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

cogs clicked into place in her mind. She looked over at Charley. Her dark head bent low over the chopping board at the table, her damp curls captured in a loose top knot with an old blue hair scrunchy. A huge pang of affection welled up and caught in Pam’s throat. Some women find it hard to love the people their children fall in love with – the people their children love more than them, but it had been easy to fall for Charley.

Sensing Pam was looking at her, Charley glanced up and smiled back at her lovingly. God, thought Pam, not for the first time, you’re far too young to be a widow. And you’re far too young to be alone for the rest of your life. She stirred the pan in thoughtful silence for a while, marshalling her thoughts and choosing her words carefully, hesitating to rush in where, in this case, even angels would tiptoe in cautiously. Finally, taking the pan off the heat she went over to Charley and sat down next to her at the table.

‘Sweetheart, I don’t want you to think of me as your mother-in-law forever.’

Charley’s eyes widened in protest, but Pam silenced her by putting her hand on her arm. ‘I will be whatever you want me to be in your life… a friend, a stand-in-Mum, a business partner… a lodger even!’ Anxiety had clouded across Charley’s face, so Pam went on hastily, ‘I will always, always want to be part of your life, and I will never want you to stop being part of mine, but I think it’s time you started to think… time we both started to think,’ she corrected herself, ‘that one day someone else might fill the wonderfully privileged role of being your mother-in-law.’

Charley swallowed hard and shook her head.

Seeing tears brimming in Charley’s eyes Pam fetched her the kitchen roll. She unravelled a piece and handed it to her, before carrying on tenderly, ‘It’s okay to find someone else, Charley. It’s more than okay, and in fact you should. You’re a wonderful young woman and you deserve to find someone who will make you happy for the rest of your life. Josh would want you to be happy. And so do I.’

‘There’ll never be another Josh,’ said Charley fiercely, hot tears scalding her cheeks.

‘No. Of course there won’t be. But there might be someone else you could love.’

‘I’ll never love anyone the way I loved Josh,’ insisted Charley.

‘Yes, that might be true,’ said Pam sagely.

Then she went on to confide in Charley something she’d never admitted to a living soul before. ‘When Luke was born, I didn’t want another child. I loved him so much I was scared I would never be able to love another child as much as him. I just didn’t believe I could.

‘But Geoff was adamant we should have two,’ continued Pam, ‘He was adamant Luke should have someone to play with. So I did a terrible thing. I had another baby purely to give Luke a playmate.’ Charley didn’t say anything, but lightly touched Pam’s hand in a gesture of support. ‘And then Josh was born,’ Pam went on tenderly. ‘Out he popped, all scrunched up and wrinkled, and they bundled him into my arms, and then suddenly, there was this… this rush of love. It completely engulfed me – Josh brought it with him.’ Her throat tightened threateningly. She took a deep breath, while her eyes sought Charley’s and held her gaze. ‘We can all love more than one person, Charley. Loving Luke didn’t stop me loving Josh. Loving Josh mustn’t stop you loving someone else. He’ll always be a part of your life. As I will.’

Wordlessly, Charley put her arms round her mother-in-law, and Pam leant into the hug, resting her head against Charley’s.

Chapter Thirty-four

‘I’m not sure how to break this to you…’ Angie’s voice down the phone was hesitant.

Charley was in the shop trying to work out if she had enough power sockets. As it happened, she didn’t. The crafters, she remembered, had crisscrossed the floor with multi-plug extension cables, which she doubted was even legal – it certainly wasn’t safe. ‘What’s happened?’ she demanded urgently.

At the other end of the line she could her Angie take a deep breath, and her mouth went dry. She hoped to God nothing had happened to one of Angie’s kids.

‘A pipe’s burst in the school kitchen. A mains pipe. And the kitchen and the entire hall is flooded, so we can’t use it for the fundraiser.’

‘What?!’

Charley sat down hard on the nearest chair, her mind racing, and not quite understanding why they couldn’t use the hall – how long did it take to mop up a floor, for crying out loud?

‘Hang on, the Prosecco Night is nearly two weeks away. Surely they can get it cleared up by then?’

‘No. The water’s lifted the floor tiles. They’ve got to replace the whole floor.’

Bloody, bloody, bloody hell, thought Charley, sinking back into the seat. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’

‘We’ll have to cancel.’

‘Noooo!’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘It’s not your fault, Ange,’ Charley assured her, then added less tactfully, ‘But Tara’s going to be gutted.’ Charley was already gutted, partly because she’d ordered more than nine hundred quid’s worth of extra stock for the event, but mostly because she really, really didn’t want to let Tara down.

‘I can’t see any other option,’ said Angie, ‘unless we go back to holding it in your flat.’

The idea was so ludicrous that Charley laughed out loud. ‘We’ve sent out four hundred flyers! Twenty people in my flat is a squeeze!’

And then a notion slid sideways into her mind. She dismissed it, but it slid right back again. ‘Ange. I’ll call you back.’

Was it an insane idea to shift the fundraiser to the shop? She looked around the available space. It was just about big enough, but would people come down here? Would they want to trek all the way into town for what had always been a very local