Chapter One
Enya Brown’s phone buzzed in the middle of the night.
Throwing back the duvet, she sat up straight, skinny legs dangling from the side of the bed, widening her eyes to help clear the foggy edges of sleep.
She took a moment to centre herself with a long, deep breath through her nose and out of her mouth, just like the lady she had found on YouTube had suggested.
It helped, a little, in that her flustered pulse calmed and she was able to quietly locate her glasses, which were on top of the book on her nightstand.
There was something about a text or call arriving in the dark when the world was sleeping that had the power to put the fear of God into her.
Her first thought was for her son, was he okay, had something happened?
Her second, a prayer that he was safe and sound.
Then came the devastating prediction of utter desolation, knowing that if anything should ever happen to him, her life would lose all of its meaning.
It was daft really, the idea that bad news could only be delivered after office hours, or that the Grim Reaper preferred to work the night shift, understanding that the very worst news had far more impact when delivered to someone in their pyjamas. They might have a point.
She wondered what percentage of people died at night, not underestimating the powerful addition of booze, drugs, poorly lit roads, inclement weather: were we more likely to die in the dark?
She wasn’t sure who she could ask.
Feeling far more alert, she reached for her phone.
The house was quiet. She detested the silence of the empty hours.
Similarly, small noises of irritation like the creak of a door, the whistle of the wind and the chirp of birds, as they only served to remind her that she had once lived in a home with so much noise, so much life, that she would never have noticed such an inconsequential thing!
What had she become? Who had she become?
‘Sometimes, Jonathan, I feel that I’m no more than a trick of the light,’ she whispered. ‘Almost invisible.’
This she spoke as she opened the text, incredibly relieved to see it was a message from Jenny. Any contact with her friend triggered a thunderclap of joy that pulled her out of any potential panic.
Got any Kitkats?
These three words from her best friend, akin to opening a window in a stifling room to welcome a breeze, or a warm hug on a cold day, were crucial reassurance when she needed it the most. Invisible people did not receive messages like this.
The text had been sent some five minutes previously, at precisely 3 a.m. She smiled.
No, But IVE got a twirl, Half a toblerone and those chocolate dipped shortcake biscuits from marks that you like. Oh and half an Easter Egg
On my way – the instant reply.
Throwing her kimono over her cotton PJs, she made her way down the stairs and opened her front door, taking a moment to look along the street, very much liking the pink-edged, lilac-tinged light that hovered over the terraced chimney pots, giving the place an ethereal quality.
It promised warmth tomorrow and she felt it a privilege to see this little corner of suburbia in its idling time, where only the scamper of tiny creature feet foraging, the flutter of leaves disturbed by breeze, and the thump-thump of her friend’s slippers as they made their way down the path of the house next door but one, cut through the quiet.
Enya smiled and waved. Jenny smiled and waved back.
Their faces, devoid of make-up, crinkled in delight, shoulders raised, fingers on lips.
The two more like excited kids who were sneaking out, breaking curfew, than grown women, who could, if they so desired, venture out and about whenever the fancy took them. Even at this hour.
Enya made her way into the kitchen and filled the kettle. What was a 3 a.m. snack without tea to accompany it? She heard the front door close, and the sound of her friend, babbling, as soon as she walked in, as if it were mid-afternoon, normal.
‘Who in the world has half an Easter egg hanging around? It’s nearly July!’
‘I am aware.’ Enya gave a slow blink as she plopped the teabags into the mugs, comforted by her friend’s presence, aware of how having someone else near her halted all feelings of despair.
‘I hate people who save their Easter eggs, it’s not natural! They’re designed to be shoved in your mouth, eaten in one go and then you have to dispose of the foil and cardboard as soon as possible, hide the evidence.’ Jenny took a seat at the kitchen table.
‘This actually speaks volumes about your secret chocolate habit, the fact you feel the need to hide the evidence! It must be hard being married to a police officer, does he check the recycling for dabs? And also, hate is a strong word. I don’t hate anyone, but if I did, it wouldn’t be because I disagreed with how they did or didn’t eat their chocolate! ’
She pulled the pretty tin with the chocolate stash in it from the shelf inside the larder and grabbed the biscuits, placing both on the table in front of Jenny.
‘That’s the difference between you and me.
’ Her friend levered the lid from the tin with her thumbs and, with something close to urgency, ripped the wrapper from the Twirl, before stuffing a whole stick of the stuff into her mouth.
