Chapter Two
I know I’m lucky to be a librarian. I love books and reading and the fact that our beautiful Victorian library serves as a much-needed community hub in our town. I especially love my colleagues, who’ve become great friends. However, the next morning, as I trundle to work, I don’t feel lucky.
Eddie’s remark still smarts as I march along the seafront. Tiny snowflakes skim my face and a sharp wind stings my cheeks. Apart from a sole dog walker in the distance, the flat, wide beach is deserted.
I’m not like you, Eddie announced. Meaning, you think I’d want your shitty life? And maybe he’s right! He’s seen his dad and me struggling and arguing, unable to pay bills. We’d planned to do so much to Kilmory Cottage, but the years have whipped by and nothing’s come to fruition. At least, not to the house itself. In between raising three kids and working full-time, I’ve managed to create a beautiful cottage garden, filled with roses that bloom all summer long. But apart from that, what mark have I actually made?
The trouble is, I’ve never had a grand life plan. So can I really expect Eddie to have one?
His dad and I were twenty-one when we met and fell in love. Frank was a bartender, working the summer season at a resort on the Algarve. I’d gone on holiday with friends, never intending to peel away from the group, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d met boys who were cute, or even handsome – but not beautiful like Frank. Not wild and brimming with life and schemes and daring, in the way that he was. His face was all cheekbones and angles, his eyes the darkest brown. His big beaming smile melted my heart like ice cream under the hot Portuguese sun. When my holiday ended, he skived off work to see me off at Faro airport where we hugged tightly, and I cried.
As we pulled apart, I saw that Frank’s face was wet with tears too.
‘It’ll be okay,’ he insisted and somehow, I knew he was right. Somehow we’d make it work, despite the hundreds of miles between us, and the fact that we were virtually broke. Back in Glasgow, I was working in a soon-to-be-defunct bookshop, while Frank would be expected to go home to work on his family’s farm after the summer season.
Why would we let any of that stand in our way? At that age we believed that anything was possible. Had anyone urged us to work at the tax office, we’d have laughed in their faces.
So I blotted my wet cheeks and boarded my plane home to Glasgow, clutching the piece of driftwood on which he’d carved Carly + Frank Forever .
We started writing to each other. A torrent of impassioned scrawlings, with Frank’s wonky English always making me smile. The way he said foot finger for toe, or Get a plane for coming to see me soon! There were calls and occasional visits, and every so often we’d decide together that maintaining a long-distance relationship was too hard. Yet we couldn’t give each other up. It took my mum’s illness to make us realise that we had to be together. At first things had seemed hopeful. But when her cancer spread and she was moved to the hospice, Frank turned up in Glasgow with a rucksack and his dark hair all wild, to be with me.
I fell to pieces when Mum died. Thirteen years younger than Dad, she’d always seemed so young and vibrant. He’d left her suddenly for another woman when I was fourteen – I’m an only child – and although heartbroken, she was also furious and determined that we could manage just fine by ourselves.
Mum never wanted another man. She didn’t need anyone. It had been the two of us, thick as thieves, and I’d never imagined a world without her. And she’d loved Frank, and admired his free spirit, his love of life.
Within weeks of Frank moving to Scotland we found out I was pregnant. That certainly wasn’t planned. We were living in my tiny rented flat, and only just finding out how to be with each other in normal life – rather than those heady reunions when we’d barely emerge out of bed.
Yet we were delighted too. We just had to figure out how we’d manage a future together, and what we’d do. With baby Eddie’s arrival, we were propelled into a house-hunting mission.
Having grown up on a farm, Frank had been driving a tractor virtually as his milk teeth fell out, and worked the land along with his father and brothers. He wasn’t a city person at all. Plus, he loved the sea – the farm was close to Portugal’s wild south-west coast – and we started to wonder if the west coast of Scotland might be the place for us.
A sleepy Ayrshire town called Sandybanks had been a childhood favourite of Mum’s. She’d taken me there, although I could barely remember it. But one day I suggested to Frank that we hop on a train for an exploratory look around.
We strolled along the seafront and stopped at a house with a For Sale sign nailed to its garden fence. At twenty-seven, and still trying to come to terms with losing Mum, I stared at Kilmory Cottage and squeezed Frank’s hand. The house was battered by salt winds, the garden a tangle of thorns. The town was pretty faded too, having once been a bustling holiday destination. Now the few remaining guest houses badly needed a lick of paint. The birthday cake roundabout on the seafront had probably looked jolly at one time, with its icing swirls and candy-striped candles jutting up from the seats. But now rusting and splattered in seagull poo, it clearly hadn’t moved for years.
However, the place still had plenty of olden-day charm, and the glorious sweep of Sandybanks Bay captivated us. Although Eddie was snoozing in his carrier against my chest, I pictured him a few years on, running delightedly along the beach. This was what we needed, I decided. A new start by the sea to raise a family of our own.
