Ten Years On E-Book

Alice Peterson

• Herausgeber: Bedford Square Publishers
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 387

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Rebecca is happily married and content with her job in a London art gallery. But when tragedy strikes and her life comes crashing down around her, she flees to her childhood home in the country, hoping time will help her heal. Born in the same country town, Joe had a falling out with Rebecca and hasn't seen or spoke to her in a decade. Now he's the successful owner of a wine bar, and is breaking local hearts. Rebecca finds living with her parents again a challenge. Nor is it easy to discover that Joe lives and works too close for comfort. When she sees him again, bittersweet memories rush back to haunt her, along with unanswered questions. Will she ever be able to forgive, forget and move on?

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Praise for Ten Years On

‘A lovely read, tackling both light and dark material with real assurance. I love the idea of a love triangle where one of the characters has died, which actually makes him more of an obstacle than if he were still alive. Also, the thought that you can find true love twice feels a strong romantic notion – and quite true, I’m sure’ Tom Williams, Chalet Girl screenwriter on Ten Years On

Praise for Alice Peterson

‘If You Were Here is a moving and emotional story about facing a life-altering dilemma’ Jill Mansell, bestselling author of Rumour Has It

‘It’s not often that I fall in love with a book within the first few pages, but it happened to me with this one’ The Bookbag on You, Me and Him

‘Compelling and beautifully written’ Daisy Buchanan, journalist and author on If You Were Here

‘As it was the favourite book of the year to date for my reader in this field, I had to read it too… I loved it. It’s character-led, warm and sensitive’ Sarah Broadhurst, The Bookseller on Letters From My Sister

‘This is a wonderful portrait of the different dynamics within an unusual family’ Sara Lawrence, Daily Mail on The Things We Do for Love

‘A lovely example of realistic fiction that many women will be able to relate to’ Sun on One Step Closer to You

‘Echoes of Jane Austin, A Room With a View and Bridget Jones’s Diary’ Robert O’Rourke on Monday to Friday Man

To Robert Cross

(1925–2011)

His reassuring voice

continues to encourage me to write.

PROLOGUE

NewYear’sEve, Winchester

‘Ten, nine, eight…’ we all shout in Kitty’s crowded sitting room. Kitty is my oldest school friend.

‘Three, two, ONE…’

I hear Big Ben chiming on the television in the background. ‘I love you, Becca,’ Olly says, lifting me into his arms.

I’m laughing, so happy. ‘I love you too.’

Soon the television is turned off, replaced by music. There’s drunken dancing on the sitting-room floor, everyone singing. I hear fireworks.

From the other side of the room, I catch Joe watching Olly and me dance. I beckon him over. He smiles, before being pulled away by one of Kitty’s admiring friends.

It’s three in the morning when Olly, Joe and I stagger back to my parents’ home. We cut through the water meadows, the river glistening at night. I’m singing, ‘Happy new year.’ Olly puts a hand over my mouth, tells me we’ll be arrested.

‘That could be fun,’ I say, pushing him away. ‘Who was that girl you were with all night, Joe?’

Olly catches my arm, steers me away from the edge of the river.

‘Yeah, I saw you too,’ he says. ‘She was cute, Lawson.’

‘What’s her name? Or can’t you remember?’ I hiccup.

‘Juliet, actually.’

Olly turns to Joe. ‘You should have stayed, Romeo.’ Kitty had urged us to crash there for the night, but Olly and I wanted to head home. My parents are away and my sister, Pippa, is out, so we have the house to ourselves.

‘Romeo, Romeo…’ I pretend to look for Joe from my balcony.

‘I didn’t feel like staying.’ He shrugs. ‘I took her number, though.’

‘Wherefore art…’

‘Shut up, Becca.’

‘… thou Romeo?’ I finish, twirling myself round the next lamp post.

‘Christ, she’s a liability,’ laughs Olly.

‘Let’s pretend we don’t know her,’ suggests Joe.

Back home, we head outside, deciding another drink and cigarette are needed before bed, along with a packet of chocolate biscuits. We sit, huddled, on the bench in the stone-paved area of my parents’ garden. I’m in the middle. We raise our drinks to each other. ‘To us,’ Olly says.

‘To us,’ Joe and I repeat.

Olly, Joe and I share a flat in Clifton, Bristol. We’re in our second year at university. Joe’s reading medicine; Olly and I English. Olly and I have been going out for nearly a year. I started to take real notice of him in the second term, after I’d heard his band, ‘Stanley’, playing in the student union bar. He played the piano. He was tall, slim, wore baggy jeans and somehow made a navy cardigan look cool. His hair was light brown with soft strands that flicked across his forehead. As I watched him play, every now and then he’d turn to the lead singer, flaming red hair and wearing the shortest black dress with lace-patterned tights, and he’d smile, mischief in his eyes. Suddenly I wanted to be her and was determined to attract his attention. Before our next English tutorial I washed and styled my long thick hair, applied foundation, blusher, mascara, lip-plumper… wore my suede miniskirt, Wonderbra, low-cut top and cowboy boots. I love those boots – they work every time. Of course, all this grooming meant I was late. I rushed into the crowded lecture room with one other latecomer, saw a seat free, and, oh my God, it was next to Olly. It was fate! I flew towards the desk, plunged my books on the table, dived into the seat…

‘Back to Bristol soon,’ says Joe half-heartedly.

