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*****
I’m woken by a giant pig snorting into a microphone.
What the … ?
My startled gaze falls on Theo. He’s still concentrating on his book but there’s a suspicious tension about his mouth. He’s trying not to smile.
Oh God, the great snuffling pig must have been me. How bloody mortifying.
Theo removes his glasses and rubs his eyes. Then he glances over and I notice they’re an incredible deep blue colour. Quite mesmerising. ‘I was just about to wake you up. We’re here.’ He nods outside as the train glides into Hart’s End and comes to a stop by the big, ornate station clock.
Eek!
I grab my notebook and pen, and stuff them into my handbag, along with all my other bits and pieces. To my surprise, Theo appears to be getting off at this stop, too. I follow him along the carriage, noticing Olivia also getting up to leave the train. Theo courteously ushers her out into the aisle in front of him and she says something I can’t quite catch and they exchange a smile. I feel like a peeping Tom, intruding on a private moment between them, and a feeling of irritation rises up from nowhere. I wish I was off this damned train and walking up the path to Honey Cottage!
I try to peer round Theo to catch sight of my backpack in the luggage rack at the end of the carriage, but he towers above me, his broad shoulders blocking the view, so I give up.
When I get to the rack, panic sets in because I can’t see my backpack at all. Then I realise that someone has dumped their enormous black suitcase on top of my modest-sized bag, squashing it underneath. So then, of course, I have to try and heave the massive monster off, which – ten sweaty seconds later – I’m realising just isn’t going to happen. It’s stuck. There’s probably a dead body in this bloody suitcase, it’s so immovable!
The train is going to leave any second!
I need my backpack!
Suddenly, two strong arms are moving me gently but firmly aside. Dazed, I watch as they proceed to haul the evil black suitcase off the top of the pile. Quickly, I grab my backpack and turn to find Theo sliding the case back onto the rack. Then he guides me firmly towards the doors, leaps down onto the platform, then half-pulls, half-carries me off the train in the nick of time, just as the electronic whistle announces the doors are closing.
As the train moves slowly off, I find myself staring up into Theo Steel’s deep blue eyes, still clasped to his powerful chest and trying – with limited success – to get my breathing under control.
‘Thank you,’ I gasp, and he lets go of me.
‘No problem.’ He smiles lazily. ‘Didn’t want you ending up in Lake Heath. It’s a long walk back.’
‘True.’ I turn to hoist the backpack onto my shoulders, which conveniently hides my blushes. ‘But didn’t you say you live in Lake Heath? Why get off the train one stop early?’
Backpack secured, we start walking towards the station exit. Olivia and her irritatingly pert bottom are sashaying along just a few yards ahead of us and I’m quite certain Theo Steel is taking full advantage of the view. This makes me feel unaccountably cross. Probably because I’m shattered after the long journey.
‘I live in Lake Heath but I work in Hart’s End,’ says Theo. ‘I’m a personal trainer at the sports centre there.’
‘Oh, right. Olivia will be impressed.’
He laughs. ‘But you’re not.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say that. Anyone who can run a marathon then go straight in to work afterwards deserves a medal in my book.’
He shrugs his big shoulders. ‘I’ve just got one client then I’m off home for a soak.’ He grins. ‘Five hours in a hot bath should see to the aching muscles.’
‘True.’ I do a little mini jog to keep up with his long stride, doing my very best not to think about Theo Steel stretched out in the bath. What’s wrong with me? I definitely need a lie-down! ‘Epsom salts are good in the bath. Or so I’ve heard, never having run a marathon.’
‘You should come along to the gym. I could put you through your paces.’
‘Er … ooh, I don’t think so. Me in a gym would be like a giraffe in Sainsbury’s. Just not normal.’
‘No?’
‘No. It’s all those mirrors. Ugh! I mean, I know what I look like. I don’t need my nose rubbed in it.’ I’m wittering on, but I can’t seem to help it.
‘You look all right to me.’
I glance up and Theo Steel is assessing me with an approving look on his face. I blush as red as a letterbox and can’t think of a thing to say. He’s just being kind, obviously. We walk along in silence for a moment.
