She laughed. ‘Don’t be daft. Of course it’s a statue. No way would a real deer stand so still and stare at us like that. It would be long gone.’
Carne yapped furiously and the ‘statue’ turned its head and cantered away, disappearing into the undergrowth.
Alison’s mouth fell open in shock and Mac lifted her chin, laughing. ‘Told you.’
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘This place is absolutely perfect.’
‘It is,’ he said, as they continued their walk. ‘I’d forgotten, and I don’t know how I’d forgotten. I can’t imagine living anywhere else but here now. I just wish…’
He didn’t finish the sentence.
‘You just wish what?’ Alison urged.
‘I just wish Wyatt and Sarah could see it. I wish I’d brought them here when they were little. I wish they’d got to see more of their grandma. I wish they could see Watersmeet and meet Jacob Armitage and Heatherstone, and Ellen MacKenzie and Jamie Fraser, and Mrs Beddows and the Dickensian Ducks and the Bennet Sisters. Yes, and even this annoying little swine,’ he added, rolling his eyes as Carne tugged on the lead.
‘More than anything,’ he said, ‘I wish they’d come to see me, and believe me when I tell them that I love them so much, and I’m so sorry we lost touch, and I’d do anything to change what happened.’
‘Well,’ Alison said slowly, ‘have you tried to tell them that?’
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I gave up years ago.’
‘But why? Why don’t you try again?’
‘After all this time? What if they put the phone down? What if they don’t want to know me? What if they hate me and they tell me so? One thing believing they do. Quite another hearing it from their own mouths.’
‘You know,’ she said, ‘you told me that I lived too much in the past, and you were right. But if you ask me, your problem is that you won’t look to the future.’
He swapped the lead to his other hand. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes, you do. You say you only think about today because that’s all we’ve got. And you’re right. Todayisall we’ve got. But our today is shaped by what we did yesterday, and our tomorrow is shaped by what we do today. If you want your future to be a good one, you have to lay the foundations in the present. You have to start fixing things now, Mac, because one day, your today is going to be your last, and if you haven’t done everything you can to put this right it’s going to be full of regret.’
He said nothing, and his stride lengthened as if he was trying to walk away from her. But Alison wasn’t giving up and she kept pace with him. They headed rapidly down the road, the sea growing ever closer, and Carne’s ears pricked up with excitement, his nose sniffing the salty air in anticipation.
As they finally reached the beach, Mac unclipped the lead, and Carne raced off along the sand, yapping joyfully at the rolling waves.
Mac dug his hands in his jacket pockets and turned to Alison.
‘When I – when I was going through a hard time, and my marriage had ended, and things were… Well, they were really bad. Back then, my mother used to write to me. Proper letters, written with her fountain pen on thick, unlined paper. She always found me. I moved around a lot, but she tracked me down. I didn’t reply, but she never stopped writing. And one day, three years ago, I picked up the phone and I called her, and we talked and talked.’
She waited, her heart aching as she heard the grief in his voice.
‘She never said a single word about all the letters I hadn’t answered. She was just glad to hear from me. After that, I called her every week.’
His eyes gleamed with unshed tears. ‘She never gave up on me, Alison. Why didIgive up onmykids? Why am I such a coward?’
She moved to him and put her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest. ‘You’re not a coward,’ she told him. ‘You’ve just had a lot to deal with, and maybe you made mistakes. But now you know that, and you want to put it right.’
‘They might not be as forgiving as Mum was,’ he murmured into her hair.
‘No, they might not,’ she agreed. ‘But you’ll never know unless you try, will you?’
He rested his chin on her head, holding her close, sheltering her from the sudden gusts that blew in from the North Sea. He made her feel safe, protected, cared for. She knew he could do the same for his children if they’d give him another chance, but he had to givethema chance first. He had to try, or he’d never know.
‘I’ll write to them,’ he said at last. ‘You’re absolutely right. It’s time I started to put plans in place for the future. I need to talk to Gavin about something, sort things out with Stella. Most of all, though, I want my children back in my life so badly, and I have to make the first move. I can’t guarantee they’ll want anything to do with me. They might even hate me. But I’ll try. I won’t give up on them. Not again.’
‘I’m so proud of you,’ Alison whispered.
She wasn’t sure he heard her, what with the wind rushing round their ears, and the pounding of the waves, and Carne’s happy barking. But she thought maybe he could feel it as she stood there with him, holding him tight, silently sending him all the love and support she knew he deserved.
