‘Surely Audrey knows it’s not all real life. It’s like social media only showing the good parts.’ His velvety brown eyes were full of understanding. ‘Veronica said your ex has remarried.’
She wasn’t sure whether knowing that her mum talked about her and Simon to Charlie was a good thing or not. ‘He married the woman he left me for.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I’m not. I rushed into getting married when I shouldn’t have, but I won’t ever regret it: I got Audrey.’
‘True.’ And there was that reassuring smile again, the one she could look at a thousand times or more and still not have had enough. ‘He has two more kids now,’ Sam added.
‘How does Audrey feel about her half-siblings?’
‘She doesn’t know them.’ Yet. But she’d be a part of their family if she went through with the idea of moving to the other side of the world. And although Sam hadn’t meant it to happen, her bottom lip trembled, she bit down on it but all it did was allow a tear to snake its way down and when Charlie covered her hand with his, she bolted across the café, Clare staring after her, and she hid in the kitchen.
Monty, short and with a shaved head that made him look more of a brute than he was, didn’t say much apart from ‘Excuse me’ when he needed to get out to the floor and give a plate of scrambled eggs on toast to a customer at table five.
‘Stop hiding,’ he told her when he came back. He hooked an arm around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. ‘Clare needs help out there.’
Pulling herself together, she went out to find a next-to-empty café apart from the customer with scrambled eggs and of course, Charlie, waiting patiently. She noticed he had another cup of coffee in front of him.
‘There’s an extra cup over there for you,’ Clare whispered as she floated by.
Sam should’ve known she’d never get away with walking off without explanation so she went over to join Charlie and nodded when he asked whether she was OK. The table they were sitting at was by the window, looking out at crisp brown leaves skittering past, the tree that had shed them destined to be bare in a few short weeks.
‘Kids are hard,’ he began, ‘whatever age they are. I remember shutting myself in the utility room when Layla was two and acting up. I covered my ears and everything. I may have even hummed a tune so I really couldn’t hear her.’
Sam’s smile didn’t last. ‘I don’t know what to do anymore.’
‘I don’t have many pearls of wisdom apart from telling you to hang in there.’
‘I wish I had a magic wand to wave and make everything all right.’
‘May I suggest we don’t talk about Audrey for a moment,’ said Charlie. ‘What about you?’
‘What do you mean what about me?’
‘As parents we are often guilty of focusing on our kids and forgetting everything else, but we need to be happy too.’
‘My happiness seems way, way down on the agenda.’
‘Well, it shouldn’t be. You’ve moved to Mapleberry, you’re working in a café which, judging by what I know, isn’t your first choice of career. Management, am I right?’
‘Sort of,’ Sam smiled. She toyed with the handle of the coffee cup and recapped where her career had taken her over the years. ‘Management was where I ended up, at the top of the ladder I’d tried to climb for a while. I had some control, prospects, more money, security. It’s what I was always told to work for.’
‘By your mum?’
‘Actually no, more my dad. Mum never said much. She’d kind of gone by then…not in a physical sense.’ She shrugged, awkward saying this out loud. ‘But emotionally she was out of reach so it was Dad’s advice I got, his support.’
‘And he approved of the path you took?’
‘My dad died when I was seventeen.’
He ran a hand through hair that was long enough on top that it didn’t settle exactly the same as before, and if it were possible, looked even more handsome in the low autumn light filtering in through the window. ‘I’m sorry, it’s rough, I know. I was older when I lost my parents, but whatever age you are, it sucks.’
‘It does suck.’ They exchanged a grin at their youthful phrasing. ‘Layla seems to cope remarkably well without her mum around. Sorry, tell me to be quiet if you don’t want to talk about it.’
‘No, fair’s fair, you’re telling me all your secrets,’ he grinned. ‘It hasn’t all been plain sailing; sometimes Layla misses her incredibly and I don’t know what to do. It’s why Veronica has been such a blessing, and Audrey turning up too. Layla has had very few female figures in her life and I know she needs them.’
‘Tell me about your wife.’
And so he did. Charlie talked about how they’d met at the hospital where she was a nurse, how they’d dated for a couple of years before he plucked up the courage to ask her to marry him, about their wedding reception that hadn’t had a band but a pianist.
Layla wanting to learn to play and coming over to practise so often made perfect sense to Sam now.
‘Amanda loved the piano,’ he said wistfully. ‘Other music was never an option.’
‘Did she play?’
He smiled. ‘She did, and she was pretty good. She had a go on the wedding day as well, everyone cheering her on as she sat there in a white gown at the ebony grand piano in the corner of the room.’ Sam didn’t miss the tear in his eye. ‘I have some of her music recorded, Layla listens to it often – it’s a way of keeping her memory alive, I suppose.’
‘You’re an amazing dad.’
‘And you’re a good mum – you’re just having a hard time.’
‘Single parenting is tough.’ When he nodded, she told him, ‘My dad was always the strong one; he seemed to keep us all together.’
‘You must
