PROLOGUE
February
This, thought Pete Moore, was what most people presumed being a firefighter consisted of day in, day out. The high-octane thrill of hurtling towards a disaster to save lives, breathing apparatus and high-vis jacket at the ready, adrenaline thundering through one’s veins, heart quickening more with every turn of the fire engine’s wheels. They were wrong. But it was what they were trained for in case it was day in, day out. Tonight, it was the full fantasy adventure shebang: ambulances, paramedics, police deployed, both fire engines from their station plus two from the next nearest, sirens, blue lights. It was a bad one, Andy the gaffer warned them as the information fed through to the onboard computer. A ten-vehicle pile-up on a notorious blackspot stretch of a dual carriageway south of town. It was dark, it was February, black ice, sleet, cold, roadworks: all the ingredients present for a perfect recipe crash. Someone who set off for work that morning with a cheery ‘See you later’ would not be going home ever again. Pete used to chew on the emotional details of bad incidents, but somewhere along the line, he stopped. He didn’t set out to mentally detach himself, it just happened. He did his job to the best of his ability and he was good at it: strong, fearless, insightful, tenacious; but he left it at the door with his boots.
He shouldn’t have even been there that night. He was covering a couple of hours for Rav whose dad had had a fall. He should have been at home, shoes kicked off, fire on, dinner in the oven – whoever was first in made the evening meal was the unwritten rule, although he was a much better cook than his wife was and so he tended to do more than his fair share of that particular duty. He should have been looking out of the window at the sleet, grateful to be dry and indoors and intrigued about what the night would hold for him as he twisted the top off a bottle of red and poured out two glasses to let them breathe and air.
Looking back, he wasn’t sure what would have been worse: waiting in the cosy warmth of the kitchen, getting slightly annoyed that the top of his shepherd’s pie was overbrown, the peaks blackening, wondering where Tara was after she’d rung and asked him to go straight home after his shift because she had something she wanted to tell him; looking at the clock, getting anxious. Or being there in the thick of it all: the smoke, the bitter hard rain turning into snow, the lights, the noise, the chaos. Being part of the scene, seeing it all first hand. Registering the red car in the middle of all that crushed, mangled dark metal, like the one coloured frame in an otherwise black and white movie. Krish Khatri madly wrenching glass away, Sal crunching determinedly with the cutters, the paramedic pushing in through the driver’s side window at a weird, uncomfortable angle in order to get to the driver.
Pete remembered screaming, ‘Jesus Christ, it’s Tara.’ He remembered big Andy Burlap’s arms closing around him. He remembered holding his wife’s tiny, beloved hand, chill to the touch, desperately trying to rub warmth into it, a warmth it could not sustain because Tara, who had set off for work that morning with a cheery, ‘See you later’, would not be going home ever again.
SOUTH
I quote my practised answer
My face a perfect mask
I’m doing good, I’m fine
How very kind of you to ask
I stumble and exist
And I pretend that things aren’t hard
While my compass spins and spits
Behind a stoical façade
My life is plunging south
Yet I smile, make you believe
That I’m waving, and not drowning
In this lake of acid grief
LIFE GONE SOUTH
LINDA FLOWERS
Chapter 1
Late August
For a couple of hours every Wednesday evening, this lovely room was Molly Jones-Hoyland’s kingdom. She’d originally planned to hold her Molly’s Club sessions in her home, but then her friend Leni had suggested she use her teashop. After all, there was plenty of parking nearby, comfortable seating inside, and more than enough tea and cake to accompany the sympathy. Plus it had the atmosphere, for the teashop had a welcoming, soothing ambience perfectly suited to people who were feeling disorientated, adrift. Indeed, the little ‘Teashop on the Corner’ had drawn Molly in like a magnet years ago and she had found not only friendship there but a true purpose. Opening the door to it had heralded the opening of a door into another life, a bigger life than the one she had been living up to that point. There was magic within its walls, she was convinced of it. The teashop might have been a newly built property put up on the site of a demolished wire factory but she had long suspected that beneath it, ancient and benign ley lines ran, because there had to be some explanation why anyone who stepped inside felt instantly calmed, relaxed, at home.
Molly was in her mid-seventies but she still had a lot of energy for her pet project: to help people through grief, to see them through their loss, their anger, their bewilderment, help them to reach acceptance just by bringing them into a safe arena where they could talk, and share their experiences. She had no formal qualification in grief counselling, though she’d known much sadness and loss in her own life, but she had personally gained so much from friendship and, above all, kindness that she felt duty bound to pay it forward. It had healed her and given her hope when she had felt none, when on her horizon were only clouds and not a peep of sunshine. It had made her see herself – and made others see her – as a strong woman behind her gentle façade. Molly emanated a tranquillity that people responded to and they opened up like flowers to her, spread their leaves as if she were a welcome of warm rain.
There were never more than six ‘guests’, as she referred to them, in her sessions; she’d found that a small group worked best, five being the optimum number for some strange reason. If Molly could help people to locate the pinprick of light in their black pit of despair, she knew she could show them that the sun still rose in the east and she could guide them towards the dawn of a new happier existence. Every life gone south could be fixed, every compass could be recalibrated to point upwards to a north of hope.
The teashop really was a special place. Here, Molly and her circle of friends – some young, some old and all ages in between – had had many a discussion over literary works, inspired by all the wonderful book-related goods that filled the cabinets around the room. She had learned as much as taught and it had given her jaded heart a new lease of life. One of her new-found friends was a retired surgeon, a widowed Sikh gentleman who had become as close to Molly as it was possible to be without overstepping the boundary into something closer still. Friendship was enough for both of them. In Molly’s Wednesday night ‘Molly’s Club’ sessions, Pavitar Singh acted as barista. He donated his time and services for the price of refreshment and considered himself more than reimbursed.
‘I’m expecting new faces tonight, Pavitar. A Miss Laurie De Vere and a Mr Peter Moore,’ Molly called to him. Their names had reflected them well, Molly thought when they had spoken on the phone. Laurie, gentle and cultured: Pete, solid and no nonsense. She was looking forward to helping them; they were so young to be going through what they were.
‘Good, good,’ said Pavitar, checking his watch. He knew as well as Molly that the new people were often late. They had to build up their confidence to walk through the door, but they usually did so eventually, give or take a couple of false starts. Ringing up Molly and asking if it was possible to join the group was the biggest hurdle.