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  ‘Adam?’ she asked, hoisting a leg inelegantly over the bike and walking it over to him. She unclipped the helmet and ran a hand through her hair, hoping it hadn’t gone too madly fluffy. ‘Hi, I’m Becca. Rachel’s sister?’

  She was smiling in a disarming ‘Brace yourself!’ sort of way, but registered only disbelief in his answering look. Disbelief and . . . well, disappointment, if she wasn’t mistaken. ‘You’re kidding,’ he said flatly, and shook his head. ‘No offence, but . . .’ He gave a humourless sort of laugh. ‘Look, this is not what I paid for.’

  Becca stopped abruptly, the hand she’d held out in a friendly manner falling to her side. In her experience, whenever people said ‘No offence’, they were almost certainly about to be offensive. In a big way. ‘What do you mean?’ Damn, that sounded a bit aggressive. ‘Listen, I should have said, we can offer you a fifty per cent discount on today’s session if—’

  But he wasn’t listening. ‘I don’t want to be rude,’ he began awkwardly, his gaze sliding everywhere but her face, and her heart sank. Wrong! He so was about to be rude. ‘But I signed up for a fitness programme? Run by an expert?’ He paused for impact, just in case she was under any illusions that she might be an expert. Hardly. ‘Her sending you along instead . . . Sorry, no. Not having that.’

  Becca’s face flamed at the insults implied in his words. It was because she was fatter than Rachel, she thought, stung. Fatter, and red in the face, with frizzy hair and borrowed clothes that were slightly too tight. And he’d taken one single glance, and written her off. Sorry, no. Not having that. Not having you. He hadn’t even given her a chance!

  The customer is always right, she remembered her dad saying, and tried to keep her cool. ‘I’ve prepared a full training session,’ she said through gritted teeth, pulling her exercise plan from her pocket. ‘From an ex-Royal Marines commando, no less! And seeing as we’re both here, we might as well give it a go, see how you get along.’

  But he was shaking his head again. I’m not taking orders from you, Fatty – it was visible in his face. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Look, no offence, but—’

  On to the second ‘no offence’ already, Becca thought dismally; and once had been more than enough. He was hardly Mo Farah himself in his baggy T-shirt and box-fresh trainers, was he? ‘Yeah, well, offence taken,’ she blurted out in the next moment. ‘Have a listen to yourself, pal, you’re being bloody rude, you know. When I was only trying to help.’ And before she could stop herself, she had crumpled up her exercise plan and thrown it in his face, then got back on her bike and pedalled away as fast as she could, nose in the air. It was all she could do to stop herself bellowing out ‘Get stuffed!’ over her shoulder, but her lungs were tightening from the hard burst of exercise, and luckily – for him – she couldn’t spare the breath. How dare he, though? How dare he? Ignorant, charmless, bad-mannered jerk. Tosser. Knobhead!

  Her heart, which had felt so joyful moments before, seemed to thump against her ribcage, a tattoo of hurt. Yes, okay, so she was kind of on the tubby side these days. Agreed, she probably didn’t look a vision of good health and ass-kicking fitness at first glance either; not your standard fitness-instructor physique. But he could have given her the benefit of the doubt, couldn’t he? He could have humoured her, been polite at least!

  Tears smarted in her eyes as she bumped along by the river, no longer sure of where she was going. She hated the way people judged you on your size – how you could be the best and kindest person in the world and still get written off with a single look up and down, just because you were a bit of a chubster. It was so rude. So unfair!

  Pedalling harder, she blinked away the tears, not wanting to dwell on it any longer. No. She wouldn’t cry over mean-spirited, judgemental Adam. She wouldn’t cycle to the nearest bakery and gorge herself on a chocolate eclair, as Wendy would have advised, either. (Naughty but nice!) Instead she would hold her head high, refuse to feel bad about herself, and get the hell back to Rachel’s house as fast as possible.