‘Let’s not think ’bout that just yet,’ I say. ‘Ugh. Work.’ I gulp down some water.

‘You don’t work, Becca,’ Joe points out in that cool, controlled way of his. Even when he’s been drinking, rarely does he seem drunk.

‘I do.’

‘Well, not very hard,’ Olly encourages Joe.

I ignore them laughing at me. ‘What’s the best thing that’s happened last year?’ I prod Olly’s shoulder. ‘You go first.’

‘Playing in a few gigs, going out with you.’

‘Ah,’ I sigh, kissing him. ‘Me too.’

‘Oh God.’ Joe stubs out his cigarette prematurely. ‘I think I’m off.’ He also lives in Winchester, though neither Olly nor I have visited his home over the Christmas break. He says it’s about as relaxing as visiting the dentist.

‘Sorry, Joe, no more public displays of affection,’ Olly promises him, pushing him back down on to the bench. ‘Stay the night.’

‘How about you, Joe? Top thing that’s happened?’ I ask.

He runs a hand through his thick dark hair. ‘Meeting Olly.’

Olly smiles. ‘That was a good night.’

Olly had met Joe at the beginning of our second year. ‘Moving into your flat,’ Joe continues. He had needed somewhere to live; we had a spare room… ‘Realising I’d met a top guy.’

‘Shall I leave you two to it?’ I say, feeling like a gooseberry.

Joe turns to me. ‘And a top girl.’

‘Group hug,’ I suggest, throwing my arms around both of them. We sit like this for a while, happy, gazing at the stars.

‘What d’you think we’ll be doing in ten years?’ I ask, finally breaking the silence.

‘Ten years on?’ Olly repeats, as if it’s impossible to see that far ahead.

‘It’ll come round quickly, I bet.’ I cross my arms. ‘Before you know it, we’ll be fifty,’ I exclaim, as if fifty is on the verge of false teeth and decrepitude.

Joe shakes his head. ‘Can’t imagine being fifty.’

‘Ten years…’ Olly thinks out loud. ‘OK, I’ll live in a London pad with a view ’cross the river, I’ll be a famous writer, or maybe I’ll be the next Mick Jagger or Bob Dylan…’

‘Take drugs and trash hotel rooms,’ Joe says.

‘I’ll be far away from here,’ I predict, thinking of myself as a podgy little girl, long hair in plaits, on the top floor of my parents’ house, painting day after day in the school holidays. ‘I want to travel the world, go to India, China, Mexico…’

‘Uh-oh, she’s off.’ Olly rolls his eyes.

‘I’ll live in Florence or Venice… speak Italiano,’ I say, exaggerating my accent, ‘I’ll learn a ton of languages, and I’ll definitely be painting. My work will sell for millions! You, Joe?’ I nudge his arm.

Olly and I wait. Joe could do anything he wanted. Like my sister, he’s talented at sport; he excels at rugby and has the muscles to show for it. He’s handsome in a rugged way: dark hair, stubble, moody grey eyes. He drives women mad because they never know what he thinks of them. Joe has the ability to make you feel like you’re the only person he cares about in the world, but in the next moment you’re nothing, no one. Christ, I’d hate to be in love with him. I’d never eat, I think to myself as I grab a biscuit. In the short space of time that I’ve known him, already he’s broken hearts. Take that girl tonight. Juliet. She’ll be sitting by the phone all day, waiting for him to call. ‘Ten years, Joe. What d’you think you’ll be doing?’

‘Ruling the world.’ He lights another cigarette. ‘I don’t like doing this, Becca.’

‘Spoilsport.’

Olly ends up agreeing with Joe. ‘Let’s face it,’ he says. ‘None of us knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone in ten years’ time.’

1

Ten Years Later

‘He will live on in spirit, forever with us,’ Kitty says tearfully. After her reading, she returns to her seat.

Olly’s mother, Carolyn, sits next to me, my father on my other side. I stare ahead. This can’t be happening. I want to stand up and scream, tell my family and friends to go. There’s been a terrible mistake.

‘Mrs Sullivan?’ I see the policeman standing at our front door that evening. It was late, about eight o’clock, and I couldn’t understand where Olly was, since he’d promised to be home by six thirty. ‘I’ll pick up a bottle of wine on the way,’ he’d said in his message.

‘May I come in?’ the policeman asked.

He refused a cup of tea.

‘I’m so sorry, I’m afraid I have bad news,’ he said. ‘Your husband was involved in a road accident earlier this afternoon.’

Carolyn touches my arm, encouraging me to stand for the next hymn, ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’. She looks frail, her fine brown hair scooped back from her face with a comb, tears in her pale-blue eyes. Her skin is ashen. Halfway through the verse she grips my hand, as if we will get through this together. But any moment now, I will wake up and the only touch I shall feel is Olly’s arms around me. I’ll be able to tell him how vivid my dream had all seemed; how the church was packed with friends and family. How sad Olly’s father Victor had looked in his suit and glasses. He appeared smaller, greyer, stooped in grief, and I saw deep regret in his eyes. It was too late for him to get to know his son. There was a price he’d paid for putting work before his family.