And there was our perfect cottage, for sale, facing the sparkling bay. The Isle of Arran a purplish smudge on the horizon, and the ferry cutting its way towards the quay.
‘Shall we do it?’ I asked Frank, willing him to say yes.
He did.
With my inheritance from Mum, together with every other penny we could scrape together, we had just enough for a deposit. And so we bought Kilmory Cottage. Our daughter Bella was born a couple of months after Eddie had turned one, and Ana came along two years later. Frank and I never had the urge to get married. After being left as she was, Mum had been resolutely anti-marriage – ‘No need for it, Carly!’ she’d insisted, and I guess that message had stuck. And Frank was – and still is – a fantastic dad. I’ve never doubted that he loves us all very much. But he wasn’t easy back then. There was still that wild impetuousness there; the boy who, at twenty-one, had grabbed my hand at two in the morning and we’d run, screaming with laughter, into the sea. That young man who’d jumped feet first into a life with me, in a foreign country, because he’d wanted us to be together and have a good life. To have more, certainly, than he’d had on the farm.
However, Frank wasn’t an employee type of guy. There was a restlessness in him; an insatiable urge to throw himself into a thrilling new project. And soon, this father of three was insisting that taking over Sandybanks’ failing ice cream parlour was ‘too good an opportunity to miss’.
‘I know you want to do your own thing,’ I’d reasoned, ‘but it feels too risky, Frank.’
‘Yes, but the rent’s reasonable and the location’s great.’
‘If it’s so great then why does nobody go there?’
‘They will,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll brighten it up and drag it into the twenty-first century. I’ll completely transform it. And we’re at the seaside, Carly!’ His dark eyes beamed excitement and I tried to swallow down my guilt at not sharing his enthusiasm. ‘Who doesn’t want a delicious ice cream at the beach?’
At the time, Frank was working crazy hours as a delivery driver while I was a full-time mum. I could see how passionate he was, and told myself that he deserved this chance if he could secure a loan. Next thing I knew, funds had been raised and there he was, master of a malfunctioning commercial freezer that the previous proprietor – now disappeared, leaving no contact details – had assured him was ‘in perfect working order’. Frank plundered his funds to rent a replacement freezer but still the shop failed. Somehow, this man from southern Portugal hadn’t factored in our long Scottish winters and the fact that ice cream sales dwindle to virtually nothing when the cold weather bites.
Next came a tiny bakery, tucked away down an alleyway, where he planned to wow the west of Scotland with Portuguese custard tarts. ‘ Everyone loves pastéis de nata,’ he’d insisted. ‘It can’t fail.’
Well, yes – maybe in Lisbon or even London, they did. But the craze was a long way from reaching our little corner of Ayrshire (in fact it still hasn’t arrived).
Then there was the food truck project, embarked on with wild enthusiasm one spring. He’d planned to sell sizzling garlicky steak sandwiches – which proved popular – but still he never managed to turn a profit and the venture was dead in the water by the end of the year. I’d feel terrible for Frank, to see his dreams shattered. But then he’d blunder into the next thing, and I was more often furious about the perilous financial position we’d find ourselves in. It wasn’t just the two of us anymore, free as birds. We had three children depending on us. As soon as Ana started nursery I went back to work, doing various office jobs – and I didn’t think it was beneath me, Eddie! Sometimes, I even enjoyed it! Then a decade ago, the library job came up and I leapt at it.
These days Frank works as a mechanic at his mate Dev’s garage. He’d never been a mechanic before, but he can turn his hand to virtually anything, when he puts his mind to it. And somehow we’ve scrambled through. But on this, my first day back at the library after the Christmas break, something hits me hard in the gut.
I stop abruptly on the seafront. Snow is still falling, dusting the birthday cake roundabout like icing sugar.
I’ll be fifty this year. My birthday’s in September – nine months away. My mum died at fifty. My life is speeding by and Eddie will be still lying there, posting Orange Cremes into his mouth. Or maybe it’ll be those hard round toffees that are always left at the end?
That’s me, I think wildly, marching on now, past the bandstand and the faded town map on a big wooden board. In the Quality Street tin I’m the Toffee Penny; the one that cements itself to your teeth. Why do they even put it in? It’s just there to be annoying – like a mother haranguing her son to find a job.
I veer away from the seafront and towards the town centre, passing the fishing tackle shop and the beauty salon. The library is in view now, the jewel of our town with its turrets and spires and stained-glass windows. A leaky jewel, as it happens, as there’s no money to fix the roof and guttering. Just enough for an array of buckets that we rearrange to catch the ever-changing locations of the drips.
The snow has stopped falling and way above the library, in the sky, a tiny dark speck has appeared. The speck is a plane and it shocks me to realise how much I wish I was on it.
Like all those times I flew out to see Frank, desperate to be together again. When he’d spot me at Faro airport arrivals and we’d fall into each other’s arms.
