Secrets Lies Legacies

By Wilma Hayes

Secrets, Lies and Legacies (formerly published in print as Things I Haven't Told You)

Mary and Tim seem to have a perfect relationship. But everyone has secrets - haven't they?

Mary, a former school teacher, decides to go back to work - as a builder. As the only woman on site, she has some challenges to meet but learns quickly. Tim, a structural engineer who would much prefer to be on a building site, is unemployed - a house husband. Then his mother finds out. She is a domineering person who takes an instant dislike to Mary and works to destroy the relationship - 'for Tim's sake'.

A mystery from Tim's family threatens to destabilise their newly found love for each other and the wider family relations even further. Tensions escalate. Somehow Mary has to find out why there is such a powerful demand for her attention in the walled vegetable garden. She finds tiny glimpses into the past and knows she must widen the search. Then Tim tells her why his mother is so hostile. It runs deeper than it seems.

Mary hasn't been entirely forthcoming about her family either and there are new pressures, financial this time.
In order to meet these new challenges, she must first get Tim to admit that she must resolve the mystery and then they have to survive their controlling, dishonest and unstable parents, a sudden marriage, a new baby, a flood, a possible murder and a new professional venture for them both.

But then there are the children, one grown up and the other not...

This is the second in the Welsh Marches series. The first book Freeing My Sisters begins the tale and a third, Red Snow tells the true story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilma Hayes
• Release date: Mar 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9780957617919

Wilma Hayes

'The Welsh Marches is an evocative place. Full of mystery, history, and tiny old houses, it leads easily into Wales - a perfect place to write and to set romantic novels with mysteries and crimes embedded in them.'This is how Wilma summarises the inspiration for her four novels in the Welsh Marches series and the forty-nine short stories which follow and make up Sevens, Stories to Commute By.Luckily for her, she was able to escape to this scenic area and begin to write. It is not a gift that many people are given, but with a tiny cottage of her own, an accompanying cottage garden and a husband who is handy with a computer and a coffee pot, the opportunity was too good to ignore.

Book preview

Secrets Lies Legacies

Everyone has secrets…haven’t they?

by Wilma Hayes

First published in 2013 as Things I Haven't Told You,

this electronic edition published 2015 by Smashwords

Copyright Wilma Hayes

978-0-9576179-7-1

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition License Notes This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Visit www.wilmahayes.co.uk for more author news and information about the next books in the series or to order print copies.

Dedication

For my husband

who said I had to write

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 A new job

Chapter 2 Tim's mother

Chapter 3 Meeting Mum and the Colonel

Chapter 4 Was this a good idea?

Chapter 5 Wishing for home

Chapter 6 Moving in

Chapter 7 Royston insists

Chapter 8 Army life or not

Chapter 9 The farm

Chapter 10 Hannah insists

Chapter 11 Oh imperfect day

Chapter 12 Another worry to resolve

Chapter 13 The headmaster

Chapter 14 So who did it?

Chapter 15 Royston speaks

Chapter 16 Family issues

Chapter 17 The conservation architect

Chapter 18 Is it possible?

Chapter 19 Decoration by committee

Chapter 20 Robert's 'gift'

Chapter 21 Accident at the farm

Chapter 22 Royston again, louder this time

Chapter 23 George

Chapter 24 Babies

Chapter 25 What did I see?

Chapter 26 The search

Chapter 27 All change

Chapter 28 Christmas

Chapter 29 Floods

Chapter 30 Follow the drain

Chapter 31 Look at the faces

Also by Wilma Hayes

Follow Me!

Sample Chapter Freeing My Sisters

Sample Chapter Red Snow

Sample Chapter The Word Garden

Secrets Lies Legacies

Everyone has secrets…haven’t they?

Chapter 1 A new job

How did we ever come to this?

Tim was asleep, or drunk, sitting at the kitchen table, face down among the papers. He was dressed, but he hadn’t shaved. His laptop glowed benignly among the litter of newspapers, tissues, tea mugs, Canadian Club rye whisky bottle nearly empty. His glasses were on the floor.

This man without human faults had showed her a part of his world where she could never go. Mary would never have all of Tim again. Some of him was owed elsewhere.

~ ~ ~

'Mary, I’ve made your lunch...’ Tim looked up as Mary entered the kitchen. An involuntary explosion of laughter made him choke so hard he couldn’t breathe.

The small person standing on the kitchen tiles in front of him was wearing heavy work boots; blue, oversized bib and brace overalls, cuffs rolled up at the bottom; a t-shirt bulging out of the sides, and big work gloves. Huge plastic goggles propped up a hard hat from which fluffy brown curls escaped. Coughing on hysterical hoots he gathered her under his chin into a huge hug. She grabbed the hard hat to stop it falling on the floor.