‘You’re making it sound scarily real,’ Olly will say.

We’ll laugh and hold on to one another, kiss, make love, stay in bed for at least another hour. Then we’ll go for a walk in the park, enjoy a lazy lunch, and I won’t take anything for granted again.

I am brought back to reality when I hear the sound of footsteps echoing against the stone floor. Simon, Olly’s elder brother, is walking to the front of the church, clutching notes. He’s a bigger build than Olly, darker hair. He gave up the police force to move his wife and two children to Northumberland a year ago, to be closer to Carolyn and Victor. ‘He was always the action man, and the bossy one,’ Olly used to tell me.

I like him. He’s brave. I could not stand up there today.

‘Olly was the musical one in our family,’ he begins. ‘He started learning the piano when he was six. There was I, busy playing army and building dens in the garden when Olly was playing Chopin and composing music in his head. His other passion was writing.’

I shut my eyes and try to listen, but images of the morning before he’d died keep on coming back to haunt me.

‘Surprise!’ I’d said.

Olly helped himself to a croissant, saying, ‘What a treat.’ Rarely did we eat breakfast together before work; I was always in too much of a rush. ‘By the way, the shower-curtain rail thingy collapsed, I’ll fix it later,’ he said.

‘Did it? Oh well,’ I said, pouring the coffee.

‘Becca? Are you feeling guilty? Have you had an affair with Glitz?’

Patrick van Glitzen, or Glitz as I call him, is my sixty-five-year-old boss. In his late fifties he set up a modern British art gallery on New Bond Street. It’s now one of the most successful galleries in the country.

‘Oh shucks, is it that obvious?’ I leaned across to kiss him. ‘I’ve got some exciting news.’

‘We don’t have to visit your parents this weekend?’

‘Cheeky sod. You know Norman Graham?’

‘The guy who paints blocks of colour.’

‘That sell for thousands. Yesterday I sold a series of six. Six, Olly!’

‘That’s great. So, you must have got a beefy commission?’

‘Yep, but it’s even better, Ol. Glitz is going to review my pay and give me a small bonus at the end of the summer.’

Olly smiled. ‘That’s incredible.’

‘So, I was thinking…’

‘Uh-oh, that’s dangerous.’ Olly poured himself another coffee.

‘I was thinking it’s time we moved out of here—’

‘Not that again.’

‘Olly! That’s not fair.’

‘It’s just you keep on going on about it.’

‘Well, that’s because we live in a shoebox and I’m sick of it.’

‘I know,’ he said, wounded pride in his voice. Olly felt uncomfortable talking about money. He felt he should be the one earning more, but teaching music and writing a novel in the hope it was going to get published one day was never going to get us on to the property ladder. So, I’d given up my freelance illustrating to work for Glitz. Olly felt guilty that I was the one giving up my dream. I’d been passionate about painting since childhood and had studied art in Florence. He kept on promising that he’d make it up to me. He would finish his script and get a publishing deal.

‘There are a couple of witnesses,’ the policeman had continued. ‘Your husband overtook on a corner…’

‘No,’ I uttered. ‘That’s so unlike him! He was always careful, he promised he’d be careful…’

He nodded with respect, but continued nevertheless. ‘He didn’t see the oncoming vehicle until it was too late. There was nothing the driver could have done.’

‘Olly drew people towards him,’ Simon continues, his voice wavering now, ‘with his infectious enthusiasm and charm.’

I touch the photograph on the back of the service sheet. Olly is smiling; there’s warmth in his eyes. This picture was taken the night we moved into our one-bedroom apartment. It seemed so grand and grown-up four years ago. We were eating takeaway and drinking cheap champagne by the fire.

‘It isn’t hard to see why he has so many friends here today.’ Simon gestures to the packed congregation.

But I know one person who isn’t in the church. Joe Lawson. Joe should be here. He was Olly’s best friend. The three of us used to hang out together.

And then I destroyed us.

‘Oliver was kind,’ ten-year-old Barnaby is saying to me, clutching his mother’s hand. Olly used to teach piano privately, and Barnaby was one of his star pupils.

My best friend Kitty thanks him for me, saying he’d played his Chopin piece beautifully and Olly would have been very proud.

I move through the crowded church hall, pushing past people drinking tea and eating cake. Mum catches me up, dressed in a simple grey outfit. ‘Darling, there you are.’ Pippa joins us, holding on to one of her twins, Oscar. Oscar’s three. He has chocolate brownie smudged around his mouth. Pippa doesn’t know what to say. Nor does Mum. No one does. How can they? I force a smile. ‘I need some fresh air. I’ll be back in a minute.’

I can feel them watching me helplessly as I walk away.

