The Year of Taking Chances Page 2

  Chapter Two

  On the other side of Larkmead, past the village green where the summer cricket matches were held, and over the curving brick bridge that crossed the mill-stream, the houses were a mix of narrow Victorian terraces and smaller cottages, some with their original thatched roofs. Up on Butler Row, two streets back from the greengrocer’s and post office, was White Gables Cottage, the house where Caitlin Fraser had grown up, and where she’d come back to in recent weeks, after her life had fallen in like a toppled house of cards.

  Slumped on the sofa now, she was sorely tempted to blow out the whole New Year thing and go to bed early with a hot-water bottle and a pint of wine. Don’t be such a wet lettuce! she heard her mum exclaim in her head. Go to bed early when it’s Hogmanay? I don’t think so, lassie.

  Caitlin rolled her eyes at herself. Jane Fraser had become more Scottish than ever, now that she was dead and existed only in Caitlin’s memories and imagination. Mind you, her mum had always loved New Year, making a whole raft of resolutions every year, only for them to peter out and be forgotten before it was February. ‘It’s like a promise to yourself to do better this year,’ she’d explained to Caitlin, the first time she’d let her stay up till midnight and see in the New Year. ‘So, for instance, I’ve made a promise that I’ll help Maud Simmonds with her allotment, whereas your daddy’s promised to stop smoking those stinking cigarettes. Haven’t you, Steve?’

  ‘What? Er . . . yes,’ her dad said, although he didn’t look quite as zealous as Jane did at the prospect.

  A promise to yourself to do better this year. Put like that, it sounded pretty good, Caitlin thought, remembering how she and her mum had sat in their nighties and dressing gowns on this very same sofa together, cheering as they watched the fireworks exploding over the Houses of Parliament on telly, while her dad snored like a hippo in the armchair. If she leaned back and shut her eyes, she could almost imagine she was there, slipping back twenty-five years in a single heartbeat.

  Almost. Except that her dad had died when she was twenty and wouldn’t be snoring in his favourite armchair again, and her mum wasn’t there this year either, to cheer at the fireworks and splash them another tot of whisky each.

  Caitlin’s eyes fell upon the Sympathy cards gathering dust on the mantelpiece (she must take them down soon; they depressed her every time she looked at them); the family photographs that had an added texture of poignancy, now that the curly-haired lady smiling in a sundress was dead and gone; and the small urn of ashes still waiting to be scattered. It had been over a month since the funeral, but Caitlin was stuck in a half-lit limbo of grief and hadn’t yet been able to say that final goodbye.

  ‘She wouldn’t want you moping about,’ Gwen, the old lady next door, had said, whenever she popped round on her way to her book group or sewing bee. (It was kind of dispiriting when a pensioner was more outgoing socially than you, to be honest.)

  ‘Let me know if you want me to tidy up the garden for you,’ Jim over the road had offered when she bumped into him in the street. ‘I used to do some of the digging for Jane, when she needed a hand.’ Even Spencer Bailey, whom she hadn’t seen since they were at school together, had accosted her outside the village shop one Sunday morning, saying he was sorry to hear about Jane, and then rhapsodising that she’d made the best cakes he’d ever tasted. He’d done her extension, he explained, when Caitlin looked puzzled. He was a builder now, still in Larkmead, married with a couple of kids, he went on. (She remembered he’d always had that easy-going, friendly charm, even when everyone else was an awkward teenager.) ‘Hey,’ he said, just as she was about to make an excuse and end the conversation, ‘if you’re still here at New Year, we’re having a party, by the way. Come along, if you want.’

  She had smiled politely, thanking him and saying she wasn’t sure of her plans yet, but then Gwen had knocked on the door that afternoon with a hopeful look in her eyes and asked if Caitlin would accompany her to see a swing-band up at Radnor Hall for New Year. ‘Jane was going to come with me, you see, so I thought you might like her ticket. Could be fun!’

  Could be fun? Could be a wake-up call that her social life was in danger of expiring, more like. She had never been more glad to reply, quite truthfully, that she’d been invited to a party – sorry, Gwen. ‘Thanks, though,’ she added, as her neighbour’s face fell. Christ, she thought to herself, closing the front door afterwards. Things had got pretty bad when someone seriously thought you might want to go to some geriatric swing-band evening because you had nothing better to do. On New Year’s Eve!

