Saying goodbye to some of her regular patients when she retired had been harder than she would’ve thought possible, especially when they got upset. Beryl, a ninety-year-old lady with limited mobility, had been the most distraught even when Bonnie handed over to Yvonne, a bubbly redhead who always had a smile and a kind word. She supposed that was what happened and what she’d loved so much about being a district nurse. You got involved; you developed a deeply personal connection to patients and their families outside a hospital setting.
Then there was Stephen, a fifty-two-year-old living at home with his parents after a motorcycle accident put him in a wheelchair. He had his name down to move to a specialist facility with people his own age but until then he’d been stuck at the house he’d grown up in and couldn’t wait to leave. He’d always made her laugh with his moans about his parents, always very good-natured grumbles, and they were doing nothing but fussing over the son they loved, but he had a dry sense of humour and Bonnie had had a hard time remaining professional rather than giggling all the time.
She missed her work. She hadn’t at the start. She hadn’t when they’d been on their travels or busy moving into the cottage in Driftwick Bay, but now life had settled somewhat she missed a routine. Had she retired too early?
The timer buzzed, signalling the syrup sponge was ready.
She took the basin off the pan, set it down on the trivet and opened the top carefully to avoid any burns from the steam. The skewer she poked into the sponge’s centre came out nice and clean, and she left it to stand for a few minutes while she washed up some of the utensils she’d left piled in the sink in favour of getting on with her painting. Howard always said she liked to use every pot. She hadn’t but somehow, yet again, it did look like she’d done her best to.
The pudding was best served hot and so she wasted no time turning the sponge out onto a deep plate. She spooned some of the syrup from the bottom of the basin over the fluffy golden top and then cut two enormous wedges.
She’d take Howard his portion first, get him settled and happy and then come back for hers.
On her way to the back room she trilled, ‘Now, don’t eat this too fast; it’s very hot.’ But he’d fallen asleep again. ‘Howard… pudding…’
But in seconds she knew.
He wasn’t sleeping at all.
The bowl, the sponge, and the syrup fell from her hands, crashing onto the floor and sending splatters all over the rug and the side of her husband’s favourite chair.
That day was four weeks ago and very quickly Bonnie had had Howard’s assistant Iris put a sign up on the door to the bookshop sayingPermanently Closed.Bonnie had no intention of ever setting foot in there again. It would be far too painful. Iris had brought over the post from the shop the day she put the sign up and sure enough there was another letter from the developer. She’d set it in the letter rack because she wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t get in touch with them. Driftwick Bay Books might not have been Howard’s for all that long, but much like his bookshelves here, it was all Howard. She couldn’t go inside the quaint shop with its warm dark wooden interior, its little antique-effect signs dotted around to point customers to the right section if they were lost, without expecting him to look up at her from the counter behind the till and beam a smile her way, a smile like he’d had that rainy day in Blackpool when they first met.
The town loved the bookshop; the community would hate to see it go. But without Howard, was she really going to hang on to it? Was she really a part of things around here anyway? Was living here still her dream without her husband by her side?
Howard had gone, and sometimes Bonnie wished she had too.
9
MARGOT
Margot couldn’t believe it. She was here in Dorset. She’d left her home. She’d left Perry and come down to Bournemouth where she’d made some of her happiest memories with her parents and her boys. And she’d planned her departure so well that Perry wouldn’t have realised it had happened until it was too late.
She’d really done it.
It felt unreal in so many ways.
She took her shoes off to feel the sand between her toes as she looked out to sea, the vastness of nothing but water, nothing but freedom. The boys had always loved their time here and she’d always felt at peace. It had been the natural destination to head for.
With their mum and their gran, the boys had experienced a freedom on the south coast that came without criticism, that gave them the ability to be young and to truly be themselves. The older they got the less easy that was to do with Perry around at home. When Alistair was tiny, Sebastian being so much older would make him laugh with the infectious giggle that had him and Margot doing the same. When Alistair reached the terrible twos, it was Sebastian who could calm him down and distract him. And when Alistair had felt the pressure of his exams as a teenager, Sebastian had taken him away from his books almost as if he intuitively knew he was feeling the same pressure he had felt from their dad, and they’d go kick a football around outside instead.
