as a university lecturer, with plans to become a writer one day, and Abbie also working at the university, in the archive department.
She glanced at her watch. Abbie had promised a friend who had become an aficionado of car-boot sales that she would go through her attic and see if she could find anything she wanted to dispose of. She had just enough time, if she was quick, to do so before her evening appointment with the manager of the new luxurious conference centre which had recently been opened as an extension of a local hotel.
Abbie herself had actually been approached to see if she would be interested in taking up the appointment as manager of the centre, but she had declined. She preferred being her own boss, being in charge of her own life. It might sometimes be lonelier that way, but it was also much safer—and safety when it came to her relationships, be they professional or personal, was something that was very, very important to her.
Not even her closest women-friends were allowed to get too close to her, just in case they might hurt her in some way, and as for men…
It wasn’t that she was a man-hater, she denied as she made her way up the narrow flight of steps that gave her access to the attic space, no matter what some men might think. It was just that having been hurt very badly once, having been called a liar and worse, she was not about to give any man the opportunity to do so a second time. Why should she? She would be a fool if she did. That didn’t mean there hadn’t been times…men who had tempted her, but the memory of the pain Sam had caused her had always held her back. He had told her he loved her, that he would always love her, that he would never hurt her, but he had lied to her and she had believed him. How could she allow herself to trust another man after that? And not just for her own sake, for her own protection, but for Cathy’s as well. Letting herself be hurt was one thing—she was an adult capable of making her own choices and of paying the price for them—but Cathy was more at risk. Cathy needed love and security.
Abbie pushed open the loft door, wrinkling her nose against the smell of stale air and dust. She hadn’t been up here since just after Cathy had left home for university.
That was where Cathy had met Stuart, who had been taking a postgraduate course, and for a while, during the early stages of their relationship, Abbie had been worried that history was going to repeat itself.
It had been Fran, one of her oldest friends, who had warned her that she was in danger of alienating Cathy and damaging their relationship by becoming almost fixated on the belief that Stuart would hurt Cathy as Sam had hurt her.
‘Stuart isn’t the same,’ Fran had told her, ignoring Abbie’s refusal to discuss the subject with her. ‘And even if he was,’ she had added hardly, ‘it’s Cathy’s right to make her own mistakes and her own choices. Sometimes the hardest thing about being a parent is letting go,’ she had added wisely. ‘I understand how you feel about Cathy, we all do, but she’s an adult now, Abbie, and she’s in love—’
‘She thinks she’s in love,’ Abbie had interrupted angrily. ‘She’s only known him a matter of months, and already she’s talking about moving in with him and—’
‘Give her a chance,’ Fran had counselled her. ‘Give them a chance.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ Abbie had grumbled. ‘Your two are still only teenagers…’
‘And you think that makes things easier?’ Fran had rolled her eyes theatrically.
‘Lloyd and Susie haven’t been speaking all week. Lloyd caught her in a passionate embrace on the front doorstep the other night, and, predictably, he’s suddenly turned into a protective, outraged father. And, of course, Susie’s just at that age where she thinks she’s old enough to make her own decisions—even though she isn’t—and then she had to go and make matters worse by telling Lloyd that she was the one who snogged Luke, and not the other way round.’
‘Hmm…’ Momentarily Abbie had been diverted from her own problems.
Susie, Lloyd and Fran’s elder daughter, was her godchild and back then had been a formidably feisty fourteen-year-old.
Along with Michelle, Fran and Lloyd’s younger daughter, she had inherited her father’s striking red hair and there was certainly no way that there was any remote resemblance between Lloyd’s two daughters and her own, Cathy; if Sam had stayed around long enough he would very quickly have been forced to withdraw his accusation that Lloyd was Cathy’s father.
Poor Lloyd. He hadn’t met Fran when she and Sam had split up, and he had been wonderfully supportive in the early months when she had first been on her own, even hesitantly suggesting that perhaps they should marry. She had refused him, of course. She had known that she didn’t love him, nor he her, even if everyone else had considered them to be a pair before Sam had appeared in her life.
Gingerly kneeling down in the only space she could find in the piles of stuff heaped all over the loft floor, Abbie started moving things out of the way so that she could get to the boxes of bits and pieces she knew were stored up there, and which she intended to hand on to her friend for her car-booting sorties.
As she did so she knocked over a pile of children’s books. She paused to straighten them up, her eyes misting unexpectedly with tears as she recognised Cathy’s first proper reading books.
How well she remembered the thrill of wonder and excitement she had felt when Cathy read her first proper word, her first full sentence. How proud she had been, how sure that her daughter was the cleverest, prettiest little girl there ever was, how humbled by the knowledge that she had given birth to this special, magical little person—the same special, magical, perfect child who had refused to eat her supper and later thrown a tantrum in the supermarket of blush-making proportions!
Abbie’s smile faded as she also remembered how it had felt to have no one to share the special moments with, to have to wait until she could telephone her parents to tell them of Cathy’s wondrous achievement.
Firmly she resisted the temptation to indulge in nostalgia. She was a busy career woman with a full diary and very little time; the daydreamer who went soft-eyed and emotional over every small incident in her life had been firmly suppressed and controlled. Another Abbie had had to develop and take shape. An Abbie whom people respected and sometimes even found slightly formidable, an Abbie who had learned to deal with life and all its small and manifold problems by and for herself…An Abbie who could and would, if necessary, fight like a tigress to protect her child, an Abbie who had no need of sentiment or regrets about the past, and who had certainly no need for a man in her life to mistrust her and hurt her.
She crawled across the floor to where she thought the boxes were stored, cursing as the dust made her cough and then cursing again and trying to ignore the ominous pattering and scuffling sounds she could hear in the rafters above her. Birds, that was all…nothing to worry about.
She reached the boxes and pulled the first one out, reaching for the one behind it. Only it wouldn’t move; it appeared to be wedged against something. Gritting her teeth, Abbie felt behind it and then froze as her fingers curled round a piece of net fabric.
She knew immediately what it was, but, even though caution warned her to leave well alone and ignore it, for some reason she didn’t.
Instead…Instead, her fingers trembled as she tugged harder on the fabric, clenching her teeth as she heard it rip slightly and the balled-up grey-white bundle of fabric finally came free of the small space she had jammed it into.
Once it had been pristine white, the tiny crystals sewn onto
