Mistakes We Make (5 page)

She’d never wanted kids. He’d asked her one day, before they were married. They’d taken a short break to the sun and he’d come out with the question as they sat by the swimming pool at the less than luxurious hotel, surrounded by a squealing, shrieking, yelling crowd of youngsters, whining for ice cream, or pizza, or chips every few minutes.

‘God no,’ she’d said, frowning as a particularly large child leapt into the pool and sent splashes jetting across a dozen yards. ‘Can you imagine?’

It had been an ill-chosen holiday, and if they’d found out anything about each other in those few days it was that package holidays didn’t suit them. Soon they’d both been too busy scaling their respective career ladders to discuss the matter of a family again. And that had been that.

‘I’m sorry we startled you last night,’ he said, his voice low. ‘I had no idea you were going to be here, or I would never have—’

‘You don’t need to explain.’

‘I just wanted you to—’

‘Ah, there you are!’

Another voice interrupted his explanation and Adam sat up abruptly. He didn’t mean it to look like a guilty start, and the thought that Sunita might interpret it like that unsettled him.

‘Hi!’

Gold sandals winked across the last few clumps of grass and wobbled up the uneven surface of the rock.

‘Oh! Damn!’ Sunita swayed and might have fallen if Adam hadn’t sprung to his feet in one lithe movement and caught her. ‘Ouch!’ She reached down and rubbed her ankle.

Adam noticed Molly’s frown and knew she was wondering, as he was, whether the stumble had been deliberate.

Sunita seemed oblivious.

‘Thank goodness you caught me,’ she said, her smile dazzling. She raised her arms and hooked them round his neck, then pressed her ruby-painted lips to his mouth. ‘Have you had a wonderful morning?’

She could hardly have made the statement of possession more obvious. So it had been deliberate.

Molly stood. ‘Listen, I’ll leave you two. It’s time for lunch, and Lexie needs to eat.’

‘Maybe we’ll see you at dinner?’ Adam called as she leapt gracefully across the rocks.

She lifted a hand in acknowledgement, but if she replied, he didn’t catch it.

‘Lovely girl,’ Sunita said, laying the palm of her hand on his chest. ‘Now, tell me all about where you’ve been and what it was like. I’m dying to hear about your climb.’

Molly, hopping from rock to rock, was conscious of Adam’s gaze following her and her face burned. She had not known she still felt like this.

––––––––

C
aitlyn Murray grabbed for the tin of baked beans as a boy raced down the aisle, backpack flailing behind him as he sprinted for the door.

Too late. The backpack hit the display and yanked a corner tin out of place. Cans crashed noisily onto the floor and rolled in surprising directions under the shelving.

‘Kevin McQuade, I’ve told you before!’ she yelled after the small boy.

It was no use. The thieving brat had gone already and there wasn’t much any of them could do about it. The days when the local constable would have grabbed a snotty-nosed kid by the ear and dragged him terrified to his father for a ticking off were long gone. Kevin – who lived a few doors down from Caitlyn’s family on the Summerfield estate – wouldn’t suffer. He definitely wouldn’t be told off by his parents. In fact Caitlyn suspected it was his mother who’d sent him out to steal. Angie McQuade had an exaggerated sense of what she was owed by the world at large.

‘You OK, Cait?’

One of the assistants scuttled from behind the shelves, his face a picture of concern.

‘It’s fine, Joe. I’m fine.’

She ducked away and reached to retrieve one of the tins.

‘Here, let me.’

‘Thanks Joe.’

‘He take anything?’

‘Probably. It really bugs me. Honest folk work for a living.’

‘Like you and me, yeah? Doesn’t pay much though, does it?’

‘Still,’ she said.

It was Friday night, but Caitlyn didn’t have any plans, which was just as well because she didn’t get away until almost ten o’clock.

The supermarket was on the edge of Hailesbank, on the site of an old printing works. Caitlyn could remember the factory. She’d even been inside once on a school trip. She could still hear the noise of the machines and see the grimy windows, looking like no-one had cleaned them for a hundred years. Her friend Jenna said it was about time that smelly old place was pulled down and Hailesbank needed a supermarket anyway, but Caitlyn missed the factory. She liked the magic of seeing the vast sheets of paper hammering through the massive presses, building yellow upon magenta upon cyan upon black until everything came together in a perfect full-colour sheet at the end.

