One Day and Forever

Epilogue

SIX MONTHS LATER

It was a gorgeous July morning, and a small crowd was already starting to form outside the old church on Newart Street, on the South Side of Glasgow. Most of the bystanders were local residents or fans, desperate to get a glimpse of Ollie Chiles, who was holding a press conference that morning to announce what was happening with the timeworn, neglected building. The banner outside was a bit of a giveaway, right enough – The Moira Chiles Academy of Music and Drama. As far as the neighbourhood was concerned, the place hadn’t even opened yet, but already it was making a difference. The crowd of lads who always hung around the end of this street drinking and getting up to no good had been given jobs working on the site, on the condition that they turned up on time every morning and put in a solid day’s work. Not one of them had missed a shift yet.

Amidst the chaos of the building site inside, preparations were underway to introduce some of the key members of staff to the media that was congregating in what would have been the vestibule of the old church. Ollie and Calvin were on their third cups of coffee, as they finished preparing what they were going to announce.

‘You know, every time something goes wrong with the construction, I think I could be spending my retirement on a sun lounger in Marbella… but I wouldn’t swap this chaos for the world,’ Calvin said. ‘I mean look at me. I have dust on this Tom Ford suit, and I’m not freaking out. I’m like a different man.’

Ollie’s million-dollar grin was as wide as ever. In fact, his grin had been a pretty permanent feature lately. Filming had wrapped on the latest season of The Clansman at the beginning of May, and he’d spent every moment since in Glasgow, working here full time with Calvin and the rest of the team, and sleeping in his own bed every night. This morning, when he’d woken up, he’d realised that he’d never been happier. Although part of that might have something to do with the woman who had been lying next to him.

As Calvin went off to greet the press, Casey Lowden came into the room, her dark hair swept back in a ponytail, no make-up on, paint stains on her dungarees. He thought he’d never seen a more gorgeous sight in his life. ‘Ollie Chiles, you really need to stop looking at me like that or we’ll never get any work done,’ she said, slipping her arms around his neck and going up on to her tiptoes so that she could kiss him.

‘That would be fine with me,’ he said, grinning as his lips met hers.

This was the way it had been since they’d got together in January. He’d returned to LA from Drea’s incredibly beautiful, romantic wedding and cleared out all his stuff from the home he’d shared with Sienna, into a small but stunning apartment just off Sunset Boulevard. Thankfully, Sienna had been out of town that weekend – footage on social media showed her dancing in a Vegas club with Van and an entourage of people he didn’t even recognise – so there had been no awkward reunions or recriminations. In fact, they’d only spoken through lawyers since then, and their quickie divorce was already done and dusted. Her insistence on a pre-nup when they got married, and the fact that they’d never integrated their finances, meant that they both walked away with their own earnings, their own assets, and for him, a large dose of relief.

Anyway, he’d been organising his new crash pad when Casey had called him to say she was in town for meetings. They’d met at the Mondrian for drinks, and she hadn’t left his side until she had to come back to shoot her next scenes on The Clydeside . After that, they’d made the long-distance thing work, but it had been bliss to wake up next to her every morning since he got back to Glasgow. This was his base now, and he would travel when he was working on location, but other than that, this was where he was going to be.

‘Right, Ollie Chiles, put that woman down. I brought you up better than that.’ As always, Moira liked to make an entrance.

‘Don’t worry, Moira, it was me leading him astray,’ Casey joked back. Casey’s relationship with his mum was like night and day compared to the one his mum had had with Sienna. The two of them had hit it off straight away and that hadn’t changed as they’d got to know each other better. Casey gave him a quick peck on the lips. ‘I need to go get ready for the press conference. I’ll see you there.’

Calvin had amassed an awesome group of talent to spearhead the academy, but Casey was Ollie’s favourite member of the board. The deal was that this was a free academy, open to the young people of Glasgow for both full-time and part-time courses and lessons. The other big acting names would run workshops, fund raise and keep the profile of the centre high, but Ollie and Calvin were the main investors.

‘You know, son, I’m not sure whether I love her or you more,’ his mother teased him, with a cheeky wink, before plonking herself down on the chair Calvin had vacated. ‘In case I haven’t said this in the last twenty-four hours, I couldn’t be prouder of you, Ollie. Or more grateful to be back on dry land.’

One of the first appointments they’d made at the academy was a powerhouse singing talent, who had forty years of experience in the business. And Moira couldn’t wait to pass everything she knew on to the next generation. Neither could her best mate, one of the actresses who would be volunteering to teach drama, and who was currently wafting in, kaftan trailing behind her.

