‘—No matter how much you want to see me in a suit and a tie with a briefcase—’
‘Abriefcase?When did I ever—’
‘’Cause I’mjust not doing it,all right?’ He leaps fromthe sofa, sending the Quality Street tin flying and clanging onto the floor, its contents scattering all over the room.
‘Eddie!’ I exclaim as he charges out, robe flapping behind him, and thunders upstairs. His bedroom door bangs, rattling the house.
I stand there for a moment, pressing my hands over my hot, smarting eyes.Don’t cry,I will myself.You only suggested a job! You were trying to help. But was that wrong? Are you too controlling? Should you just let him flump about in that disgusting robe for the rest of his life?
I gaze round at the scattered sweets and wrappers, picturing the six of us – me and Frank, our three kids and my father – dipping into the tin when we were all together at Christmas. Paper crowns, mince pies and rowdy games of Pictionary and Boggle. Frank and I were so happy to have the girls home, albeit briefly. Bella and Ana have gone back now, keen to return to their flats and their friends and their New Year’s Eve parties.
And now my heart seems to crumple like one of those discarded wrappers on the floor.
Chapter Two
I know I’m lucky to be a librarian. I love books and reading and the fact that our beautiful Victorian library serves as a much-needed community hub in our town. I especially love my colleagues, who’ve become great friends. However, the next morning, as Itrundleto work, I don’t feel lucky.
Eddie’s remark still smarts as I march along the seafront. Tiny snowflakes skim my face and a sharp wind stings my cheeks. Apart from a sole dog walker in the distance, the flat, wide beach is deserted.
I’m not like you,Eddie announced. Meaning,you think I’d want your shitty life?And maybe he’s right! He’s seen his dad and me struggling and arguing, unable to pay bills. We’d planned to do so much to Kilmory Cottage, but the years have whipped by and nothing’s come to fruition. At least, not to the house itself. In between raising three kids and working full-time, I’ve managed to create a beautiful cottage garden, filled with roses that bloom all summerlong. But apart from that, what mark have I actually made?
The trouble is, I’ve never had a grand life plan. So can I really expect Eddie to have one?
His dad and I were twenty-one when we met and fell in love. Frank was a bartender, working the summer season at a resort on the Algarve. I’d gone on holiday with friends, never intending to peel away from the group, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d met boys who were cute, or even handsome – but notbeautifullike Frank. Not wild and brimming with life and schemes and daring, in the way that he was. His face was all cheekbones and angles, his eyes the darkest brown. His big beaming smile melted my heart like ice cream under the hot Portuguese sun. When my holiday ended, he skived off work to see me off at Faro airport where we hugged tightly, and I cried.
As we pulled apart, I saw that Frank’s face was wet with tears too.
‘It’ll be okay,’ he insisted and somehow, I knew he was right. Somehow we’d make it work, despite the hundreds of miles between us, and the fact that we were virtually broke. Back in Glasgow, I was working in a soon-to-be-defunct bookshop, while Frank would be expected to go home to work on his family’s farm after the summer season.
Why would we let any ofthatstand in our way? At that age we believed that anything was possible. Had anyone urged us to work at the tax office, we’d have laughed in their faces.
So I blotted my wet cheeks and boarded my plane home to Glasgow, clutching the piece of driftwood on which he’d carvedCarly + Frank Forever.
We started writing to each other. A torrent of impassioned scrawlings, with Frank’s wonky English always making me smile. The way he saidfoot fingerfor toe, orGet a planeforcoming to see me soon!There were calls and occasional visits, and every so often we’d decide together that maintaining a long-distance relationship was too hard. Yet we couldn’t give each other up. It took my mum’s illness to make us realise that we had to be together. At first things had seemed hopeful. But when her cancer spread and she was moved to the hospice, Frank turned up in Glasgow with a rucksack and his dark hair all wild, to be with me.
I fell to pieces when Mum died. Thirteen years younger than Dad, she’d always seemed so young and vibrant. He’d left her suddenly for another woman when I was fourteen – I’m an only child – and although heartbroken, she was also furious and determined that we could manage just fine by ourselves.
Mum never wanted another man. She didn’t need anyone. It had been the two of us, thick as thieves, and I’d never imagined a world without her. And she’d loved Frank, and admired his free spirit, his love of life.
Within weeks of Frank moving to Scotland we found out I was pregnant. That certainly wasn’t planned. We were living in my tiny rented flat, and only just finding out how to be with each other in normal life – rather than those heady reunions when we’d barely emerge out of bed.
Yet we were delighted too. We just had to figure out how we’d manage a future together, and what we’ddo.With baby Eddie’s arrival, we were propelled into a house-hunting mission.
Having grown up on a farm, Frank had been driving a tractor virtually as his milk teeth fell out, and worked the land along with his father and brothers. He wasn’t a city person at all. Plus, he loved the sea – the farm was close to Portugal’s wild south-west coast – and we started to wonder if the west coast of Scotland might be the place for us.
A sleepy Ayrshire town called Sandybanks had been a childhood favourite of Mum’s. She’d taken me there, although I could barely remember it. But one day I suggested to Frank that we hop on a train for an exploratory look around.
We strolled along the seafront and stopped at a house with a For Sale sign nailed to its garden fence. At twenty-seven, and still trying to come to terms with losing Mum, I stared at Kilmory Cottage and squeezed Frank’s hand. The house was battered by salt winds, the garden a tangle of thorns. The town was pretty faded too, having once been a bustling holiday destination. Now the few remaining guest houses badly needed a lick of paint. The birthday cake roundabout on the seafront had probably looked jolly at one time, with its icing swirls and candy-striped candles jutting up from the seats. But now rusting and splattered in seagull poo, it clearly hadn’t moved for years.
However, the place still had plenty of olden-day charm, and the glorious sweep of Sandybanks Bay captivated us. Although Eddie was snoozing in his carrier against my chest, I pictured him a few years on, running delightedly along the beach.Thiswas what we needed, I decided. A new start by the sea to raise a family of our own.
And there was our perfect cottage, for sale, facing thesparkling bay. The Isle of Arran a purplish smudge on the horizon, and the ferry cutting its way towards the quay.
‘Shall we do it?’ I asked Frank, willing him to say yes.
He did.
With my inheritance from Mum, together with every other penny we could scrape together, we had just enough for a deposit. And so we bought Kilmory Cottage. Our daughter Bella was born a couple of months after Eddie had turned one, and Ana came along two years later. Frank and I never had the urge to get married. After being left as she was, Mum had been resolutely anti-marriage – ‘No need for it, Carly!’ she’d insisted, and I guess that message had stuck. And Frank was – and still is – a fantastic dad. I’ve never doubted that he loves us all very much. But he wasn’t easy back then. There was still that wild impetuousness there; the boy who, at twenty-one, had grabbed my hand at two in the morning and we’d run, screaming with laughter, into the sea. That young man who’d jumped feet first into a life with me, in a foreign country, because he’d wanted us to be together and have a good life. To have more, certainly, than he’d had on the farm.
