The Year of Taking Chances (19 page)

She dropped the photo as if it were red-hot.
June 1st?
That was Family Day, the day they’d always celebrated with Victoria sponge, fresh strawberries and champagne.
Just because, Jane had
said, shrugging, as if the date were a purely random selection.
Sometimes it’s good to celebrate your family and think about how lucky you are.
Champagne, though.
On her parents’
meagre salaries!
They weren’t the sort of people to splash out on champagne unless it was a special occasion.

A
really
special occasion.

She glanced at the photo again.
She looked so uncomfortable in Jane’s arms.
Frightened, almost.
Jane was gazing at her with adoration, but Caitlin looked as if she didn’t know what
the hell was going on.
A special day.
June 1st, 1983.
Caitlin!

It was that exclamation mark that kept nagging at her.
That wasn’t normal, was it?
As if it was the first time she’d appeared in their lives.
As if they’d only just met.

No.
Just no.
Shut up, Caitlin.
She was definitely losing the plot.

I’m sorry, hen,
she remembered her mum saying as she lay dying.
I should have told you.
I never knew how to say it.

I’m sorry, hen.

I’m sorry, hen.

Nausea rose inside her, hot and sour, and she ran from the room, her heart booming.

‘That’s nine pounds fifty-eight, please.
Thanks very much.’
Gemma took the ten-pound note offered to her and opened the till.

‘Thank you, darling.
Earning a bit of extra pocket money, are we?’

Gemma’s smile tightened on her face as she put the forty-two pence change into Bill Perkins’s outstretched hand.
‘Something like that,’ she said and walked away down the
bar.
‘Ladies.
What can I get you?’

She’d been working in The Partridge for three days now and was slowly getting to grips with having a job for the first time in twelve years.
She had learned to pour a pint of Adnams
without topping it with two inches of yellow froth, how to work the glass-washer and navigate the temperamental electronic till, and she was getting to know the regulars and their particular
quirks.
For instance, she now knew that Brian Butters kept his own silver tankard behind the bar and refused to drink from anything else.
Tight old John McNaught would always wait for his single
penny change, rather than wave an airy hand and say, ‘Don’t worry about it’, like every other normal person did.
And Louise Brierley, who was supposedly on a health kick, would
lean over the bar and whisper huskily for a sneaky vodka to be added to her orange juice, ‘But don’t tell my hubby, love, all right?’

Like Bill Perkins, a few other people had raised an eyebrow when they saw Gemma behind the bar.
‘Don’t you live in that lovely big farmhouse?’
one lady asked in surprise when
Gemma served her, as if people in lovely big farmhouses couldn’t possibly need to earn a couple of extra quid.

‘Yes, that’s me,’ she replied briskly, hurrying through the order before the next question, starting ‘So why .
.
.?’, could be asked.

It was fun enough work, though, sociable and varied, particularly in the evenings when they had a bigger crowd.
She enjoyed chatting to people she wouldn’t normally mix with – some
of the old men, for example, were just adorable; and Bernie, the landlord, was brilliant.
What she was most looking forward to, though, was the Friday pay packet: the little brown envelope with
cash and a payslip, every penny of it earned by her.
It might be ‘pocket money’ to the likes of Bill Perkins, but it would make a big difference to Gemma.
Hard cash in her purse again,
money actually coming
in
to the family, rather than pouring out.
Admittedly the sum she was earning was a pittance, as Harry had said so apologetically, but a pittance could at least
contribute in its own small way.

She’d telephoned the utility companies and told them she was now working and was very much going to pay the bills, but please could she have a bit of leeway for the time being?
Most of
them agreed that she could pay off a small amount of what she owed every few weeks, provided such payments remained regular and consistent.
So that had bought them a tiny gasp of breathing space at
least.
As for the mounting credit-card bills .
.
.
well, she’d have to cross that bridge when she came to it.
Until she could scrape together some more money, she had simply decided to stop
looking at them, stuffing the envelopes unopened in a drawer.
There were only so many sleepless nights of worry that a woman could cope with, before she had a nervous breakdown.

