Chapter 1
ADDIE
Addie Rafferty was running late. Again. She picked up the pile of post from the doormat and dumped it, along with a collection of junk mail, on the table.
The blue envelope on top caught her eye with its Anchor Island postmark, but she didn’t have time to deal with whatever it was right now.
She had to get to work. She’d already been late several times recently and she didn’t need another black mark against her name.
This job was the only way she could afford this flat which wasn’t homely by any stretch of the imagination but was at least a roof over her head.
And with her seven-year-old son, Isaac, to think about too, she had to keep making ends meet the best she could, and perhaps accept that this was just the way it was.
Having skipped breakfast in a rush to get Isaac organised for staying at his grandparents for the weekend, so she could put in more hours for work, she reached for the last remaining teacake from the batch she’d baked with him on Sunday, grabbed her bag and left to walk the short distance from her flat in Harrow to the Tube station.
The blue envelope was still on her mind as she boarded the Tube and began the relatively short commute into London.
It hadn’t looked like Aunt Gayle’s writing on the front, but who else would be sending her a letter from Anchor Island?
Addie and her sister, Susanna, rarely heard from Aunt Gayle, and vice versa.
The last time Gayle had been in touch it was a few months ago with a birthday card for Addie, and before that a short letter to remind them that their father’s things were still in her attic.
They’d been there for thirty years, ever since he died and the girls went to live with her.
Addie had taken charge of replying to say that she and Susanna would come and sort through things soon, although both she and Susanna had known it would be a big leap when they eventually did it given neither of them had been back to the island in almost twenty years.
Even Isaac’s relentless questions about her years growing up on an island in the English Channel hadn’t instigated a visit.
As the Tube continued to head into the heart of the city and the office where she worked as a senior digital designer for a web agency, Addie pushed away her concerns about Anchor Island and Aunt Gayle and thought about the day ahead instead.
She had a big presentation to deliver and although she liked to think she wasn’t bad at what she did for work, the fact was, it wasn’t her dream job, never had been, and on some days that made it so much harder to give it her all.
On the train she was surrounded by a mishmash of people – some dressed in jeans, others in smarter dress like the woman in a sharp suit with pointed stilettos.
Did she do her whole commute in those? Addie had long since given up on heels, favouring trainers until she reached the office.
Another man leaned against the metal safety pole frantically scrolling on his phone.
On the seat closest to him a woman was tapping away on a laptop, seemingly desperate to get finished whatever it was she was in the middle of.
Addie wondered how many of these people were working in their dream job.
How many people truly got to do what they loved when there was the pressure of bills to pay and hungry mouths to feed?
Sometimes you had to do what was necessary.
And that’s exactly what Addie had done. She’d wedged herself into a life that did what she needed it to do – it provided.
She earned good money, the rented flat she’d lived in for the last five years was close to a half-decent school for Isaac, and while she wasn’t on the property ladder, she still had some savings put by in the vague hope that she would be one day.
As the Tube shunted her closer and closer to her destination she thought about the upcoming weekend.
Except it wasn’t a weekend, not for her – she’d be catching up with work, albeit from home.
To at least make it bearable she planned to stay in her pyjamas all day and the second she was finished she’d bake a lovely pudding to enjoy after her dinner.
Chocolate soufflé would be perfect and already she was thinking about enjoying it with a glass of wine.
She’d picked up a bargain bottle of Pinot Grigio on a special deal from the corner shop the other day, when she’d raced in to buy bread so Isaac would at least get a sandwich in his packed lunch.
She couldn’t really afford it and didn’t buy wine often, but sometimes she needed a little something for herself to take the edge off the grind of day-to-day life.
She thought about Isaac, with his crazy blond curls and dazzling smile, who loved chocolate soufflé just as much as she did.
Her little boy was the love of her life, and it pained her that she couldn’t give him more.
Instead of a grotty flat with no outside space of their own, she longed to give him a garden, fresh air rather than a sea of smoke from the crowd of teenagers who hovered outside their building.
She wanted to give him a bigger bedroom to build his Lego, she wanted to spend every weekend baking with him rather than working, she wanted to bask in the sound of his gentle giggles and make the most of the time they had before it was too late and he was all grown up.
At least Isaac had Maurie and Jarrett, his paternal grandparents.
They filled some of the void Isaac’s disinterested father, Jonty, had left when he’d taken off for South America and never came back.
Maurie and Jarrett’s house in Ruislip was a real home too, a place where Isaac had his own bedroom and a great long garden to run around in and play outside whenever he felt like it.
It should’ve been a quick walk from the Tube to the office but the gods of whatever it was that controlled being on time were conspiring against Addie today.
First there was a problem at the ticket barrier, with queues backed up.
Then she was lost in a swarm of people trying to get up to street level, and after being jostled about, when she finally emerged there was a street cordoned off due to a police incident, and she was forced to take a longer route to the office.
To top it all off, she was about to enter the building but collided with someone and ended up with coffee down the front of her shirt.
She’d planned to go straight to the bathroom after dumping her bag to deal with the coffee spill before it really set in to the material of her shirt.
But she didn’t get a chance. She’d only just put her bag down when her boss passed by her desk and said, ‘A word, please.’ He didn’t need to add the instruction to follow him into his office.
She exchanged a look with her colleague, Sally, who was sitting opposite. ‘Probably about my meeting later, I’m a bit nervous.’
‘You’ve got this,’ said Sally. ‘They’ll love you.’