‘Darling, why are you sitting down?’ she asked Moira. ‘We have press to greet and people to charm. Let’s go.’ Jacinta McIntyre, ever the consummate professional, wafted right back out again, taking Moira, before pausing to greet two new arrivals in the doorway.

Kara gave both her mum and Moira quick hugs, as she passed them, feeling yet another huge wave of nostalgia at seeing the two women together again. They’d been inseparable since Moira had come home and moved into Jacinta’s spare room and Kara was pretty convinced that they were out most nights living their best lives. As they definitely should. They’d even been polite and friendly to the man standing next to her.

‘Ollie, Josh is here and he just wants to run through the key points of his speech.’

Ollie immediately got up to shake Josh’s hand and Kara appreciated that Ollie was making an effort too. It helped that Josh had redeemed himself for the lack of judgement that had caused her to call off their wedding, by offering to run the PR for the academy free of charge. Of course, it was great profile for his company, and there were already lots of overlaps with his existing client base. He still represented the Clydeside Studio, but he had dropped Corbin Jacobs, who had last been seen doing an advert for washing up liquid, as people in the industry had strangely become reluctant to work with him. Kara tried not to relish his downfall, but it wasn’t easy.

‘I’ll leave you two to get organised – the construction manager has a couple of questions for me about the wardrobe department.’

‘Dinner later?’ Josh asked her.

Kara had managed to repair her friendship with her ex-fiancé, and their working relationship too. When she got back from Hawaii, they’d both sat down and talked honestly for the first time in way too long. When all the high tension and drama had been taken out of the equation, they’d both agreed that they’d been coasting for the last couple of years of their relationship and that the blowout, while painful, had actually been a sign that it wasn’t right. They’d run their course as a couple, but they’d both committed to the friends part. The fact that both their lives had got so much better since then was a definite sign that they’d done the right thing.

‘Dinner sounds good. Is Issy joining us?’ Issy. Josh’s lovely, funny, beautiful girlfriend of the last few months.

‘She is,’ he replied.

‘Great – see you then.’ With a cheery smile, she left the two of them to talk and made her way back through the stone corridors to the area of the academy that had been designated for the wardrobe department. Here they planned to teach design and every aspect of the creation of the costumes that would be worn in acting classes and academy shows. Kara had never been more excited or felt more creative in her work. It was a long way from the everyday street wardrobe that she’d managed in her job at The Clydeside .

That seemed like such a long time ago, it was hard to believe it was only six months since she’d left. By the time she’d returned from a glorious week in Hawaii, her new contract was waiting for her. They’d offered her job back with a sizeable increase in salary, and a sincere apology for the incident that had occurred on Hogmanay. Abigail Dunlop had personally met with her to talk the offer through, but in the end, Kara had declined. Like everything that had happened at that time, it felt like she was being somehow nudged onto a new path. She’d decided that it was time to find a role that would inspire her to work to the very edges of her creativity, and she’d found that in the most unexpected place. While she’d been contemplating returning to The Clydeside , she’d taken a week-long trip to visit a friend, and while she was there, she’d heard that a new production in that city was looking for someone to head up their costume department. It was a historical spectacle to rival Downton Abbey and The Gilded Age , and it was set in eighteenth-century Dublin society.

‘Have I told you how fricking gorgeous you are when you grin like that?’ The Irish accent still got her every time. As did the bloke who was sitting patiently in the corner of the room, looking over the latest batch of contracts and agreements that Calvin had dumped on his lap the minute he got here. Zac Corlan was of course offering his legal advice free of charge as a favour to his girlfriend’s best mate and his business partner.

Zac meant every word of what he’d just said and he still chose to believe that everything that had happened in the last six months was a result of his mum and Aunt Audrey, sitting on that cloud somewhere, rustling up a bit of divine intervention.

Kara getting the job in Dublin had been incredible, although they’d decided to take it slow and make sure that they got to know each other properly before jumping in to anything serious – a plan that had lasted about a month, before they both fessed up to being utterly in love with each other. She’d moved into his Dublin flat and every night since then had felt like the 2 nd of January. Their jaunts to Glasgow every couple of weekends were brilliant too – Kara helped with getting the academy’s wardrobe department set up, he gave free legal advice, and it gave them a chance to spend time with his cousins, Jill and Hamish, and their families. Of course, they all loved her. As did…

‘Right, Kara, where do you want the lights in this room?’ His dad had a pencil behind his ear, a set of blueprints in his hand, and a twinkle in his eye that had been missing for the longest time after Mum died.

