with her father, although frosty at the start, hadn’t taken long to thaw – due to Ian’s polished patter, bags of charm and bulging wallet – relations with Trish had shifted dramatically. The two of them no longer enjoyed heart-to-hearts, fun baking sessions and girly shopping trips. Now, Amber barked orders and Trish obeyed. An unpleasant state of affairs that, Trish knew, stemmed from her guilt. Her daughter’s mortifying indictment that she was responsible for the break-up had scorched her like a branding iron.
Having mentally dissected her relationship with her husband manifold times over the last ten months, and with surgeon-like precision, Trish, however, had failed to reach the same conclusion. In her opinion, her and Ian’s sixteen-year conjugal bond had been a happy one. They’d met on a train – her travelling north to visit her parents, him en route to a boozy weekend in Newcastle with the lads. On her return from the buffet car, the conveyance had jolted to a halt, causing her and her cheese toastie to topple sideways – onto Ian. She’d been embarrassed, oozing apologies. He’d been unfazed, ready with humour. They’d laughed. Chatted. Exchanged numbers. And met up again in London. Eighteen months later, the relationship going from strength to strength, Trish had discovered she was pregnant and Ian had asked her to marry him. Events thereafter included her becoming a mother, and him – in an impressively short time span – becoming a company director, clearing the rungs of the computer software company where he’d worked since graduating at breakneck speed and with several hefty pay rises. With money no issue, and preferring a safer, cleaner, more rural environment to bring up their child, they’d moved from the capital to the adorable village of Cornfield in the Cotswolds – much to Trish’s delight. She’d always dreamed of living in a chocolate-box village, one with a hotchpotch of individual properties, steeped in history and packed with quintessential Englishness. And in a house with windows either side of the door and a cherry tree in the garden. With Ian, that dream had become reality, bringing with it not one, but three, cherry trees, a pear tree, and half a dozen of the apple-bearing variety.
‘This is perfect,’ their friends had cooed. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.’
But, once again, Trish had. And, once again, she’d harboured the worrying presentiment that her luck wouldn’t last; that something would transpire to burst her perfect bubble.
As, indeed, it had.
In the perfumed – and now-pregnant – form of Chloe.
News of whose impending motherhood Ian – in his usual cowardly way – had requested Trish break to Amber.
Depressingly aware the announcement would go down like a ton of mouldy King Edwards, Trish wondered if, this time, she really might just not bother.
Following Amber’s “vegetarian” announcement, Trish spent the following morning at the kitchen table scouring the internet for new meat-free recipes. Not that she minded. Since discovering the joys of cooking, she adored trying new recipes and had trialled many during her marriage. Had she not enjoyed the activity so much, she might have found herself looking back after the split and wondering, yet again, why she’d bothered. At the time, she’d naively believed that conjuring up fresh, healthy and occasionally spicy food would result in the satisfying ability to apply the same adjectives to her marriage. She’d stupidly adhered to the age-old adage that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, when it had since become obvious that the route to more prominent parts of his anatomy included a sharp right along cleavage bypass, stopping off at bikini wax along the way. Still, none of that was Amber’s fault. And while Trish – again rather guilelessly – attempted to inject a little sunshine into her daughter’s world with her culinary offerings – usually received with no more than a begrudging ‘Thanks’ and only then after prompting – she hadn’t thrown in the tea towel and resorted to dishing up beans on toast every night just yet. She hoped this latest vegetarian whim might reignite Amber’s interest in food, because, although Trish loved rustling up the meals, her daughter’s lack of enthusiasm, plus the regular consignment of her efforts to the bin – along with the invested time and money – was becoming ever so slightly irksome.
‘Muuuuum…’ Amber sashayed barefoot into the room – sporting black skinny jeans, a My food is grown not born T-shirt, a side plait and a huge grin.
Jerking up her head from her laptop, Trish’s suspicions vaulted to attention. Her daughter smiling could only mean one thing: she wanted something. And if that something didn’t similarly enthuse Trish, a battle might ensue – or, at the very least, a minor skirmish.
Grasping for stalling techniques, Trish blurted, ‘I thought I’d make vegetarian fajitas for tea.’
‘Sounds yum. Want me to help?’
Oh God. Trish’s heart rate gathered pace. Whatever her daughter wanted, she evidently wanted it a lot.
‘Er, no. It’s okay.’ Then, bracing herself, ‘So, what have you been up to?’ she all but squeaked, dread crashing over her as her vocal cords chimed out the words. She’d bet it involved an all-night rave. Or a booze cruise to Amsterdam. Or piercings.
Amber began fiddling with the sleeve of her T-shirt, which did nothing to ease Trish’s mounting nerves. ‘Welllll… I wondered if you’d mind if I got a paper round.’
A paper round? Trish’s immediate emotion was one of relief. At least a paper round didn’t involve sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll or piercings. At least with a paper round there’d be no chance of the police knocking on the door at all hours of the day or night.
Or would there?
Hadn’t squillions of kids gone missing when delivering papers? And worse? Heaven only knew what kind of dodgy characters lurked about in the early hours, hiding in bushes, waiting for innocent children to pass by, so they could lasso them away to dingy basements and keep them there for decades. And what about in winter? When it was dark and frosty and foggy. She could be knocked over. Or slide into a ravine. Not that there were any ravines in the Cotswolds. But still. Anything could happen.
‘It’s in Little Biddington,’ Amber went on, blissfully unaware of the terror swarming about her mother.
‘Little Biddington?’ whimpered Trish, head now whirling. ‘How will you get over there every morning?’
Amber twiddled the ends of her chunky plait. ‘It’s the next village, Mum. It’s like a mile away. I’ll go on my bike’
Trish’s eyes almost vacated their sockets. The only time she’d known Amber show the remotest interest in her bike was after some supermodel had declared cycling the only way to rid thighs of cellulite. And even then she’d only ventured out twice – returning with a bad case of nettle rash the second time and declaring she’d rather have cellulite after all. Quite where this sudden urge to slither out of bed at the crack of dawn to furnish Cotswold households with their broadsheets had sprung from, Trish couldn’t fathom. Or could she? Feigning innocence, she asked, ‘Do you, um, know anyone else who’s doing one of these paper rounds?’
‘Er, Jessica from school,’ replied Amber, a slight flush touching her smooth, freckled cheeks. ‘Oh. And a couple of the boys.’
Ah ha. This sounded more like it. ‘Which boys?’ Trish asked, battling the Gestapo-like edge creeping into her tone.
‘Jake Sanders. Tristan Philipps. And… Miguel.’
Ha! Trish resisted the urge to punch the air. There, in all his Mediterranean, handsome, teenage, jeans-swinging-off-narrow-hips way, lay the answer to the mystery; the real reason her daughter wanted to swap leisurely school summer holiday lie-ins for traipsing round the streets at some ungodly hour: Miguel Sanchez – the new boy on the block – and the latest addition to Amber’s class.
Waiting in the car to collect Amber from a friend’s house party to celebrate the end of the academic year, Trish had watched the girl amble down the path with a very tall, exceptionally good-looking young man, who’d