  Still, she realized soberly, it was only by chance that she did have something better on offer. If ever anyone needed a resolution to sort their life out, it was definitely her.

  Half an hour later Caitlin was leaning in towards the long gilt-edged mirror to inspect herself. Even now it felt weird to be getting ready in her mum’s bedroom, as if she’d be ticked off any minute for snooping around. The light was best in there, though, plus there was that enormous mirror – the kind that only a glamorous woman with a love of dressing up could hang on her wall. Caitlin was not this type of woman, but Jane Fraser had always loved an excuse to ‘put a face on’ and doll up for a night out. She must have racked up hours standing right here, painting her eyelids and lips, sweeping blusher onto those high cheekbones and dithering over which of her many pairs of high heels to wear.

  Even at the end of her life, when she’d been too weak to feed herself, dozing in and out of consciousness, Jane had begged Caitlin to put some mascara on her and brush her hair. Imagine that! Mascara and hair-brushing wouldn’t get a look-in on Caitlin’s deathbed, that was for sure. Coffee, perhaps. A last bag of chips, with lashings of salt and vinegar. Maybe a bloody big whisky to finish her off.

  The irony was that her mum had been as fit as a fiddle almost until the end. Lean and rangy, she had shimmied through Zumba in the village hall every Thursday evening apparently, and was always out gardening or cycling around the village on her old upright bicycle. Then, one Tuesday in October, she’d gone to the doctor complaining of stomach pains. The doctor told her it was probably gallstones and prescribed painkillers, but the next day Jane was vomiting and feverish, and ended up being rushed into hospital with acute pancreatitis.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she told Caitlin on the phone that night when she broke the news. ‘Lot of fuss about nothing. I should be home in a few days, don’t worry.’

  ‘Are you sure? I’ll come and see you at the weekend. Or sooner, if you want?’

  ‘What, and miss work? Your boss would love me for that, wouldn’t he? Don’t be daft, I’ll be home before you know it.’

  Only it didn’t quite turn out like that. Jane never went home again. The doctors tried keyhole surgery to remove the dead tissue in her pancreas, but an infection occurred, which spread into her blood. Then a nurse telephoned Caitlin from the cottage hospital and said in that very British sort of way, ‘She’s extremely poorly. You might want to be here.’ Caitlin had left Cambridge that evening with a bag of clothes and a frightened heart, kissing Flynn goodbye with the promise that she’d be back as soon as she could. But three days later, despite everyone’s best attempts, Jane’s major organs failed, and then she was dead. The whole thing, from stomach pains to death, had taken less than six weeks.

  Tears swelled in Caitlin’s eyes as she remembered those nightmarish hours at her mother’s bedside, holding her hand, praying under her breath, trying to bargain with a god she didn’t even believe in. That was how desperate she felt. That was how frightened. But none of the antibiotics, drugs or prayers had had any effect.

  Jane was rambling at the end. ‘I’m sorry, hen,’ she said a few times, gripping Caitlin’s hand. ‘I should have told you. I never knew how to say it.’

  ‘Told me what? What do you mean?’

  ‘We thought it was the right thing to do,’ Jane said, shutting her eyes. Then her words became indistinct and mumbling, however close Caitlin leaned in to hear.
<
br />   ‘Don’t worry, Mum. Whatever it was, it’s fine.’

  Then Jane’s eyes shut and her face fell slack. BEEEEEEEP went the monitor, and it was all over.

  Caitlin took a long, shuddering breath at the memory and raked a hand through her hair. This wasn’t getting her ready. She would be late, if she didn’t hurry up. Taking a deep breath, she peered into the mirror again and her reflection stared back warily. Eyeshadow, mascara, lipstick: done. It would take a scaffolder to prop up her eye-bags, and even Leonardo da Vinci would struggle to brighten her sallow skin, but she’d tried her best. She’d unearthed a clean pair of jeans and had Febrezed a sparkly top that had been at the bottom of her suitcase for six weeks. Hell, she’d even pushed the boat out and blow-dried her shoulder-length dark hair. She actually looked halfway presentable.