Outside, I lean against the wall and take a deep breath. I see the policeman again, standing in front of our fireplace. ‘He didn’t see the oncoming vehicle… it was too late.’ Why was he so reckless? What was he thinking about? I feel angry, and when I’m not angry I feel so sad, as if I’ll fall apart, break into a thousand tiny pieces. I wish with every beat in my heart that I could rewind time, go back to that day. Maybe if I’d waited till the evening to talk to him about moving out of the flat, he’d still be alive.

‘We could rent somewhere more central,’ I’d said, showing him the two properties that I’d circled in the brochure the night before, when Olly had been out playing poker with his friends. ‘I reckon with what we’re both earning, and if we tap into our savings, we could afford it.’

Olly glanced at the flats, but was quiet. I watched him put on his jacket. ‘What do you think?’ I pressed, trying to hide my frustration. ‘Both flats are close to the river and to your work.’ Olly worked in the music department of a school in Chiswick.

‘We could have an extra half-hour in bed,’ was my last attempt to get something positive out of him.

‘We’ll talk about it later.’

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Fine. Listen, got to run.’ He grabbed his motorbike helmet off the sofa. Detecting my disappointment, he came back to me, pressed his forehead against mine. ‘I’m tired. Hungover. Entirely self-inflicted,’ he added.

I stroked the back of his neck. ‘You want to move, don’t you?’

‘More than anything.’ He brushed a greasy crumb from one corner of my mouth, kissed me. ‘I’m so proud of you.’

I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ says Kitty.

‘He was keeping something from me.’

Olly had left a message later that morning, when I was in a meeting. ‘Look, we need to talk,’ he’d said.

‘Becca, don’t,’ she says, leaning against the wall with me.

‘Don’t what?’

‘Go over it again and again. It’s not helping anyone, least of all you.’

‘But he said we needed to talk.’

‘That doesn’t mean he was hiding anything.’

‘He was distracted, something was worrying him.’ I bite my nail.

‘Becca, not today, not now.’ She rests an arm on my shoulder. ‘Come inside. Your father wants to say a few words.’

‘Maybe I should talk to Carolyn, see if he’d spoken to her?’

‘No! Stop doing this to yourself. Let it go,’ she begs.

‘I can’t!’

She shakes me by the shoulders, looks me in the eye. ‘Olly loved you so much, he’d never keep anything from you, you know that.’

Tears come to my eyes. ‘Do I? I don’t know anything any more.’

‘It happened quickly,’ I hear the policeman trying to reassure me. ‘He wouldn’t have been in any pain.’

I want to scream. I want to die.

Kitty’s arms are around me. I hold on to her. ‘I can’t live without him, I can’t,’ I cry. ‘Oh Kitty, what am I going to do?’

‘Shh. I’m here. I’m here. We’re going to get through this, Becca, I promise you. We’ll get through it together.’

2

‘Right, that’s it, we’re ready for tomorrow.’ I look around the gallery. Paul Lamont’s abstract paintings of London landscapes are mounted on the walls, their prices printed out on fresh white cards just waiting to have that red sold sticker in the corner.

I watch as Glitz loosens his tie, slips off his shoes and stretches his legs under the desk. Exhausted, I sit down opposite him. Glitz is handsome, in an unconventional way. He has silvery-grey hair, a long face, large nose and sharp blue eyes that could spot a needle in a haystack. If he didn’t work in modern art, he’d make an excellent detective. I can see him in a stylish trenchcoat with a pair of binoculars.

‘You’ve done an excellent job, Rebecca,’ he says. ‘The frames work well.’

‘You’ve got a hole in your sock.’ I smile at his big toe poking out.

He peers at his feet. ‘So I have.’

I play with my pen. ‘I didn’t have you down for a hole-in-the-sock kind of man.’

He pauses, thinks before he says, ‘Life is full of surprises.’ He then looks at me for a moment too long, and I turn away, knowing he’s going to ask me that dreaded question.

‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’ Is it me or is it hot in here?

‘Scout’s honour fine, or are you crossing your fingers under the desk?’

I show him my hands, fingers uncrossed. After Olly’s funeral, six weeks ago, Glitz had suggested I take some time off work, but the thought of being alone in our flat all day was unbearable. I still haven’t fixed the shower-curtain rail. ‘You see, fine,’ I pretend.

‘In that case, how about a drink?’ Over the past three years Glitz and I have become good friends and occasionally we go to a bar or have something to eat after work.

‘Oh my God,’ I gasp, reading the scribbled message I had forgotten to give him earlier today. ‘Marty called! You have a party tonight. Tom…’ I try to decipher my writing. ‘Tom Bailey?’

‘Bugger.’

Marty is Glitz’s American wife. She’s plump and lovely and wears pale-yellow jumpers with gold jewellery. She’d called me earlier, saying, ‘Is His Majesty in a good mood?’ When I replied yes, she promptly told me about the drinks tonight, stressing that he couldn’t wriggle out of it.

Yet he remains firmly in his seat. ‘I can’t hear a word at these parties.’

‘Well, maybe it’s time you invested in a hearing aid.’

‘Oh, not you too. I don’t need another wife.’

‘My father has one, Glitz.’ I don’t add that he never wears it.

‘What?’ Glitz smiles wryly. He watches me gather my jacket from the back of my chair. I lose my balance for a second.

