Chapter 1 #2
‘Aw, I know, and it’s really good of you, but I’ve spent enough time away from Kelsea Sands. I don’t want to leave again. Besides, I’ve had enough of living in a city, thanks all the same. Twenty years in Sheffield with Craig was enough. Too far from the sea for my liking. And the Humber.’
Alison nodded. Twenty years had been more than enough for her, too.
She’d missed Rosie so much during those years, even though they’d spoken on the phone regularly and visited each other at least once a month.
Of course, they both had other friends, but it wasn’t the same.
She’d been relieved when Rosie came home, although sad for her that her long-term relationship had ended.
‘I’m hardly far from the Humber myself,’ she pointed out.
‘And it’s only a fifteen-minute drive to the sea.
’ It was the one thing she’d insisted upon when they’d bought this house.
She’d wanted a view of the river, and this new estate on the site of an old dock had been the perfect compromise if she couldn’t live in Kelsea Sands.
‘Yeah, but you know what I mean.’
Alison nodded, understanding. The air was different in a city.
Any city. You could breathe properly in Kelsea Sands.
Given the choice, she knew where she’d rather be, and if it hadn’t been for Drew’s job in the west of the city, and the heavy traffic going across the River Hull at rush hour every morning and evening, she’d have insisted that they buy in the village, or at least as close to it as possible.
Her heart lay in the countryside of Holderness and always would. This remote area of East Yorkshire, edged on one side by the North Sea and by the Yorkshire Wolds on the other, with the Humber Estuary marking its southern boundary, was the only place she ever felt truly at home.
Even so, she didn’t like to think of Rosie staying in a caravan, as nice as it was.
Not in winter. Tide’s Reach Caravan Park was open eleven months of the year, so its residents were sent packing on 31 December and not allowed back until January was over.
Something to do with its licensing conditions, according to Gavin Hewson, who owned it.
Since Rosie had broken up with Craig four years ago, she’d spent every January at her parents’ house, just across the road from the park.
They’d offered to let her live there permanently, but she’d refused.
She’d rather have her own space, even if it was a caravan.
Still, it was handy to have a permanent address, and they clearly didn’t mind her using theirs.
‘Them next door but one from you have still got their Christmas decs up! Have you noticed? Bad luck, that,’ Rosie said, nodding knowingly.
‘Should have taken them down on Monday at the latest, and here we are on Friday. Wouldn’t like to be in their shoes.
Hey, you’re a bit late home from work, aren’t you?
’ she added, glancing at the clock on the wall as Alison handed her a mug of tea, strong with two sugars, just as she liked it.
The clock was shaped like a chicken and Alison had bought it about thirty years ago when she’d had a sudden and inexplicable desire to decorate her kitchen like a rural farmhouse.
All the other things from that era had long since been replaced with something more suited to a home on a reasonably modern city estate, but the chicken clock had stayed. Alison couldn’t really say why.
‘I’ve been to the doctor’s,’ Alison admitted, wondering why she’d shared that information. It would have been much easier to say that the traffic had been bad. She put her own mug of tea on a coaster with shaking hands.
Rosie’s expression changed to one of concern. ‘Are you all right? Nothing’s wrong, is it?’
‘No, honestly. Everything’s fine. Well…’ Alison blinked away sudden tears. ‘I mean, I think it is. Mostly.’
She turned away and rummaged in the cupboard. ‘Cake?’
‘Always,’ Rosie confirmed. ‘But what aren’t you telling me, Ali?’
Alison carried two small plates, each holding a slice of cake and a fork, and placed them carefully on the table before taking a seat next to Rosie.
‘I swear, it’s nothing. Just a routine health check with it being my birthday month.’ Her eyes drifted to the carrier bag that Rosie had propped against her chair leg, and, without warning, she burst into tears.
‘Oh, God!’ Rosie put her arm around Alison’s shoulders and pulled her closer. ‘What is it? What’s happened? You can tell me, you know. Mind my cake,’ she added, hastily nudging the plate away as Alison’s elbow moved scarily close to her precious Victoria sponge. ‘What did the doctor say?’
‘It was the nurse,’ Alison said with a sniff. ‘It’s not about that anyway. Well, not really. My blood pressure was up a bit, and I’ve gained another seven pounds since I last got weighed and I got told off like I was a naughty kid.’
Rosie nodded wisely. ‘They’re trained to talk to you like that, you know. Did she call you poppet? I’d have had words if she did.’
Through her tears, Alison couldn’t help but laugh. ‘No. She was really nice, to be fair. It’s me. I feel so washed up. I’m sixty-two!’