  And in the meantime, Adam Holland could bloody well jog on. Literally. Without her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ironically, Rachel had been quite looking forward to staying with Sonia Next Door while Dad and Wendy were on their week’s honeymoon in Dorset. Sonia had white-blonde hair and wore lots of lipstick and tight jumpers like Barbara Windsor and had a naughty sort of laugh. Once she had answered the door to Terry in a black satin nightie and some fluffy pink slippers. Dad had gone bright red and looked away but Sonia had giggled behind her hand and said, ‘Whoops! No peeping, Tel,’ and then winked at Rachel like she didn’t care one bit.

  Whenever Sonia had babysat for Rachel in the past, she had brought round PopTarts and they’d watched Coronation Street together. But now they were in Sonia’s house, the other side of the adjoining wall, and it was no longer just the two of them. There was Frank, too, Sonia’s new boyfriend, who had a mean face and a sour smell about him that adult Rachel would learn to associate with men who’d drunk too much. And on the night of the wedding, while Dad and Wendy were miles away in their hotel, Rachel had woken up in Sonia’s small white-painted spare room to find Frank sitting on the end of her bed, his cigarette smell seeming to settle on her like a film of dust, catching in the back of her throat, as he leaned over in the darkness. ‘Ssshh,’ he whispered, sliding a hand under the covers onto her thigh as she shrank back against the pillow, bewildered and scared. ‘Ssshhh.’

  Almost thirty years later, the memory was still enough to make her shudder, and she forced the images violently from her head as the dread and nausea re-awoke. No. Don’t think about it. Put that lid back down, lock it away. That was how she’d always dealt with the horror – by burying the memories so deeply they could rarely be accessed. ‘It could have been worse,’ she had told a counsellor once, mumbling out the story for the first time. She had suffered postnatal depression after Scarlet was born, and had come to a clinic once a week to talk to a kind, calm woman about her feelings. There was something about that quiet, lavender-painted room, the measured gaze of the counsellor, that invited confidences. ‘I mean, I feel something of a fraud, even mentioning it to you now. He didn’t rape me. He didn’t stick his tongue down my throat – or anything in any other place, for that matter. He just came into my bedroom and put his hand under the covers on my leg. That was it. No real harm done. It’s just . . .’ She bowed her head. ‘Somehow the shock of it was enough to make me feel really bad. Dirty. Like it was my fault.’

  The counsellor was older, threads of grey through her thick brown hair, and she spoke in a slow, gentle voice. ‘It’s confusing for children when adults behave in unexpected ways,’ she had said. ‘And the feelings it provoked have probably come up again at this time because you’ve got two little girls yourself now, and—’

  That was it. That was the thing. ‘And if anyone dared do that to my girls, I would want to kill them,’ Rachel had burst out automatically, fists clenching in her lap.

  The counsellor had nodded, understanding in her eyes. ‘But it wasn’t your fault,’ she had said, leaning forward and speaking with uncharacteristic firmness. ‘It was not your fault, Rachel, okay?’

  As it was, the incident itself had been over in a matter of moments, thank goodness. She had refused to ‘sssshh’ as Frank had instructed, screaming instead at the top of her voice for Sonia, who came running in, boobs jiggling in her nightie, sending Frank packing. It could have been worse, Rachel had repeated to herself whenever her mind strayed back to the episode; like that made it any better. But at the time, it had been as if a fissure had cracked right through her childhood, as if a protective layer around her had been ripped away, exposing her to the horrible truth: that adults could be random and dangerous and frightening. Afterwards, there could be no turning back, no un-remembering, no mending and replacing of that protective layer; it was destroyed for good.

  Rachel had sobbed and sobbed, face in her hands, refusing to look at Sonia, crying again
and again that she wanted her dad. She cried all night and all the next day too, even though Frank was long off the scene by then, until Sonia, out of desperation – and guilt, in hindsight – managed to track down the newlyweds and persuade them to come home. No, she didn’t explain why Rachel was so upset. And Rachel didn’t, either. She kept it chained up inside herself from then on, refusing to say what had happened, turning her brutalized feelings on Wendy and blaming her completely for the whole sorry story.