‘Call Marty right now and tell her I’ve been mugged.’

‘No. You call her and tell her you’ve been mugged.’

‘Can’t. The bastards took my phone.’

I laugh.

‘I’ll give you that Lamont painting you love,’ he bargains.

‘Ah, now that’s more interesting.’ I sit down again, feeling dizzy.

‘Rebecca? Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘No.’ I rub my eyes. ‘I think I need to get home, lie down.’

‘I’ll call a cab.’

I stand up, lose my balance, grab on to the corner of the desk.

‘Rebecca!’

I see black dots swimming before me, like tadpoles.

‘Sit down, now!’

‘I feel weird, Glitz, faint.’

He rushes to my side, places a hand against my forehead. I’m sweating. Next thing I know, he thrusts my head between my knees.

I groan, feeling sick.

‘Not working?’ He’s now grabbing me under the arms and dragging me down on to the floor.

‘What are you doing?’ I protest as I crash to the ground.

‘Recovery position. Legs in the air!’

Once my legs are stuck in the air Glitz jumps up, saying he’ll fetch me some water. ‘I feel awful,’ I murmur, my vision blurred.

‘Hold on,’ he urges.

I don’t remember him coming back.

I’m in hospital. A young dark-haired doctor who looks half my age is taking my blood pressure, a yellow floral-patterned curtain drawn round us for privacy.

Glitz sits awkwardly on a plastic chair by the side of my bed, next to a blue paper-towel dispenser. In the cab on the way to hospital, he told me I had been unconscious for at least a minute and that I needed to see a doctor immediately. I felt he was being a drama queen, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, even when I was feeling more or less back to normal. ‘I promised Marty I’d look after you. She told me you shouldn’t be working so soon.’

I’d raised an eyebrow. ‘This isn’t just a ploy to get out of your drinks thing?’

‘It’s a small ray of light.’

‘Blood pressure normal,’ the doctor mutters, writing on a piece of paper attached to a grey clipboard.

‘So, I can go home?’

She nods. ‘We’ve done all the tests we need to do.’

‘Great. Thank you.’

‘You and the baby are fine.’

‘Wonderful. That’s great. Sorry, the what?’

Glitz knocks his shoulder against the towel dispenser.

‘The baby, it’s fine,’ she repeats, looking curiously at Glitz cursing and muttering in the corner.

I stare at her. ‘I’m pregnant?’ She doesn’t know about Olly. This can’t be happening. She doesn’t understand! I can’t be having a baby.

She nods.

‘Sorry, there must be a mistake.’ This is a joke, surely.

The doctor shakes her head.

She waits for a sane reaction from Glitz, but he’s as stiff as a piece of cardboard.

‘Congratulations, er, both of you,’ she says.

3

Three weeks later, and Kitty and I are loading cases and boxes into the hired removal van.

The doctor guessed I was nine weeks pregnant. ‘You need to leave London, Rebecca,’ Glitz had said in my kitchen that night. He’d gestured to the mess in the house, the piles of letters unopened, last night’s supper left on the kitchen table…

He was right. It was too painful living here, Olly’s shadow following me around, and now I had an unborn baby to think about too, but where was I going to go? ‘This can’t be happening,’ I kept on saying.

‘It is happening, Rebecca. You need your family. Take all the time you want.’

I shook my head. ‘Right now, all I need is a cup of tea.’

He whipped a plug out of its socket, turned round and stared at me. I’d ironed my dress that morning before I left for work, but I was sure I’d turned it off, hadn’t I?

We drive past the Dairy Crest building on the A316. ‘Look at the little cows on the roof,’ I remember Olly once pointing out.

I can’t look at them today. I glance at Kitty, sitting grimly behind the steering wheel, her fiery auburn hair tied back into a ponytail. When we first met outside the school gates I was drawn to her amber-coloured eyes. I’d never seen eyes like hers before. Like me, Kitty grew up in Winchester, though her parents moved to Kent many years ago, to be closer to her brother and their grandchildren.

I stare out of the window, knowing how much I will miss her.

‘I’ll miss you,’ Kitty says, as if she can read my mind. ‘Who can I call after another disastrous date?’

‘You can still call me.’

‘It’s not the same. Oh bollocks, I don’t want you to go.’

‘Nor do I,’ I respond, thinking how much I’d taken for granted those nights when the two of us would meet after work, see a film, grab something to eat and laugh about something funny that had happened during our day. On Friday nights, Olly, a couple of his friends, Kitty and I would go out clubbing, followed by lazy breakfasts on a Saturday morning. Often at weekends I’d persuade Olly to come to an art exhibition, and he’d take me to a music gig in the evening. Sunday mornings would be spent fooling around in bed, before dragging ourselves out for a long walk, followed by meeting friends in the pub for lunch. Olly loved Sunday roasts.

Life was simple back then.

‘If it gets too much, Becca, I’ll buy a blow-up mattress and you can move in with me. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

I’m going to miss all my friends, especially Kitty and my old university housemates, Sylvie and Jamie. Sylvie works in a creative marketing company and is currently playing with fire, dating her boss. Jamie runs his own video filming business, recording christenings and weddings. He’s a warm person; when I see him the sun comes out.

