The Year of Taking Chances by Lucy Diamond Page B

resolution this year that I needed to start again, to find a new wife.’
    ‘A new
wife?
’ Gemma spluttered on the unexpected word.
    ‘Well, not immediately, obviously. But I do miss having someone to come home to, you know. I don’t want to be on my own any more. Judy’s a nice woman – we’ve had a
few evenings out together. I like her.’
    ‘Hello, Barry. Hello there, Gemma. What can I get you both today?’ asked Kev, the pub landlord just then. He raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘And is that your lady friend I see over
there in the corner again?’ he asked, followed by a wink at Gemma.
    ‘It certainly is,’ Barry replied, an air of pride about him as he began reeling off their order.
    Gemma tried to wrest back control of her feelings. Of course she was pleased for her dad that he’d met someone and seemed happy. And of course she didn’t want him to be lonely, to
see out the rest of his New Year’s Eves alone. All the same . . . a wife, he’d said. A
wife
. It seemed such a monumental word to use. Her dad had this habit of falling for
unsuitable women – her mum being a prime example. The last thing she wanted was for him to be hurt all over again. She sighed, wondering if her brothers knew about Judy yet. Had they already
met her? Mind you, they were boys; they wouldn’t feel the same way she did. Sam, Luke and David would just be glad that they were off the hook when it came to making sure Dad was okay all the
time.
    ‘Thanks, Kev,’ her dad said at that moment, and Gemma realized there were three drinks now waiting on the bar.
    ‘Lovely,’ she said, grabbing some cutlery and her Coke. ‘Thanks, Dad.’
    ‘You’re welcome, sweetheart. I’ve been looking forward to you and Judy meeting each other. I know you’re going to get on like a house on fire.’

Chapter Eleven
    Two months after her mum’s death Caitlin had finally made the first few baby-steps towards dealing with her loss. She had stopped wallowing in bed for hours on end. She
had accepted some work from Saffron, the friendly woman she’d met at New Year, and was actually loving the experience. She had booked a haircut, shaved her legs, done an enormous amount of
washing, including all her bedding, and thrown every last takeaway menu into the paper-recycling box. She hoped the lady from Golden Dragon wasn’t missing her phone calls too much.
    Even more remarkably, she had actually begun sorting through Jane’s belongings, one room at a time, in order to clear the cottage and get it on the local estate agent’s books. How
poignant the little details of a life seemed, when that person had gone. All those unopened bags of sugar Jane would never decant into the small crackle-glazed pot, to be used, two spoonfuls at a
time, in her milky coffees. All those packets of twenty-denier natural-tan tights unworn in a drawer. The bags of dusty bulbs for the garden, the neatly labelled envelopes of seeds she’d
never planted. Candles never lit. Letters never replied to. All those empty spaces at the end of last year’s calendar that she hadn’t lived quite long enough to fill.
    Jane had been a kind mum, a solid pillar of a person that you could lean against, confident she would bear your weight. When Caitlin was much younger and had argued with Nichola, her best friend
in primary school, her mum had emptied out the dressing-up box and ransacked her own wardrobe, suggesting they both put on beautiful outfits and have a princesses’ picnic in the garden. Adorned in one of Jane’s pink silk nighties, which hung around her ankles, beads, a flowery hat and some enormous red high heels, Caitlin had never felt more loved as her mum poured them
Ribena from her best china teapot and they ate cucumber sandwiches on the old tartan travelling rug, ‘just like real princesses’.
    Another time, when Caitlin had split up with computer programmer Jeremy, she’d come back to Larkmead for the weekend, drooping with heartbreak, and Jane had known