  Of course, Wendy, for her part, never quite forgave Rachel for it either. She didn’t say as much to her face, but Rachel overheard her on the phone to a friend, moaning about how they’d cut the honeymoon short because of ‘little Madam kicking up a fuss. While Becky was as good as gold at Mum’s!’ For Rachel, sitting on the stairs earwigging, the words had felt like hot knives stabbing into her. Even now she could remember how she’d leaned against the wall, feeling a drumbeat of injustice pounding in her blood.

  A fuss, indeed. A fuss. The man’s hard, probing fingers on her soft thigh, the terrifying weight of him on the bed, the way that Rachel was convinced she could smell cigarette smoke in her hair for weeks afterwards . . . that was not what she would term a fuss at all. But then, how could she try to defend herself, when she dared not get Sonia into trouble? They probably wouldn’t believe her anyway. Somehow it would end up being her fault, her overreacting. (Maybe it was her fault, she had thought miserably.)

  After that, the damage was done. Rachel was a good girl and she tried to like Wendy, tried to jolly along for the sake of her dad; but the incident had spoiled everything, leaving a stain across the surface, so that she always felt grubby and ashamed whenever she thought about her dad’s wedding. And no amount of cream cakes or buns from the bakery could ever change that.

  ‘Good morning! And how are we doing today?’ Rachel was jolted from her memories by the arrival of the doctor – a new one this time – a freckled woman with an Australian accent and brisk manner, with what looked like a posse of medical students in tow.

  Rachel felt greasy-haired and haggard, bruised and tender, but she forced herself to struggle upright. I’m a survivor, she reminded herself. ‘I’m fine,’ she croaked.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Back at Rachel’s house after the Adam debacle, Becca threw herself into the soft beige sofa and let out a scream of rage into its padding, punching the foam seat cushions a few times like a toddler for good measure. Stupid. Horrible. Rude. Offensive. Arsehole!

  After one last punch she made herself two fried egg sandwiches with brown sauce, and a pot of brutally strong tea. It helped.

  The phone rang just as she was washing the frying pan and wondering how she was going to fill the rest of the day. Wiping her hands on her cycling shorts – Rachel’s cycling shorts – she picked up. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Rachel? My name’s Michael Jones, I’ve got one of your fliers and—’

  Oh dear, it was the old Welsh guy from the day before. The one who wanted Rachel to teach him how to make Irish stew. Becca interrupted before he could give her the full spiel all over again. ‘Hi, Michael,’ she said politely. ‘We spoke yesterday? I’m Becca. Rachel’s sister. I’m afraid she’s in hospital, so . . .’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ he said. There was a pause. ‘Not nice places, hospitals, I know.’

  He must be thinking of his wife, she thought, remembering how he’d previously mentioned her dying. ‘No,’ she said, feeling sorry for him. And then, for some reason – perhaps because the mellow timbre of his voice reminded her of her dad, or because she was feeling a bit fragile herself at that moment, or perhaps simply because the rest of the day was looming emptily ahead and she had nothing better to do – she found herself saying, ‘But I can make an Irish stew. I could show you.’

  He sounded delighted. ‘That would be very kind. And how much would you charge?’

  How much would she charge? Becca floundered for a moment. The part of her who had been missing her dad so much wanted to brush the question aside, to tell him that there was no charge, don’t worry about it. But she had just lost her job and was pretty skint, she remembered in the next moment. So it was the skint part of her that replied with a hesitant ‘Twenty quid?’

  ‘Splendid!’ he said. ‘When can you come round?’

  By midday, she was knocking on Michael Jones’s door. Although cooking didn’t exactly fall under her sister’s new business brief, Becca had worked in a pub kitchen long enough to pick up a few recipes herself, and figured that she could make a pretty decent fist of a stew. Besides, the loneliness in the old man’s voice had caught at her heartstrings. So here she was, a bag of lamb, potatoes, onion and carrot swinging from one hand. She liked to think that had it been her dad in a similar situation, widowed and alone, someone else would have done the same for him.

  Michael Jones was tall, although a little hunched now, with wispy white hair and friendly brown eyes twinkling through brown-framed spectacles. He was in his mid-seventies, she guessed, but sprightly and lean; not the sort of person who, on retirement, sank into an easy chair and never rose again.

