‘I’m home!’ I called out as I shoved the back door open with my shoulder, slammed it shut again and dumped my bag on the table. ‘You still haven’t fixed the door, then?’
I didn’t shout out the bit about the door. My dad and his moods were always tricky to gauge when you didn’t have eyes on him. These days, his temper came down to how well he’d fared playing the online gambling sites he favoured.
‘But I’m not going to be here long!’ I added, reaching for the kettle and checking the clock. ‘I want to make sure everything’s set up at the pub before I start thinking about what to wear.’
Anna, Molly and I had been on a shopping trip to Norwich to pick out outfits for the party, but I still wasn’t convinced that the rather demure dress we’d settled on was really right for me. I was more of a tight top and skinny jeans kind of girl.
‘But what about my dinner?’ came Dad’s gruff voice.
‘Evelyn’s laying on a buffet,’ I reminded him, ‘there’ll be plenty to eat. Where’s Mum?’
‘She said she was going straight up to the home after she’d finished at school.’
Dad didn’t work. I could barely remember him leaving the house during daylight hours to go anywhere other than the pub or the bookies, but Mum had always managed to hold down a variety of jobs. School cleaner, dinner lady – or midday supervisor as they were now called – and nursing home housekeeping assistant, was the current combination.
Living at home with the Hurren family was nothing like being at work with the Connellys, but I managed to juggle the two contrasting parts of my life. Most of the time.
As much as I longed to take up Catherine’s kind offer, I knew Mum would be lost without me acting as the buffer that she needed when Dad had been on a bender and gambled away his beer money.
‘Are you going to sort me out some dinner, then, or what?’ Dad barked.
‘I just told you there’s going to be a buffet.’
‘Titchy sandwiches and those stinking devilled eggs Evelyn keeps churning out?’ he moaned. ‘I’m going to need something more substantial than that to see me through the night.’
Given his tone, I’d say the casinos hadn’t played in his favour. I had a cursory look in the fridge, flicked the kettle off again and reached into my bag for my purse.
‘I’ll nip down to the chippy,’ I said, resignedly, knowing I’d have to shelve my trip to The Mermaid. ‘They should have the fryers on by now.’
‘Make mine a large cod,’ Dad called back.
I took my annoyance out on the dodgy back door and headed up the road into town.
‘Large cod, large chips and a couple of bread rolls, please Sharon,’ I requested as I rifled through my purse to see if I could cobble together enough change. The Connelly family paid well, but stretching out my wages to accommodate an appetite as large as my father’s wasn’t always easy.
‘I can’t believe you’ve got room in those jeans to squeeze that lot in,’ said a familiar voice close to my ear. ‘And I thought you were cutting back on carbs until we’ve been up the aisle?’
‘What are you doing here?’ I laughed, spinning round and finding myself face to face with a wall of firm chest. ‘I thought you were supposed to be working late this afternoon?’
‘I wanted to surprise you.’ Gavin grinned, pinning me with his piercing blue gaze before planting a passionate kiss on my lips in full view of everyone.
‘And you made a detour to the chippy because . . .?’
‘I wanted to pick up some dinner for your dad,’ he cut in. ‘You know as well as I do that if he hasn’t got his belly full he’ll be a miserable sod all night, and I’m not having him spoil our party because the sandwiches are too small.’
That was typical Gavin. He was always coming up with things to smooth the way in the Hurren household. We’d barely started dating before he’d worked out that fresh flowers were the way to Mum’s heart, while Dad was always happier to see him when he turned up with a pack of lagers tucked under his arm.
‘Are you still meeting the lads for pre-drinks?’ I asked, keeping my tone light as I started counting out change.
I was none too impressed with the idea, but Gavin’s mates had insisted that, if they were losing their leader, then they were going to send him off in style. I had tried to suggest that sort of thing would be best saved for the stag night they were already planning in Dublin, but they hadn’t listened.
‘Nope,’ said Gavin, handing a crisp twenty pound note over to Sharon, who couldn’t resist batting her lashes at him even though she knew he was well and truly spoken for.
‘Seriously?’ I frowned.
‘Seriously,’ he grinned. ‘I told them I’m going to be with you right from the off tonight. My place is next to you now, Hayley.’
‘Mum?’ I called when I arrived back and found her coat flung over the back of a chair.
‘I’ll be down in a minute.’
I grabbed two plates and set about filling one and adding a handful of chips and the extra bread roll to the other.
‘I thought you were at work,’ I stated when she finally came in.
‘They let me finish early,’ she told me, rolling her eyes when she spotted the plates. ‘Did you remind him there’s going to be a buffet?’
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘but this one’s for you. Just don’t let him see it.’
‘Thanks, love.’ She smiled gratefully. ‘I haven’t had a bite since breakfast.’
‘Guess who I bumped into in the chippy.’
‘Who?’
‘Gavin,’ I grinned. ‘He’s finished early as well. He’s just popped to the shop so he’ll be here in a minute.’
‘Well, I should think so,’ said Mum as she began packing the buttered roll with chips. ‘This is going to be a night to remember.’
I didn’t get a single word of thanks from my father when I presented him with his early extra dinner on a tray and plonked it on his lap.