Over the last week, Margot had given nothing away about what was coming. It was as if flipping the calendar in the kitchen over to the month of September at the start of the week had marked a monumental change that she’d made cautiously but surely. Each day she’d got up and done her chores and anything else on her to-do list in record time to make sure that Perry suspected nothing by the time he came home from work. As part of her plan, she’d rented a storage unit less than ten miles away as it meant she could easily drive back and forth to get her most treasured things out of the house. She moved the items she wanted from home to storage over a few days so that it wouldn’t raise suspicions. Luckily there was a rear access to the garage so she didn’t have to come out through the front door as Perry would’ve got that on the Ring camera. She also couldn’t take too long – everything would have to be explained and shorter outings were far easier:we needed more coffee beans;I was out of eggs;I forgot to post a letter. Unbelievably, as she was taking things she’d feltluckythat Perry hadn’t installed CCTV cameras around the property. Lucky? Feeling that way had reminded her of how wrong her whole situation was.
She’d taken plenty to the storage unit: the coffee table that once belonged to her mother, and because Perry said it didn’t go with their lounge furniture it had been relegated to the loft; a beautiful ornate Ming vase her mother gave her on her fortieth birthday; the boys’ memories including magic sets and board games and all the sentimental things that were either in the bedrooms they’d once occupied or packed away in the attic. She’d taken all the photograph albums – if Perry argued about that at a later date she’d happily put what he wanted onto memory sticks and send them to him, but for now she wanted to safeguard them. She’d had to think carefully about packing her clothes. She hadn’t wanted Perry to see empty rails in her wardrobe should he look inside, so she’d packed her favourite items and repositioned what was left so the wardrobes didn’t look so empty.
She had a wonderful book collection, but it would be too obvious if she cleared those. She needed to get away from the house without having a conversation about leaving because she knew Perry would stop her. Whatever he said would get into her head and before she knew it he would’ve convinced her that this was a bad idea. He would’ve repeated all those things he’d said time and time again – she couldn’t make it on her own, she had no money or job or skills, she was breaking the family apart. Sometimes she had those thoughts all by herself, which was why she’d never taken the leap before.
She put a few of her most treasured books into a box. Margery Williams’The Velveteen Rabbitwas incredibly special, having once belonged to her mother. Margot had read it to the boys time and time again when they were little. Into the box went other childhood favourites she’d enjoyed and then shared with her sons includingThe Tiger Who Came to Tea,Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, andThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She slotted in ten to twelve other books – as many as she thought she might get away with – and then she positioned the antique humidor Perry’s father had passed down to him from his own father further along and spaced out more of the ornaments so it wouldn’t look like anything was missing. Sometimes she moved or rearranged a few pieces when she was cleaning so she doubted any of the things she’d done would rouse suspicion.
The day she closed up the storage unit with the possessions that mattered the most to her tucked inside, the adrenalin was flowing freely. Her escape route was in sight. She wasn’t going to be this crushed woman she barely recognised any more.
Back at the house she’d put a couple of thick jumpers into a rucksack at the last minute when she decided she didn’t want to leave them here, given some days could be chilly despite the summer season. As she’d taken the rucksack down to the basement to put with the rest of her things, she’d paused when she passed the photograph of their family of four on the wall of the stairwell. The picture was of her and Perry and the boys on a boat, all of them smiling as the boat skipper took them further out to sea. She stood there staring at the smiles, the happiness of the Yorks. She closed her eyes. They’d had some good times.
The next picture along was taken of the boys outside the tent they’d pitched in the back garden. It was when Sebastian was fifteen and preparing to do the Duke of Edinburgh award and he’d been desperate to camp out for the night. Margot had borrowed a family-sized tent from her parents, and just when she was laying out the poles thinking she would have to do it with Sebastian when she didn’t have much of a clue, Perry had come home and taken over. He hadn’t seemed himself. He didn’t mention anything about his day; he simply got on with putting up the tent. He made a campfire and they sat around it telling stories until it was time to go to sleep. They’d all stayed in the tent that night and it had been like a snapshot in time that was never really repeated, as if she was nineteen all over again and cuddling up to that same Perry she’d met in the pub.
They never did put the tent up again after that day, even though Sebastian and Alistair had begged. Perry had never taken Sebastian orienteering like he’d promised, and over the years the distance between the boys and their father simply grew. Perry had made matters even worse when Sebastian got a job as a ski instructor. He’d called Sebastian’s career choice ridiculous, a lark. He’d told his son that he was just a boy wanting to mess around rather than getting a real job.
Yesterday, before Perry came home from work, Margot had gone from room to room in the house. It had a warmth in some places. In the boys’ rooms she remembered tucking them into bed, reading them bedtime stories; she remembered how she’d sit with them the night before a big exam. She’d take them hot soups in a mug when they were sick; she’d lie with them if they needed her to.
