Cover

Dedication

For my family

Here or gone

Near or far

In my heart

Is where you are

Chapter One

‘So, while I battled round Tesco for the food shopping you went to the craft shop and bought baubles and bits of wire … and a Santa suit?’ Laurel demanded of her fourteen-year-old niece Daisy as they drove the winding road home to Middledip. Her windscreen wipers swished away tiny flakes of snow in the fast darkening afternoon.

Daisy giggled. ‘I know it’s mid-November but I have to start making Christmas wreaths. I can’t make the compostable ones yet or they’ll fall apart by Christmas Day, but I can make the ones that are all baubles and plastic holly. The Santa suit’s for the Year Seven Christmas party I’m helping with at school. It’s only five weeks till the end of term.’

‘I suppose school Christmas events will be starting,’ Laurel acknowledged. ‘Whoa, holy crap!’ She stamped on the brakes as a man loomed out of the snowy dusk and jumped in front of her car, signalling wildly.

‘Where’d he come from?’ Daisy gasped as the SUV fish-tailed and shopping bags slithered noisily off the back seat.

‘There’s a car on the verge. Maybe he’s broken down. Don’t open your window,’ Laurel added hastily.

‘There’s another man with the car.’ Daisy peered through the glass, squinting from beneath her dark, curly fringe. She giggled. ‘That’s weird. He’s holding the car door handle and wearing a coat around his bum. He’s got bare legs and socks without shoes.’

‘That is weird.’ Laurel chewed her lip as she took in the bizarre scene. Should she drive off? They were still three miles from Middledip, on a quiet road with the only illumination coming from her headlights. Visions of car-jackings flashed through her mind. She had a teenage girl in her car.

Then the man who’d leaped out in front of them ran up and knocked on her window. Laurel jumped, as she recognised him.

Grady Cassidy.

Though she was aware Grady still lived in Middledip – because Daisy was buddies with him and his nephew Niall – he’d once occupied a special place in her teenage heart and his sudden appearance was a shock.

At the same moment, Daisy, still staring at the man beside the other car, snorted a laugh. ‘That’s Niall’s dad, Mac Cassidy, our head of year. He’s been pantsed!’

Laurel’s head shot round and she stared at Grady’s brother Mac, frozen – in more ways than one, probably – beside his car, short hair rippling in the gusty wind. It was Mac Cassidy, minus trousers. What the hell?

Slowly, she turned back to regard Grady. No longer the conservative, doe-eyed teen she remembered, his straight hair fell to his shoulders and was tucked behind his ears, his brows thick and black. Though still recognisably the same person, his shoulders were broader, his jaw stubbled, his forehead wider and set in iron furrows as he tried to peer into her car.

Until she’d left the village at sixteen, she and Grady had been a bit of a thing. To him, she’d confided her dreams of becoming an artist, and the hollow, sinking grief around the loss of her mum two years earlier. In turn, he’d unburdened himself about family-shaking clashes between brash Mac and their domineering dad. Then Mac and his horrible mates had done what they did that night …

‘Can you help us?’ Grady called through the glass. ‘Someone tricked us into stopping and took our phones. My brother’s frozen.’ Grady looked cold, too, hugging his hoodie around him. It was probably his coat around Mac’s bottom.

Heart rate uncomfortably rapid, Laurel buzzed her window open half an inch and Grady edged closer. There was no recognition in his gaze but it had been nineteen years and she knew she’d changed. ‘Some young lads overtook us, then pretended to break down. When we stopped to help, they jumped out – five of them. Some held on to me while the rest set on Mac and took his jeans and boots then attached him to the car door with cable ties. Hilarious, to them,’ he added bitterly.

Laurel glanced back at Mac, his back to them perforce but his head half-turned as if trying to catch the discussion, squinting against the snow blowing into his face. ‘They took your phones?’ she repeated, to give herself time to envisage driving off and leaving Mac Cassidy to his indignity and discomfort. The revenge would be so sweet that her fingers actually flexed on the gear stick. Then, knowing she ought to have grown out of petty payback, however much she owed the elder Cassidy brother for his past sins, she pulled on the handbrake and switched on her hazard lights. ‘I’ve got something in the boot that will free him. Then you can drive home.’

‘Little bastards took Mac’s car keys too,’ Grady snapped, retreating so that she could open her door. ‘They left me my keys but they’re not much good when my vehicle’s three miles away.’ Then, as if Laurel’s silence was a question, he added grumpily, ‘I know I could have run to the village but I needed to stop any cars careering round the corner and hitting my brother.’

Laurel had to acknowledge that as a real danger, the car being positioned just after a curve. Then she saw Daisy had her phone out and was discreetly training her camera on the hapless Mac. ‘Cut that out,’ she said sharply. ‘I mean it, Daisy. I don’t care if he’s your head of year and he gives you detention. It’s never right to pass images like that around, ever.’

