‘Are you sure it’s free?’ Nicola asks. ‘This is all very … good. My grandson’s always warning me about those emails that say you’ve won some money, and an offer of free lifts might come under the same category, I’d say. No such thing as a free lunch, and all that.’

I nod. This is a fair point – actually, I wish my grandma was this suspicious about these sorts of things. We had a scare a few years ago where she mistook some junk mail for an official letter from the bank and almost transferred her savings to a mysterious Russian bank account.

‘Absolutely. So basically, my grandma had this idea about helping isolated people get around more, and I’m staying at her place at the moment, looking after all her projects, and … I just thought this was the simplest way to help. I’ve got a car and I’ve got time, so …’

‘Is there some way I can check you’re not about to drive me off into the woods and eat me?’

I splutter out a laugh. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘I could ask you the same, really.’

‘That’s true enough,’ she muses.

‘I do have a DBS certificate, if that would make you feel better?’

‘I haven’t a clue what that is,’ Nicola says. ‘But I think I’d probably be able to judge by looking at you. Shall we meet at the church? You’d have to be a real piece of work to murder me there.’

‘Lovely,’ I say. ‘Just tell me when.’

14

Eileen

It is ten o’clock at night. I am kissing a man on his doorstep. I’m wearing high-heeled boots. Tod’s hands slide beneath my jacket, and his thumb trails along the zip of my long linen dress, as though finding its way for later.

Since meeting Tod I’ve felt like I’ve opened a door to a part of myself I’d entirely forgotten about. Yesterday I caught myself giggling. I’m not sure I giggled even when I was a young woman.

It’s lovely. It really is. But underneath it all there’s a dark, guilty whispering in my belly. I’ve been doing so well putting Wade behind me, but ever since Tod and I have started stepping out together, I haven’t been able to put him out of my mind quite so easily.

I think it’s just a matter of breaking the habit. After all, I’ve not kissed a man who wasn’t my husband for fifty years. Tod’s lips feel so different; even the shape of his head, his neck, his shoulders seem strange under my palms after so many years learning the lines of Wade’s body. It’s like trying on somebody else’s clothes, kissing Tod. Strange and disconcerting, yes – but fun.

I pull away from his arms reluctantly.

‘You won’t come upstairs?’ Tod says.

‘Not yet.’ I smile at him. ‘We’re only on date three.’

That was my stipulation. I agreed to all Tod’s terms for this relationship of ours, but I said I wouldn’t go to bed with him until we’d been on five dates. I wanted the time to decide if he was a good enough man for that. I’m all for a bit of fun, but I don’t plan on – what was it Fitz called it? – ‘getting played’. Sex does mean something to me, after all, and I don’t want to share it with a man I don’t much like.

As it happens, though, I seem to like Tod very much. So much that this rule feels rather …

He quirks an eyebrow. ‘I know a wavering woman when I see one,’ he says. He gives me another long kiss on the lips. ‘Now get yourself in a cab home before we do something we might regret, hmm? Rules are rules.’ He winks.

Good lord, that wink.

I’d better get myself a cab.

*

I sleep late the next morning and don’t wake until eight. When I walk out of Leena’s bedroom, I find Martha on the sofa in tears.

‘Oh, Martha!’ I hesitate in the doorway. I don’t want to march in and embarrass her. But she turns her tear-stained face my way and waves me over.

‘Please, come and sit with me,’ she says, rubbing her belly. ‘Crying alone is a new low for me. Normally I have Leena to weep on.’ She sniffs as I settle myself down beside her. ‘You look well, Mrs Cotton. Ooh, were you out with your silver fox last night?’

I feel myself flush. Martha smiles.

‘Don’t get too attached, remember,’ she says, wiping her nose. ‘Though I’m only saying that because you told me to remind you. Personally, I think he sounds like a catch.’

‘Don’t you worry about me. What’s the matter, love?’ I hesitate. ‘If you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Yaz and I are close to exchanging on a house,’ she says. ‘I don’t like it, but she says we don’t have time to be picky now, and I said it’s such a huge decision I don’t want to rush it, and …’ She’s crying again; the tears drip off her chin. ‘I’m so worried I won’t be able to do this – that I’m not ready for a baby – and Yaz being all Yaz about the other stuff isn’t helping. The baby will be here soon, and Yaz just thinks we can still be how we were before. But we can’t, can we? Everything’s going to be different. And scary. And we’ve really not got everything ready. Oh, god …’

I try to remember the bittersweet panic of discovering I was pregnant. That time was a complicated one for me and Wade. We weren’t married when Marian was conceived. Not even engaged, actually. I did a very good job covering the baby bump in the wedding photos, so now nobody’s the wiser – not even Marian – and I prefer it that way. But I remember, in amongst the chaos, those moments of pure panic that sent me spinning, just like Martha is now.

It was the change of plan that upset me the most. There would be no job down in London now, no changing the world, no adventures – or rather, the biggest adventure, but one I’d be undertaking at home. There was no question of leaving Hamleigh now. And as for men … well, it would be Wade, for ever. He did the honest thing and proposed, and I was grateful. Who knows what my mother and father would have done with me if he hadn’t.

I take Martha’s hand. ‘You know what you need, love?’ I tell her. ‘You need a list. Let’s get a pen and paper and sort through all the projects that need doing before the baby comes, then we can make a plan, and a back-up plan.’

She smiles at that. ‘I can see where Leena gets her Leena-ness from, Mrs Cotton.’

‘Call me Eileen, would you?’ I say. ‘I don’t much feel like a Mrs any longer.’

I pull out my new project diary to start on Martha’s list.

‘Oh! Have you spoken to the landlord about the communal area?’ I ask, catching sight of spruce up on my last to-do list.

Martha sits up straighter, wiping her face. ‘Yeah, I meant to say: he loved the idea. Said he’d even give a bit of money towards it. Only five-hundred quid, but …’

‘Five-hundred pounds?’ I gawp. ‘That’ll be plenty !’ I pause, looking at Martha. She looks like she’s been worrying here on the sofa for a while. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy getting started on it? We can work on that list of yours afterwards.’

‘Actually, yes, do you know what – let’s do it. I’ve done quite enough wallowy weeping.’ She stands up, rubbing her eyes. ‘I was thinking we could try the antique place down the road, see if we can get some nice furniture without spending too much?’