“Why did you have to move out?”
“My mum passed away suddenly a few months ago, and the landlord wanted to bring in new tenants who could pay more, so I had no choice but to leave.”
Travis hadn’t expected this painful twist in the tale and hadn’t expected to hear about such a dreadful loss. “I’m so sorry about your mum.”
The bright, brave smile returned. “Thank you. I appreciate that. It was a terrible blow to lose her, and it was worse having to leave the home we shared. But I’m doing okay now.”
Are you, though?he almost asked. The pain burning behind her eyes was unmistakable. Not even her brilliant smile could hide it from him this time, not now that he knew about the grief she carried.
He thought of what he’d learned about Courtney since he’d met her—that she was no longer with the father of her child and would raise the baby alone, and that she’d recently lost her mother and been forced to leave the home they’d shared. Until now, he’d just assumed she was another resident of Foxglove Street. But if she’d been forced to leave the home she’d shared with her mother, then who was she living with here on the street?
A vague memory flickered in his head, and he latched onto something Olive Nimmo had said in passing when they’d spoken at the library during his book club talk. Now that he focused on their conversation, he remembered her saying that Courtney was visiting family for a short time, which was why Olive thought she’d be a perfect fit to step into Travis’s assistant’s shoes.
“I think I remember Olive Nimmo mentioning that you were staying here with family?” he now said.
Courtney nodded. “My cousin, Rosie, lives here on the street, and kindly offered me her spare room. I was in temporary accommodation before that for a few months in Southampton near where my mother and I used to live, but it wasn’tparticularly nice. Basically, it was a bedsit, and that’s putting a positive spin on it.”
She let out a laugh and then her gaze clouded over, and a look crossed her face as if she was embarrassed to have said so much about her situation. “Anyway, it’s lovely to be here in Hamblehurst instead. Rosie’s house is so pretty. And my aunt and uncle are nearby, too, and my other cousin, Zara, that’s Rosie’s sister, she lives here in the town, too. So, that’s nice.”
Travis sensed from her careful words that there was more to this, much more, than she was telling him. What sort of temporary accommodation had she been living in? A chill crept up his spine as he thought about the facts he now knew—she was a pregnant young woman who’d found herself homeless after her mother’s death. Had she been forced to rely on the local council to help her with housing? He’d seen enough news reports lately to know that wherever the council had placed her, it probably had been downright awful, considering the endless problems people faced when it came to finding suitable housing these days.
And more to the point, who were these family members of hers, who’d allowed their relative to endure a bereavement and homelessness—whilepregnant and alone—before finally taking her in?
“I’m sorry you had to live in temporary accommodation, Courtney,” he said, choosing his words carefully, aware that this wasn’t really any of his business. “It’s a shame your cousin couldn’t let you use her guest room before you found yourself in the bedsit.”
Courtney opened her mouth to reply, then snapped it closed again. She set down her sandwich and dabbed a napkin across her lips before looking over at him.
“Actually, that’s a bit of a long story,” she said and gave an airy laugh. “Even a fiction author like you probably wouldn’t believe it.”
“Try me.”
He wanted to know her story, wanted to know every single detail of it. Listening to her talk as they sat together in the quiet kitchen, and hearing the tenderness and pain in her voice, he wanted to know and understand and find some way to salve her wounds.
Courtney studied his expression for a beat, as if judging whether he was just being polite or not. The naked honesty in his eyes convinced her to keep talking.
“I only discovered I had family here in Hamblehurst a few weeks ago,” she said. “My father died when I was small and I never knew him, and it was only after my mother passed away that I discovered he had a brother, my Uncle Colin. He never knew about me, and I never knew about him. It was a shock for him to find out about me, and hard too, because his brother, my father, led a hard life and spent time in prison before he died. There was a lot of bad memories for my uncle, even after so many years, and because of the upset his brother caused in his family, he struggled with how to tell his wife and daughters about the niece he never knew he had.”
Travis frowned at this, even as he sympathised with the shock the man must have received. Again, Courtney must have noticed his reaction, because she shook her head at his expression, as if determined to defend her uncle.
“My uncle is a good man. I can’t pretend to understand what it must have been like for him to lose his brother all those years ago and to never have made his peace with him before he died, and to then have some long-lost relative pop up out of the woodwork. Plus, when I got in contact with him and he learned that I’d lost my mother, and had just become homeless, and waspregnant and about to become a single parent, well, it’s a lot for anyone to take in.”
Travis nodded, conceding the point.
“Anyway, my uncle Colin was waiting for the right moment to break the news to his wife when events took another turn and I ended up meeting his family completely by accident. There’d been an, er, incident at the bedsit where I was staying?—”
“What sort of incident?” Travis interrupted, sensing from her tone that she’d been about to gloss over the details, and sensing, too, that this ‘incident’ had been no small matter.
A pained look crossed Courtney’s face. “One of the other residents at the bedsit broke into my room and tried to steal my stuff. He grabbed me and frightened me half to death. Another resident had to pull him off me.”
“My God!” Travis said, his eyes wide in alarm. “Were you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“I was okay. I wasn’t injured, just scared and worried about the baby after getting such a fright. In a panic, I spoke to my uncle on the phone and told him what had happened, and because I was so desperate to get out of the bedsit and away from the misery of it all, I caught the bus over here to Hamblehurst. Although I’d only known my uncle for a few weeks, I always felt better whenever we talked and felt even better in his company. He has this comforting spirit about him and is incredibly kind and caring.”
A smile lifted the edges of her lips and then vanished as she waved a hand. “Little did I realise at the time I was being so selfish.”
“Selfish?” Travis almost shouted, stunned that she could think such a thing considering what had happened to her. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“It was my uncle’s birthday that day, and I just invited myself over and plonked myself into the middle of things. I had no ideait was his birthday, and if Ihadknown, I never would’ve got in the way. I almost ruined his surprise birthday party.”