‘I was only going to send it to Niall.’ Daisy grinned as she lowered the hand that was holding the phone.

‘Stay in the car, please,’ Laurel began.

But she wasn’t fast enough to prevent Daisy springing out of the vehicle with a cheerful, ‘Hello, Grady! Evening, Mr Cassidy.’

‘Shit,’ Laurel muttered, scrambling out and yanking up her hood against the freezing air. She didn’t catch any reply Mac might have made to Daisy as she hurried to open her boot and search out her Leatherman multi-tool, kept for when she was out painting and needed to hack her way into gummed up paint tubes. Nor did she enquire why Mac had been pantsed and not Grady. It was probably the same as it had always been: Grady made friends and Mac made enemies. Keeping her distance from Mac, she opened the device to the spring-loaded scissors and offered it to Grady.

Relief flashed over his face as he took the tool. ‘Thanks.’ His mouth relaxed into a sudden smile. ‘You’re a life saver.’

Laurel nodded and Grady reached around Mac to free him with a couple of well-placed snips. ‘Thanks.’ Mac nodded in Laurel’s direction but focused on simultaneously rubbing his wrists and keeping a grip on the coat clutched around his waist. Neither man showed any sign of recognising her.

Daisy opened the back door of Laurel’s car and stuck her top half inside, emerging seconds later with an air of triumph. ‘Here you are, Mr Cassidy. I bought these for when I help at the Year Seven party but you can have them.’ She beamed angelically at Mac as she proffered the scarlet trousers of the Santa suit, complete with copious white fluff around the ankles.

‘Oh. Erm, thanks, Daisy,’ Mac muttered gruffly.

He took the folded red felt with such a ludicrous expression of dismay that an insane urge to giggle ballooned inside Laurel. Voice quivering, she said, ‘Daisy, let’s get back in the car and give Mr Cassidy a moment.’

Mac mumbled a sheepish ‘thanks,’ but Grady cut across him, peering into the depths of Laurel’s hood as if trying to read her expression. ‘Erm … I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but you’re not going to drive off and leave us, are you?’

Daisy was already back in the front passenger seat and Laurel hesitated, just for the instant it took for her to envisage doing exactly that. In her head she heard her best friend Fliss’s soft California tones. I accept the gravity of what happened to you, but hanging on to your negative feelings will only hurt you and prevent you from moving on. You’re not that hurt teenager, now, Laurel. You’re a strong woman. You’ve empowered yourself by learning self-defence and safety techniques. Fliss had delivered those sessions and Laurel had been a star student. But … she was also human and she drew out the moment as she pretended to deliberate.

In-her-head-Fliss added gently: Sometimes life doesn’t go the way you expected. You have to let go of what you once pictured and take joy in what you have.

Mac had struggled into the too-small Santa trousers behind the car and was now staring at her, the red felt hanging ludicrously at half-mast above his wet socks. Around them, the fine snow was dusting the hedge tops, outlining each bare twig.

Grady smiled at her, clearly not really thinking they were going to drive off. And he had once been her friend … She gestured towards her car. ‘Hop in the back. You’ll have to share the space with my shopping. The boot’s full.’ She’d only moved back to Middledip yesterday – Friday. She’d unloaded her personal things into her old room in The Nookery, where dormer window overlooked ploughed fields and lines of poplar trees, and her pictures had been crated and sent ahead, but her paints, brushes and easels still waited in the SUV’s capacious boot. There was no reason to share these details with the Cassidys though. Or how adrift she’d felt to leave Alex and their little blue house in West London after ten years – nine together, and one spent apart but living amicably under the same roof. Then Alex had acquired a girlfriend called Vonnie at the same time as he’d gone for trendier glasses and a hipster style to his brush-like brown hair; Laurel’s much-loved sister Rea, Daisy’s mum, had suffered an acceleration to her agoraphobia and then Daisy had begun uncharacteristic attempts at truanting. Laurel had known it was time to return to the village … like it or not. Hopefully, her absence would allow Alex to move on, maybe achieving with Vonnie what Laurel had been unable to provide. She remembered her last words to him. You’re a good guy, Alex Lasienko. Laurel’s infertility ending the love they’d known had not been his fault.

‘Thank you.’ The voices of the Cassidy brothers broke into her thoughts as she climbed into the car. Laurel brushed snow off herself and jumped back into the driver’s seat.

With a quelling look at Daisy, who was grinning all over her round, teenaged face, Laurel started the engine and resumed their interrupted journey to Middledip, wondering if even Fliss could counsel her to look forward when such an uncomfortable part of her past was currently sitting in her car.