The next mortgage payment was due at the end of the month.
She was trying not to think about that, either, although the panic often seized her as she lay in bed at night, with images of bailiffs
at the door leaving her unable to doze off.
There was still no sign of any compensation payment for Spencer, even though she had made the application herself now and gone round to the scaffolding
firm in person, only to beg despairingly in their office.
(How to make a tit of yourself, part 937.) But anyway, she was doing her best.

Unfortunately, news of her job hadn’t gone down too well at home.
Darcey had been positively dismayed.
‘But I will miss you,’ she said, her lower lip sticking out.
‘What
about my bedtime story?’

Will, too, was unimpressed.
‘Oh, great.
How intellectual!
My mum’s a barmaid?
You’d better not tell any of my friends.’

As for Spencer .
.
.
he wasn’t exactly thrilled, either.
‘I don’t want all those blokes leering at you,’ he grumbled, although she suspected it was more the fact that she
had replaced him as Family Breadwinner that he didn’t like.
It obviously offended his macho ideas of how a husband and wife should operate.
Yeah, well, that’s been really successful
lately, hasn’t it?
she felt like saying.
It took all of her patience not to fling the red bills in his face and point out that this outdated mindset would see them ending up on the
streets with a begging bowl, if they weren’t careful.

‘I’m just being practical,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘I thought this was a good solution.’
When he said nothing, she couldn’t resist adding,
‘Otherwise, maybe we should seriously consider what Will suggested the other evening and sell some of our things to raise a bit of capital.
While you’re not driving, we could sell the
M—’

‘I’m not selling my Mazda,’ he said furiously.
‘I’m not a fucking cripple.
I’ll be able to drive again in a few months, the doctor said.’

‘All right, I just thought I’d mention it.’

‘I’m not selling, Gem.
No way.’

‘All right!
In which case, I need to work.
We’ve got no choice.’

To make a point about how disgruntled he felt, he went and sat in his wretched car, all alone, in the gloom of the garage, like a big sulky baby.
Gemma ignored him.
She had a job to go to and
didn’t have the energy for yet another argument.
Besides, Spencer was due to have the cast off his ankle soon, and she was clinging to the hope that this would lift his mood again.
Something
had to.

‘He’s been quite low,’ she had blurted out to the doctor, when they went back to the hospital for a check-up the week before.
‘I’ve been wondering if maybe
he’s depressed.
I’ve been reading up about Post-Concussion Syndrome and .
.
.
’

The look Spencer gave her was so ferocious she could have sworn the ground quaked.
‘Wouldn’t anyone be depressed?’
he spat.
‘I’m not exactly going to be cheerful
about this, am I?
Who would?’

The consultant – a woman in her fifties, with watchful brown eyes and a calm, measured manner – said to Spencer, ‘This sort of thing tests everyone’s patience and good
humour.
But if you’re finding it too much, then we can certainly talk about—’

‘No,’ Spencer said, visibly annoyed.
‘I’m not finding it too much.
And I don’t want to be drugged up on any happy pills, either.
Got that?’

They hadn’t spoken the entire way home.
He didn’t even moan about her driving, as he usually did.
At last, as she was pulling into the driveway, he rounded on her.
‘Don’t
ever do that again.’

‘What?’

‘Talk about me as if I’m not there.
Tell a doctor your opinion of me and how best to fix me, like I’m some kind of child who can’t speak for himself.
Let me handle it,
all right?’

He clambered awkwardly out of the car, with a painfully slow shuffle and swing of his crutches, silently daring her to offer help.
She knew better by now.
Instead, she sat there in the
driver’s seat, watching as he leaned shakily against the porch, fumbled for his door keys, then let himself in.
The front door gave an imperious slam behind him.

She let out a long shuddering sigh, her breath steaming in the cold air.
When Spencer behaved like this – so pig-headed, so bloody self-centred, as if he was the only person who mattered
in the entire world – she sometimes fantasized about driving away and leaving him behind.
And good bloody riddance!

