Chances Read online

  Not just some bloke … but still, as I looked down at Caitlyn’s vouchers, a prickle of life stirred within me. I had loved archaeology once, had been fascinated by the opportunity to literally unearth traces of lives lived thousands of years ago. The Romans had been my favourite area of study. And why shouldn’t I attend a talk on them, even if Paddy Friel would be there? He was nothing to me now, and he would have long forgotten me. The time when he, or any man, had any influence over my actions was long gone.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, picking up the vouchers. ‘My first act of kindness. I’ll go to the lecture, and no one will stop me.’ I laughed. ‘Paddy who?’

  Chapter 2

  Paddy Friel. Or Nigel Patrick Friel, to give him his full name, the name that only people who had known him in infant school days would know. And me – because once I had known him inside out, understood every shift and sigh of his body, comprehended every turn and contemplation of his mind. Until adversity hit, and I discovered that the man I thought I had known and loved was a sham in substance as well as in name.

  We had met in our first year at university, both students of archaeology, but inhabiting very different social groups. He was part of the crowd of beautiful people, the sort of group my sister Faye would have naturally belonged to, but which was far out of my league. I’d noticed him at once – impossible not to, with those glossy dark curls, confident swagger, and the Irish accent that I only discovered much later was an exaggerated version of his real voice. Despite the small number of students on our course, I would have put money on him not knowing that I existed.

  But then, in the third term of my first year, as I had wandered back to the halls of residence laden down with supermarket carrier bags that scored the flesh on my fingers, a shove in the back had knocked me to the ground, sending eggs smashing to the pavement and tins of baked beans rolling into the road. A hooded man had crouched over me, with a knife in his hand, and I had been too frozen with terror to react. And then, like a dark descending angel, Paddy Friel had appeared and knocked my assailant out of the way, making him run off. Paddy had picked up my shopping, escorted me back to my room and stayed with me until the police arrived. He had wiped away my tears, made me countless drinks, talked to me and, above all else, he had simply been there for me when I needed him.

  Later that night, he had insisted that I join him at the local pub for a drink, determined that I had to leave my room again before the fear took hold and kept me prisoner. The next morning he had waited outside my halls to walk me to our lecture, and that had been the beginning of everything …

  The memories swept relentlessly through my head as I drove through Inglebridge on my way to pay my regular Sunday visit to my grandmother, Phyllis. She had moved into the local nursing home, The Chestnuts, eight years ago, after her first hip replacement, and had loved it so much that she never moved out again. It was a not-for-profit home, where fees were low, happiness levels high, and the staff were universally kind to the old people in their care. Gran thrived on living there, and at eighty-seven, showed no sign of leaving any time soon.

  The Chestnuts occupied an old manor house, extended several times as funds allowed, and as usual I found Gran basking in the sun in the large conservatory, a pile of magazines at her side. She smiled as I approached, and I relaxed, all thoughts of Paddy Friel effectively banished. With Caitlyn’s recent departure, and Mum having been settled on the Costa Brava for the last sixteen years, Gran was the only family I had left. I had never been so glad to see her.

  ‘Hello, Gran,’ I said, bending to kiss her soft cheek, and resting my head against hers for a moment too long. ‘You’re looking well.’

  ‘You’re looking thin,’ she said, never one to mince words. ‘Are you overdoing the exercise again? There’ll be nowt left of you by Christmas at this rate. I’ll be mistaking you for the turkey wishbone. You want plenty of best butter, chips cooked in dripping, and a good supply of gin. How else do you think I made it to my age?’

  ‘Certainly not by flattering your nearest and dearest.’ I laughed and pulled up a chair beside her. ‘I don’t know whether I should give you these biscuits now …’

  ‘All-butter shortbread?’ I nodded. They were her favourites; I brought them every week. Woe betide if I produced anything else. ‘I’ll ring for tea.’

  Gran pressed a button on the plastic emergency necklace she wore and shortly afterwards an exasperated carer bustled in. She took one look at me and rolled her eyes.