  You look a picture, lovey, her mum said in her head. A proper picture. Now go out there and knock ’em dead!

  ‘Don’t get carried away, Mum,’ Caitlin muttered with a small smile.

  An unwanted memory flashed into her mind. This time last year she’d been getting ready for a night out in Cambridge with Flynn: dinner in town, then on to a house party off Mill Road. She’d worn a scarlet dress and dangly earrings, her skin shimmering from the fancy scented body lotion she’d rubbed in. As New Year struck, they found each other on the dance-floor and kissed, really kissed, like two people who were madly in love. They had been two people who were madly in love back then, she reminded herself grimly.

  She sank onto her mum’s soft double bed, its floral duvet cover still in place, and wondered miserably what Flynn was doing tonight. The last time they’d spoken – several weeks ago now – he’d been curt with her, verging on aggressive, his sympathy and patience long since evaporated. He wanted her to ‘snap out of it’, to ‘pull herself together’, like it was that easy, like she could just click her fingers and return to normality. Was she coming back or not?

  Not, she told him. No way.

  She got up from the bed abruptly, not wanting to give in to despondency. ‘Come on, Eeyore,’ she said to herself. ‘You can do it.’

  Grabbing a bottle of red wine, she pulled on her boots and coat and was out of the front door before she could change her mind.

  Chapter Three

  It had seemed a good idea to Saffron at the time: a quiet getaway, all on her own. She could escape from Max, escape from work, her parents, London . . . everything, basically. She would leave it all behind and enjoy a few days of rural bliss in a Suffolk village, while she worked out what on earth she was going to do.

  Baker’s Cottage had looked delightful online, the perfect place to enjoy some peace and solitude. With its thatched roof and double frontage painted the colour of vanilla ice-cream, it was like something from a children’s storybook – a warm, welcoming place, she imagined, with home-baked muffins cooling on a tray and the softest, most blissfully enveloping beds. The photo on the website had obviously been taken in the summer and showed a front garden full of colour: tall lupins and delphiniums, bright cornflowers and scarlet poppies, and – yes – sprays of white roses climbing around the door. She could practically smell their fragrance as she spontaneously clicked her mouse and made the booking.

  Several hours later an email pinged in from the owner, one Mr Sykes:

  I’ll leave the key under the mat. Full instructions for everything else in a folder inside. Have a splendid New Year!

  Yrs, Bernie

  After living in London for seventeen years, the thought of leaving a door key anywhere other than safely in a handbag close to your body felt completely alien. How charming, she thought. How heart-warmingly trusting!

  Ha. More fool her. She should have known such slapdash arrangements could only mean trouble.

  It was dark when she arrived and she had to drive around Larkmead several times before eventually spotting the sign reading ‘Pear Tree Lane’, half-covered in shrubbery. There was no proper street lighting, so she crawled along the road, headlights blazing, peering blindly at the shadowy houses on either side. Then, once she’d finally found the cottage itself, she lifted the mat to find a complete absence of keys. Off to a great start.

  Two fruitless phone messages later, she was grateful for the helpful neighbour who produced a spare key. But, once inside, it took only seconds before the cold water of disappointment poured all over her. In reality the cottage was a lot less delightful than she’d anticipated: damp, cold and clammy, as if no living human had set foot inside for weeks on end. Her nose wrinkled at the mildewy smell as she poked her head first into the small (‘cosy’) beige living room with its old stone hearth, then the even smaller (‘compact’) galley kitchen with a couple of desiccated pot plants by the sink and a dripping tap. Upstairs were two chilly bedrooms with moth-eaten velvet curtains, and a very turquoise bathroom.

  It was a far cry from the boutique hotels she occasionally stayed in for work purposes, she thought regretfully. No sign of a monsoon shower or luxury bedding under this roof. Still, she’d made her bed, now she had to lie on it, as her mum would say. With or without the expensive Egyptian-cotton sheets.