  The address he’d given her was of a small bungalow up near the racecourse – a bungalow that had seen better days, Becca thought, as she followed him inside. A bare light bulb dangled from a flex in the hallway, the wallpaper was brown and peeling at the edges, the carpet had worn patches and there were piles of stuff absolutely everywhere: carrier bags of old newspapers, dusty, desiccated pot plants, books stacked higgledy-piggledy in teetering towers on the floor . . . Becca, what are you even doing here? she thought to herself, realizing with a flash of unease that for all his friendly smiles, Michael Jones might really be some kind of psychopath with a stew fetish. But then, as she followed him through to the back of the house, she noticed a rip in the shoulder seam of his jumper and chided herself for her overactive imagination. He was just a lonely old man, that was all, a bit shabby round the edges since his wife had died.

  Besides, she thought, if he was a serial killer, she was still a bit fired up from her earlier encounter with Adam. He stood no chance.

  ‘Here’s the kitchen,’ Michael said. Again, it was haphazard and cluttered, with crockery piled up on the work surfaces and what looked to be the parts of a trombone spread out on newspaper across the table. ‘It’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid, but there’s only me, see. I don’t tend to bother so much now.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Becca said, trying not to think of her mum’s kitchen in comparison. Wendy was on her own now too, but she’d gone the other way if anything, taking comfort in bouts of energetic hoovering or savage scrubbing. You only had to step inside her house and she was practically spraying you with Mr Muscle. Becca spotted a Calvin and Hobbes mug on the draining board and decided she was probably safe. Nobody who liked Calvin and Hobbes could possibly be evil. ‘So . . . Irish stew. I’ve brought the ingredients you need and printed out a good recipe. Shall we get started?’

  Michael had lived quite a life, she learned, as she showed him how to cut the lamb into chunks and peel the potatoes. He had been a musician, playing the bass trombone for the Welsh National Opera Orchestra for several years as a young man, before eventually hanging up his concert tails to teach the instrument privately and in schools. He still played in a band with a few friends – ‘The Old Sods, that’s our name’ – but other than that, seemed to lead a solitary life. There were reminders of his wife everywhere, Becca noticed with a pang, spotting framed photographs of her up on the wall, an apron hanging on a peg that read ‘World’s Best Nanna’, a pair of floral wellingtons just visible through an open cupboard door.

  ‘Do you have family nearby?’ she asked, gesturing at the apron, as she put the potatoes, peeled and chopped, into a dish of cold water to prevent them browning.

  ‘Australia,’ he said, the light in his eyes faltering for a second. ‘Our daughter Shona moved out there twelve years ago now, has two little girls.’ His hands shook on the carrot he was attempting to peel,
and he gave a rueful smile. ‘So not exactly near, no, unfortunately. They come over every couple of years or so, and Danno, one of the boys in the band, showed me how to talk to them on Skype, but it’s not like popping round, you know? Not the same.’

  ‘No,’ Becca agreed. ‘It’s not.’ She thought of her mum Wendy, who lived half an hour away across town, and whom she spoke to most days. The two of them might have had their flare-ups in the past – they weren’t both redheads for nothing – but they were there for each other. Solid. That was what counted.

  Because of time constraints Becca mixed up stock from a cube, but she showed Michael the instructions at the start of the recipe detailing how to make it from scratch, if he felt so inclined another time. Judging by the collection of well-thumbed cookery books gathering dust on a shelf above their heads and the full utensil drawer, Michael’s wife had been the sort of cook who saw through a recipe properly, stock pans and all.

  ‘She did love to cook, my Christine,’ Michael confirmed when Becca asked him. ‘Oh yes. The most beautiful bread, light as a feather. And a lovely roast dinner on a Sunday.’

  There was such yearning in his voice that it made Becca feel quite sad. She wondered if any man would ever talk about her so lovingly, with a tear glistening in his eye. She hadn’t exactly had the best luck with boyfriends so far.

  It was as if he’d read her mind then because he asked, out of the blue, ‘How about you, eh? Have you got a nice boyfriend? I bet you’re fighting the fellas off, aren’t you? Mobbed by admirers!’