The fact is, I have been in a gym. Hasn’t everyone? I joined one January along with about twenty-five thousand others determined to make this their year to adopt a healthier lifestyle. I went three times then gave up, mainly because it was winter and far too cold to venture outdoors after work. Which is a pretty pathetic reason, I know.
I give Theo a sneaky sidelong glance. I can’t imagine him letting the temperature put him off working out.
Finally, we catch up with Olivia, despite my very best efforts not to. (I’ve already stopped to rummage around for my ticket – which I knew was safely in my jeans pocket – then wasted more time checking that my backpack was zipped up properly.)
She dazzles Theo with a smile. ‘Don’t forget the 10k.’
He smiles back. ‘I won’t.’
She turns to me. ‘I could email you the clean diet sheet if you like? And send you some muscle-toning exercises.’
‘Er, no, you’re all right, thanks,’ I say perfectly calmly, while inside I’m literally growling.
Theo is walking along as if he hasn’t heard a thing.
‘Always remember,’ says Olivia, as if she’s addressing a classroom of five-year-olds, ‘that what you eat in private, you wear in public.’ She grips my upper arm and squeezes hard enough to make me yelp. Then she leans closer and says in a loud stage whisper, ‘Banish those bingo wings before they really take a hold, Dawn.’
‘Twilight,’ murmurs Theo and I swing round in surprise and gratitude.
‘Right, I’m off to do some courgette shopping,’ says Olivia. ‘I’ve just bought this incredibly clever machine that turns them into courgetti!’ She gives a mad laugh that would put Mary from Coronation Street in the shade. ‘Just like spaghetti but none of the horrible gluten. And it’s so tasty, you’d hardly know!’
She gives a cheery wave and disappears into the supermarket.
‘I’d know,’ I mutter darkly, and Theo Steel grins.
Chapter 2 (#u3a0aea97-22d2-55bd-b3c8-fd5390bd5788)
Walking along the road from the station to Honey Cottage, after saying goodbye to Theo Steel, I’m feeling a confusion of mixed emotions.
On the one hand, this picturesque little village is the place I associate with all the love, happiness and support of growing up with two wonderful parents. I’m an only child and Mum had three miscarriages before she had me, so it was probably inevitable we’d be a really close-knit family unit.
But passing the schools and the shops, jarring memories from schooldays keep punching their way into my head, making me feel queasy.
Like the time Lucy Slater dragged me into the school toilets one break time, with two of her mates, and told me they thought my hairstyle was weird so they were going to flush my head down the loo. I must have been about eight. They did it silently, I suppose thinking they might get caught if they made a noise. I can still recall Lucy’s hand forcing me down and the dirty water rushing up my nose and stinging my eyes. And the blind panic I felt, thinking I was going to be drowned. I threw up afterwards, over my shoes, and they all thought this was hilarious.
Usually, the marks didn’t show but this time, with my streaming hair and eyes, it must have been clear to the teachers that something punishable had gone on. But I knew that if I snitched on Lucy, the misery she inflicted would only get far, far worse, so I pretended I’d ducked under the tap for a bet.
The head was obviously concerned enough to phone my parents, though, because I remember when I got home, Mum wanted to know exactly what had happened. I managed to convince her and Dad it was all just a joke. I dreaded them finding out what was going on and marching down to the school, mistakenly thinking they were making life better for me, demanding the bullies be punished.
I thought going to the high school might change things – that Lucy Slater would find other people to pick on. But the sly digs and nasty remarks continued unabated, for a while at least.
And then a boy called Jason Findlay finally turned things around for me.
Jason was a boy in my year, who I’d worshipped from afar for a while, and I finally got talking to him in the library one day. We found we were both huge fans of The X-Files and when he told me he thought I looked like Gillian Anderson’s Scully, I was floating on air for days afterwards.
He found out about the bullying and he basically told Lucy and her mates to stop tormenting me. And, unbelievably, they did. I couldn’t understand it at the time. It seemed amazing that they’d bullied me for so long and then one stern word from Jason and their active dislike turned instantly to indifference.