‘I know,’ Rosie said. ‘It was your birthday the other day, remember? Are you going to open your cards or are you going to cry all over your cake? Cos that’s a crime, if you ask me. It looks ever so nice.’ She gazed longingly at her plate. ‘Can I stop hugging you now? I’m starving.’
She gave Alison a wink.
Alison shook her head. ‘What are we like? Yeah, let’s have the cake. Although I shouldn’t by rights. The nurse would have a fit.’
‘Oh bugger it,’ Rosie said. She ignored the fork and picked the cake up in her hands, taking a big bite and chewing blissfully. ‘Mm, mm, this is gorgeous,’ she managed eventually. ‘M&S?’
‘Maister’s,’ Alison told her. She scooped some cake up on her fork and began to tuck in. Sod her blood pressure.
‘So,’ Rosie said, a few minutes later when the cake had been safely devoured, ‘what’s with the tears?’ She licked her fingers and sighed. ‘I must pop into Maister’s on the way home.’
‘I was just being stupid,’ Alison told her. She reached over and opened the kitchen drawer. ‘Here, have a baby wipe.’
‘Trust you to have baby wipes handy. You’re so organised.’ Rosie wiped her hands gratefully. ‘Thanks, love.’
‘I don’t feel very organised,’ Alison admitted. ‘I feel as if everything’s falling apart, to be honest. Me most of all.’
‘Just because you’ve turned sixty-two? It’s only a number. I don’t remember you getting all upset about turning sixty, and surely that was a bigger deal?’
‘I’m on the fast lane to seventy now,’ Alison said bleakly. ‘It’s all downhill from now on.’
‘It’s all downhill from twenty-nine, if you ask me,’ Rosie said with a shrug. ‘You can’t let it bother you. What does it matter? At least we’re alive.’
Alison sighed. ‘I’ve got a whisker on my chin,’ she admitted at last. ‘One wiry dark whisker. I keep having to pluck it out.’
Rosie giggled.
‘It’s not funny. What if it’s just the first? I’ll end up looking like Father Christmas!’
‘Not if your whiskers are dark. You might end up looking like Hagrid, though.’
‘Thanks for that.’
‘What’s really bothering you?’ Rosie queried.
‘Life,’ Alison said with another, heavier sigh. ‘I often wonder what Drew would think of me wasting it away like this.’
‘Bless him,’ Rosie said. ‘He was a lovely fella.’
‘He was, and he didn’t deserve…’
‘Nobody does,’ Rosie said gently, squeezing Alison’s hand. ‘But that’s life, isn’t it?’
‘Do you know, it was nine years in November. Can you believe that? I’ve been a widow for nine whole years.’
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you,’ Rosie told her for what felt like the millionth time. ‘I tried to get back as often as I could, but I wish I’d lived closer.’
‘You were brilliant,’ Alison assured her. ‘You all were. I’d have been lost without you.’
Her mam and dad had been towers of strength.
Rosie had popped back from Sheffield as often as she could and had kept in touch by phone and text.
Her aunt and uncle, Elaine and Christopher, had been quietly supportive, and her cousin Niall – Rosie’s brother – had tried very hard not to be so vicar-ish and be more cousin-ish as he’d consoled and comforted her.
Although he’d switched back to vicar mode when he’d performed the funeral service in his church – and a beautiful job he’d done, too.
All in all, she couldn’t complain about any of them. She knew she was lucky to have them all.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have given up teaching,’ she mused, not really meaning it.
‘You’d got completely fed up of teaching,’ Rosie reminded her. ‘You did the right thing.’
‘But that was before I knew Drew was going to die! And before I knew I was going to be left all alone.’
‘If you really wanted to go back to teaching, you’d have done so… afterwards, but you didn’t, did you? You took that job at the petrol station. Don’t you like it?’
Alison shrugged. ‘I don’t mind it, I suppose. It’s easy and the people are friendly.’ And it’s on the same retail park where Drew used to work so I feel closer to him there. ‘It’s just that I can imagine Drew telling me I should be doing something more with my life than this.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t help thinking how he died so young, Rosie, while I got all this extra life. Shouldn’t I be doing something with it? For his sake, if nothing else.’
‘Not being funny,’ Rosie said, ‘but it won’t make any difference to Drew what you’re doing with your life.
If you took up mountain climbing, became a nun, or spent your remaining years sitting in a corner, eating doughnuts and quietly growing your Hagrid beard it really wouldn’t matter, would it?
Drew wouldn’t know one way or the other.
Mind you, don’t tell our Niall I said that, for God’s sake. ’