The first couple of miles passed in silence apart from the hiss of tyres on wet asphalt and the swish of the windscreen wipers dislodging the snow. Then Grady, as if belatedly recovering his manners said, ‘How are you doing, Daisy?’

Daisy turned in her seat and beamed. ‘Good. Are you going to run the village art show thing?’

‘Seems like it. Hope you’ll get involved.’ Grady’s voice was light and warm.

Daisy nodded. ‘Cool, I will if Mum’s OK with it.’ Then she added brightly, turning her gaze Laurel’s way just as Laurel pushed back her hood. ‘Maybe you’ll join in now you’re here, Auntie Laurel.’

‘Laurel?’ Both the Cassidys spoke at once, Grady sounding astounded and Mac taken aback.

‘Hi,’ she said laconically. Her right foot got heavier on the accelerator and she shot into the village. She forced herself to touch the brakes and take a breath. ‘Can you tell me where you need dropping? Our frozen shopping will be thawing.’

Grady said, ‘We’ll go to Mac’s, please. It’s 148 Port Road.’

Good. At least that wasn’t too near Great End, where Laurel’s family home, The Nookery, stood. She turned sharp right out of Main Road into Ladies Lane. ‘Number 148? Do I turn right at the end? Or left?’

‘Right, please,’ Grady said, when Mac made no reply. Then, cautiously, Grady added, ‘Nice to see you, Laurel. Sorry for not recognising you—’

‘It’s dark and I’m nearly twenty years older,’ she cut in swiftly. ‘It must be about here, right?’

‘Just under this lamp,’ Grady agreed quietly. ‘Thanks again. I think Mac would have got hypothermia if you hadn’t helped.’

Laurel answered more genially. ‘Someone else would have stopped, I expect.’ She halted the car, watching the snow make tiny starbursts on the windshield as the men fumbled with their seat belts.

Daisy and Grady said their goodbyes. Mac, who’d been completely silent since Laurel’s identity had been revealed, gave a hoarse, ‘Thank you very much,’ before he hurried from the car and the brothers left their footprints in the veil of snow up the garden path, Santa trousers brushing Mac’s calves. Laurel hoped his silence had come from consternation at her turning up again rather than mere embarrassment. He deserved every anxious moment.

Daisy laughed. ‘Poor Mr Cassidy in his boxers, stuck at the side of the road.’ She whipped out her phone while Laurel turned the car around.

‘Daisy,’ Laurel murmured. ‘Just hang on before you start messaging anyone about this.’ She felt rather than saw Daisy’s surprised glance, but she had the satisfaction of seeing the phone screen gradually going dark in her peripheral vision. Three minutes later they drew to a halt outside The Nookery, its back to the farm fields that surrounded the village. Oddly spaced windows punctuated uneven walls and a mad thatched roof undulated over the large, sprawling cottage, a thatch partridge silhouetted at one end. The Nookery sat back from the rest of Great End like an awkward child at a party. Both it and the studio in its garden had belonged to Isla, Laurel and Rea’s mum, so they now belonged to Laurel and Rea. As Rea had little interest in the studio, Laurel was about to make it her new workspace.

She killed the engine, flicked on the internal light and met her niece’s dark, dancing eyes. ‘I can’t stop you messaging your friends or posting what happened on social media, but I want you to think carefully before you cause Mr Cassidy stress and humiliation. Humiliating someone is bullying, and bullying is something we should all find unacceptable.’ Even if Mac Cassidy was the victim and damned lucky Laurel was doing him this favour. ‘And he’s your friend’s dad.’

Daisy dropped her gaze and sighed disconsolately. ‘The faaaaaark.’ Laurel already knew that ‘the faaaaaark’ was Daisy’s thinly veiled attempt to get away with saying ‘what the fuck’. Rea discouraged it but Laurel felt that as Daisy had a mum who panicked at the idea of leaving home, and an aunt who’d left Middledip for good reason and hadn’t wanted to come back, a little pseudo swearing wasn’t worth worrying about. Daisy muttered, ‘Niall would know it’s a joke.’

‘When it’s his dad?’ Laurel probed gently.

Daisy shoved her phone away. ‘But Mr Cassidy’s my head of year and he was pantsed and cable-tied. And I got him to wear my Santa trousers.’

Laurel grinned at Daisy’s air of injury, leaning over the centre console to reward her niece with a hug. ‘It’s really hard not to take revenge on people. I’m not a fan of Mac Cassidy either but you’ve told me you’re friendly with Grady and I remember him as a good guy. Let’s do it for him if not for Mac, all right?’

‘Oh, all right.’ Daisy opened the car door. ‘Grady’s great. He does cool stuff.’

Laurel didn’t ask what kind of stuff, pretty sure she wouldn’t be crossing his path much. It was nineteen years since they’d been more than friends and the reason the relationship ended wasn’t a subject she liked to dwell on.