But in the next moment she thought of her mum, doing exactly that with the waiter from Ibiza, and a thousand childhood hurts reared up and stung her all over again.
For years she had lain in bed
every night listening for the sound of her mum’s footsteps tottering up the front path – footsteps that never came.
She had wished on every blown-out birthday candle, and every stir of
the Christmas pudding with Grandma, that Karen would come home.
On every significant occasion growing up – Christmas concerts, wobbly teeth, her first period – she’d wanted her
mum there.
Her dad had been Superman, nobody could have been a better father, but despite his best attempts there was still a gap in the house, an empty, ghostly presence.
And now here she was,
wishing herself away, to leave her own empty space.

More like your mother than you thought, after all,
whispered a mean voice in her head.

No.
She wasn’t like her mum.
There was no way she would ever walk out on Will and Darcey.
But Spencer?
It had crossed her mind a few times lately.

She twisted the wedding ring on her finger and steamed up the windows with another sigh.
In sickness and in health, remember?

Yep.
She remembered.
For richer, for poorer, too.
If ever there was a test of her marriage vows, then this was it.

As well as working in the pub, Gemma had a couple of sewing jobs on the go – the bridesmaid dresses and the curtains – and had taken to working up in the tiny box
room at the front of the house, away from the blasting telly and Spencer’s complaints.
Sewing had always been her thing, right from the summer when she was about Darcey’s age and
staying with her grandparents for a fortnight while her dad worked.
Grandma Pepper had the most wonderful bag of scrap material – all colours, all fabrics – as well as a button tin and
a bulging sewing box.
While Grandad took the boys out fishing and kite-flying, Gemma had a crash-course in sewing with Grandma, threading her first needle and making her first clumsy, wobbling
stitches.
By the end of the fortnight she had stitched an entire wardrobe of outfits for her dolls and teddies and was hooked.

These days Will wouldn’t be seen dead wearing anything his mum made for him, but Gemma still made skirts and dresses for Darcey, and for herself too of course.
She had set up her sewing
table by the window of the box room so that she could gaze out at the street below while she sewed, and enjoyed seeing the comings and goings of her neighbours: Mrs Belafonte walking her
Labradoodles; and Jan, the harassed-looking mum from number twenty-six, hurrying to playgroup with her three-year-old toddler twins.
And you could set your watch by Mr Ranger, the elderly gent who
lived in the rundown corner house, setting off for his midday pint of ale.

One afternoon she was surprised to see a different person walking up the lane.
A young woman with a carrier bag of groceries from the Spar, who was familiar, yet not instantly recognizable.
Long
red hair that streamed like ribbons in the wind, a black trench coat, a short flared skirt over leggings and boots.
Then she realized it was the woman who’d stayed next door over New Year.
Sophia, was it?
An unusual name, beginning with S.
Sapphire?
Suzanne?

Gemma frowned, the name on the tip of her tongue.
Saffron
, that was it!
She had been really funny and nice, teaching everyone the ‘Single Ladies’ routine after the clock
struck midnight.
They’d had a right laugh that night.

She watched, her sewing forgotten, as Saffron reached the cottage next door, put down her bag of shopping and rummaged in her coat pocket for the door key.
Then, as if she could feel the weight
of Gemma’s gaze, she turned and looked in the direction of The Granary.
Busted, Gemma thought guiltily, feeling herself blush.
Caught noseying.
She held her hand up in a little wave and tried
to look surprised, as if she’d only just seen her.

Saffron smiled and waved back, then pointed at her door, holding up her hands in a T symbol.
Then she mimed drinking something, which might have been a cup of tea or possibly a pint of wine.
Gemma wasn’t about to say no to either.
She put two thumbs up, switched off her sewing machine and hurried downstairs.
‘Just popping next door,’ she yelled.

‘You came back!’
she cried as Saffron opened the door and let her in.
Then the smile slipped from Gemma’s face as she saw how terrible Saffron looked
close-up.
Puffy bloodshot eyes with enormous bags underneath, spots around her mouth, a general look of despair.
Oh my goodness, she must be ill, thought Gemma, her heart squeezing in worry.
Ill or
recently dumped – maybe both.
‘Is everything okay?’
she asked tentatively, hoping her alarm wasn’t too visible.