Sylvie, Jamie and Kitty helped me clear out the flat. I had been dreading touching Olly’s things. The paperwork strewn over his desk, his unfinished script, the framed photograph of the two of us on a beach in Cornwall… it was exactly how he’d left it.

Kitty was in charge. She works for a careers and education consultant in Piccadilly, specialising in difficult teenagers, but her true gift is her organisational skills. Olly and I used to laugh at the way she’d behave in a supermarket. Before we had even arrived she’d be visualising the layout of each aisle. ‘I’ll do eggs, bread, milk; you do fruit, vegetables, cheese…’

‘I almost expect her to wear a stopwatch and blow a whistle too,’ Olly said.

In our flat, she made firm decisions, but at the same time was sensitive and didn’t rush me, especially when it came to going through Olly’s side of the wardrobe.

Each time I’d open a drawer or cupboard, I’d be haunted by a memory. Everything I touched had a story behind it. I could see the joy in Olly’s eyes when I’d given him his vintage record player last year. We’d seen it at an antiques fair in Brighton, and when Olly’s back was turned I’d taken the dealer’s business card. Olly used to play records while he was writing. Bob Dylan’s ‘Make You Feel My Love’ was one of our favourites. He’d played it on the piano at our wedding. His old and faithful tennis shoes reminded me of our holiday in Spain. Our villa had had two tennis courts right outside our apartment, but Olly had forgotten to pack his trainers so, determined to show off our (non-existent) tennis skills to the other residents, we went on a mission to find a local sports shop and bought them.

Shaving foam in the bathroom made me remember teasing him: ‘Isn’t it time you joined the twenty-first century?’

His desk, by the window, reminded me of coming home late from work to find him writing, the dirty breakfast bowls and mugs still on the kitchen counter.

If I was in a bad mood I’d throw them loudly into the sink before saying, ‘When are you going to finish this book?’

If in a good mood I’d kiss his cheek, and try to persuade him to let me read a little. He’d promise I could when it was done, and I’d bite my tongue to stop myself from asking when that would be.

In the bottom drawer of his desk, I was shocked to see a couple of passport photographs of him and Joe pulling faces in the booth. There was also an old picture of the three of us at Kitty’s New Year’s Eve party ten or so years ago. I was in the middle, my arms around them both. Had Olly kept the photographs in the hope that one day he and Joe might become friends again?

Later that night, Kitty, Sylvie, Jamie and I had discussed what to do with his piano, but by then I wasn’t thinking straight any more. I’d stored up my tears throughout the day, been brave enough to hide them, but now that the packing was over and the flat looked so empty, it was all too real.

Finally, we made the decision to donate it to a local community centre. I knew Olly would have liked that.

I wonder what he would make of me doing this. He used to say he could only manage Christmas with his own family if he took home a bottle of whisky and spent most of his time in his bedroom, drunk.

The last time I saw his parents was at the funeral. I remember Victor’s quietness, how slowly he had walked out of the church. I recall hugging Carolyn the morning before they returned to Northumberland. It was as if we were both holding on to a part of Olly, neither one of us wanting to let go. When I’d called to let her know I was pregnant, she was so quiet that I thought the line had gone dead. ‘You and Olly,’ she said at last, ‘are going to have a child?’

It felt as if we’d both been given a lifeline, a branch to hold on to in the storm. ‘I can hardly believe it myself, Carolyn, but it’s true. We’re having a baby.’

A road sign welcomes us to Hampshire. I haven’t lived at home since I was eighteen. How am I going to manage living under the same roof as Mum and Dad? What the hell am I going to do with myself?

I can’t live in our old flat, but I don’t want to be shipped home. I must be deranged! We need to turn round. It’s my parents’ home, their territory, I don’t belong there anymore…

‘Stop.’

‘What?’

‘Pull over.’

‘I can’t!’

‘Pull over!’ I screech now, when I see a sign for the service station.

Kitty steers the van off the motorway, swings into the car park and drives into the nearest parking space. I unbuckle my seat belt and wind down the window, feeling sick that I am letting my old life slip away.

I am sick.

‘Heavy night last night, was it, girls?’ says a man sauntering by.

We’re parked in front of an uninspiring patch of grass. It’s drizzling and we’re watching, in silence, a man out with his bulldog, smoking. When the dog cocks his sturdy leg against one corner of the litter bin, the man stubs his cigarette butt into the grass and moves on. ‘How are you feeling now?’ Kitty asks, handing me another bottle of water.

I stare ahead. ‘I’m pregnant, Kitty, homeless, no Olly. How am I going to manage?’

She looks away. She has no answers.

‘I’m up shit creek.’ It was one of Olly’s favourite phrases.

At last she turns to me, smiles helplessly. ‘Put it this way, things can only get better.’

And for the first time in many weeks, we laugh.

Kitty follows the exit sign to Winchester. My parents moved to St Cross when I was one and Mum was pregnant with Pippa, who lives twenty minutes down the road from Mum and Dad with her husband and their twins. St Cross is on the edge of Winchester, near the famous water meadows where Keats walked and created ‘Ode to Autumn’. Jane Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral. The city is steeped in history.

