Page 70 of The Sunrise Sisterhood

‘And you’ve got me. Any time you need someone to talk to, I’m your man.’

‘And any time you feel remote over on your side of the water, I’m your woman.’ Liz helped him secure a rope to the nearest cleat on the dock. It was time for her to disembark, but she was reluctant to leave him. ‘Perhaps we should set up a code. Hang red flags out of our bedroom windows when we need a friendly ear.’

He gave a low rumbling laugh. ‘It’s a thought, but a red flag outside a lady’s window might receive more than an offer of an ear.’

She giggled. ‘Oh. That’s true.’

‘Goodbye, Liz.’ He offered her a hand to climb out of the boat. ‘Thanks for coming to my rescue.’

‘You’re welcome. Thanks for the boat ride.’ She began to walk away but changed her mind and turned back to face him. He was still watching her. ‘Patrick? Can we do this again sometime?’

A smile spread across his face. ‘I’d like that.’

‘Me too.’

She walked away then, thrilled with her own audacity. She listened to his engine roaring away across the estuary, and when she turned round a final time, her breath caught in her throat at the sight. The sun had risen high enough to crest the hill behind Salcombe and the Ecsta-Sea was bathed in light. Incredibly, there it was: her silver lining.

Chapter Nineteen

Clare

Clare lay awake in bed squinting. Whoever had shut the curtains for her last night had missed a bit and there was a sliver of light determined to find her face whichever way she turned. Not that she’d slept much. The nurse had instructed her to sleep upright propped up on pillows, but whenever she’d dozed off, her head had nodded, and she’d jolted awake again.

The pain in her arm was … well, she couldn’t even find words bad enough, but given a choice between breaking her arm again and giving birth to Ivy, she’d choose that thirty-six-hour labour ending in a forceps delivery all day long. She felt guilty now for not giving enough sympathy to every child who’d turned up in her classroom over the last ten years with a limb in plaster. Although, thinking about it, the children themselves had seemed quite proud of their little casts. Maybe children’s limbs were made of Play-Doh. Hers felt more like glass rods.

She looked down at her left arm. ‘Ugh. That is bad.’

Her upper arm was double its usual size. She peered inside the sling and shuddered at the sight of the mottled purple skin of her forearm.

She loved Salcombe, she really did, but not being able to drive was going to be a killer. There wasn’t even a big supermarket within walking distance. The little local one was fine for cooking for the four of them, but not when they had a booking to cater for. She knew that Liz or Skye could go shopping, but it had been one of her only contributions to the business effort. It had made quite a nice change, putting Ivy in the seat of the trolley and doing a big shop. At home, it was mostly nappies, coffee and finger food for both of them. She rarely cooked complicated stuff these days. Meals had to be quick and easy with minimal chopping; she’d learned that early on, when Ivy had suffered with colic. It was all right for you, Jamie Oliver, she’d thought, abandoning her cookery book in frustration. You try finely chopping an onion with a writhing baby on your hip.

Those early days had been so tough that sometimes she’d wondered if she’d done the right thing, going ahead with the pregnancy. And then there were others when the joy from something Ivy had done, or the way she’d smiled, or clapped, burst out of her like a firework and she knew that becoming a mother had been the right choice all along.

Her mind flitted back to the day she’d gone into labour. Forty-one weeks pregnant and getting seriously fed up. Clare didn’t do ‘late’, but this was beyond her control. The day had started off with a call from Liz. This had been their morning ritual: Liz would call, ask her what sort of night she’d had and then offer to drive up from Salcombe to Bath to be on hand, just in case today was the day. Clare would promise she’d let her know the minute she felt a contraction. But that day, as they’d ended the call, Clare had flinched with the sensation of a steel strap tightening across her stomach.

The sensible thing to do would have been to call Liz back and ask her to come. But Clare wasn’t feeling sensible. Instead, in between contractions, she scrubbed every inch of paintwork in the flat, bleached the sink and put clean sheets on her bed. Then she phoned for a Domino’s pizza, watched a Zac Efron film and dipped in and out of sleep. By seven o’clock, the contractions were so strong that she couldn’t have held a phone conversation if she wanted to. Instead, she booked a taxi, picked up her hospital bag and used the fifteen minutes it took for the cab to arrive to make her way down from her top-floor flat to the front door.

‘Maternity department please,’ she’d said breathlessly as she opened the rear door.

The taxi driver had taken one look at her and panic flashed up on his face. ‘Are you …?’

Clare had sucked in a breath and nodded. ‘In labour, yes.’

The taxi driver had looked as nervous as she felt and had glanced over his shoulder at the front door. ‘Are we waiting for anyone else to join us?’

‘No. Only the baby. I hope you’ve got warm hands.’

It didn’t take long to get to the hospital after that.

The taxi driver had most likely been wondering if the baby’s father was coming. It wasn’t Adam who was on her mind then but her mum. Clare missed her so much. The sound of her voice, the irreverent cackle of her laughter, the way she made up silly songs about nothing. She missed the way Mum made everything fun. She missed ringing her up on the way home from work to tell her the funny stories of the day. The little things that made her her, like the way her two front teeth overlapped ever so slightly so that she never passed a mirror without checking she didn’t have something stuck in them and how she hated her second toes for being longer than her big toes. But, most of all, in that moment, Clare missed her mum’s hand in hers on the most wonderful, most scary night of her life.

It had been the following afternoon before Ivy had deigned to put in an appearance. A full day and a half since Clare had had her first contraction. There’d been no one to brush Clare’s hair off her sweaty forehead and whisper to her that she was doing brilliantly.

Instead, her daughter’s welcome party consisted of Clare and a room full of strangers. No worries, Clare had told herself. She was all the baby needed, she’d love her enough for a whole army of relatives.

‘I’m sorry it’s just me. Sorry there’s no man to cry tears of joy and promise that you’ll always be daddy’s girl,’ Clare had whispered into the soft whorl of her tiny ear. Her lips were cracked after thirty-six hours in labour and they felt rough on the sweet skin of Ivy’s cheek. ‘But maybe it’s better that way. You can’t miss what you’ve never had.’

Now Clare held on to her broken arm, swung her legs down off the bed and walked to the window. Everywhere throbbed: her head, her shoulder, even her knee was bruised from the fall.