughed.
Taz was still talking, while Kate made every effort to keep a grip, looking for something, anything to hold on to. It seemed as if everything she had known and believed to be true for most of her adult life had suddenly all shifted and was still moving. Maggie breaking her ankle had been the spark that had lit a fuse on the bomb that had blown her world apart.
How long would the Chrissie and Joe thing have gone undiscovered if Maggie hadn’t fallen down? How long before Maggie would have spilt the beans about Guy if Kate hadn’t driven home? Struggling to pull her mind away from the flames that threatened to engulf it Kate had a fleeting vision of Maggie and Guy standing by a Christmas tree in the hall, arm in arm, elegant newlyweds, hosting some fictional family get-together. They were barely able to keep their hands off each other. Kate shivered – Maggie was wearing a wedding dress and veil. Guy was wrapped in a small white fluffy bath towel. Kate closed her eyes, trying to wipe the image off her retina only to find it was immediately replaced by an equally vivid picture of Joe and Chrissie sitting hand in hand at her kitchen table. Chrissie was wearing Kate’s dressing gown and a bridal veil. ‘It’s not what you think, Kate,’ Joe was saying.
Kate sighed. The storm clouds pressing down inside her head had been gathering there since finding them together. Everything else that was happening in her life seemed to be being played out against the sense of an even greater storm brewing.
Instinctively, Kate knew that that sensation would follow her and be with her and to some extent alter the way she behaved and thought and reacted until the situation with Joe was resolved – and somewhere in that resolution her life would change for ever. Which sounded a bit melodramatic but then again Kate thought ruefully, picking up one of the books on the display, her sister Liz didn’t have the monopoly on high drama.
‘Oh, do you like him? Have you read the new one?’ Taz was busily waving another copy of the book in her direction. ‘We had him in last week, this is a signed copy if you’re interested.’ It was only then that Kate realised with a start that she’d been holding a conversation without actually being aware of a single word.
Denham had barely changed in the years since Kate had left home. The main streets and marketplace were mostly Georgian with a strong Dutch influence shaping the roof lines and plaster work; if you glanced up above the modern shop fronts and brightly painted facades it didn’t take much to pick out the handsome symmetrical lines of an older time.
Walking along the High Street, Kate realised that even if she hadn’t come to stay with Maggie, her mother had more than enough friends and people who loved and cared about her to ensure she didn’t starve or die of neglect while Guy was away. It was heartwarming and at the same time a bit threatening to be greeted every hundred yards or so by all manner of faces, remembered, half remembered, known and unknown.
The sun shone, the people smiled and gossiped and asked solicitously after Maggie’s health. It felt as if they were making some kind of royal progress. Kate had completely forgotten what it was like to live amongst people who knew you and your family and each other in a loose, overlapping web of emotional connections.
The people who had watched her grow up still ran and worked in a lot of the shops. Kate resisted the temptation to run through them on her internal check list, wondering whether too much sentiment was bad for the health.
The other thing that struck her was that people seemed to have the time to linger, that frantic metropolitan pulse that had her rushing across roads and hauling Maggie up kerbs was totally lost on the people they met on the pavement. Denham just didn’t move that fast.
‘Kate? Kate, is that you? Kate? Cooooeeeeee. Over here! Kate!’
They were on their way towards the restaurant Maggie had suggested for lunch. Kate looked around and scanned the people close enough to have called out and didn’t recognise a single one of them, and then an extremely rotund woman in a lime-green floral sundress waved enthusiastically and scurried across the road towards them
‘Well, hello. Fancy seeing you here, how are things going?’ she asked warmly, looking Kate up and down. ‘You so look well. God, it’s so good to see you again.’
Kate smiled without committing herself, determined not to show herself up by admitting that she hadn’t got a clue who the woman was. Meanwhile she could feel her face screwing itself up while her brain scurried off to find a mug shot and details that fitted the evidence. It had to have something stored somewhere surely, after all Andrew Taylor had been in there. The woman certainly didn’t look like a loony and she most definitely knew Kate’s name.
Kate knew she was staring and gurning and grimacing and then some far distant penny dropped and she felt her mouth fall open. ‘Julie? Julie Hicks? Oh my God. It can’t be.’ She smiled with relief as much as recognition.
The last time she remembered seeing Julie had been on Leavers’ Day in, in – God knows how long ago it was. Back in those days Julie had been a 4′ 10″ pocket sized Goth weighing in at about five stone with lots of eyeliner and buck teeth.
Kate was tempted to say that she’d grown but before she could speak Julie grinned; at least she still had the buckteeth.
‘Took you long enough. I didn’t realise I’d changed that much, you look just the same as ever.’ Which was even more worrying as the last time they’d seen each other Kate was certain she’d had a brace, a very dodgy haircut, and a good crop of blackheads. Julie turned her attention to Maggie.
‘Hello, Mrs Sutherland. What on earth have you been up to? Maybe you ought to take more water with it.’
They all laughed politely at what passed for a joke in Julie’s neck of the woods and swapped where-are-they-now and why-we-were-there stories and then Julie said, ‘Actually, I’ve just moved back to Denham. We’ve bought one of the houses up in Berbeck Road, you know, on the little estate up behind the churchyard, Church Pines? Near the doctor’s? We’ve been in nearly a fortnight now, just long enough to let the dust settle.’
Maggie and Kate made approving noises as Kate was certain they were meant to. Berbeck Road was full of doctors and solicitors and men who did sensible things while wearing good suits.
‘And how about you?’ asked Julie pleasantly.
