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

‘Bad luck!’ said Charley, gently tugging the peak of the child’s sunhat down over her eyes.

Monnie giggled and pushed it back up.

‘Let’s sort something out when we get back from Centre Parcs,’ suggested Tara.

‘Sure,’ Charley said noncommittally.

Turning to her daughter, Tara put her hand out towards her, ‘Come on then Monnie-Moo, let’s go and see some ferocious sharks!’

Monnie slipped her hand into Tara’s, and Charley watched them walk off, playfully swinging their arms together. She wanted to cry.

Apart from that one encounter with Tara, and seeing Pam every single day, which wasn’t necessarily good for either of them, Charley didn’t see anyone else all summer. Instead she took every extra pub shift available and went to ground. When Nisha called, inviting her out for a drink, she declined, blaming an urgently needed economy drive, and when Angie suggested she join her mob for a picnic at the beach in Weston-super-Mare, Charley excused herself, saying she’d committed to working pretty much every day.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see her friends – she did. She desperately missed their company, their support and their affection. But she couldn’t cope with facing up to the contrast between their lives, which were all happy, successful and fulfilled, and her own. She knew she was a failure. And she didn’t need anyone, or anything, rubbing it in.

Ordinarily, Pam would have been able to lift Charley out of the doldrums she’d sunk into, but Pam’s spirits and confidence ware sinking even faster than Charley’s following the unexpectedly cold shower of truth at the lawyer’s. Pam spent a lot of time in her room thinking things through.

When Zee suggested they all meet up for one of their occasional pub lunches, Pam declined, but with a cheery-enough laugh, ‘You must be joking! Not after last time!’ Then, the following week, she feigned a summer cold to avoid going on a shopping trip with Zee.

A few days later, Mona phoned to invite her round to a supper party at her place.

‘Sounds lovely. Who’s going?’ asked Pam warily.

‘Don’t panic! I haven’t invited Geoff,’ Mona assured her. ‘It’ll be just be the usual couples – but minus Geoff.’

Pam didn’t feel she could refuse, but as the dreaded evening loomed closer she grew increasingly anxious, and then unbearably anxious, until eventually, after a sleepless night and full of apologies, she called Mona and cried off.

Full of tact and sympathy, Mona had assured Pam that she understood, and that she certainly didn’t want to pressure her into doing something she didn’t feel ready to do. Explaining her change of plans to Charley, Pam fully expected her to understand too, but to her surprise her daughter-in-law took a different stance.

‘I know it’s daunting going to things on your own, Pam, believe me, I really do. But you just need to take that first step. The longer you leave it, the harder it will be.’

Pam’s heart went out to Charley. There had been so much more the young woman had had to contend with following Josh’s death, which Pam hadn’t even appreciated. ‘How did you manage it? That first step?’ she asked.

Charley sighed thoughtfully before she answered. ‘Well, to start with I did accept invitations from couples, from Josh’s friends, but it was always horribly awkward. Nobody knew what to say, and people treated me differently, like they were tiptoeing round me on eggshells all the time. I hated it, and I knew I was spoiling everyone else’s fun. Eventually I stopped going and only went out with my girlfriends – Tara, Angie and Nisha. But looking back I wish I wish I’d stuck it out, been a bit braver – because now I’ve lost that part of Josh’s life, too. Which is why I think you should go,’ she finished.

‘But I’ve got nothing to wear!’ claimed Pam, resorting to a different, if time-honoured, excuse. ‘I’ve left nearly everything at home.’

‘You can borrow something of mine,’ Charley said, in a voice that brooked no argument.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling! I’d look like mutton dressed as lamb!’

Charley regarded her mother-in-law’s slim figure with her head on one side. ‘No, you wouldn’t.’ Then she slipped off to her room and a few minutes later came back with a couple of mini dresses and a pair of black leggings. ‘Either of these, over those, will look great on you,’ she promised. She then cajoled Pam into calling Mona back to tell her she could go after all.

‘Ah,’ said Mona, down the line, and Pam could hear the distinctive sound of a metaphorical brick being dropped from a great height and landing heavily. Her friend continued, ‘The thing is, when you said you couldn’t make it… I called Geoff and invited him instead.’

Hearing the acute discomfort in Mona’s voice, Pam said hastily, ‘Oh, that’s fine! Absolutely fine!’

‘I’m sorry, Pam—’

‘No, it’s my fault,’ Pam assured her. ‘I’m the one messing you around.’

‘You’ll come next time, yes?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Pam, instantly hating herself for feeling so improbably, childishly, disappointed – no, jealous – that Geoff was getting to go and she wasn’t. She wanted to cry. She just bloody well hoped he wasn’t taking that effing Barbara.

Much as they wanted to, Pam and Charley couldn’t simply go off-grid and disappear from everyone’s radar forever. A couple of days after the new school term started, Angie called Charley.

‘Will’s gone back to school and sanity has returned to the house! It is officially safe to come round!’

Charley laughed, knowing that Angie was only half-joking. Despite being the Headteacher of the local primary school, or perhaps because of that, Will’s parenting style was best described as ‘playful pandemonium’. Charley knew Angie’s summer would have been spent in endless garden campouts and dinosaur digs, treasure hunts and pirate battles, mini-Olympics and water fights. Not for the first time Charley found herself feeling jealous of her friend’s full-on family life. Normally, she’d have happily gone round at the weekends and after work, and joined in. But this year Charley had exiled herself, and she’d missed