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A Dozen Second Chances
KATE FIELD
One More Chapter
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020
Copyright © Kate Field 2020
Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Kate Field asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008317836
Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008317829
Version: 2019-11-11
Table of Contents
About This Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
This ebook meets all accessibility requirements and standards.
Please be advised this book features the following content warnings and proceed at your own discretion: mental illness and bereavement.
To Catherine Bowdler, for being kind to herself
Twenty minutes. The train would leave in twenty minutes, and time wouldn’t stop however hard I wished for it.
I looked at Caitlyn, sitting across a table littered with half-drunk coffee cups; caught her surreptitiously sliding her sleeve back down to cover her watch – not for the first time.
‘It will be fine,’ Caitlyn said. ‘No different than when I went on a school trip, only this one will last longer. I won’t be that far away. Nearer than Nan. It hardly takes more than an hour to fly to Paris.’
She would be over five hundred miles away. I’d looked it up. She’d been further on school trips, but they had been finite – a matter of days. Now she was leaving for twelve months, but really, what were the chances of her coming back? Once she’d experienced the glamour of Paris, why would she want to return to rainy Lancashire? And while part of me wept at the thought of losing her, when I had already lost so much, another part cheered her on. I’d had plans to travel once. I knew what it felt like, that heady mix of trepidation and excitement, the belief that the world was storing up opportunities with your name on, waiting to be discovered. I wouldn’t let anything get in the way of her discoveries.
‘Of course it will be fine,’ I said. I knew my allotted lines. We had played out a script all week: me trying to look pleased that Caitlyn was going, Caitlyn trying to look sorry. ‘Freedom! At last!’
I managed a smile. I shouldn’t have come. I should have dropped Caitlyn off at the local station to make her own way, not suggested driving down to Manchester and spending the night there before she caught her train. I had wanted to savour our last minutes together, not realising until now that sometimes a swift goodbye was a far less painful option after all.
‘Freedom for you too,’ Caitlyn said. ‘You could let Rich stay the night, without fear that you’ll corrupt my innocent young mind …’
I made a non-committal noise, trying to disguise my instinctive aversion to that idea. Rich in my bed … his face the first sight of my day … He wouldn’t expect that, would he? I thought we both had the measure of our relationship: it didn’t include whole nights together. Physical intimacies, yes; emotional ones, no. Besides, I’d spent years enjoying my independence. I might now have an empty nest, but filling it with a man wasn’t my idea of freedom.
Fifteen minutes. Caitlyn rummaged in her backpack and brought out a slim package wrapped in blue tissue paper. She held it out to me.
‘I’ve got something for you. It’s not much …’
I unwrapped the paper with deliberate care, eking out the seconds. It fell open to reveal a tiny gift box, and inside that lay a stack of rectangular pieces of card. I studied the top one. It was beautifully illustrated around the border with a variety of my favourite flowers – Caitlyn had inherited Faye’s artistic talent, as well as her looks. In the centre,