Now, Mr Bradley looked ashen. The moment Grace was out of earshot, he clutched Amy’s hand and sighed: a heavy exhalation that morphed into something scarily like a sob.
‘Oh Amy, my dear, I’m sorry,’ he said as he straightened up, dabbing at his eyes with a proper pocket handkerchief. Dimly, Amy wondered where on earth you could even buy such things nowadays. She decided this wasn’t the time to ask.
‘Don’t apologise,’ Amy said, patting his hand awkwardly as he loosed his grip on her. ‘I understand. I’m worried, too. I won’t be able to rest until she’s come round and the doctors tell us the surgery went well. Probably not until I’ve got her home, tucked up on the sofa with Bertie and a Miss Marple.’
‘She’s a wonderful woman,’ Ken said, his voice wobbly and waterlogged. ‘I hope you know how highly I think of her. How much I value and enjoy the time we spend together. How grateful I am to have found someone to … toloveagain. At my time of life.’
Love?Amy was not prepared for this.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ she said firmly, gently placing her hands on his shoulders and looking him square in his kind, smile-lined eyes. ‘She’sgoing to be all right.’
In truth, Amy was feigning a level of calm confidence she didn’t truly feel– but it rather seemed as though one of them needed to keep it together.
‘I can’t bear to think of losing her,’ Mr Bradley said shakily. ‘After my wife died, I never thought I’d find another partner– let alone one I could adore so completely.’
This was all deeply embarrassing– but beneath the mortification that came with hearing a man shestillcouldn’t call by his first name profess undying devotion to her grandmother, Amy felt something else. She was moved. Tears had sprung to her eyes and, although she felt worried for Grace, they weren’t born of anxiety or fear for her gran.
‘My dad,’ Amy said quietly, ‘always said he could never love anyone again after my mother left us. Losing her crushed him for good.’
‘I know it did,’ Mr Bradley said, nodding and seeming to pull himself together somewhat. ‘It was a shame for him– he was a good man. Falling in love is a game of chance, to some degree: one never knows when or where the feeling might appear. But being willing to play it is key, and that’s difficult after heartbreak.’
‘You think he could have, then? Fallen in love again, I mean? You think it was … a choice not to?’
‘Oh, that’s not for me to say,’ said Mr Bradley, clearly concerned he’d upset her. ‘I meant no offence.’
‘No, I know you didn’t,’ Amy reassured him. ‘I’m just interested in your perspective. You and Gran have both overcome bereavements– moved on in a way he never did, even though he was so much younger.’
‘Indeed. I suppose that when I refer to a game of chance, I do mean one hassomechoice: it’s a question of either keeping your cards close to your chest, or deciding to show them, come what may.’
Amy nodded. ‘So you’re saying that whether you can fall in love depends on how risk-averse you are?’
‘Essentially, yes. Though as I said, it might also be a question of readiness to play.’
‘You’ve lost me, Mr Bradley.’
‘Call me Ken, my dear, I beg of you. I think we’re a little way past formalities after this morning.’
‘Sorry,’ Amy said, wincing. ‘Ken. Maybe it’s the extended poker metaphor, but I don’t understand. I suppose I always thought my dad staked his heart on my mother and then lost it forever. Are you saying he folded too soon?’
‘I wouldn’t presume to judge. But perhaps he decided to be a spectator for a while, rather than a participant in the game. That may have been a conscious decision– one that arguably made sense while you were young and he was your sole carer.’
Somehow, despite her anxieties about Grace’s operation, RomFest, Hugh’s mind games and her increasingly intense, Sam Ainsworth-focused fantasy life, Amy registered the significance of this. Perhaps she’d misunderstood things– believed her father too broken to find love again, when in fact he’d merely been putting it off until she didn’t need him so much. How was he to know that, by the time she was thirteen, he’d have terminal cancer– that he’d miss his chance to try again?
‘Well, this has all been quite illuminating, though I’m suddenly aware I have no idea how to playanycard games,’ Amy said, smiling.
‘In my experience, when you find the right partner, you tend to figure out the rules as you go,’ Ken said, a slight but perceptible gleam in his kind eyes. He beamed knowingly at her when she didn’t respond.
Feeling a change of subject might be prudent, Amy said: ‘Why don’t I fetch us some coffees, then head back to the cottage and take His Majesty for a walk?’
‘So long as you’re sure,’ Ken said, tentative. ‘What if she wakes up while you’re away?’
‘I think,’ Amy said, peeling herself up off the uncomfortable plastic chair she was stuck to, ‘that based on everything you’ve said this morning, you’re the first person she’s going to want to see.’
As the words left her lips, she finally understood that Grace’s initial reluctance to tell Amy about her accident wasn’t only down to the distance that had grown up between them, or Grace’s fear that she’d pull her granddaughter away from her busy London life if she frightened her.
It was also because, with Ken to support and care for her, Grace didn’t reallyneedAmy– at least, not as much as Amy had thought. The realisation stung, more keenly than she’d ever have expected it to.
As Amy pulled up to the kerb outside the cottage in Grace’s car, she heard her phone chime from deep inside her handbag.
