Boldwood Books
This book is set on the 30th May 2020, but it was written long before that, so it describes a world that is now barely recognisable. In these pages, there is no pandemic, no lockdown, no worries about new terms like ‘social distancing.’
So while you read it, please suspend belief, and remember a time when we could all gather for family meals, meet friends at airports and squeeze the people we love.
Those days will come again.
And in the meantime, this book is dedicated to every single person who went out to work to keep our lives turning – the NHS staff, the teachers and staff in hub schools, the shop workers, the delivery drivers, the carers for our elderly and vulnerable, the forces, the post office, the bin collectors, the police and fire services, public transport workers, the volunteers and all the many other cogs in the wheel.
You’re all bloody brilliant.
Thank you
x
Once Upon A Time There Was…
Agnetha (nee Sanders) McMaster, 45 – owner of The Ginger Sponge, a coffee shop in the Merchant City area of Glasgow, divorcee with twin daughters, Isla and Skye.
Skye McMaster, 20 – Focused and driven, studying law at the University of Glasgow.
Isla McMaster, 20 – Working with her mum in The Ginger Sponge until she decides what she wants to do with her life.
Mitchell McMaster, 46 – Agnetha’s ex-husband, a lawyer whose negotiation skills come in handy when co-parenting their daughters.
Celeste Morrow-McMaster, 45 – Mitchell’s second wife and stepmother to the twins, a successful event planner who was formerly Agnetha’s best friend.
Yvie Danton, 31 – Agnetha’s friend, confidante and a nurse on the geriatric ward of Glasgow Central Hospital, founder of bereavement group, The Wednesday Club.
Val Murray, 60-something (she refuses to confirm) – Another of Agnetha’s pals. Also a member of The Wednesday Club, and a gregarious gem who takes all newcomers under her wing.
Will Hamilton, 48 – A bereaved dad who bonded with Agnetha over loss and sorrow, but who is now giving her a reason to smile again.
Hope McTeer, 22 – An adoptee who has decided to search for her biological parents, planning to be a doctor, in her fourth year of studying medicine, while moonlighting as a health care assistant at a Glasgow hospital.
Maisie McTeer, 24 – Hope’s adoptive sister, drama queen and jobbing actress.
Dora McTeer – 56 – Adopted Hope and Maisie as babies, an English teacher who is always on hand with support and calm reason.
Aaron Ward, 48 – Divorced father of two who had a wild holiday romance with Agnetha in LA in 1997.
Zac Stone, 48 – Aaron’s best friend and flatmate back in 1997; Celeste’s lover on the same nineties holiday.
The rest of the Wednesday Club:
Marge and Myra (septuagenarian sisters), Jonathan and Colin – bereaved survivors who come together every week to support each other as they navigate the loss of their loved ones.
Prologue
I remember her so clearly.
There’s an image in my mind of her standing on the observation deck at the top of the Empire State Building in New York. She was about twenty-one and it was a cold day, but she didn’t care that the wind made her long red hair fly and her eyes glisten as she threw her arms out wide. The sheer joy she was feeling radiated from every pore, her smile wide and irrepressible. Like it would never fade.
Another memory. Maybe a year later. Sitting on the end of a cold Scottish pier in the early hours of the morning with a man she was madly in love with. She said he was the third love of her life. Or was it the fourth? It was a standing joke with her friends that her romantic history was like a constant repetition of death defying leaps. She’d fall from a great height into the abyss, but, as if on a bungee cord, she’d snap right back out again at warp speed a day, a week, a month later, leaving a few cases of whiplash along the way.
Another flashback, to the following summer. On a beach in Malibu, watching the surfers at dawn, making lines in the sand with her toes. I knew the whole holiday had been put on a brand new credit card and the expense sent it straight to its limit, but she gave that no thought at all. All that mattered was that moment. That experience. Life is for living. Her mantra. A cliché, but, yep, life is for living, she’d say.
Along the way, she’d met him. The one who made her forget everyone else. Dizzy with love and optimism, she said yes to the happy-ever-after dream, and prepared to waltz up the aisle with him. But they didn’t make it. Life took her on another path and into the arms of someone else.
It was just a detour. A blip.
Still, she would dance, she would throw back shots and bounce the glass on the bar, she would start a party in an empty room and watch as people flocked to join the fun.
She would talk about how there were no limits to how great her life could be, and you couldn’t listen to the enthusiasm and certainty in her voice and not believe her.
At twenty-three, she thought nothing could stop her, that she was indestructible, that there was absolutely nothing she couldn’t do or achieve if she wanted to.
Perhaps it was the naivety of youth, but she didn’t even see the perfect storm coming.
Marriage. Children. Ailing parents. A mind-blowing betrayal. A chain of events that would hijack her world, changing her until the person she was no longer existed.
Yep, life is for living, she would say.
Until she became nothing more than a battle-weary survivor, who set aside her own life just to get through the days.
I remember that young, carefree woman so clearly.
Because she was me.
1
Agnetha McMaster
It was like the sound they played to warn of imminent tornadoes in disaster movies. Agnetha McMaster – ‘Aggs’ to her pals – banged the button on her phone, silencing the alarm that was wailing like a foghorn about twelve inches from her ear. Thankfully, there was no tornado. And, also thankfully, the mug that she knocked