She continued to speak with her gob full of chocolate.
‘I hate lots of people, and for the most ridiculous reasons, not that they’re ridiculous to me. I have a list.’
‘You have a list?’ Enya was shocked.
‘Yes! And don’t look at me like that, Angela gets it, she has a list too.’
She poured water into the mugs, fascinated, unaware that her sister also had a list. ‘Who does Angela hate?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t want to break any confidences,’ Jenny pulled a face and carried on, ‘but I know for a fact that woman who does the weather – too smiley, too keen, with undertones of smug.’
‘I can’t believe I’m last to know about this! So who do you hate and why?’
‘I hate Poirot,’ Jenny over-enunciated.
Enya whipped around to face her friend; this was a revelation that she couldn’t allow to pass without comment. ‘Oh you can’t! I love him!’ She fished out the teabags and lobbed them into the sink. ‘Why do you hate him?’
‘It’s the moustache, it looks like liquorice, and it makes me feel sick.’ Jenny shuddered. ‘I imagine it going soft and then having to eat it.’ The thought clearly didn’t repulse her that much, as she reached for the second stick of chocolate.
Enya laughed loudly. ‘You can’t hate Poirot because you fear having to eat his moustache!’
‘I told you it was ridiculous, and I think you’ll find that, actually, I can hate whoever I want. It’s my list.’
‘So, who else?’ It was always a delight when after two decades of friendship, they revealed new facets of each other; she loved how her friend checked in like this regularly, chocolate craving or not.
Although unspoken, it was obvious that Jenny understood how much Enya needed this companionship.
She sloshed milk into the tea and took the mugs to the table, where she sat opposite her friend.
‘Erm, Blake Dunlop.’
‘Blake Dunlop?’ She repeated the name of a gangly boy who had been in their kids’ class at primary school. A name she hadn’t heard for a while.
‘Yes.’ Jenny, straight-faced, sipped her tea. ‘If he walked in right now, I’d punch him in the face!’
‘You would not!’ She did her best to contain her laughter.
‘I bloody would!’
‘You know he runs the reclamation yard up by the quarry?’
‘Does he now? Hmmm . . .’ Jenny stroked her chin as if making a plan.
It made her chuckle. ‘Why do you hate him?’
‘He made Holly cry.’
‘What, recently?’ Enya felt the flicker of concern. She loved Holly Hudson.
‘No!’ Jenny tutted. ‘Of course not recently. If it was recently, Phil would have punched him in the mouth.’
‘Or Aiden would,’ Enya pointed out. She had known Holly since she was in nappies on account of the fact that she had grown up next door but one.
Holly had been (almost) surgically attached to her son, Aiden, by the hip, for the last decade.
‘Not that I can imagine Aiden, or you, punching anyone, for that matter.’
‘There’s always a first time.’
‘Mmm.’ Enya sipped her tea. ‘What did he do to make her cry?’
‘Karate-kicked her art project, broke it clean in two. I’m sure I told you about it at the time.’
‘Probably. But a lot’s happened since then.’
Enya swallowed, thinking of that time when Aiden was little, and she’d been so busy.
Busy with mum jobs, her actual job, looking after the house, running around with a timer in her head that meant she leapt from chore to chore like a bee harvesting pollen.
Busy . . . Unlike now, when lonely hours stretched ahead of her each evening and the night often felt endless.
‘Ain’t that the truth.’ Jenny nodded. ‘Holly spent hours making it, don’t you remember? They were about seven and had to build a puppet theatre in a shoebox?’
‘Vaguely.’ She couldn’t remember what she’d had for supper last night, let alone an event decades before that hadn’t concerned her.
‘Well, Holly walked into the playground with hers in her hands, she’d gone for a Wind in the Willows vibe, river background with weeping willow, Toad, Ratty and Mole stuck on to lolly sticks, it was lovely.
Then Blake bloody Dunlop comes along, high kicks it right out of her hands and runs off. The little turd.’
‘That was over twenty years ago!’ She pointed out the obvious.
‘Your point being?’ Jenny sipped her tea.
‘Holding a grudge for that long only damages you. I bet Blake won’t even remember it!’
‘I’d still like to punch him.’
Enya laughed at her diminutive best friend, a talented florist whose hands were more used to arranging stunning floral bouquets than brawling. ‘I take it you couldn’t sleep?’