Kitty and I went to the same school in St Cross. We reminisce about walking the headmistress’s pug, Bertie, through the meadows after school with Annie, one of our old school friends. We laugh, remembering how the three of us had all fancied fair-haired and blue-eyed Nick Parker. He had played Robin Hood in our school play and I was jealous because Annie played Maid Marian and got to kiss him. I played Friar Tuck. Kitty was our director, bossing us about from the back of the stage.

As we turn into my parents’ driveway, the nerves kick in again.

‘Just remember, it’s not forever,’ Kitty says.

Mum appears from the back gate, somehow looking chic in beige gardening trousers, a summer blouse and soil-stained gloves, her dark blonde hair swept back in a navy spotted scarf. Audrey, their miniature wire-haired dachshund, barks ferociously until she realises I’m not an intruder. ‘Hello, Audrey Hepburn,’ I smile, stroking her when she jumps up against my legs.

‘Come in, come in.’ Mum calls Dad. ‘We’ll unload later. I’ve put you in your old bedroom, Rebecca. Is that all right?’

I nod.

‘And Kitty can sleep in Pippa’s. Well done you. How was your journey?’ She hugs me, pulling away as she doesn’t want to get mud on my clothes.

Kitty tells her it was fine, the M3 was deserted. On the hall table is an answering machine, the red button flashing. ‘Darling, can you see who called?’ Mum asks when Dad appears from the sitting room.

Dad, fine grey wispy hair and dressed in linen trousers with a daring pink cardigan, gives me a warm hug before going to the telephone, muttering that he never hears it these days.

‘Because you won’t wear your aid!’ Mum calls, making me think of Glitz.

‘You have one new message,’ the machine tells us, as Kitty and I follow Mum towards the kitchen, Mum bemoaning that my father is a stubborn old mule.

‘Hi, Mum, it’s me,’ a voice says.

It’s Pippa.

‘Got your message. Of course,I’ll come over later. I’m not surprised you’re nervous. It’s a huge deal having her to stay.’

I freeze.

Mum turns, looks at the machine as if willing Pippa to leave it at that.

But Pippa continues. ‘I’m dreading it too, but I’ll be here to help you and Dad. We’ll get through this together. See you later. Love you.’

‘Well now!’ Mum whips off her gardening gloves, her skin flushed. ‘How about a nice cup of tea?’

I have barely strung two words together over supper. The salmon tastes heavy in my mouth. I can’t stop thinking about that message. Pippa and me, we’re not close. I didn’t get to know my sister growing up because she played competitive tennis from the age of ten. At weekends and throughout the summer holidays, she and Mum travelled all across the country to take part in tournaments.

‘I’m only thin because I’m always rushing around,’ Pippa tells Kitty. ‘Oscar and Theo are hard work!’

Does Dad feel the same? Is he dreading having me to stay?

‘Love you,’ she had said at the end of the message, as casually as saying ‘bye’. I can’t remember the last time I said, ‘I love you’ to Mum. I used to say it as a child, especially when given second helpings of Angel Delight, but at some point I stopped. Why? Olly used to say it was simple. Mum invested more time in Pippa and we grew apart.

‘More wine?’ my father asks Kitty.

‘It’s delicious.’

‘Chilean.’

‘Don’t feed her at the table, Rebecca.’ Mum shoos Audrey back towards her basket.

Pippa places a hand over the rim of her glass. ‘Thinking of wine, I tell you who’s back in Winchester, Becca. Joe Lawson.’

I drop my knife. ‘Who?’

‘Joe Lawson.’

‘Sorry, what about him?’ I play with my napkin ring. It’s the same ring that I used to have as a child, engraved with my initials.

‘He’s opened this new wine bar in The Square – well, it’s not quite so new any more.’

My napkin ring is now spinning across the table.

‘Todd took some clients there the other day and was really impressed.’

Kitty catches the ring before it falls on to the floor.

‘Who’s Joe Lawson?’ Mum asks, clearing away my barely touched plate of food. I see her twenty years ago, towering above me as she said, ‘You will eat your peas, Rebecca, or no ice cream!’

Dad asks if anyone would like coffee.

‘You shouldn’t drink caffeine from midday onwards,’ Pippa points out, and for a second she looks just like Mum, except without the sprinkling of grey in her blonde hair.

‘Pah!’ he mutters. ‘Wasn’t Joe one of your old university friends, Rebecca?’

‘Um.’ I bite my fingernail.

‘Apparently you can hire out the cellar at this Maison Joe place,’ Pippa enthuses. ‘Todd thinks we should have our wedding anniversary party there.’

A silence descends across the table.

‘Excuse me.’ I scrape back my chair and leave the room.

‘Clever,’ I hear Kitty say to Pippa, her tone barbed.

Kitty sits at the end of my bed in her stripy pyjamas. ‘You never told Olly about Joe, did you?’

I shake my head, an uneasy feeling settling in my stomach.

‘Are you going to see him?’