‘So you’re friends with Mac’s son when Mac’s a teacher at your school? How does that work for you?’ She got out to join her niece in the frigid November evening, careful of her footing.

Daisy shrugged. ‘He’s my head of year, which is weird, but he’s Niall’s head of year, too, which is weirder. Kids who have teachers for parents have to put up with weirdness.’ She glanced at her aunt. ‘Why don’t you like Mac? Don’t you like Grady either?’

They began to gather the shopping from the rear seat. Laurel hooked three bags on one hand. ‘I was friends with Grady but I didn’t get on with Mac.’ She’d stopped being friends with Grady to protect him as much as herself.

She changed the subject. ‘Your mum will be pleased we’ve got all the ingredients she wanted for her Christmas baking.’

Daisy grappled with her share of the shopping bags as she tried to skid on the snow. ‘Do you think getting all the stuff for the mince pies and sausage rolls so early is part of her agoraphobia? It’s six weeks until Christmas, bet she won’t make them till Christmas week.’

Laurel didn’t know. Maybe Rea was trying to exert extra control over some parts of her life because she’d lost control in others? If so, Laurel had made the wrong choice when she persuaded Rea not to order the ingredients online and had piled Daisy into the car for a real-life shopping expedition. But she knew how it felt to be fourteen and facing horrible life events so she gave Daisy the best hug she could manage around all the shopping bags and made her voice reassuring. ‘I think she just wants us to have a really lovely Christmas so she’s getting in the spirit early.’

Laurel wouldn’t mind a good Christmas. Last year, she’d been unexpectedly miserable at the finality of her decree nisi, and so had Alex. Earlier Christmases had been blighted, too. Once, she’d miscarried a week before Christmas. Another year she’d been sure she’d been pregnant but the test had proved negative. The worst had been the year she’d been pregnant but not daring to hope she’d go full term – and losing the baby the day after Boxing Day. Bad things always seemed worse at Christmas. This year, it was time to put the past behind her and look forward.

If she could.

Grady followed his brother up the long front garden of the tall red-brick Victorian house Mac shared with his wife Tonya and their son Niall. The warmth of their home hit him as they kicked snow from their boots and stepped inside, and it was incredibly welcoming after a quarter-of-an-hour shivering at the roadside. His bones felt turned to ice. Mac must feel worse but he was all grim silence and downcast gaze.

Grady had a couple of things to say but could wait till Mac was warm and dry.

Across the hall the sound of the TV blared from the sitting room along with the raucous laughter of Niall, Mac’s fourteen-year-old son, whose voice had deepened in the last months. Mac swung round and hissed at Grady, ‘I don’t want Niall to see me like this,’ then raced upstairs in his wet socks, two-sizes-too-small Santa pants looking uncomfortably strained in tender places.

Grady caught Tonya’s voice, high and worried, and Mac’s answering rumble, soothing yet frustrated. Grady winced. He loved his mercurial sister-in-law but explaining where your car was and why you were wearing Santa trousers? One thing Grady hadn’t missed since his relationship with Pippa ended last February was awkward questions.

About to stroll into the sitting room and hang out with his nephew to share an episode of The Mandalorian, Grady paused when he heard Mac hiss his name. Seeing his brother beckoning over the upstairs banister, he cast a longing look into the sitting room and the fire he could see blazing in the hearth, then altered course to trudge up the carpeted stairs. Rounding the top, he found Tonya, hands on hips. Her eyes were huge in her pointed face and she reminded Grady of a pretty (if confused) elf, pink hair spiked up from the sides to meet in the middle.

Mac, still huddled up in his coat and Santa pants, glanced at Grady and indicated his wife with a nod. ‘Tell her what happened. She thinks I’m making it up.’

Tonya jumped in before Grady could get the first word out. ‘I’m not accusing him of lying, Grady, I just don’t understand. He was late. I rang you both and no one answered. Then suddenly your phones and Mac’s car keys were lying on the doormat in the hall. I opened the front door and Mac’s jeans and boots were piled on the step. It was like a scary movie. I was about to ring the police.’

‘Our phones and the keys were put through the door?’ Grady repeated incredulously. He glanced at Mac. ‘That’s a relief. I presume we are going to ring the police, though, aren’t we? When you’ve got warm clothes.’ Then, realising he hadn’t reassured Tonya, he said, ‘We were coming home from watching Peterborough play and stopped to help some guys. They’d overtaken us a minute earlier and it looked as if their car had broken down.’

Tonya’s fair brows flew up towards her upswept hair. ‘You stopped in the middle of nowhere?’

‘They were teenagers,’ Mac put in. ‘It was precisely because it was the middle of nowhere that I stopped. It was snowing.’

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