With All My Love by Patricia Scanlan

stroked his cheek and then, realizing what she was doing, stopped, her hand dropping to her lap. ‘Sorry. I don’t know why I . . . oh God, now I’m even more embarrassed,’ she groaned.
    ‘I was really looking forward to seeing you again, Valerie. I’ve thought about you a lot,’ Jeff said quietly.
    ‘I’ve thought about you too,’ she admitted.
    ‘Would you be able to come for a drink tomorrow afternoon? We could celebrate New Year’s Eve early?’
    ‘I’d like that.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Is Ursula back on the scene?’ She had to ask.
    ‘God, no!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s really over. Like I said, I’ve thought about you a lot and I’d like to take you on a date tomorrow even if it is the middle of the afternoon. That’s if you want to. You did say you didn’t fancy me.’ He gave her a teasing grin.
    ‘An afternoon drink date might change that,’ she agreed, giving a wobbly smile.
    Their eyes met and he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her so tenderly that she was afraid she might start to cry again.
    Lying in bed that night, unwilling to sit watching TV in the same room as Terence, she took comfort from the memory of Jeff and his tenderness towards her. She knew without the shadow of a doubt that he would never do anything to hurt or harm her. He was as far removed from the type of man her father was as could be. Maybe the new decade was going to be the best time ever in her life. She knew for certain that the eighties would see her leave her family home to stand on her own two feet, and even though the thought scared her, it invigorated her as well. She would get good marks in her Leaving Cert because she was working like a Trojan and it would pay off. This time next year, if she was lucky, she would have a job, she comforted herself. She would be earning her own money and Terence would have no power over her ever again. And tomorrow she was going on a date, and her father wouldn’t even know about it. Jeff was a real man, a gentle man and he wanted to date her. Maybe good things were going to happen at last. Her spirits began to lift and the awful cloud of darkness that had being smothering her for the past few weeks began to dissipate.
    Valerie smiled at the memory of Jeff’s kindness and tenderness towards her. Even all these years later she could remember that moment as though it had happened yesterday. For the first time in her life she had realized that men could be kind and loving. It had been a revelation. She had never seen her father act tenderly towards her mother. Terence had never been affectionate with her, but as Lizzie had pointed out to her not so long ago when they had been discussing her relationship with her father, Terence had never received love and, consequently, didn’t know how to give it.
    Valerie sighed, fingering the gold cross that hung around her neck and which had been one of Jeff’s first gifts to her. He knew what it was to be kind and loving because he had experienced it. She was lucky, she supposed, that Carmel had made up for Terence’s failures as a parent, in her own quiet way. It was thanks to her mother that Valerie had enjoyed one of the most momentous occasions of her life when she had crossed the threshold of adulthood and never looked back.

C HAPTER T EN
    ‘I’m a free woman!’ Valerie danced around Lizzie’s bedroom as she ripped off her school blouse and stepped out of her uniform skirt.
    ‘Me too. Yippeeeeeeee!’ Lizzie hollered, flinging her tie out the window. They had finished their last exam, and they were elated. School days were finally behind them and the future beckoned. And the beginning of that future was the End of Exam Barbecue, which was taking place down on the beach in a few hours’ time.
    Valerie had told her mother about the planned celebrations the previous week. ‘And I don’t care what Dad says, I’m going, Mam, and if he takes the belt to me again I’m going to have him charged with assault,’ she’d