‘All I wanted was an opinion, not a performance. You know how women are; we like to think we’re dressed right for the occasion. Do you think I look right and are you sure my bum doesn’t look big in this?’

He looked over her shoulder, ‘Your bum is just big enough and still gorgeous – trust me,’ and sneezed with another laugh. ‘Now I have to go with you to see the reaction when George and the guys see you!’

‘Don’t you dare!’ She took off the hat and pushed the gloves and goggles into it. ‘But did you say lunch? Have you really made my lunch?’

Tim wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, picked up the plastic carrier bag from the kitchen table, opened it and looked in. ‘Yes, you have lunch, a jar of coffee, also a box of tea bags and a package of Jaffa cakes, and...‘ He sniffed back another snort of laughter.

‘What are the tea bags for? I don’t drink tea.’

‘I know that; the tea bags and Jaffa cakes are for the rest of the guys. The new boy in the team always brings the tea on his first day. There is also a flask of coffee for you in case you can’t wait for the kettle to boil and a dry pair of socks, a box of tissues and a loo roll.’

‘A loo roll?’

‘Darling,’ he put one hand on her shoulder and pretended to be patronising, ‘toileting arrangements are going to be basic and traditionally a lot easier for men. Since you are the only female, you’ll need some other system which I am afraid I will have to leave you to devise for yourself, but I have put a windbreak and a hammer in the boot of your car, just in case you find a use for them.’ He hung the bag on her wrist. ‘I doubt that George has arranged port-a-loos just for you.’

Mary hugged him again. ‘You are amazing. It is going to be a very long day without you.’

He waved her out of the gate. I wonder if this is what mothers feel like when they send their precious child off to school for the first day, he thought. But dear God, I’ve just sent mine off for a day with four healthy, well-muscled blokes on a construction site. How is she going to cope with the teasing, the testing, the rough language… the health and safety nightmare? Under this barrage of thoughts, none of them good, he began to see the potential for any number of fatal, embarrassing and cruel scenarios. It was going to be a very long day indeed. The laughter had long since disappeared into a thick, self-created layer of aloneness.

George and three other men were lounging around the gate when Mary arrived. They looked to her like a happy lot, but whether that was a cover for the means by which they intended to humiliate her, she could not yet tell. It was quite likely of course, that they had made a book on whether she would show up at all. She wondered who won.

‘Come into the office.’ George’s voice was familiar with its smoke damaged growl. That, at least, gave her some comfort as she got out of the car with her precious plastic bag. George was short, stout and would have been dark but for a florid complexion. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and the plaid shirt, surprisingly clean, was neatly tucked over his extended stomach into a strong belt underneath. He led her into the only part of the derelict building with anything that might be called a roof and wall - a blue tarpaulin tied down to the old timber framing. The project on which George was working was the renovation of an ancient box frame barn and its conversion into a house. She had learned that much when she’d pleaded with him to agree to her stupid scheme. Good old George – traditional builder, loved old buildings as if they had souls. He understood every technique used in rural buildings created after the beginning of time and he’d agreed to let her learn some of it.

The old farm site was on an open space that sloped gently towards the south west, accessed from behind by a long tree lined lane. The earth around the barn was rutted with vehicle tracks in which mud was drying and cracking from the effect of the raw summer sun. There were irregular piles of materials that Mary could not hope to name; some seemingly new, others obviously not. A curl of smoke drifted upwards from a low bonfire with a pile of broken wood and odd timbers beside it, slowly being disposed of.

The structure itself had little of its original roof; the remaining tiles had slid down the roof in sagging crescents and looked like eyes just wakening from sleep. Others were stacked in neat piles, probably for reuse. Mary could see the wooden beams that made up most of the building. In between the beams was a variety of wall structures; bricks, plywood held on with strips of timber, other materials with small sticks and poles hanging out of it. There was enough height for two floors, Mary assumed, and a large opening that had logically been a doorway. It was tall and wide enough for large hay wagons and horses to have entered easily in the centuries when farms worked that way.

Against what was probably the edge of the property, barbed wire was looped on grey wooden posts set at decaying angles among the grass and weeds. There were several outbuildings in an equally tumbled state of decay, partially covered with vegetation that gave some bleak indication of the original state of the main structure. Underneath the tarpaulin’s flapping shelter was a dirt floor on which was a table with one leg propped up on bricks, a collection of odd chairs and one stool. The other men swaggered in behind them with exaggerated casualness. George straddled a chair and leaned on the wobbly table. He waved Mary to a chair which had three good legs and one made of rough cut timber. She sat down, testing her balance on the loose structure and put the noisy plastic bag on her lap. The others sat down a little distance away while he introduced them as if they didn’t want to be too involved in this scheme just yet.

