She could hear her mother’s clipped English accent over Adele’s honeyed voice. ‘Do your best, Sophie. Get up early. Stay up late. Work those weekends and holidays. Show everyone that you’re somebody. Show them. Show them all. Don’t let anyone stand in your way or distract you. Don’t make my mistake, Sophie. Don’t regret the person you could have been.’
Oh, she’d been a good student. She’d worked hard and now had everything she’d ever wanted – an imminent partnership at an international architectural firm in New York, a gorgeous rent-controlled apartment in Gramercy Park, a pension plan, designer clothes, money in the bank. No plants, pets, partners or children to distract her. It was better not to get too attached to living things. They only ended up leaving. Or dying. First her father, George, over twenty years ago of a heart attack as he inspected the Cherry Cobblers production line at Mcklintock’s, then Dottie back in 2000. Lung cancer. Cigarettes will get you every time.
It was okay. She was okay. She didn’t need anyone.
Sophie hadn’t even known her aunt Ellie existed until she’d opened an envelope addressed to The Parry Family one Christmas back in the late 70s. The card had a cartoon moose surrounded by tinsel-strewn Christmas trees on the front. Inside, in a fine, confident hand: To all of you at Christmas, from your loving sister and aunt, Ellie. She’d copied the address into the small green leather address book her father had given her for her fifteenth birthday. Then she’d placed the Christmas card beside the mahogany clock on the black marble mantelpiece, with the ones from her father’s colleagues at Mcklintock’s Chocolates, and the ones from the Women’s Institute and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital Auxiliary. It was gone the next day.
Sophie shakes her head to jolt away the image that threatens to materialise again in the blackness behind her eyelids. She can’t let him into her head. His brown eyes, quizzical and teasing. Her mother had been right. Men only confuse you. Best to keep them at arm’s length. At least the ones who could matter. The ones like Sam.
Maybe that’s why her mother had married George Parry. Because he never really mattered to her. She didn’t do much to hide that fact. Poor Daddy was a means to an end. A means for her mother to become top of the social elite of Norwich.
George did everything he could to make Dottie happy. Join the Lions Club. Tick. Suck up to the owner of Mcklintock’s Chocolates. Tick. Become a patron of the Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra. Tick. Buy bigger, more expensive houses in better neighbourhoods as he worked his way up to managing director of Mcklintock’s. Tick. Tick. Tick. But her mother was never a happy woman. Sophie had grown up in Norwich in a beautiful house heavy with unspoken words. She’d escaped to university in London as soon as she turned eighteen, Frank Lloyd Wright’s The Natural House and a sketchbook under her arm. It’d been a relief. Like throwing off a thick wool coat in an overheated room. She’d never get married. Ever.
Sophie opens her eyes and examines her hands, moving her fingers the way she’d been taught at the Sign Language Centre. ‘Hello, Becca. How are you?’ Becca must be eighteen now. Sophie didn’t really know what had prompted her to learn sign language, when she’d never intended to go back to Newfoundland. She’d been curious, she supposed. And it was something else to put on her CV. Chances were Becca and Sam didn’t even live in Tippy’s Tickle anymore. People move on. It will be better if they’ve moved on.
Sophie loosens her seatbelt and rubs at the stiffness in her neck. She’d meant to keep in touch with her aunt. But after posting out the first couple of Christmas cards, bought in a hurry at Browne’s between client meetings, time just got away from her, even as Ellie’s annual Christmas and birthday cards, full of the chatty goings-on of Tippy’s Tickle, sat on Sophie’s mantelpiece like a reproach, until they’d end up in the ‘To Do’ pile on her desk, begging for a response that she’d never get around to writing.
She’d thought of Sam often, at first, and an ache would form that would roll into a ball and sit in her stomach like an anchor. He’d left messages, which she hadn’t returned, even though her heart had buzzed with pleasure when she’d found his messages on her phone. She’d meant to call, to text at the very least. She’d stood in the kitchen of her apartment with her finger hovering over the numbers on her mobile phone at least a half dozen times. But, she hadn’t called him. Or texted him. She’d wanted to so much. But, it would never work. He knew that. He’d said as much himself the last time she’d seen him. That had hurt. Especially after … No. She wasn’t going to let herself be hurt.
She shakes her head, catching a sideways glance from the over-tanned Florida retiree beside her as she grabs for an earbud that pops out of her ear. Bloody Sam. What is he doing in her head like this?
Sophie turns off the music and stares out the window at the sky. They say time heals all wounds, but they’re wrong. Time buries all wounds. Dig them out, and the wounds still bleed. Better to keep them buried. The words from a pop song spring into her mind. Absolutely no regrets. She has absolutely no regrets. There’d been a crazy moment when the idea of living an artist’s life on the north coast of Newfoundland with a widowed lover and his deaf daughter, not to mention that ridiculous beast of a dog, had brought her up short on the path that had always been so clear and straight. Then Sam had rejected her. The phone messages he’d left her in New York couldn’t erase that fact. If he’d