  ‘You know the story of the boy who cried wolf, don’t you?’ she grumbled, but with a smile of undoubted affection. ‘One of these days there’ll be a real emergency and we won’t come. I suppose you’ll be wanting tea.’

  ‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ Gran said.

  ‘It beats some of the jobs I have to do round here …’

  ‘You shouldn’t take advantage,’ I said, when the carer had wandered off on her mission. ‘This isn’t a hotel.’

  ‘Nonsense. I’m one of the least demanding ones in here. You should hear what Mr Jacobs asks them to do. No one wants to be on rota to give him a bed bath …’

  ‘Have you heard from Caitlyn yet?’ Gran asked, when our tea had arrived and she had started on the biscuits. ‘Is she in Paris now?’

  ‘I don’t know. She said she would text as soon as she could.’ I touched the pocket where my phone lay, out of my handbag so I would feel the first vibration of a text arriving. ‘I’m sure she’s fine …’

  So I said; but that hadn’t stopped me checking the news websites on a regular basis all morning, dreading reports of a fire in the Channel Tunnel, terrorist attacks in France, or a million and one other disasters that my imagination was all too happy to suggest. I was so perturbed by the ideas, that when Gran offered me her biscuits, I took one without thinking.

  ‘Of course she’ll be fine.’ Gran patted my hand. ‘She’s a sensible girl. You’ve done a grand job.’

  But it hadn’t been a job – it had been love. Because Caitlyn wasn’t actually mine. She was my sister Faye’s child, the big sister I had adored with my whole being, until her sudden death when she was twenty-four, and Caitlyn just two. Faye had fallen pregnant around the time I started university, and she had never told us who the father was; it was all too easy to believe she didn’t know, given her lifestyle. There had been lengthy debate about what should happen to Caitlyn after Faye’s death, but it could only ever end one way. I had wanted her to live with me, whatever the personal cost – and it had been high, higher than I could have anticipated. But I had owed it to Faye. No price could ever have been too high.

  ‘I can’t help worrying,’ I said now, drawing back from the past. ‘Who knows what temptations she’s going to face in Paris?’

  ‘No more than I expect she’s faced already.’

  ‘Not on my watch!’

  ‘So I suppose your mum knew everything you got up to, did she?’ Gran laughed. ‘I thought not. You’ve done your bit, love, and more besides. Time to let go. It’ll do you both good to stretch your wings a bit. Here, have another biccie.’

  I did, telling myself that it was my own small act of stretching. I usually tried to stick to a healthy diet, but already my worries about Caitlyn were eroding my good intentions. I didn’t know how to stop, however old she was: I had a sudden vision of myself in Gran’s position in fifty years’ time, my phone clutched in my gnarled old hand, waiting for news of Caitlyn. Perhaps she was right, and I did need to learn to let go, but I didn’t know how to do it.

  ‘Here, you’ll never guess who I saw t’other day,’ Gran said later, when our teas were drunk, and I was getting ready to leave. She reached for a tatty magazine on the table at her side. ‘I saved it for you. Have a look at the page folded over.’

  Perhaps the unexpected sugar consumption had addled my wits, because I flicked to the marked page without a glimmer of suspicion. Oddly, it was the young woman in the photograph that I noticed first: luscious, thick blonde hair cascaded over
bare shoulders and brushed against a large bust that could have earned her a place as a centrefold. I felt the familiar twinge of regret over my own boyish figure and chin-length brown hair, hastily wiped away when I turned my attention to the man attached to the woman’s side.

  ‘It’s the fella you went out with, isn’t it?’ Gran asked, making it sound as if I had only had one boyfriend over my entire lifetime. It wasn’t true: there had been several boys before Paddy. Not so many after, but that was hardly surprising, and not only because all my focus had been on Caitlyn. Paddy had taught me many things that I had been delighted to learn, and one thing that I hadn’t. A broken heart can be broken a second time, and a third, until only the crushed fragments remain.

  ‘And look who he’s with!’ Gran continued, oblivious to my discomfort. ‘She was in Emmerdale until she ran off with someone’s husband.’