‘Nope. The usual.’
Enya understood only too well the debilitating pattern of insomnia that meant she often went to bed dreading a disturbed night ahead.
‘I slept soundly from ten until three, then my cogs started turning. I’m thinking about the shop, excited for our plans!’ Jenny danced her slippered feet on the wooden floor.
‘Me too.’ She beamed.
‘Shall we redo the sign, put your name next to mine?’
It was a lovely, generous suggestion that thrilled her. ‘Oh, Jen, as wonderful as that sounds, let’s give it six months before we do that, just in case I’m pants and you have to fire me!’ There was a subtle truth to her words, a lack of confidence that meant she tended to err towards the negative.
‘You won’t be pants, you’ll be ace, and I can’t fire you if you’re my partner, can I?’
‘I’m not sure, actually.’ Enya sipped her tea. She was indeed excited for the venture that would see her become part of Jenny’s business. An excitement tinged with the inevitable nerves; she didn’t do too well with change, who did? But losing her job of over two decades was a big deal.
She loved her job at the solicitors’, working for the genteel Messrs Greengate and Greengate.
Mr Richard Greengate and Mr Robert Greengate whom callers, on occasion, referred to as ‘Mr R Greengate’, with great emphasis, as if this might be defining enough.
To say it made for much confusion was an understatement.
The building on the pretty, curved High Street, where she spent four days a week between the hours of nine and five, was from a bygone era, and one where sunlight highlighted the rich soup of historical dust. Six decades of particles swirling right there in the room that made her wonder if she ever breathed in the tears her mother had shed when listening to the will of her father being read, or inhaled the fear and shame of her great-uncle Maurice as he dealt with the paperwork pertaining to his bankruptcy.
Or maybe she had sniffed Jonathan’s laughter, as she’d cradled their newborn and he’d jovially taken care of business.
‘So, Mr Greengate, this is our son, Aiden Jonathan, who needs to be added as sole beneficiary and also we think it worth making a note about his guardianship, should the worst ever happen.’ Jonathan had shot her a look then, with a wink.
It was what he had done, protected her, soothed her worries, smoothed her path, letting her know it was just a precaution.
Nothing to worry about. ‘He would be placed into the care of Mrs Angela Rudd . . .’
It felt like weeks ago, minutes, this another reminder that the whirlpool of life seemed to spin quickly, and it was all she could do on some days to keep her head above water.
It was a jolt to think this would be her last few months in their employ, as they had decided to retire, shut up shop and spend time with their respective Mrs Greengates.
The ending of her job of over twenty-five years, another change of routine that would require adjustment, another severing of rope that kept her pleasantly anchored to all that was familiar.
Her old life.
A life she missed. Not that she wasn’t looking forward to joining Jenny at the florist’s and being surrounded by that glorious scent each and every day, learning all about the business and honing her creative skills.
Her best friend had thrown her a lifeline, and she had grabbed it with both hands.
It occupied a lot of her thoughts as she chased ideas, imagining how glorious it would be at Easter, Christmas, Valentine’s and all the days in between.
Jenny swallowed her biscuit and continued. ‘Then I started worrying about how Holly will cope over the next three weeks, you know how she frets when Aiden is away for work.’
‘It ain’t easy!’ Enya sighed, glancing up at the ceiling towards her bedroom, trying to remember what it had been like when she and Jonathan were of a similar age.
They’d been desperately in love, that much she knew, but the feeling like she might crumble if he were not within reach? She couldn’t quite remember, preferring to think of herself as capable and grounded.
‘Well?’ Jenny raised her voice.
‘Well, what?’ Enya stared at her.
‘You were miles away! I just asked you if you think I can fit this half an Easter egg in my mouth and eat it in one.’
Laughing now at her friend, Enya shook her head. ‘Without a doubt. For someone so tiny, you have a very big mouth.’
‘None taken.’ Jenny took a deep breath, like an athlete preparing to perform, before cramming in the half an Easter egg.
She stifled a yawn as she watched Jenny’s antics.
‘Ta da!’ Jenny opened her mouth to show that the egg had indeed disappeared.
‘Magic!’ Enya smiled, wishing she believed in such a thing, knowing that if it were possible, she’d wish to turn the clock back to a time when her life had felt full, and she had thought loneliness and anxiety were what happened to other people . . .