black, thick and straight and I keep it in a sort of long, smooth bob that curves forwards at the sides like wings. ‘I expect he was just being kind. Not many men want to go out with someone taller than themselves.’
‘They might if you ever gave them the chance, Holly!’
‘There’s no point: I met my Mr Right and I don’t believe in second-best.’ Alan had found me beautiful, too, though I had found it hard to believe him at first after all that school bullying about my height and my very untrendy clothes …
‘It doesn’t have to be second-best – I know you and Alan loved each other, but no-one would blame you, least of all me, if you fell in love with someone else now. Alan would be the last man to want you to mourn him forever.’
‘I’m not still mourning, I’ve moved on. It’s just …’ I paused, trying to sum up how I felt. ‘It’s just that what we had was so perfect that I know I’m not going to find that again.’
‘But was it so perfect? Is any marriage ever that?’ she asked. ‘And have you ever thought that you weren’t actually married for long enough for the gilt to wear off the gingerbread?’
I looked at her, startled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you were very happy, but even the best relationships change over time: their little ways start to irritate you and you have to learn a bit of give and take. Alan wasn’t perfect and neither are you: none of us are. Look at me and Dan, for instance. He can’t understand why I need forty-six pairs of shoes and I hate coming second in his life to rugby – but we still love each other.’
‘Apart from our work, the only thing Alan and I didn’t do together was the running – we shared everything else.’
‘But one or both of you might have felt that was a bit claustrophobic eventually. Alan was a dreamer too – and he dreamed of writing. You couldn’t do that together.’
‘Well, I didn’t stop him,’ I said defensively. ‘In fact, I encouraged him, though the teaching took up a lot of his time and energy. And I was going to write a house-party cookbook, so we did share that interest too, in a way.’
‘Oh yes – I’d forgotten about the cookbook. You haven’t mentioned it for ages.’
‘It’s nearly finished, just one more section to go.’
That was the one dealing with catering for a Christmas house-party, which I had been putting off.
‘I do realise the dynamics of the relationship would have changed when we had children, Laura, but we had it all planned. I wish now we hadn’t waited so long, though.’
‘There you are, then,’ she said triumphantly, ‘if you find someone else, it’s not too late to start a family – look at me!’
‘Funnily enough I was thinking about that in Devon, and I decided that although I don’t want another man, I do want a baby before it’s too late. So I thought I’d try artificial insemination. What do you think?’
She stared at me from startled, long-lashed blue eyes. ‘Really? Well, I suppose you could,’ she conceded reluctantly after a minute. ‘But wouldn’t you prefer to try the natural way first?’
‘No,’ I said simply. ‘I want the baby to be just mine.’
‘How would you manage financially? Have you thought it through?’
‘I own the cottage,’ I pointed out, because I’d paid off the mortgage on our terraced house with the insurance money after Alan died, then moved out to an even smaller cottage in the countryside between Ormskirk and Merchester. ‘And I thought I could finish off the cookery book and maybe start doing party catering from home.’
‘I’m not sure you’ve seen all the pitfalls of going it alone with a small child, but I know what you’re like when you’ve made your mind up,’ she said resignedly. Then she brightened and added, ‘But I could help you and it would be lovely to be able to see more of you.’
‘Yes, that would be great and I’ll be counting on you for advice if I get pregnant.’
‘I must say, you’ve really surprised me, though.’
‘I surprised myself, but something Gran said right at the end made me realise I ought to go out there and get what I want, before it’s too late.’
‘You mean when she said some man’s name you’d never heard of?’
I nodded. ‘It was the way she said it – and she could see him, too. I’d never seen her smile like that, so she must have loved and lost him, whoever he was – and perhaps her journal will tell me that eventually. Her face went all soft, and I could see how beautiful she must have been when she was young.’
‘Just like you, with the same black hair and light grey eyes.’
‘Laura, you can’t say I’m beautiful! I mean, apart from being the size of a maypole, I’ve got a big, beaky nose.’
‘You’re striking, and your nose isn’t beaky, it’s only got the tiniest hint of a curve in it,’ she said loyally. ‘Sam’s right, you do look like that bust of Nefertiti you see in photographs … though your hair is a bit more Cleopatra.’
I was flattered but unconvinced. Gran’s skin had been peaches and cream and mine was heading towards a warm olive so that I look Mediterranean apart from my light eyes. Gran’s mother’s family came from Liverpool originally, so I daresay I have some foreign sailor in my ancestry to thank for my colouring – and maybe my height, which has been the bane of my existence.
‘I quite liked Sam, because at least he didn’t talk to my boobs, like a lot of men do,’ I conceded and then immediately regretted it, because she said eagerly, ‘So you will come to us, if only for Christmas dinner? I promise not to push you together, but it would give you a chance to get to know him a bit and—’
My phone emitted a strangled snatch of Mozart and I grabbed it. Saved by the muzak.
Chapter 2
Little Mumming
At my last hospital I was frequently left in sole command of a children’s ward in a separate building, night after night. When the air raid sirens went I took all the children down to a dark and damp cellar, where I had to beat hundreds of cockroaches off the cots and beds before they could be used. Finally, earlier this year, weakened by too many night shifts, lack of sleep (for I found it impossible to sleep during the day), too much responsibility and poor food, my health broke down and I was sent home to recover.
October 1944
I hoped the call wasn’t the man from Chris’s Clearance saying he’d decided against collecting Gran’s fairly worthless sticks of furniture and bric-a-brac, but no, it was Ellen from the Homebodies agency.
‘Holly, you know I said there was nothing else on the books over Christmas?’ she said in her slightly harsh voice, without any preamble. Ellen doesn’t do polite, except to the customers. ‘Well, now something’s come up and I’m going to ask you to do it for me as a big, big favour!’
‘A favour?’ My spirits lifted. ‘You mean a house-sitting big favour?’
Laura caught my eye and grimaced, shaking her head and mouthing, ‘Don’t you dare!’
‘Yes, a major crisis has just blown up,’ Ellen explained. ‘You remember Mo and Jim Chirk?’
‘You’ve mentioned them several times, but I haven’t met them. They’re one of your longest-serving and most dependable house-sitting couples, aren’t they?’
‘They were,’ she said darkly. ‘And they were supposed to be house-sitting up on the East Lancashire moors over Christmas – they’d been two or three times and the owner asked for them again –