  I assumed she meant in the TV programme, rather than in real life, but who knew with these showbiz folk? Much against my will, my eyes strayed back to the man in the photograph. Here was Paddy Friel again, thrust to my attention for the second time in as many days, and no more welcome this time. It was a good photograph, I couldn’t deny that: he was wearing black tie, which suited his colouring, and with his raffish curls and hint of five-o’clock shadow he looked like a pirate trying to infiltrate polite society. It was hard to believe that this confident, well-dressed man had once been the boy who left dirty underpants under my bed. Hard to believe, too, what weakness lay behind that charming smile.

  I flicked the magazine closed and noticed the date on the front cover.

  ‘This is six months old,’ I said, dropping the magazine on the table as if it were soiling my fingers. ‘He’ll have moved on by now, probably several times. Doesn’t he have a failed marriage behind him? Commitment was never his strong point.’

  ‘He always was a handsome devil,’ Gran said, with a wistful smile. She’d had a soft spot for Paddy, and he had given the appearance of being fond of her, but that was the trouble with Paddy: it was all style over substance, appearance over truth. ‘You could forgive a man a lot who looked like that.’

  I said nothing. Some things were impossible to forgive, however attractive the face. Not that I found him attractive any more: those feelings had died a long time ago, the least mourned of all my losses at that time. I picked up my bag and bent to give Gran a kiss.

  ‘I thought I might have seen you as Mrs Friel.’ Gran was on a roll; I wished she’d never seen the blasted magazine. ‘I’d have liked a chance to get dressed up as grandmother of the bride. I’d have out-glitzed the lot of them. I still would. Where there’s life, there’s hope, eh?’

  She looked at me with such pride and hope, that all I could do was smile back and kiss her again, too kind to tell her that life in my heart had been pronounced extinct many years ago.

  *

  I offered to drive Tina to the talk on Roman Britain the following Thursday night. As a longstanding teetotaller, I was used to being the designated driver, and I knew that Tina was hoping that to make up for missing tea and biscuits, we might find time for beer and crisps in a country pub on the way home.

  ‘It’s almost the weekend after all,’ she said, as I turned off our street and headed towards the main road that carved through the countryside, leading to the southern Lake District in one direction and to the Yorkshire Dales in the other. I loved this patch of north Lancashire, hidden away from the hustle and bustle of city life; loved the fact that I could climb Winlow Hill behind my house and see no towns but Inglebridge, and beyond that, only fields, moors, and the occasional stone-built village.

  I had moved here within six months of Caitlyn coming to live with me, desperate to escape our home county of Warwickshire, and all the familiar places where memories seemed to hang like cobwebs on every street lamp. I had known nothing of the area except that Gran lived within an hour’s drive and that property prices were cheap. I had seen on the map that it was well away from any cities – any temptations – and that had been recommendation enough. Save for whisking Caitlyn away to a remote Scottish island – something I had briefly considered – it had appeared to be as safe a place as I could find to raise a child. And it was a fresh start for us, a place where we had no history. For someone who had spent her life wanting to uncover history, I had felt no compunction about covering ours up.

  It had been a glorious spring day, and the setting sun was gilding the fields around us as we drove towards Yorkshire. Usually the view would have soothed away even the greatest anxiety. But tonight, not even the finest landscape could settle the nerves that jangled around my limbs. The talk sounded exactly the sort of thing I would have enjoyed many years ago, before my life twisted in a different direction. Was it wise to remind myself of that other possible life, when it might open up regrets that I had fought for years to keep at bay?

  And then there was Paddy … How would I feel to see him in the flesh, to hear his voice without the distance of a television set, for the first time in seventeen years? Why had I wasted one of Caitlyn’s vouchers on this? This wasn’t being kind to myself; it was more like voluntary torture.

  The school we were visiting was a well-regarded grammar school, where the central building dated back centuries. It was a far cry from the 1960s comprehensive where Tina and I worked.