‘I don’t know. I think I should.’ I’m not sure why we’re whispering, since Mum and Dad aren’t even on the same floor. Their room is on the floor below. ‘I wonder why he’s back.’

‘Didn’t his family live here or something?’

‘Yes, but he didn’t get on with his father at all.’

‘You’ll have to tell him about Olly,’ she says.

Guilt overwhelms me. She’s right. The one and only clear thought I had at the funeral was that Joe should be here, among his friends.

Kitty hugs her knees to her chest. ‘All that stuff that happened. It was a long time ago.’

‘Right.’ I nod vaguely.

‘Try not to worry, Becca.’ She gets up, saying it’s bedtime, but before she leaves the room she asks, ‘How do you feel about tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Your scan.’

‘This baby doesn’t feel real,’ I confide, ashamed I’d forgotten. Nothing feels real any more. I still want to believe I’m going to wake up and see Olly lying next to me. I’ll feel his arms wrapped around my waist, he’ll kiss me, laugh and say I was sleep-talking throughout the night, that I must have had a terrible dream.

I toss and turn, nearly crash my head against the wall and fall out of my single bed.

Of all the people who could be here, back in Winchester, why does it have to be Joe? How am I going to tell him? Oh God, Olly, I’m so angry with you! How can I tell Joe? You were the one who always knew the right thing to say. Tears stream down my face. I’m so sad. I miss you. God, I miss you.

‘I’ll be home by six thirty,’ he’d said in his last message to me. ‘I’ll pick up some wine. Look, we need to talk.’ Did we need to talk about the flats I’d shown him, or was something else preying on his mind? I know I promised Kitty I’d let it go, but the more I think about the tone of his voice, the more I am convinced it wasn’t straightforward.

I take a deep breath.

Maybe I should just avoid Maison Joe altogether for the next six months? I can’t drink wine at the moment, so I have the perfect excuse not to go. Joe wouldn’t know. It’s the middle of June now. I could just hide undercover until I have the baby at Christmas?

I get out of bed and walk to the bathroom at the end of the corridor, splash my face with cold water.

Joe Lawson. I haven’t seen him for over ten years.

It’s hopeless. How am I ever going to get any sleep?

4

Bristol University, Eleven Years Ago

I drop my library books on to my bed and kick off my shoes. I hear music coming from downstairs. Sounds like Oasis. Who’s in the shower? I glance at the alarm clock on my bedside table. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. I bet it’s Jamie, the lazy bastard.

I lie down, tired after last night. Olly and I went out; had something to eat and ended up dancing till three in the morning at the Lizard Lounge.

We’ve been going out now for nearly nine months. I think back to that day when I sat next to him in class. I was in my miniskirt and cowboy boots, hair washed and glossy. It was winter, the beginning of our second term at Bristol.

‘I heard you play last night,’ I’d said, out of breath from the exertion of flying into the seat beside him. I composed myself as I continued, ‘You remind me of the Rolling Stones, only you’re better.’

‘Rebecca, is there a problem you’d like to share?’ our tutor, Mr Simpson, asked.

‘No, sorry,’ I muttered, wanting the ground to swallow me up.

But then I noticed him glancing at my legs. Clearly I’d made the right choice with my miniskirt, even if I was freezing my arse off. He raised an eyebrow, before scribbling something down on a piece of paper. He slid the message towards me. ‘Aren’t you cold? PS Fancy a drink tonight?’

My heart did a somersault. I was going to put that piece of paper in a frame and keep it, forever.

During our first date Olly told me he wanted to be a journalist, pop star, jazz or classical pianist or maybe a novelist, or maybe a mixture of the whole lot, he’d laughed. I told him I had no idea what I wanted to do with my degree. I was hoping I’d work it out as I went along.

I rub my blistered feet together, sore from dancing last night, thinking about how Olly had walked me back to my halls after our evening. I felt comfortable with him, as if we’d known one another for years. We talked about being away from home for the first time. I told him I was happy, that I enjoyed being free and independent. I’d never felt I belonged in my family, explaining that my mother and sister, Pippa, were both sporty, whereas I was the artistic one. I described how Mum had given me a Slazenger racket for my birthday when I was about eight, hoping I was destined for the giddy heights of Wimbledon.

‘She booked me a lesson with the club coach, Kenny. You should have seen me, Olly. I ran away from the ball, not towards it.’

He smiled, before saying, ‘My father’s a bug man.’

‘A what?’

‘A bug man. Entomologist. It’s fine, you can laugh.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t know what you meant.’

‘Shame on you! My dad studies bugs for a living. Didn’t you know that there are 1.3 million described species, and that insects account for more than two-thirds of all known organisms…’

‘I didn’t, sorry.’ I slapped my thigh. ‘What have I been doing all my life?’

‘And they date back some four hundred million years.’

‘Wow.’

Olly looked at me. ‘He’s an academic, my dad, no good at small talk, lives in his own little bubble. He’s not interested in my music, what I’m doing at Bristol, nothing excites him except the habitat of weevils. In fact,’ he said, as if he was just realising this reality, ‘he doesn’t have a fucking clue who I am!’