‘Ahh!’ I’d often hear people exclaim in pleasure at the sight of us. Same in Glasgow, whenever Frank arrived. ‘Love’s young dream!’ I once heard a stranger announce fondly, and we laughed as my cheeks blazed.
‘We are love’s young dream. You’re my dream, Carly!’
Now, taking care not to slip on the icy ground, I head for the yellow salt bin at the side of the library. As I grab the shovel and start digging out salt, I replay Eddie, shouting at me yesterday and flouncing upstairs. Later I’d lain awake in bed, worrying about whether I’d handled him in the right way.
‘Just leave him be,’ Frank had said. ‘It’s not worth getting upset about.’
Maybe Frank has the right attitude, I reflect now as I scatter salt rather aggressively around the library’s entrance. Eddie’s a fully fledged adult and if he’s not going to start living his life – well, I damn well am!
Like Mum did, when Dad left her. Working two jobs and seeing her friends and doing wonderful things with me, like baking and making fancy dress costumes, and taking me out to our favourite Italian café. But also never mollycoddling me. And certainly never picking up after me at home. I’d no more have thrown my dinner on the floor than dropped a sweet wrapper in the house.
I’m far too soft with Eddie, I decide, as I unlock the library’s heavy main door.
And from now on, things are going to change.
Inside the library, I turn on the lights with the ancient brass switches that make a definite clunk . I breathe in the aroma of thousands of books, mingling with a tinge of furniture polish and something else – the smell of learning and study and history.
When our three kids were all home it felt as if Kilmory Cottage might burst at the seams. Our home really wasn’t big enough for the five of us. So, as one of the library key holders, I started coming to work early, just to enjoy the calm and quiet and stillness.
The habit stuck, and I still do that now. In fact, Frank probably thinks the library opens at eight-thirty a.m. I make an instant coffee and wander over to the 20p box, where we sell off books that have been removed from the lending shelves. There’s a few novels and a small selection of non-fiction. A book about Clyde shipyards and wildlife guides about seabirds and coastal flora. And something else that I hadn’t noticed before. One of the others must have put it there.
I pick it up and sip my coffee as I examine the cover. The Empty-Nester’s Handbook: Living Your Best Life When the Kids Leave Home.
I can’t help chuckling dryly as my gaze lands on page one.
Let’s celebrate your fabulous second act!
What if Eddie never leaves home? If Frank and I are never empty-nesters? Could turning fifty count as the start of my second act?
Think of it as a thrilling new chapter, the author urges. How do you want it to look?
I have absolutely no idea – although after Eddie storming upstairs last night, I know how I don’t want it to look.
With my fully-grown, size-eleven-footed son flinging my ‘helpful’ suggestions back into my face.
With me picking up his sweet wrappers and damp, stinky towels and mouldering takeaway cartons.
With me picking up anything at all! Or doing any of that shit!
Or feeling in any way responsible for the fact that Eddie wants to do nothing with his life!
Or letting my ‘second act’ slide by without having adventures!
What kind of adventures do I want? Fun ones, with Frank, if he’s up for it. Why don’t we do fun stuff anymore? Why do we just trundle on?
My birthday’s nine months away, I figure as I switch on my computer at the main desk. So what am I waiting for really? For Eddie to miraculously figure out what he wants to do with his life?
The front door opens and my friend Prish appears, armed with a transparent tub of home-made cakes, swiftly followed by Jamie and Marilyn. There are hugs and cries of ‘Happy New Year!’ and the cakes are cooed over and devoured. There’s no occasion Prish won’t bake for: our last library day before the holidays, and our first day back, plus everyone’s birthdays. Over the Christmas break, when she could peel herself away from her huge family – four grown-up kids and seven grandkids, all descending on her for the holidays – she brought home-made brownies for our blowy beach walks. Now the rest of us catch up on each other’s news, delighted to all be together again.
‘I’m so relieved to be back at work,’ announces Jamie, and I know he really means it, as his home life is complicated.
‘How did it go?’ I hand him a mug of coffee.
‘Oh, the usual story. Lewis went to his parents and I went to mine.’ A shrug and a wry smile. ‘But what about you, Carly? All the gang home?’
‘Yeah, it was lovely,’ I say. ‘But the girls left the day after Boxing Day. Desperate to get away from us,’ I joke.
‘That’s how it’s meant to be,’ Prish remarks. ‘That’s our job, to set them up for leaving us and breaking our hearts.’
‘Hey, I’ve still got one at home, remember?’ I smile.
‘Not for much longer, I bet.’
‘Well, let’s see.’ Having dropped a coin into the honesty box, I’ve stashed The Empty-Nester Handbook into my bag. Soon, our first lenders arrive, and weak winter sunshine ekes through the stained-glass windows.
I’m still not sure how I want my second act to look, as our beautiful library flickers back into life. But somehow, I’ll figure it out. After all, a lot can happen in nine months.