  ‘Fancy working here!’ Tina whispered, as we climbed an ornate wooden staircase towards the hall where the talk would be held. It seemed appropriate to whisper, as if nothing we could say would be erudite enough for this environment. ‘Imagine teaching history in a place that has history of its own! I bet it’s haunted.’

  ‘I’d be happy to have a few ghosts helping me, as long as they could use the photocopier and knew how to fix printer jams.’ I laughed. ‘It would have been much easier to keep tabs on Caitlyn with a team of invisible spies at my beck and call.’

  I hadn’t worked at all for the first couple of years after Caitlyn came to live with me: it had been too new, too strange for both of us, and we had each needed time to adjust to the unexpected life we had been given, and time to get to know each other properly and cement our bond. When Caitlyn went to nursery, I had filled my days taking online courses to learn everything I could about computer software and office management until I was the most qualified PA I could be. I had then taken on part-time jobs until I saw the perfect role advertised: PA to the head teacher of the secondary school that Caitlyn would attend. The term time hours were convenient, and I could keep a discreet eye on Caitlyn and any trouble she might face: an ideal arrangement, as far as I was concerned, and I don’t think she had minded it too much.

  Tina and I took our seats at the back of the hall. It was a decent-sized crowd, and I was impressed by the local interest in Roman history until I realised that a large proportion of the audience were female, and particularly well-groomed ladies with shiny hair, smart clothes and full faces of make-up. Only a handful of parents would have made such an effort for our local comprehensive. Perhaps things were done differently in grammar school society. Or perhaps things were done differently in Paddy Friel’s society, whispered a mischievous little voice in my head. I stamped it down, not before a pang of regret had flashed through me about my faded, knitted dress and barely there make-up. But I wasn’t going to meet him. I didn’t want to meet him. So what did it matter?

  The historian, Jeremy Swann, spoke first and Tina was proved right: he was a witty, engaging speaker, skilled at throwing out titbits of information about how the Romans had lived, in the style of Horrible Histories, so his talk appealed to all ages. I leant to the side, so I could see him from between the assembled heads, hanging on his every word as my long-abandoned interest blossomed back to life. I had missed this, more than I wanted to admit.

  I was still leaning, rapt, when Jeremy introduced the next speaker. I shot upright, not before seeing a familiar flash of dark curl. Tina gave me a nudge and a smile, but I stared at the ruddy, bald neck of the man in front of me and r
efused to look. I couldn’t block my ears though. The first sound of that Irish lilt set my thoughts racing through the years, dredging up memories I had hoped never to revisit: the good memories, the tender memories of love, that made the bad memories so much more painful.

  He was good, my objective self was forced to admit it. His enthusiasm covered the room like a silken net, gathering us all in, captive to the power of the story he was telling. Even I, who knew too well what a sham this was, what a false show concealing his true nature, felt the tug of excitement as he described the experience of working on an archaeological dig, of making a discovery that contributed to our knowledge of ancient times. But then he mentioned working at Vindolanda, a famous Roman site in Northumberland, and I couldn’t listen any more. We had volunteered there together during the first summer we had been a couple, and the archaeological discoveries during the day took second place in my memories to the nights spent tangled together in a sleeping bag in a tiny tent for two.

  ‘Wasn’t he amazing?’ Tina said, rousing me from the mental repetition of my shopping list – a surprisingly effective distraction, as it had reminded me that I was now shopping for one, and turned my thoughts to how much I was missing Caitlyn. ‘He’ll have inspired a few new archaeologists tonight. Inspired a few sweet dreams too for some of this audience. Phew! I think I’m having a hot flush. Can you hang on while I find a glass of water? There’s sure to be a water fountain along the corridor somewhere. Back in a mo …’

  She scuttled off down the corridor, and I lurked at the back of the hall, safe in the knowledge that everyone else was leaving by the doors at the front, presumably in search of refreshment – a cup of tea with an extra splash of artificial Irish sweetener. I checked my phone for messages as the footsteps faded, the chatter died away, and the room fell silent. And then one voice carried the length of the hall, a voice I had heard more than enough of tonight.