‘You were gone a while,’ he snapped, waving me out of the way of the television.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘They’re skimping on the chips again,’ he grumbled, when he finally looked at his plate. ‘And what am I supposed to do with one tiny roll?’
One thing The Codfather never did was skimp on portion sizes, but I wasn’t going to correct him or let him know that I’d given some to Mum, who had been working her backside off long before he had even rolled out of bed.
‘Gavin will be here in a minute,’ I said instead. ‘He’s got off work early and gone to get you some beers.’
‘You’ve landed on your feet with that one, girl,’ Dad muttered, sounding slightly mollified. ‘He could have had any woman he wanted in this town – though I suppose he still can.’
I ignored his final comment. I may have heard rumours about the occasional indiscretion, but given that they came from one of Gavin’s ex-girlfriends I chose not to believe them.
‘So, you want to make sure you don’t do anything to mess things up.’
‘No danger of that,’ said my fine fiancé as he popped his head into the room and passed me the chilled cans. ‘Your Hayley’s one in a million, Mr Hurren. You could say I’m the one who’s landed right side up,’ he added with a wink in my direction.
‘Yes, well,’ said Dad as he pulled the tab on his first lager of the day, ‘I don’t know about that, but after the business with that art teacher back in school, I’m just grateful to get her off our hands.’
‘Talking of your old art teacher,’ said Gavin as he made himself comfortable on the bed to watch me get dried and dressed after my bath, ‘have you done any more drawing this week?’
When Gavin and I had first got together, his mates had only remembered me for my notorious year eleven reputation, whereas my scorching scaffolder had asked about my talent with a paintbrush.
‘Your work was phenomenal,’ he had said, sounding genuinely awed. ‘You won the end of year show three years on the bounce, didn’t you? You must be even better now.’
I was flattered that he remembered, but I didn’t tell him I’d packed my paints away along with my memories of those final few weeks at school before the summer holidays had even started.
‘Are you seriously telling us that you can remember her etchings,’ teased Gavin’s so-called friends, ‘but you can’t remember her getting knocked up by a teacher old enough to be her father?’
I had shrugged off their spiteful comments and Gavin soon shut them up when we properly started going out, but he wouldn’t let me forget what I was missing out on.
In an unguarded moment I had told him that, for as long as I could remember, I had been happiest when sketching, designing and painting, and how I once had plans to study art after my GCSEs and dreamt of making it to art college after that. He said it was a shame things hadn’t worked out that way, but just because life had taught me a few harsh lessons, there was no reason to deny myself the pleasure of picking up a paintbrush again.
Once he knew how I felt, he wouldn’t let the subject go, and one wet Sunday afternoon he helped me dig out my easel from the loft and I hadn’t looked back since. Not that I had told anyone else about it. Not even Anna.
‘I’ve managed a couple of rough drawings,’ I told Gavin now, blocking out all thoughts of the art teacher whose timely desertion had left me with little more than blank pages and an incredibly guilty conscience. ‘And I finished the one of the dogs curled up in front of the Aga.’
Floss and Suki, the Wynthorpe Hall pooches, were perfect sitters. They could snooze for hours as long as their bellies were full. I had made some quick preliminary sketches when I was on my own with them, and I took a couple of snaps on my phone to work from in private after that.
‘Can I see them?’
‘Maybe later,’ I said, nodding at the clock on the nightstand. ‘We really need to get on.’
‘Are you two nearly ready?’ Mum hollered up the stairs the second I’d finished my sentence. ‘It wouldn’t hurt to get there early and check everything’s set up.’
‘We’ll be going in a minute!’ I called back, pulling my new dress over my head and turning around so Gavin could help with the zip.
I still wasn’t convinced it was the right thing to wear, but I was out of time.
‘The sooner we get our own place the better,’ he muttered.
‘I know,’ I said, twisting around to scrutinise my reflection and wondering whether to go for heels or flats. ‘Catherine offered us a room up at the hall again today.’
‘That little cottage would be better.’
‘Gatekeeper’s, you mean?’
‘That’s the one,’ Gavin smiled. ‘That would be the perfect little love nest for a newly engaged couple.’
‘That it would,’ I agreed, ‘but it’s already taken. Or it will be soon.’
Gavin didn’t say anything.
‘We’ll be all right squeezed in here together though, won’t we?’ I asked, wrapping my arms around his neck and thinking about how romantic it was going to be to wake up next to him every morning. ‘I’ve heard that two can live as cheaply as one.’
‘Not with someone like your father draining our resources.’
‘There is that,’ I sighed, the idyll quickly being replaced by an image of my father sprawled out on the sofa, devouring his body weight in peanuts, ‘but I can’t face leaving Mum.’
‘I know you can’t,’ Gavin sighed, ‘but it’s got to happen sometime.’
‘Just not yet,’ I said, kissing him lightly on the lips.
‘All right,’ he smiled, holding me at arm’s length and nodding in approval as he took in my new dress. ‘And I don’t suppose it really matters where we are, does it? As long as we’re together.’
‘Exactly,’ I agreed.
‘I love you, Hayley Hurren-soon-to-be-Garford,’ he laughed.
‘And I love you, too.’ I laughed back.