Falling for you

‘No choice.’

‘I would never have told Marcella, you know.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. It’s my own fault. When you asked me not to say anything, I shouldn’t have let you think I might.’ Kate paused. ‘Are you feeling as bad as you look?’

Maddy’s bottom lip began to tremble. ‘Worse. Damn, I don’t make a habit of blubbing all over the place ... oh, thanks.’ She reached blindly for a tissue from the box Kate was holding in front of her. ‘I just can’t believe my bad luck. Years and years of being ugly and boys taking the mickey out of me, then getting less scary and going out but never finding the right chap, then finally finding someone and really falling in love for the f-first time ... and I can’t have him. It’s not allowed. I don’t know, it j just doesn’t seem fair somehow .. . oh bugger, can I have another tissue?’

‘Here,’ said Kate, ‘better keep the box.’

Chapter 32

An hour later they headed together down Gypsy Lane. It was seven o’clock, time for Kate to begin her evening shift at the Angel. Dressed in a geranium-red sleeveless shift dress and high heels, with her face now carefully made up for the benefit of the punters, Kate was looking tall, glamorous and – from this angle – flawless. Next to her, moping along in her frayed denim jacket, old jeans and flat yellow sandals, Maddy felt inferior all over again.

‘Well, this is weird.’

‘Us, you mean?’ Kate turned her head and smiled, revealing her scarred side. ‘Actually speaking to each other again?’

‘And all thanks to Kerr.’ Maddy pulled out her dark glasses as they approached Main Street, acutely aware that her eyes were bulging like a bullfrog’s. ‘So he came in useful after all, that’s good news. I’m sure he’d be pleased.’

‘I’m pleased,’ said Kate. ‘It’s not been much fun being back here in the village, knowing nobody liked me.’

‘Not nobody.’ Maddy shook her head. ‘Jake didn’t care how I felt. He liked you straight away.’

‘Really?’ Flushing with pleasure, Kate said, ‘But I was so prickly with him.’

‘Oh well, that’s Jake for you. Always up for a challenge.’

And thank goodness he had been. Smiling to herself, Kate felt her heart begin to quicken at the memory of their time in bed together this afternoon – and the thought of the next time, tomorrow with any luck. She couldn’t wait for a repeat performance.

‘Coming in for a drink?’

Maddy glanced across the road at the pub, then shook her head. ‘Not tonight. Hey, did you ever see this?’

Kate turned; Maddy was making her way over to the old bench next to the bus stop. Following her, she watched as Maddy searched the wooden slats for a moment before finding what she was looking for.

‘Here we are.’

Peering down to where Maddy was pointing, Kate saw the words gouged into the wood amongst the mass of graffiti carved over the years.

‘Kate T-T is a cow,’ Kate read aloud.

‘I can remember exactly when I did it,’ said Maddy. ‘September. We’d just started back at school after the summer holidays and I was here one morning waiting for the bus. Then you sauntered past with one of your posh friends, on your way to the shop. Bear in mind that you were both wearing stretchy halter-neck tops and tiny skirts, while I was in my six-sizes-too-big maroon school uniform. And you turned to your friend and said, 'God, back to school already, who’d be a pleb?

‘I remember that!’ Kate nodded energetically. ‘We still had another ten days of holiday; we fl—’

‘It’s OK,’ said Maddy when Kate stopped abruptly, ‘you can say it. You flew down to the south of France and spent a week on your friend’s dad’s yacht.’ Drily she added, ‘You boasted about it when you got back.’

‘You’re right, I was a cow.’ Kate marvelled that the wonkily carved accusation had been on show all these years, clearly visible to anyone who’d ever sat on this bench waitingfor the bus. Never having caught a bus in her life, she would not have known it was here. ‘What are you doing?’ she exclaimed as Maddy took her Swiss Army knife keyring out of her bag and began energetically digging away at the bench.

‘Changing it. Bringing it up to date.’ Working at speed with the sharp blade, Maddy brushed away the loosened paint flakes and sat back to show Kate the finished job. Instead of Kate T-T is a cow, it now said Kate T-T was a cow.

They gazed at each other in silence for several seconds, then simultaneously burst out laughing.

‘Absolutely disgraceful,’ a male voice barked behind them. Turning, Maddy and Kate saw a couple of middle-aged rambler types in matching baggy khaki shorts and Save the Countryside Tshirts.

‘I know,’ said Kate, ‘it’s outrageous.’

Infuriated, the male rambler boomed, ‘Defacing public property, wanton vandalism. You should be ashamed of yourselves.’

‘I am,’ Kate told the man who was by this time puce in the face, ‘but I’m feeling better now.

Anyway, it isn’t vandalism,’ she added with a sweet smile. ‘It’s local history.’

Fantasy time.

After the best night’s sleep she could remember, Kate was lying in the bath with bubbles up to her ears and a blissful grin on her face that wouldn’t go away. What a magical day yesterday had turned out to be. What a day today would hopefully turn out to be – heavens, from now on anything could happen.

Closing her eyes to make visualising it easier, Kate conjured up a Christmassy picture not dissimilar to the final moments of It’s A Wonderful Life. There was Jake with one arm round her and the other