After the One by Cass Lester (e book reader free .TXT) 📕

how content he seemed in his work. Pam was right, she found herself thinking, he was a good-looking bloke.

He must have felt her looking at him, because he turned round. She flushed and looked away, but luckily the lurcher strolled over and nudged her hand, providing a distraction for both of them.

‘Carlo, don’t be a pain. Push him away if he’s a nuisance.’

‘He’s fine,’ said Charley. ‘Honestly, I like dogs.’ She did the ear-scratching routine she knew the dog liked and he wagged his tail appreciatively.

She’d always wanted a dog, but thought it was unfair to leave one alone all day. Her mother had always said dogs were too much work and she’d not been allowed one when she was a child. She had planned to get a dog when she stopped work and had kids, like Angie. Fleetingly she let herself slip into a fantasy of her and Angie pushing their buggies across the Downs with a couple of Labradors gambolling around a gaggle of kids, a couple of which she knew were hers. She pushed the ridiculous, pointless fantasy away, just as the bike man spoke to her.

‘What happened?’ he said.

His question momentarily confused her. ‘Sorry?’

‘To the bike?’

‘Oh! I hit a pothole.’

He pulled a face. ‘You were lucky you didn’t do more damage or get hurt. You know you can sue the council? Well, you can try to.’

She shook her head. ‘It was my fault, I wasn’t looking where I was going. Too busy thinking about something else.’

‘Not a great thing to do when you’re cycling,’ he remarked.

‘No,’ she had to admit.

There was silence for a while and then he said, ‘You didn’t take the shop then.’

Oh, for crying out loud, she thought, not you too…

‘I decided against it.’

‘I hope I didn’t say anything that put you off.’ He turned to her and she thought she saw genuine concern in his eyes.

‘Of course not,’ she said, glibly fibbing to reassured him. ‘I just… wasn’t quite ready to commit to it.’

On her way down to the bike shop, Charley had passed by the unit and had seen it already been let to some crafters. The window was dotted with flyers announcing ‘Crafty Crafters Coming Soon!’ She’d felt a twinge of regret, which she’d instantly crushed.

A few moments later the man stood up and span the front wheel experimentally, announcing, ‘All done.’

She thanked him and paid him, then she ruffled the lurcher’s soft grey ears, ‘Bye, Carlo,’ and wheeled her bike towards the door.

‘Take care,’ said the bike man. ‘Keep an eye out for potholes!’

‘Will do!’ she promised.

Cycling off she reflected that, stupidly, she hadn’t even asked his name. You can’t keep calling him ‘the bike man’ for the rest of your bike-riding life! she chided herself. She took the long route back to the main road, deliberately avoiding the soon-to-be crafters’ shop, but all the way home she just couldn’t shake off the dismal feeling that she’d disappointed everyone, including herself.

Chapter Twenty

‘Letter for you,’ said Charley, holding out an envelope to Pam, who took it somewhat guardedly. Glancing at the envelope she saw her home address had been crossed out and Charley’s address had been written to the side – in Geoff’s handwriting. Intrigued, she flipped it over and opened it.

Charley started making pot of tea, but noticing that Pam had gone quiet, she turned to her with a look of concern on her face. ‘What is it? Is it bad news?’ She hurried over to sit with her at the table.

‘No,’ said Pam evenly. ‘It’s an invitation.’

‘Oh?’

Silently, Pam handed her the card.

‘Blimey, that’s a bit posh!’ Quickly, Charley scanned the invitation. In embossed copperplate letters, on a white card decorated with ruby-red roses, it rather grandly informed her that:

Geoff and Pam

are cordially invited to a party to celebrate

the joyous occasion of

Laura and Martin’s

40th Wedding Anniversary.

Charley handed the card back to Pam, who merely smiled tightly at her before getting up and taking herself off to her room where she could call Zee in privacy.

‘How am I supposed to reply?’ she asked her friend. ‘It’s been sent to both of us, to our house, and Geoff’s forwarded it to me.’

Zee was practical as ever. ‘Do you want to go?’

‘NO!’ exclaimed Pam heatedly. Too heatedly, she realised, and she forced herself to continue more calmly, ‘No, not if Geoff’s going. I honestly couldn’t face that.’ In fact, she didn’t think she could face going at all. ‘They obviously don’t know we’ve—’ she paused, struggling to find an appropriate euphemism, ‘we’ve “split up”, and they’re expecting us to turn up like some… happily married couple and I’ll have to spend the whole evening explaining to everyone what’s happened. It’ll be excruciating!’

‘You don’t have to go,’ said Zee mildly. ‘Just give Laura a call and explain. It’s not like you’re one of her close friends, she’ll understand.’

The thought of phoning Laura, a woman she knew more as an acquaintance than a friend, to decline her wedding anniversary celebration because her own marriage had broken down, threw Pam into a white-out panic, and she had to fight back the childish desire to ask Zee to make the call for her. Fortunately, to her intense relief, she discovered she didn’t even possess a phone number for Laura and had to resort to using the RSVP email instead, which made it a little easier, but she still struggled to find the right words to explain her current situation.

‘I have left Geoff’ made it sound like she’d thrown some adolescent hissy-fit and stormed off in a huff, so she deleted that sentence and typed, ‘We have recently separated’. Reading it back however, the words seemed to imply their separation was an arrangement they’d mutually agreed to, amicably, which was far from the truth. She deleted that too, and retyped: ‘We are getting a divorce’, but again that sounded like a mutually agreed scenario. It was the ‘We’ that was doing it, she decided, and so, hoping that it didn’t make her sound like a melodramatic,