  Once she’d dumped her case upstairs and unpacked her provisions in the fridge, she located the folder Bernie had mentioned and worked out how to turn the heating on. The boiler obediently rumbled into life, the radiators began valiantly belting out heat and she found her spirits lifting a little as she made herself a cup of tea and sank into the squidgy cord sofa. Maybe this would be okay after all. She had warmth, she had solitude, her phone was off and her out-of-office email reply was on. She didn’t have to do a single thing now for three whole days except relax, go for long walks in the countryside, read books and sleep. Oh yes. And maybe make a few big decisions about what, exactly, she was going to do about Max, and the terrible discovery she’d made on Christmas Eve. But not now. That could wait.

  Saffron’s temporary peace and tranquillity didn’t last long. Not even the night. She was just settling down in front of the telly that evening with an enormous box of chocolates when the lights went out. The TV screen turned blank. From the kitchen she heard the fridge making a depressed-sounding groan, as if to say Here we go again, fellas, as the place was plunged into unearthly darkness.

  ‘Bollocks,’ she muttered, patting around for her phone and switching it on, so as to give her some kind of light, however feeble. It was spooky just how thickly, blackly dark it was, out here in the sticks.

  Six new emails buzzed in as her phone came to life, then a succession of beeps, indicating new voicemails, too. Ignoring them all, she pulled up Mr Sykes’s phone number and rang him again, without holding out much hope of a reply.

  ‘Bernie here, leave me a message and I’ll get back to you,’ she heard eventually and groaned. Was there any point leaving another message? When – if ever – would he ‘get back’ to her? It was New Year’s Eve after all, and he was running a pub. From his hands-off approach so far regarding the cottage, she could easily be waiting until January. Bloody hell. She was just going to have to track him down in person and get this sorted properly.

  Saffron was pretty sure she’d seen The Partridge as she drove into the village earlier: a white-painted timber-framed building with large, lit windows looming on a corner of the main street. It wasn’t far. And it was either that or falter around blindly, trying to find the fuse-box herself in almost total darkness. She had visions of her limp body flung back by a jagged bolt of electricity and lying dead in Baker’s Cottage as the New Year rang in. If Bernie Sykes was as slack at checking over his property as he was at answering his phone, she could be mouldering here for weeks.

  It was raining as she began walking along the road, a spiteful, needly sort of shower, horribly cold. She pulled up her collar and walked faster. Luckily she was used to solving problems. Working in PR with all sorts of divas and egomaniacs, you had to think quickly and get results, however dramatic a hissy fit you were faced with. She’d track down Bernie and drag him out to the co
ttage, in a head-lock if need be, so he could sort everything out. In half an hour this would already feel like a distant memory and she’d be back on the sofa, lights blazing through the cottage once more. With a bit of luck, her only dilemma then would be whether to have a hazelnut praline or a dark-chocolate truffle first.

  Bernie Sykes was a booming ruddy-cheeked giant of a man in his fifties, or thereabouts, with rumpled hair and an un-ironed shirt. He was leaning over the bar pumps when Saffron walked into the pub, addressing a couple of men with gusto; no mean feat when you were wearing a lopsided purple paper crown.

  She stood at the bar, rain dripping from her hair, waiting for him to finish so that she could catch his attention.

  ‘And then I said to her, “Well, bloody hell, this is not some kind of circus, you know, dear, you can’t behave like that in here . . . ”’

  Saffron could feel her nose turning pink as the heat from the pub warmed her face. She coughed discreetly, hoping he would notice her before January began.

  ‘And she said – you’ll never guess what she said . . . ’

  On second thoughts, this sounded like one of those shaggy-dog stories with no ending. ‘Mr Sykes?’ Saffron said.

  Bernie and his two friends both turned and looked at her. ‘That’s me,’ said Bernie, his face suddenly falling. ‘Oh dear. Not from the Gazette, are you? Or the council again? I’ve said everything I intend to about the horse incident, and it’s all getting rather tiresome, to be honest.’

  ‘I’m Saffron Flint. I’m renting Baker’s Cottage from you?’

  Bernie’s face cleared and he thrust out a large pink hand. ‘So you are! Greetings, Miss Flint. I trust everything is to your satisfaction?’

  ‘Well, no, actually,’ she said. ‘I had to borrow a key from the lady next door – Gemma? – before I could actually get into the property, and now the electrics have gone.’