‘This ‘ere’s Sam.’ Sam smirked and shook her hand. He was short, dark and broad, about eighteen years old. He had a collection of tattoos up well-muscled arms that made them look like the legs on a pool table. The tattoos disappeared under tightly rolled up sleeves. ‘Sam’s our general man. He helps out with all kinds of stuff. Then thur’s Wayne. He’s the chippie.’ Mary looked puzzled. Wayne was only marginally taller than Sam, but considerably older and he didn’t smile. He was dark and thin with a face that looked like it had suffered decades of bad food and cigarettes. He wore jeans of no particular shape, a jumper with holes in the elbows and a woolly hat. He’ll be harder work, thought Mary. But he suddenly grinned showing some gaps in his teeth, and held out his hand. ‘’e means I’m the carpenter.’

‘An’ this ‘ere’s Sean. He’s the bricky.’ Sean was tall and thin and dressed all in black. He slid his peaked cap from his head to reveal wispy grey hair that he combed from somewhere behind one ear over his head to the other. It now stuck out over one side of his head.

Mary shook his hand and smiled as calmly as she could. She seriously wondered if she was in the right place, the right generation, or on the right planet.

Seeing a dirty kettle on the floor beside a suspicious socket whose long lead trailed out through an opening in the wall, Mary remembered Tim’s advice. She reached into the plastic bag and pulled out the box of tea bags that she handed to a surprised George, and then the box of Jaffa cakes that she put on top. ‘I hope this is the done thing,’ she smiled. The grins around her assured her that it probably was, ‘but I warn you I don’t drink the stuff myself.’

George relaxed but continued to speak to the top of the table in general and no one in particular. ‘Like I told ya befur, Mary’s gonna follow you guys around fer a few days. She wants to know about brickin’ an’ carpentry and such. She’ll be helpin’ out as she can, but fer the time bein’ she’ll jus’ be watchin’. Ain’t tha’ right?’

‘Yes.’ Mary wondered why on earth she had talked George into letting her do this. ‘I don’t want to become an expert; I just want to know what expert work looks like.’ She let her eyes twinkle. ‘So George suggested I come and watch you lot.’ Embarrassed guffaws reassured her that some of the anxiety they had all brought to work this morning was slipping away.

George put both hands on the table’s sticky top. ‘Well, come on then...‘ But Mary interrupted.

‘There is just one other thing.’ She put the toilet roll on the table. ‘I intend to put up a screen in the corner of that hedge just over there if that’s OK ...’ She pointed. ‘...and when I use it I will hang my hat on the end. Now if you lot want to find out what I look like with overalls around my ankles it will only take a peek for you to find out. But let me warn you it won’t be a pretty sight and if you don’t want me to do the same to you, I suggest we agree to leave well alone. OK?’ Four jaws dropped and for a second there was silence. Then George roared with laughter.

‘Come on Mary, I’ll show y’ around and lend you a hammer.’ Mary prayed a silent thank you to Saint Tim.

As Mary disappeared up the lane, Tim shut the gate and walked back to the quiet little black and white cottage. From the back step, he looked up into the orchard and listened to the country silence around him. Not silence in the lack-of-all-sound sense of the word; there were the sounds of leaves rubbing together in the moving air, insects in the flowers and grubs in the grass. Noises in the hedge meant that bird and mouse life was at work. It was silent in its calmness. There was no urgency in nature on a warm summer morning – just the unrolling of life as it had been lived forever in this rural part of the Welsh Marches.

He’d just seen the love of his life drive off to a construction site populated by men, with all the physical dangers and adolescent culture these places were made of. He’d worked on enough of them to know very well what they were like. The turmoil in his heart softened only marginally as he watched Mary’s two kittens, Rosie and Marie, ripple through the rough orchard grass and up a large apple tree. Apple, pear, plum, walnut, they were all the same to him until they produced fruit. Maybe it was ash. Maybe it didn’t have fruit. He needed to get a grip on his imagination.

Rosemary Cottage sounded hollow as he went in and that was unusual. Even the radio in the background sounded tinny and false. He felt that he didn’t want to be there alone. So he tidied up the papers in the living room, cleared envelopes and circulars from yesterday’s post off her silly and very uncomfortable settees and walked up the lane to his own house.

It too felt empty and strange. He collected his post from the crooked box hanging on his gate – the one that he had not yet secured to the timber frame, made a cup of tea in his shiny new kitchen, dropped the tea bag into the sink and leaned against the dark counter top. The kitchen had once been full of sound from radio, i-pod or ringing telephones. There hadn’t been a lot of culinary activity – he was a boil in the bag kind of chef - but now the kitchen was empty and silent. His house, lived in for barely five months, had memories from some of his short time here but not many. He ran his hand over the counter top. Dust was beginning to settle. He had been here so little in the past two or three weeks, why should he be surprised. It was already feeling devoid of life. It no longer had things going on in it; things that memories were made with.