It was only later that I realised Lucy had a crush on Jason herself and would have done anything he asked her to do.
Anyway, overnight, my life changed. I was dizzily, ecstatically in love for the first time and Jason felt the same way. At fifteen, I was happy and confident at school for the very first time and my grades improved in leaps and bounds – enough to make university a possibility.
I thought Jason and I would be together forever …
I’ve tried hard over the years to play down the bullying and put the taunts and the painful attacks behind me. But coming back to Hart’s End always makes the dark days of my past loom a hundred times more vividly.
Sometimes I wonder if that will ever really change.
*****
The house feels shivery and bleak without Mum and Dad, so I go around turning on table lamps and radiators to make it cosy – even though it’s the middle of May and it won’t be dark for a few hours yet.
Then I make a cup of tea and sit in Dad’s old armchair, smoothing the arm and trying to look on the bright side. It’s going to be fine. The café will be a success and I’ll be able to pay off the mortgage arrears so we won’t have to sell the house. They don’t have a big mortgage, but the illness forced Dad to stop working and close down the business. They lived off savings for a while but for the past few months, they’ve been sliding slowly into debt.
The treatment he’s about to undergo sounds horribly invasive but my dad has always been strong – in body and in spirit. He’ll take the discomfort in his stride – I know he will. I try to ignore the nagging little whisper in my head that says, What if the treatment doesn’t work?
We have to be positive. The doctors wouldn’t have recommended Dad for the trial if they didn’t think he stood a big chance of benefiting from it, would they?
The bond I have with my dad is special.
When I was little, he’d take me fly fishing, usually right after tea, and we’d sit there, side by side, watching the surface of the river for any slight movement, Dad making me laugh with his daft jokes. (He didn’t seem to mind that my giggles probably scared the fish away.)
Fishing as it grew dark was the way to go, Dad said, because fish loved evenings, especially after a hot summer’s day spent lazing around. As a child, I loved this image of lazy fish getting their groove on as dusk fell. And of course, whatever we caught, we always returned to the water to swim another day.
Mum used to go fishing with Dad when they first met. I tend to picture it as quite romantic, the two of them sitting together on the river bank, talking about their lives and waiting for a bite – but Mum always laughs and says she was only there for Dad and that, actually, she hated the cold and the wet and all the fishy smells! (Prawns make the best ever bait, according to Dad.) I think Mum was quite glad when he started taking me fishing instead.
When they were thinking of a name for me, Mum joked they should call me Dusk or Twilight because that was the time of day they did a lot of their courting, right there by the river. Even before I arrived in the world, they were apparently patting her swelling tummy and talking to ‘Baby Twilight’, and the name just stuck.
They’re well matched as a couple. Mum is the practical one, while Dad has a more reflective, dreamy nature, like me. I love that he believes in following your dreams, whatever the cost. When I was little and we sat on that riverbank, he’d tell me that life was precious and should be lived to the full. He’d encourage me to smell the rain and feel the wind, and throw my dreams into space to see what came back to me.
It was Dad who first gave me the idea about switching careers and studying to become a pastry chef. When he said it, I laughed, wondering why I hadn’t thought of it first. I sometimes think Dad knows me better than I know myself.
He’d always been in great health. Never went to the doctor. His other hobby, apart from the fishing and wood carving, was walking. He and Mum both loved the holidays they spent in the Lake District, getting hot and breathless scaling the peaks and enjoying the panoramic views from the top. At home, when he wasn’t busy with the shop, he’d often walk for miles in the country lanes around the village. He was a fit man. Everyone said that. So I didn’t have to worry about him.
Then, a month after I started at catering college, Mum phoned to say she’d have to cancel our forthcoming weekend in Amsterdam because Dad was feeling a bit under the weather. I remember thinking it must be a really bad dose of cold or flu to make Dad give up a trip to one of his favourite cities. We’d been looking forward to it, all three of us, for ages.
Then came the news that Dad had diabetes.
