because of how much it made his daddy laugh, and Angie would stand outside the door listening, loving them with all her heart and wishing Liam was able to read it himself.
‘He’ll get there,’ Steve’s mother always assured them, ‘he’s just a late learner, that’s all. You wait, before you know it he’ll be streets ahead of everyone else and you won’t be able to keep up with him.’
Due to her role as a teaching assistant at the local school, Angie was able to monitor his progress, and it definitely wasn’t happening at the same rate as other kids his age. On the other hand he was always so happy and eager to try new things, and even when he was teased or left out of a game he never seemed to get upset. He’d just laugh along with the others, not caring that he was the butt of the joke, and if anyone ever appeared sad he’d quickly invite them home to play trains or do some colouring with him and his dad.
‘He’s a special boy,’ Hari Shalik, Steve’s boss, would often say, ruffling Liam’s hair and smiling down at the small upturned face in a grandfatherly way.
‘Can I come and work for you when I’m grown up?’ Liam would sometimes ask.
Hari’s chuckle rang with notes of surprise and delight. ‘Of course, if it’s what you still want when the time comes, but you might have other ideas by then.’
‘He’s going to fly to the moon, aren’t you, Liam?’ Steve would prompt.
Liam’s nod was earnest and slow until he broke into a grin and wrapped his arms around his daddy’s legs. ‘Only if you come with me,’ he whispered.
‘Well, I wouldn’t let you go on your own.’
‘Can we take Mummy?’
‘I think we should.’
To Hari, Liam said, ‘Mummy’s going to have a baby.’
Hari’s golden-brown eyes widened with interest. ‘So you’ll have a brother or a sister? Will you take them to the moon as well?’
Liam thought about it. ‘They might be too small, so they’ll have to stay with Granny Watts until we come back.’
‘Good idea, and don’t forget to let me know when you’re going so I can come and give you a good send-off.’
Recalling that conversation now as she drove away from Hill Lodge, Angie was smiling at how precious and pure those memories were, like long hot summer days before autumn came to shadow the sunlight, and rain began falling like tears from gathering clouds.
Emma was Angie’s younger sister by a year and several months. She was also plumper and louder, happily divorced and a hard-working mother of two small boys. She had a similar abundance of fiery red hair to Angie’s, and the same arresting blue eyes that changed shade according to her mood.
The two of them had taken over at Bridging the Gap about a year ago after Angie had lost her job as a teaching assistant (cuts to the education budget), and Emma had no longer been required as a receptionist at a local dentist’s after it was absorbed into the Kesterly Health Centre. It was pure luck that the husband-and-wife team who’d been running Bridging the Gap since its inception had decided to retire at that time, and Ivan, the parish manager of St Mary’s, the local church, had decided to give the sisters a chance.
‘Why not?’ he’d agreed, in the slow, doleful tones that had unnerved Angie and Emma at first. ‘You’ve excellent references, the pair of you, and we could do with some younger and livelier input around here. Yes, you’ll suit us very well, and I hope we’ll suit you too. Just make sure there’s no dossing in the church, or anywhere else on the site.’
‘Don’t worry, we promise to go home at night,’ Emma had assured him with mock sincerity.
Ivan blinked, taking a moment to understand, but he didn’t seem to find it funny. ‘I was referring to the men you’ll be taking care of,’ he explained. ‘Or, more accurately, to their associates from the streets. There are shelters for them to go to at night and this church isn’t one of them. Nor are the residences we are fortunate to have use of.’
Both of Bridging the Gap’s properties belonged to an octogenarian recluse, Carlene Masters, who had apparently handed the rundown Victorian villas to St Mary’s to use as the vicar and parish committee saw fit while she went to live in Spain. All she required in return was a small rental income. Angie and Emma had never met her, but they did know that she’d waived the rent for two months during the introduction of universal credit. Since housing allowances were what paid the rent and contributed to BtG’s running costs, the change of system could have proved disastrous for the organization and residents alike when payments had dried up for weeks on end.
Now, as Angie went to update the whiteboard that dominated one wall of the shed-like office she and Emma worked from, she spotted a couple of parish outreach workers crossing the small courtyard outside and gave them a wave. From the large plastic sacks the two women were carrying it was clear they were on their way to the storeroom next door, where charity-shop rejects were kept before being sent to those in need overseas. They were the only people Angie and Emma ever saw at this end of the rambling church complex, apart from Ivan who occasionally dropped by to make sure everything was running as it should.
Their little enclave was tucked in behind the church hall and sheltered by a magnificent copper beech tree, and contained only their bunker of an office with its en suite loo, tiny kitchenette and semi-efficient heating, and the adjacent storeroom. Their window looked out over the courtyard where a sealed-up wishing-well served as a bird table and a high, thorny hedge separated them from the main road beyond. To get to the church they had to follow a stone pathway through a wilderness of old fruit trees and long-forgotten shrubs to connect up with the car park next to St Mary’s offices, where the vicar’s wife and parish manager carried out God’s admin work.
The rectory was the other side of the centuries-old church, looking out over a sprawl of suburban rooftops that ended way off in the distance where the sea could be glimpsed sparkling away like a feast of temptation on crystal clear days. The old graveyard meandered gently down the south-facing hillside for at least a quarter of a mile to the busy residential street below. This was where Hill Lodge and Hope House were situated, in amongst a number of similar formerly grand villas, most of which had now been converted to flats. Angie and Emma never took the route through the tombstones and neglected shrines; no one did, it was too creepy and far too overgrown. Whoever needed burying these days was ferried to the newer, more desirable cemetery in the nearby semi-rural suburb of Morton Leigh.
‘So what’s your new bloke like?’ Emma asked as Angie added Mark Fields’s name to the Hill Lodge section of the whiteboard.
Raising her eyebrows as a fierce gust of wind whistled around their red-tiled roof Angie said, ‘He seems OK. Early days though. If he doesn’t settle in, Hamish will be sure to let us know.’
‘What’s his story?’
Spotting the outreach ladies leaving, heads down as they battled the wind, Angie said, ‘Apparently he broke up with his wife after he was laid off work, and ended up with nowhere to stay when she got the house. Booze played a part in it somewhere, but Shawn, who referred him from the rehab clinic, says he’s been a regular at AA for over six months and is ready to start again.’
‘No
