Cosy Nights & Snowball Fights (Little Duck Pond Cafe #36)

CHAPTER FOUR

When I was just seventeen, I fell in love with a boy called Hamish.

He worked on the bread and pastries counter at the local supermarket and he’d give me this really gorgeous smile every time I went to pick up a bag of their freshly-made jam doughnuts. (They were Mum’s favourites – and they quickly became my favourites, too!) We’d exchange a comment or two, but because he seemed like the cheeky-chappie type, I sort of assumed he’d flirt like this with everyone.

One day, however, he surprised me by asking me out. It must have been autumn because I remember the biscuits and cupcakes had been iced to resemble spider’s webs and pumpkins with smiley faces. So I said yes, and I discovered – over a series of Jager Bombs and packets of crisps in the local pub – that beneath the jokey exterior, Hamish was actually a really sensitive guy. He told me it had taken him ages to pluck up the courage to ask me out.

That was the start of my first proper relationship. And at first, it was wonderful. Hamish made me feel like the most beautiful, witty, intelligent girl in the world, and I fell madly in love with him.

So I was utterly heart-broken when, the following month, he suddenly ended our relationship in a text and then went silent on me when I tried to find out the reason why.

Eventually, in complete frustration and wanting answers, I marched into the supermarket and – over the Santa cupcake and snowman cookie display – I demanded to know what was going on. Why wouldn’t he at least talk to me on the phone? He was polite but vague, saying he always thought we were just having fun and that it was nothing serious. A week later, though, I heard through the grapevine that he was back with his ex-girlfriend. Totally unbeknown to me, my role in that relationship had been to help Hamish get over the initial break-up with her!

After that devastating experience, I shut myself away in my bedroom and tortured myself listening to ‘our’ songs on repeat. I might never have left the house again if it hadn’t been for Jo, who’d been my best friend since the first day at primary school. She refused to give up on me and came over every night just to hear me going on and on about Hamish and how I’d never love again the way I’d loved him. She always had a supply of tissues in her pocket and she made me a playlist of girl power songs, and eventually, as we sang along for the hundredth time to Little Mix’s ‘Shout Out To My Ex’, I felt my spirits slowly reviving.

Jo’s view of boys was quite down-to-earth. She attracted their interest with her fiery red hair and confident air, but she always kept them slightly at arm’s length. She was much too wise to let a boy ruin her life, like I’d allowed Hamish to ruin mine!

I gave romance a wide berth for a while after that, and although I went on a few dates, they never came to anything. Even when I met Gavin – he joined the employment agency in Guildford, where I’d worked since leaving school – we were just friends at first. Gavin’s desk was directly opposite mine and we got to know each other in a totally natural, non-pressured way, and I liked him. He made me laugh but it was just an easy workmate friendship, nothing more. I’d tease him about the girls he always seemed to have flocking around him – like tall, pretty Ella from accounts who’d use any excuse to come into our department just so she could engage in a bit of flirty banter with Gavin. He’d notice my sly smiles as they chatted away, and once Ella had gone, he’d shrug and grin at me. ‘It must be my magnetic attraction,’ he’d say, and I’d laugh heartily at that and flick my eyes to the ceiling. I knew he was a terrible flirt and quite frankly, Ella was welcome to him!

It was only when I left the agency six months after Gavin joined – to start a beauty course at college – that he confessed at my leaving do that he’d always really liked me. Now that we weren’t colleagues any longer, would I like to have dinner with him some time? I laughed and said I would. He actually had a great smile, I realised, as if seeing him for the very first time. His puppy dog eyes were deep blue with long lashes, and the way he kept pushing back his floppy blond hair was really very endearing. Plus, he was funny, which totally sealed the deal in my mind.

Next day, the jitters set in, remembering what had happened with Hamish when I was seventeen. But I told myself I was six years older now, with the benefit of experience. I was no longer so na?ve about love and romance. And Gavin was different. We’d started off with like , as friends, which was surely a good basis for a healthy relationship. What harm would it do to have some fun and get to know him better, out of the workplace?

My trust issues weren’t only due to my first boyfriend’s treatment of me. Far from it. My experiences during childhood had made me wary of pretty much everyone.

I hadn’t had the best of starts in life. My mother was an alcoholic and I’d never known my dad.

When I was a child, I’d thought it was normal to live in constant uncertainty. It was how I lived, so I believed it was the same for everyone. It was only when I started school and made friends with Jo, and she invited me to her house for tea after school, that I started to realise there was another way... that there were mums who would never pass out on the sofa and ‘forget’ to collect their children from school so they’d have to walk home and cross roads on their own. Jo’s mum, who was a nurse, had a healthy snack waiting for her when she got home and she was always keen to know what Jo had been doing that day at school. I could tell Jo didn’t particularly like being asked this and she would often reply, ‘Oh, nothing.’ I could see that Jo took her mum’s love completely for granted and I wondered how that would feel, to know you were right at the centre of your parent’s world and that even if you did something bad, their love would never waver...

The first time Mum ‘forgot’ and no one came to collect me from school, my teacher spoke to Jo’s mum and she took care of me. She must have quickly realised my situation, because she looked out for me after that, always staying at the gates until Mum eventually arrived.

Jo’s mum was so kind, and for a while, things were okay.

But living with someone who was an addict, I was forced to grow up quickly and it wasn’t too long before I felt like I was the mum, worrying all the time about her and doing everything I could to make sure she was safe. I did the best I could. But then the fire happened when I was ten. Social Services got involved, and I was taken into care. I felt so scared and bewildered, and during that time, it was Jo who pulled me through.

With all this as the backdrop to my life, meeting Gavin and planning our lives together seemed like nothing short of a miracle. I’d never experienced a normal family life, like Jo’s, but now all that was changing. I’d found my soulmate in Gavin.

The dark days were over. There would only be sunshine from now on.

I felt like the luckiest girl in the world...