‘There’s gratitude for you,’ Cathy said, brushing her hair away from her face as her breathing slowed again.
To her complete and utter shock, Tansy smiled. Not the usual mocking smile, but a warm and genuine one.
‘You’re pathetic,’ she said.
Cathy gave her a quick grin. ‘Don’t you think I know that? I hate that I’m so scared of something so daft.’
Tansy shrugged. ‘You’re scared of what you’re scared of.’
‘What are you scared of?’
‘Lots of things.’
‘Listen…’ Cathy said, serious now. ‘I’m sorry about before. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.’
‘I ruined your book.’
‘It’s just a book – not even a good one. I can write it again; it doesn’t matter.’
‘It won’t all be ruined, will it?’
Cathy shook her head. ‘I’m sure it won’t be.’
‘So you might only have to write a bit.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll bet Iris will let you have her photocopy.’
‘Not every recipe is in there but I think I could get most of them again.’
Tansy was silent for a moment, her gaze on the horse now further up the field. ‘Has Matt seen it?’
Cathy nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Was he mad?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You have to be kind to him, you know.’
‘I hope I am being.’
‘Sidonie wasn’t.’
‘I heard that.’
‘She didn’t even care after the overdose.’
Cathy looked sharply at her now. ‘Overdose?’ she repeated, suddenly feeling dazed.
Tansy turned to her. ‘You didn’t know about that then.’
‘Your uncle?’
Tansy nodded. ‘We found him; me and Erica. She says it was just a cry for help, but I don’t know. I think he wanted to die.’
‘What happened?’
‘He went to hospital and then we had to look after him. I mean, we had to make sure he didn’t get lonely.’
‘When was this?’
‘When he first came back to England after Sidonie dumped him.’
Cathy quickly ran through what she knew. So that would have been about two years ago?
‘When you say “we”… was that your mum too?’
‘At first. But then she got with Shane. She said he was alright anyway and he probably wouldn’t do it again. That’s when he started going on dates with people, but we all knew none of them were right for him.’
‘Tansy…’ Cathy began slowly. ‘I can’t tell you if I’m right for him or not, but I can tell you that I really like him and I would never willingly hurt him. As for being lonely, I know exactly how that feels so I understand how to help him with that. I don’t want to come and mess up your family; I just want to be a friend to you all.’
‘All of us?’ Tansy said, a note of scepticism creeping into her voice, the shadow of that old challenging expression again.
‘All of you,’ Cathy said. ‘If you’ll let me.’
Tansy nodded. She glanced up the path. ‘We should go back.’
‘Your uncle’s probably on his way down here,’ Cathy said. ‘He told me he’d give me ten minutes and then follow.’
‘Is he bringing Guin?’
‘I don’t know. I expect he will.’
‘I love Guin.’
‘You love all animals, don’t you?’
‘Yeah. Makes me angry when people are mean to them. They can’t help being what they are.’
True, Cathy thought. You could probably apply that to a lot of people too. She felt that she might just be looking at one of them right now.
Matthias did have Guin with him and seemed pleased but very surprised to find Cathy and Tansy having a calm and civil conversation as they walked the path. He smiled warmly at them both but, as Cathy smiled back, it was tinged with sadness too. He’d hidden so much pain from her and it made her sad that he’d felt he’d had to. She could understand to some extent why he hadn’t told her what the split from Sidonie had done to him but she wished he’d been able to. What did that say about their relationship? Did it mean he didn’t feel as close to her as she did to him? That he didn’t trust her as she did him? It was early days, of course, and it might have been no more than that, and she hoped so. Perhaps it was just too painful to talk about and Cathy understood that too, but she wanted to be there for him and she wanted him to know that. She glanced at Tansy, walking at her side. They’d finally made their breakthrough, but if she repeated what she felt Tansy had told her in confidence she might undo all that hard work.
So what did she do? Did she tell Matthias that she knew or not? Or did she wait and hope that he’d feel able to open up to her?
Thirty
Cathy and Tansy had managed to make their carrot cake. Cathy had put out the ingredients from memory and Tansy had followed her verbal instructions to combine them. Eventually the book had dried out enough to look through and, though they’d lost a few pages to the tea deluge, some of the pages were still intact and legible. While Cathy was fast learning that Tansy was never going to be the life and soul of any party, they at least had got along for the remainder of the day, and Cathy felt they’d finally reached a new understanding. Matthias had been pleased to see it and never once betrayed that he’d ever been anything but perfectly content with his life.
This morning, Cathy was back at work. For the first time she’d really noticed how bright and festive the town was as she’d walked through to the market. Every shop front was adorned with fairy lights or tinsel or fake snow or some other Christmassy motif, strings of lightbulbs stretched across every road, and Linnetford Rotary Club had their Santa out, collecting donations for various charities and entertaining the children. At the entrance to the market building a choir of local schoolchildren were gathered and singing uptempo Christmas songs in that adorably tuneless way that only school choirs did, bundled in scarves and hats and coats that still had growing room, breath rising as tiny clouds on the frosty air.
Linnetford was a small town by most comparisons, and even though they usually only managed a handful of visiting Christmas stalls, today the smallness of their number was more than made up for in the power of the aromas issuing from them. It was early, but already Cathy could smell roasting nuts and sugary pastries and the smoky scent of the charcoal as it fired up to cook bratwurst and burgers. And the town was buzzing with shoppers, the early birds eager to finish their gift lists and the more chilled finally prompted by the imminent arrival of the big day to get started on theirs.
Cathy and Fleur had a busy morning dealing with all these extra people, meaning Cathy barely had time to share recent events with Fleur. But when lunchtime came Cathy grabbed a sandwich and found a quiet spot on the stall to eat rather than go out, making the most of the odd lull to catch up with her boss.
‘So where’s this girl’s friends?’ Fleur said, leaning against the counter as she watched Cathy pull apart her sandwich to inspect the filling. ‘Doesn’t she have any of her own age?’