An old lady was sitting in her usual place on one of the memory benches, a plaque dedicated to her husband. She had informed Mark of this one morning, when they had got chatting.
They wished her a good morning as they passed by, and she returned their greeting.
A group of teenage girls, bags slung over their shoulders, were making their way to school, chattering loudly as they went.
‘Oh, to be that age again,’ commented Mark, who had always been popular with girls.
He watched a small group of boys from a neighbouring school turn and glance at the girls as they walked past.
‘I wish I had had a few more adventures at that age,’ Carol found herself saying.
‘Do you?’ asked Mark. Carol was such good company now, and he imagined her being a bundle of fun in her youth.
‘Yeah, I do,’ she confessed. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun with my friends, I just wish I had been a bit more adventurous,’ she reflected. ‘I had a friend who went off and worked abroad as a nanny. I wish I had done that.’
‘I imagine that was quite an adventurous thing to do, back in the day.’
‘Oh, it was,’ agreed Carol. ‘Everyone thought she was really daring, going off like that on her own. Not like me, married at twenty-one and still living in the place I grew up,’ she told him.
As they approached one of the exits at the far end of the park they passed an elderly gentleman who wished them a cheery good morning as he threw some nuts and seeds from a plastic supermarket bag to a flock of birds on the nearby lawn.
‘Let’s hope the birds eat all that food or the rats will,’ Mark whispered to Carol as they walked past, not wishing to offend the old man, who regularly fed the birds in the park.
Some of the leaves on the trees already had a soft yellow bleeding through the green, and at some point the trees would become a mixture of red, gold and green, thought Carol as she walked. As she did so, the line of a well-known eighties song popped into her mind, and she smiled.
‘Something amused you?’ asked Mark.
‘“Karma Chameleon”,’ she said, explaining her thoughts.
‘That song was number one when my daughter was born,’ he said.
He told her all about his daughter, who lived in Australia.
‘Wow. I didn’t know that. You must miss her,’ said Carol.
‘We both did at first,’ he told her, referring to himself and his late wife. ‘But when we went out there and saw the life she was living, we knew it was right for her. We would go out at least once a year, and she and her husband would come over here,’ he told her. ‘She came over after Diane died and tried to persuade me to go and live with her.’
‘And you didn’t fancy it?’
They had stopped for a second on a path to allow an enthusiastic young boy to ride past on his bike.
‘I felt too old to make a new life on the other side of the world,’ he said as they strolled along. ‘Besides, my life is here, along with my memories. We are still close, though. There are lots of FaceTime calls.’ He smiled. ‘In fact, she and her husband are actually coming over early in the new year, doing a bit of a tour, visiting old friends too,’ he told her.
‘That will be nice,’ said Carol, hardly able to imagine how she would feel if Jess and Maisie lived on the other side of the world.
They eventually arrived at an exit on the right-hand side of the park and walked on until they reached Coronation Road.
There was another park on the road, that included a playground for children and a field for dogs to run around. The council had recently installed some new outdoor gym machines, as well as upgrading some of the equipment in the play area.
‘Did you know Declan was instrumental in getting the funding for the upgrading of the park?’ Mark informed Carol as they walked by.
‘Was he really?’ said Carol.
‘Yes, and the gym equipment. He told me about it once. Only when I happened to mention something about the park, though,’ he told her. ‘I like Declan; he’s a good bloke.’
Carol had replayed the conversation in her head this morning when she had dropped Maisie at school. Jess had insisted on taking the train into town as she knew how flustered Carol got driving into the city centre, despite her mum offering.
Along with most people in the city, Carol remembered reading about the downfall of Tony Callaghan. To hear that Declan had been the one who had killed him, though, had come as a huge shock.
