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She slammed the door behind her, stomped down the lane and onto the High Street not really knowing which way to turn after that. She just needed to burn off some of the awful energy filling her limbs with bitter toxicity.How dare he, how really really dare he?She could feel her eyes begin to sting and then blur. What a mess, what a nasty, vile mess she was in the middle of. And what was she even doing in Millspring and why? She’d come here without any proper plan, expecting the past to roll out a red carpet and allowher to shift around pieces that would somehow make everything all right again. What sort of fool was she? She’d just transplanted all her sorrows from the city to a village, without anything changing for the better so far; in fact it had just gotten worse.
She was marching like a sergeant-major toy stuffed with fresh batteries until she spotted someone looking at her in a strange way as she passed them. She slowed her pace, took a breath and found herself level with the Bees n Cheese tea room. Good idea. She’d take ten minutes out, ram a piece of cake in her gob and an industrial-strength camomile tea. She walked in, heard a tinkly bell above the door announce her arrival and a young woman behind the counter smiled a hello.
The air of the tea room was like a salve. String music at low volume was being piped through speakers and there was a gorgeous aroma of honey wafting from lit scented candles. She took a seat in the back corner, picked up the bee-covered menu. It didn’t matter what she chose, she’d be too angry and upset to taste it anyway.
A minute or two passed; the waitress gauged she’d left enough time to take the order.
‘Just a coffee, please,’ Shay answered, changing her mind about the tea.
‘Americano?’
‘Lovely, thank you. White.’
‘Anything to eat?’
‘A slice of banana drizzle, please. A very small one.’
She put down the menu, took in her surroundings. Someone had taken real care over this place, evident in the arty touches: the tiny bees painted on the lemon walls, the sugar bowls on the table in the shape of honeypots, thewedge-of-cheese graphics on the serviettes. She imagined herself and Denny walking past, glancing through the window at the ‘old people’ inside taking tea. He pale and lanky, anxious for the fine down on his face to turn into something more manly. His eyes grey-blue, bright, skin like cream – unravaged by teenage spots, unlike everyone else’s at that age; his lips full, pink, unkissed. The thought that he had died unkissed had crippled her through the years. He had deserved to be kissed and loved and she wished she could have felt for him what she knew he felt for her. How much simpler life would be if we could turn on and off our feelings at will, she thought. Emotion was a double-edged sword.
Her cake arrived and if that was a small slice, she’d have hated to see a big one. It had fluffy cream cheese icing on the top and a sweet banana sauce drizzled over it. Her coffee came with two button-sized honey biscuits balanced on the saucer. The food and drink served no purpose other than something to swallow while she gathered her thoughts and tried to put them into some order, but it was delicious all the same.
How dare Bruce divorce her for unreasonable behaviour. There were a million and one reasons why she should divorce him. For a start, for not even telling her he was thinking about a divorce. The last she’d heard from him had been to say that he was basically doing them both a favour by initiating a temporary break. She seemed to remember he’d thrown in an ‘I love you’ as well. As for not doing her fair share of jobs around the house – he was right on that front; she’d been lumbered with a totallyunfairshare of them. Somehow they’d slipped into being characters in the Ladybird Book of Male and Female Stereotypes wherehe did the garden, i.e. mowing the lawn once a fortnight which took half an hour, with the occasional bit of weeding, and any heavy-duty DIY which involved a power tool. She did everything else which, according to what he must have told his solicitor, was to serve up Pot Noodles and wash some socks.
No, she didn’t parade that she’d defrosted the fridge the way he shouted from the rooftops if he’d stopped a door squeaking. She didn’t highlight every stain she’d got out of shirts and carpets, the pizzas she’d made from scratch, the windows she’d washed, the buttons she’d stitched on, the fancy dress costumes she’d stayed up until the wee small hours making, the homework she’d helped the kids with… How had she ended up being loaded with more baggage than a Buckaroo horse with a broken spring?
And if, in the early days, she’d been really proud to put a dinner down on the table in front of him when he came home from work, why hadn’t he been equally proud to hang out the washing for her? As for ‘being insensitive to his needs’, what did that even mean? Accidentally treading on an eggshell by saying hello, when he had a face on him like an owl with haemorrhoids? Wanting to have sex with a husband who was trying to stay faithful to his mistress? How dare he, how DARE he?
She was vaguely aware of the waitress taking another order to a newly arrived couple in the window and a plump woman walking out of the back room behind the counter and heading in her direction, most likely to ask the standard ‘Is everything all right for you?’ question. But the woman didn’t, she said a very tentative, ‘Excuse me, are you Shay Corrigan?’
Shay felt a cold wash of dread fall over her as if it hadbeen tipped out of a bucket at height. She raised her eyes to the woman but she didn’t recognise her. She opened her mouth to issue a denial but had left too long a pause. The brief silence had given the woman her answer. She pulled out the chair at the other side of the table and said with a smile: ‘Shay Corrigan. I’ve been waiting twenty-nine years to see you again.’
Chapter 29
‘You don’t know me, do you?’ the woman asked, nervous smile on her lips.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ Shay replied. There was something slightly familiar about her eyes but not enough to identify her outright. Shay’s brain flicked through all the friends she’d known at school, searching for a match, but nothing came.
‘I knew it was you. I saw you passing the window the other day and I nearly dropped my tray. By the time I’d got to the door I couldn’t see you anywhere, but Iknew.’ The woman was grinning as much as if she’d just laid eyes on a film star.
Slightly awkward, thought Shay. ‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘If I tell you, promise you won’t get up and walk out,’ the woman went on, before dragging in a fortifying breath. ‘Terri. Theresa, as I was back then. Briggs.’ She held the flat of her palms out as if surrendering. ‘Can I get you a fresh coffee? I’d love to talk to you for five minutes.’
Shay couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to. She would never have guessed this homely, plump woman with the neat blonde bob and the friendly face was the same lean,mean Theresa Briggs with her angry scowl and scrub of auburn hair.
‘Chloe, can you bring us two honey coffees, please,’ said Theresa – Terri, as she said she was now – calling behind her to the young waitress. She was wearing the widest smile her lips were able to stretch to when she turned back to Shay. ‘You can’t know how much I hoped I’d bump into you over the years. And here you are.’ She reached over the table, grabbed Shay’s hands and gave them a squeeze of excitement. ‘Are you up here visiting?’
‘I… I’ve just got a bit of business in the area.’
‘Oh Shay, it is so lovely to see you. I’ve had an apology sitting in my heart for you so long it’s taken root and grown a tree,’ Terri said, smile still burning.
‘Have you?’
‘Oh yes, I really have,’ replied Terri. ‘All those rotten names I flung at you at school. I was a proper piece of work back then. I hope I’m not any more.’ She laughed.
Shay shrugged. ‘It’s a long time ago. I can’t really remember.’
‘Well I do.’ Terri stood up. ‘Let me just give her a hand with these coffees. Please don’t go anywhere. Have five minutes with me, that’s all I ask.’