Everywhere had supermarkets. She didn’t know where there was another print works. Still, a job was a job. She had to make up for the salary she used to earn from her job in Edinburgh and needed every penny she could get to help her mum out.

‘Night, Cait!’ called Joe, who was guarding the door to stop latecomers sneaking in. ‘Safe home!’

‘You too.’

She scurried through the car park. There were only four cars left. Earlier, she’d seen people driving round and round, searching for spaces. Shopping here was a stressful experience.

Caitlyn didn’t have a car. She walked out of the car park and took the path along the river to the bridge. The bus to Summerfield left from the town hall, and she had just ten minutes to catch it or she’d have to walk the couple of miles home.

From the far side of the bridge she could see the bus, waiting at the stop. She started to run. It was uphill, and by the time she got close she was puffing. The town hall clock read ten twelve. If Dan was driving, she’d be fine. If it was Jake, he might decide to leave early.

She was fifty yards from the bus when she heard the engine start up and it pulled into the road.

‘Stop!’ She waved her hands frantically. ‘Stop! Oh please!’

She glimpsed Jake’s face, resolutely averted, as the bus trundled past her.

‘
Bother
you, Jake Thorogood!’

She flopped down onto the low wall outside the police station, her feet already throbbing from long hours of walking round the store. Jake had been impossible since the time he’d made a pass at her at the pub Christmas social and she’d had to slap his face. Caitlyn despised her curves, she longed to be whippet thin so that clothes looked good on her, but it seemed her shape appealed to men like Jake. The wrong sort of men.

She stood up resolutely. She’d have to walk; sitting here wouldn’t get her home. She turned towards Summerfield. It’d take her half an hour if she strode out, forty minutes at this pace. She didn’t have the energy for striding, so forty minutes it’d have to be. What was bugging her most was not Jake’s behaviour, nor even the fact that she’d have to walk; it was that by the time she got home there’d be no chance at all of seeing Iona May before she fell asleep.

Caitlyn’s youngest half-sister was six years old and cute as a kitten, with soft, fluffy blonde hair, blue eyes as big as two moons and a little nose that turned up at the end. She didn’t look much like their mother and there was no resemblance at all to Mick Boyce, the child’s now-absent father – and thank heaven for that.

She passed the last house in Hailesbank and stepped into the gathering darkness where the town lights ended. At least there was a pavement the whole way. She started counting steps. It was a mile and a half now. One thousand, seven hundred and sixty yards in a mile, that made two thousand, six hundred and forty yards. She couldn’t stride a whole yard though, so maybe three thousand steps till she was home. She resolved to count and got to one hundred and six before thoughts started crowding in.

Like how good it would be not to have to share a room with her other half-sister, Ailsa. Like where she’d be now if she hadn’t resigned from Blair King a year ago. Like what her life would have been like if her dad hadn’t died and her mum hadn’t let Mick Boyce move in.

She switched to counting cars that passed instead of steps. It was easier.

Two the other way, just one going in her direction. Then a rival supermarket’s delivery van. The poor driver had obviously been working late too. Behind it, a string of cars.

She lost count.

Farm Lane, where Caitlyn lived with her mother, was about as unlike a farm lane as you could imagine. There was the old Crossed Keys pub at one end of it, and maybe that had been a barn or something a long time ago, because it was built of rough stone, but the rest of the lane was council housing. It was grey and dismal, and all the houses looked identical, except that some had tidy front patches with a small square of green grass and a few flowers, others had been concreted over so that there was no work involved in keeping them tidy. Yet others were used as a dumping ground for everything that wasn’t wanted in the house but no-one could be bothered to take to the tip.

She was nearing one of these, the one that belonged to Angie McQuade, whose youngest son Kevin had caused havoc in the supermarket earlier. One of the older McQuade boys was emerging from the front door, on his way for a quick pint at the pub, no doubt, having polished off whatever grub Kevin had filched. Caitlyn kept her head down and strode on, praying she’d get past before he realised who she was.

Too late.

‘What’s yer hurry, Cait-no-mates?’

The youth stepped out in front of her and seized her wrist with a malicious grin. It was Ricky, the eldest. Caitlyn had been at school with Ricky and knew he was a bully. She wasn’t afraid of him – she knew too many of his secrets for him to be any real threat to her, but if she didn’t handle him right, she’d waste more precious time before she got home and she really wasn’t in the mood for a fight.

She squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye. ‘You’re the one in a hurry, Ricky. You’re running out of drinking time.’

He released her wrist to glance at his watch. ‘Shit!’

‘They’ll be taking last orders. You’d better run.’

He swung away. ‘Another time,’ he cackled. ‘You and me—’ He made an obscene gesture.

He made Caitlyn feel uncomfortable. She could handle Ricky on his own, but if he was in a crowd, he might gain courage.

‘Enjoy your pint,’ she called after him. Never show weakness.

The Murrays lived a few doors further down. They used to have a small lawn, but after Mick left, her mum got Malcolm Milne to come and lay some slabs in the small space between the front wall and the house. ‘I haven’t the time to keep it nice, and that’s the truth,’ Joyce said when Caitlyn protested.

Caitlyn was working in Edinburgh at the time and couldn’t spend hours gardening either, so she could hardly object.

At the gate, she paused. She longed to get through the door and collapse on a chair with a cuppa, but she knew it wouldn’t be that simple. It never was in the Murray household.

She turned her key in the lock. It opened with a protesting creak.

‘Harris has just farted, Harris has just farted,’ Lewis chanted, prancing round and round her in the small hallway. The older of the Murray twins (by seven minutes) clamped two fingers over his nose. ‘Pooh.’

‘Have not.’

‘Have sot.’

‘Have
not!
’

‘Stop it, you two,’ Caitlyn said wearily. ‘Just give it a break, huh?’

She’d hoped that the twins might be in bed, but no such luck. Lewis (bigger and more dominant) dashed past his brother, pinching him on the arm as he ran.

‘Ouch! That hurt, you bastard!’

‘Harris, language!’

‘Well, he pinched me! Tell him off!’ Harris’s face was tragic. One day, perhaps, the twins would stand together against the world, but that day could be a long way off.

‘Ignore him. Come here.’ She folded her arms round the boy, feeling the bones under the skinniness. Harris had always had health issues.

A shadow fell across them as Ailsa slouched out of the front room.

‘They’re mental.’

She pulled a strand of bleached hair in front of her eyes and examined the ends. The fluorescent pink of her nails exactly matched the colour she’d painted her lips. Ailsa was fifteen and obsessed with her looks (which would be lovely, Caitlyn thought, if only she’d let nature have its own way). She certainly wasn’t much interested in her young brothers. Caitlyn worried about leaving her in charge, but if Joyce was on duty at the care home there was little choice. There wasn’t enough money to pay a babysitter.

She straightened up and released Harris. ‘Get your pyjamas on, boys,’ she called as Lewis reappeared, tearing the wrapper off a chocolate biscuit. She tweaked it out of his hand.

‘Hey! Gimme that—’

She held it above her head. ‘You know you’re not allowed biscuits at this time of night. Now go and get ready for bed. I’ll be up in five minutes.’

His bravado collapsed in the face of her quiet authority and he stomped off muttering, ‘It isn’t
fair.’

She turned to Ailsa. ‘Have they behaved?’

Ailsa shrugged, tossing her head so that the blonde locks swung in a wave round her face. ‘I guess.’

Caitlyn took off her jacket and hung it on a peg alongside Iona May’s little pink fleece, her mother’s mac and an assortment of football shirts belonging to the boys.

‘Is Iona May asleep?’

‘Yeah.’ Ailsa’s pout receded. ‘Had to carry her up, she went off in the middle of her video. We hadn’t even got to that bit where Shrek—’

‘Ready!’ came a voice from above.

‘Smelly, smelly, farty!’ chanted the other.

Ailsa rolled her eyes and a half-smile tugged at the corners of Caitlyn’s mouth. ‘Stick the kettle on, Ails, will you? I’d kill for a cup of tea.’

‘What did your last servant die of?’ Ailsa muttered as she swung away, but she went to the kitchen anyway.

––––––––

M
olly pulled back the curtains in the living room of her apartment at Fleming House and blinked as sun flooded in. A kestrel was hovering above the field beyond the formal garden, its wings barely fluttering, suspended in the vivid blue sky. Suddenly it swooped, rose and flew off down the river, and the gracefulness of the movement almost winded her.