I was quite shocked because Dad lived such a healthy life. Okay, he usually had the sticky toffee pudding when he and Mum went out for dinner about once a month, but that was hardly sugar overload.
But after the initial bombshell, I got used to the idea. Dad had diabetes, which wasn’t good. But it wasn’t the end of the world, either.
Then Mum phoned and mentioned he was going into hospital for more tests, and that was when I started to really worry. If diabetes had been diagnosed, why the need for further tests?
It turned out the diabetes was an underlying symptom of something much more serious.
Mum very rarely cried. But that night, when I took the train back to Sussex and Dad was in bed, too exhausted from the effects of the cancer to even stay up to greet me, we clung to each other and she sobbed her heart out.
Now, the only thing keeping us all going is the thought that this revolutionary new treatment will somehow make a difference. His age – fifty-nine – meant it was touch and go whether he would even be accepted on the trial, but their lovely GP was adamant he was a good candidate for the treatment. The day we heard it was full steam ahead – two months ago, in March – we cracked open a bottle of champagne Mum had been saving for their anniversary, and even Dad managed a glass.
Dad’s sister, my Auntie June, lives in North London, so hers was the obvious place for them to stay while Dad underwent his three months of treatment.
But their financial situation was becoming more urgent by the day. Dad had closed the business three months earlier, finally accepting he wasn’t well enough to continue working. It broke my heart when he had to sell off his stock just to continue paying the mortgage.
And now it’s up to me to save Honey Cottage.
The pressure makes me feel as if I’m carrying a boulder on my shoulders. I know Dad feels utterly useless, not being able to work and provide for them, and that can’t be good for his health.
So it’s up to me to take the load off his shoulders.
Whatever happens, I can’t let my lovely dad down …
The phone rings and it’s Mum. ‘We’re just back from our appointment with the consultant,’ she says, ‘so I thought I’d ring. Make sure you’d settled in.’
‘I’m fine, Mum. What about you? Both of you?’
‘Us? Oh, yes, we’re okay, Twilly love. And listen, your dad thinks what you’re doing is wonderful. Coming back home to open a café.’ She lowers her voice. I assume Dad must be somewhere in earshot. ‘He hatesthe thought of that shop unit of his lying empty. It makes him feel completely useless, bless him. So when I told him the news that you wanted to do something with the space, it brought the biggest smile I’ve seen on his face in weeks. He’s so proud of you, love.’
A lump rises in my throat, making it painful to swallow. ‘I’m really glad, Mum. Tell him I’m going to do my best to make it work.’
‘Yes, but are you sure that’s what you really want to do? You were halfway through your pastry course and you seemed to be loving it.’
‘I was. And I’ll finish the course some time in the future.’
‘Have you talked to your tutors? Have they said you can do that?’
‘Yes, Mum. Honestly. It’s fine.’
‘Well, just as long as you’re sure.’
I smile. Mum’s the worrier: the sensible one. She always has been. Dad is the adventurer: the risk-taker. Mum manages for the most part to keep his feet on the ground. They complement each other perfectly. I’ve always regarded their relationship as something to aspire to, although so far, I’ve failed spectacularly in my quest to find a member of the opposite sex to share that same magical togetherness with. Perhaps I’ll just get a rabbit instead.
‘Betty and Doreen will definitely be regular customers at your café,’ Mum’s saying, referring to her two best friends in the village. ‘You know how they love their cream teas. And I’ll get the Women’s Institute on side as well.’
‘Great! Thanks, Mum.’
She sighs. ‘Well, we’re all in this together, aren’t we, love?’
‘Yes, we are.’ My heart feels heavy. I appreciate Mum’s support but it’s going to take a lot more than Mum’s best friends, and Winnie and Rose from the WI to make this venture a success! I’ll need to get word out to all of Hart’s End and the surrounding villages, too. And I’ll have to attract the passing tourist trade – but how do I do that? I’ll need some signage, directing potential customers from the main through-road into our quiet cul-de-sac. Fortunately, it’s the beginning of May so the holiday season is only just starting …
