AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The following morning Beth was still struggling to stop her incessant smiling when her phone rang.
“You sound far too happy,” Dee said when Beth greeted her. “What’s going on?”
She stretched her legs out in the sun, causing a couple of friendly sparrows to hop out of the way and continue pecking around at the edge of the patio. “What’s not to be happy about? I have the sun on my face and a coffee in my hand. My child is having the time of her life splashing around in a paddling pool. The sky’s the brightest blue you’ve ever seen; the sea is calm and turquoise and beautiful. There are palm trees, and birds so tame they’ll eat from my hand. I can hear gulls squawking and waves rolling onto the shore …”
“All right! I get the picture. No need to rub it in. It’s grey and windy here.”
“I’m keeping all the sun for myself.”
“What the hell is going on with you, Little Miss Sunshine? Why were you sending me messages in the middle of the night telling me how great your life is? I’d been worried you were going to be miserable all day.”
“There were a few moments of misery,” she admitted, remembering how she’d sobbed in the ladies’ bathrooms at the restaurant. “But overall I had a fantastic birthday. And one o’clock is hardly the middle of the night.”
“Since when? You’re a single mother in your thirties – of course one o’clock is the middle of the night. Oh, sorry. You’re in your forties now. Did your circadian clock reset for your birthday? Because that’s not something I’d look forward to. I like my ten o’clock bedtime.”
Beth beamed. “What if you had something really fun to do after ten o’clock?”
“What’s better than sleeping?” Silence fell for a moment, before the penny dropped and she shrieked down the phone. “You were having sex? Who with? Where? What the hell? Start talking!”
“It was all so random.” Beth had her gaze fixed on Ellie who was happily hopping in and out of the paddling pool. “Ellie blurted out it was my birthday to Mirren—”
“The woman you’re staying with?”
“Yes. She insisted on looking after Ellie while her son took me out for dinner. We went to this lovely restaurant in the castle.”
“Sounds fancy.”
“It was perfect. At least until I started talking about Mum and ended up a blubbering wreck.”
“Oh, dear.” Dee sighed heavily.
“It was pretty embarrassing, but Trystan was lovely. He lost his dad a couple of years ago and he was so understanding and sweet.”
“Interesting chat-up technique!”
“It wasn’t like that. If anything it was me who came onto him. I couldn’t help myself. We just clicked. And he’s bloody gorgeous.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Why do you sound as though you don’t believe me?”
“I just wonder if you’ve hit forty and your standards have dropped.”
“No.” She laughed. “My standards are through the roof after last night.”
“This really doesn’t sound like you,” Dee said, amused.
“It’s not. Maybe my forties are going to be full of fabulous one-night stands.”
“As opposed to your thirties which were full of dull and dreary one-night stands?”
“I’ve never had a one-night stand before,” she protested.
“Um … what about Ellie’s teacher?”
“He wasn’t Ellie’s teacher! He was a teacher at Ellie’s school. There’s a big difference. And I didn’t have a one-night stand with him, I was dating him. I only slept with him once because it was awful. That’s not a one-night stand.”
“So last night was a one-time thing?”