He’d stepped in to help Ollie and Calvin after Kara had told him they were struggling to get a top-tier project manager that could oversee the construction and deliver the academy renovation on time and in budget. Cillian had been running his own construction company for three decades, and he had a brilliant team back in Ireland, so he had been able to split his time between there and here for the last few months, working with local tradesmen to get this place into shape. As Zac watched his dad and Kara pore over the plans and mark out the locations for the lights, Zac could see he was loving every moment of the new challenge. He was also absolutely sure that his dad’s new work environment wasn’t the only reason that he had a renewed zest for life.

‘Found you! Oh my goodness, this place is like a maze.’ Alice gasped, as she came through the door. ‘It feels like we’ve walked for miles, but I think we might have been going in circles.’

‘I haven’t been able to feel ma feet for the last ten minutes,’ Val chirped in, and Alice wasn’t surprised. These stone floors were not made for furry mules.

Alice still felt a flush of bashfulness as Cillian greeted her with a hug and a kiss in front of everyone. The first time he’d kissed her had been in the bar that night at the airport. It had just been a brief but lovely exchange, probably fuelled by the courage of a few pints on his part, and a few gin and tonics on hers, but it had been enough to spark the start of something quite wonderful. Since then, she’d come up to Glasgow on some of the weekends that he was here and gone to Dublin for weekends there too. He’d also come to Reading a few times and he’d been a big hit with Rory and Sophie, who were absolutely delighted for them. As was the woman in the mules who was now taking her turn to hug Cillian.

‘All right, you big handsome devil. You know, I’d love you even if you weren’t a lovely big sod, because you give my pal an excuse to visit me.’

Alice greeted Kara with a kiss, but as she turned to Zac, she spotted a change in his expression as he realised that there was a third person with them. Alice immediately stepped in with the introductions.

‘Everyone, we want you to meet Sandra. She’s going to be working here one day a week, helping with admin, and maybe more than that once the academy is up and running properly.’

Sandra had finally called her from the Emergency Department of Glasgow Central hospital about a month after their January meeting at Larry’s house. Larry had put her there with a broken wrist and it had been one time too many. ‘I can get there tonight, Sandra,’ Alice had promised. It was the weekend, so she had two days off from her new job cleaning the local school. Enough time to get up to Glasgow and back if she caught the last flight that night. ‘But in the meantime, I’m going to call my friend, Bernadette, that I told you about. Hang tight and don’t leave until I get someone to you.’

She’d immediately called Bernadette, who, thankfully, was just about to clock on for her shift at the same hospital. Alice’s next call had been to Val, and by the time Alice made it to Glasgow that night, Sandra was out of hospital and what little belongings she had with her were in Val’s spare room. Over the next few weeks, long after Alice had returned down south, they’d all supported Sandra as she’d escaped Larry for good. Alice had helped her to get work cleaning at the council offices – one of the jobs Alice had left when she’d moved to Reading. Val had given her a place to stay and someone to listen. Bernadette had given her loads of encouragement and practical support. And Alice had called her every night to make sure she knew that people were rooting for her. If anyone thought it strange that she was helping the woman who’d been her husband’s mistress, Alice just reminded them that once upon a time she’d been trapped by Larry McLenn’s bullshit too.

Today was the last step in Sandra’s climb back to her old life. When she’d met Larry, she’d been the office manager in a busy taxi office. Now she’d be working here one day a week and hopefully that would lead to a full-time job that she’d love.

‘Right, well, Sandra and I will get off to go nab good seats at the press conference,’ Val announced.

‘We’ll come with you,’ Kara piped up. ‘I promised Ollie we’d sit in the front row ready to cause a diversion if any of the journalists try to go off course and ask questions about Sienna or about him and Casey.’

‘I’ll be two minutes,’ Cillian told them all. ‘Alice, why don’t you wait with me a second and walk round with me after I mark up these drawings?’

‘Of course,’ she agreed, not giving it a second thought.

The others left while he was scribbling with his pencil on the drawings, but as soon as they were gone, he stopped what he was doing and came towards her, then wrapped his arms around her waist. It had taken a while for her to get used to physical touch again, but now she welcomed it at every stolen opportunity. She’d been in an unhappy, cruel, loveless marriage for so long, it still stunned her that she’d found love again at this time in her life.

‘So, I’ve been thinking,’ he said between kisses. ‘This long-distance stuff, well, it’s not really working for me anymore.’

Wait, was he breaking up with her? Had she got this all wrong?

But no, if he was saying goodbye, his hands wouldn’t be stroking her back right now.

‘So what do you say we do this properly? You move to Dublin or I’ll move to Reading, and I’ll make whatever changes are needed at work to help that happen.’

She didn’t have to think about it.

‘I say yes,’ she replied. ‘To you, to us, to wherever we go, for as long as it takes.’

She meant every word, and as he picked her up and kissed her again. Somehow, she knew that her oldest friend, the much-missed Morag, would approve.