She looked at her shirt and pulled a face that suggested they wouldn’t, not if her personal appearance was any indicator of her competence.
Presenting to potential clients still had the power to make Addie anxious no matter how many times she’d done it before, and today’s client, if they chose this web agency, would be a big coup for the team.
She needed to review the presentation she’d put together, the presentation that would show the client how she’d translated their concept into engaging online content, which would generate sales and boost their business.
The goldfish bowl office with a glass partition had no door, so she went inside and took a seat when her boss, Raymond, looked up and gestured for her to do so. She hoped he wasn’t about to throw another project her way given she already had a ton of work to catch up on this weekend.
Raymond eventually finished whatever he was typing on his keyboard and looked over the top of his thick-rimmed glasses. ‘Is everything all right, Adeleine?’
‘Of course.’ She forced a brightness into her voice. ‘I know I was late again today.’ She looked down at the front of her shirt. ‘Problem at the Tube station, a road closure, and someone with a full coffee cup knocked into me.’
‘Right.’ He chose his words carefully, or at least that’s how it seemed. ‘Is there anything I need to know?’
Well, let me see… she thought. My job doesn’t interest me, I’m just doing it for the money, and to be honest I’d rather be at home with my son this weekend or baking all day rather than working. Oh, and you keep calling me Adeleine which nobody else does. So please, stop it!
Raymond had always used her full name. She’d given up trying to correct him.
And, she supposed, in a heavily male-dominated team, Adeleine did sound a bit more serious than Addie.
It was just that nobody called her Adeleine any more – it was what her dad had called her and since he’d died she’d found it painful to hear, so she’d switched to the name her friends at school used.
‘I’m fine, honestly,’ she said, instead of sharing what she was thinking. ‘Everything is under control.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Totally.’
He nodded, accepting she wasn’t going to divulge anything further. ‘You’re meeting with a client today, Adeleine.’ He steepled his fingers beneath his chin, elbows on the table. ‘It’s an important client. This could mean big business for us.’
‘I’m fully prepared. I promise. I plan to do a quick review of my presentation and then I’m set to go.’
‘First impressions really count.’
So he’d seen the stain. Not hard, really – it stood out a mile.
‘I can pop out, grab another shirt from somewhere nearby,’ she said. Not that she had the time, nor the funds to splash around, but what choice did she have?
‘See that you do. And Adeleine,’ he added before she could scoot back to her desk. ‘Perhaps keep a spare set of clothes here just in case and maybe get an earlier train.’
He’d delivered his instructions as if they were easy.
An earlier train was impossible given the time before school care started for Isaac.
The extra clothes she could do, which should’ve made her feel slightly better, except it didn’t.
Still, given this was the fourth time she’d been late for work in the last fortnight, Raymond had gone pretty easy on her.
‘What was that all about?’ Sally asked when she got back to her desk. Sally had never seen eye to eye with Raymond; she pushed all his buttons, but she seemed to enjoy the challenge and she loved her job, unlike Addie.
‘I have to go and buy a new shirt.’ She indicated the coffee stain. ‘Raymond doesn’t want me meeting my client like this. And I get it. It won’t exactly give a good impression.’
Sally pulled open a packet of dry-roasted peanuts and offered them across to Addie who sat down, defeated, at her desk. ‘Fair enough. But don’t stress, you don’t have to buy anything.’
‘I don’t?’ She took a handful of peanuts. The teacake from earlier hadn’t filled her up in the slightest.
‘I have a spare shirt. And a bra, knickers and trousers.’ She leaned closer to Addie. ‘Remember how I stayed out all night a few weeks ago?’
‘How could I forget?’ It still made Addie smile, the tale of Sally’s love life which was a riot compared to her non-existent one.
‘No way did I want McTwat to know I’d been out all night,’ Sally went on, ‘so I bought new clothes on my way in and since then, kept a spare outfit here. You know, just in case. Ever the professional, me. Apart from my funny names for people.’ Sally, a massive fan of Grey’s Anatomy, was into labelling people with a ‘Mc’ prefix.
So far there was McHottie for Allan who worked in accounts, McPerv for Bob who talked to your cleavage, McMisery for Chris, the security guard, who hadn’t smiled once in the whole year he’d worked at the main doors to the office block they shared with four other companies.
Sally disappeared out of view for a moment as she bent down to open the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet. She sat back up again and passed across a shirt after making sure nobody had their beady eye on them.
‘You’re a lifesaver. Thank you. I really can’t afford to buy another one. I’ll bring it back washed and ironed.’
Sally popped a few peanuts into her mouth and swished a hand to dismiss any concern about the shirt.
Addie went off to the ladies to get changed and, being the only one in there, she lingered in front of the mirror.
What had happened to the Addie Rafferty who, despite losing her parents, had begun to find happiness on an island in the English Channel? What had happened to the girl who enjoyed baking and had once felt like it could be the start of an exciting journey for her?
Loyalty. That was what had happened.
Being loyal to her sister and sticking to the pact they’d made as young girls had cost her – she’d lost a closeness with their aunt that Susanna had never had, and she’d never followed her passion for baking since her aunt, like her sister, seemed convinced university and academia were the key to her future.
Losing all of that was worth it for the gift of her son, of course, but she greedily wanted it all – she wanted Isaac, her happiness, a job she loved and a place where she really felt at home.
But as she made her way back to her desk, she got the impression that asking for all that was asking far too much.