Somehow he had to pull his brains and imagination back under his control and get used to this. It was what she wanted to do. She had made it happen and now they were where they were – or rather he was. She was probably wrapping them around her little finger, charming the socks off them all, making them all love her... Damn it all to hell and back and then sideways for good measure.

He flicked through the post: an engineering trade magazine and a local paper, a letter from a company he’d sent a job application to and the usual assortment of junk mail. Tim slit open the company letter with a kitchen knife. Thanks but no thanks it said in a formal patronising tone. They would keep his CV on file in case another position that might suit came available but for now the position had been filled. Blah blah blah. Tim was puzzled by the impersonal tone of the letter. He was more than qualified for the post, but he wouldn’t have thought so overqualified as to make them wonder why he was interested. He had applied long before the deadline. It should have resulted in an interview at least but maybe that was just him being arrogant. Perhaps he wasn’t the profession’s gift to structural engineering. But what was he going to do with the rest of his life? He had to earn a living for a while yet at least. Retirement wasn’t exactly on the horizon and even that had to be paid for with some kind of savings. Why was he worrying? There was still a future ahead.

He shook the melancholy off his back and opened the trade magazine. He needed to secure his job search strategy and not take it personally. He was a good engineer with experience around the world from the bottom of bridges, to the top of high-rise buildings, to platforms in the middle of the ocean. It may have been a professional misjudgement to re-locate to the Welsh Marches, but that only meant it would take a little longer to find something. Opportunities were bound to be fewer and he might need to compromise. But there was no way on earth he was leaving now he’d found Mary. He tossed the trade magazine on the counter top. It slid to the edge and onto the floor.

He left the magazine where it had fallen, picked the tea bag out of the sink, made another cup of tea and took it and the local paper outside to what passed for his back garden. One day I will get this weed strewn mess sorted out. He’d mowed the grass once, but in the weeks since then, it had grown shaggy and lumpy again with things in it that clearly weren’t grass. He leaned back in his one garden chair - but not today. Today he had no enthusiasm for anything that required physical endeavour or planning.

The headline on the front page had not caught his eye, but the grainy photograph did. ‘Conmac Engineering managing director, James Racine leaving his solicitors yesterday’, was the caption. A slow smile crossed Tim’s face and the rest of the article raised his morale considerably. He went inside and called Mary’s mobile number.

‘I promise you I’m not checking up on you,’ he told her when she answered. Over her laugh, which told him that she knew he was doing exactly that, he continued, ‘but since I’ve got you, how are things going?’

‘Great!’ She sounded altogether too delighted and he felt another layer of insecurity smear itself over the large amount of the day in front of him. ‘I’m being educated in brick laying at the moment and have been put in charge of one end of a piece of string.’

‘Well, with work that important, I won’t keep you, but I just thought you might like to know that James was seen leaving his solicitors according to the front page of the Hereford paper. It’s last week’s paper, but I just collected it today.’

She shrieked, ‘Yes! Thank God for that. What else does it say?’

‘Apparently, HMRC have been looking at the accounts of certain companies…’ He heard her little laugh, ‘... and they have serious questions to ask of the Directors of Conmac.’

‘Tim, I can’t tell you how proud I am. I hope you still feel better out of it all.’

‘Well, I do feel a lot better now I’ve spoken to you. It was really lonely here when you left. Now that is silly isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but I love you anyway. And I don’t mind you checking – honestly.’

Tim smiled as he hung up. But he still had to keep a firm hand on his imagination and now that he was out of a job he must, must, must find another.

Mary clipped the little phone into the breast pocket of her overalls and tightened the string for Sean. ‘Friend,’ she explained. Sean spoke little as he worked and Mary did most of the talking or rather, asking. His answers were short, reasonable and it was obvious that he was so experienced that he worked without resorting to rationale – he’d done with that many years ago. But by mid-morning, he seemed to realize that she wasn’t going away and so showed her how to level a row of bricks – Sean called the row a course - although she had to stand in the deep mud by the wall to use the long bright yellow level on top. There will be more of this to come, Mary thought.

By lunchtime, there was mud up to Mary’s knees in spite of the rising heat and she was struggling to learn the language around her. It seemed that the normal rough edges of construction-bloke-speak had been trimmed today probably on the order of George and a residue of chivalry meant she did not have to draw the lines. Today they were being kind to her.

Under the blue tarpaulin at midday, they threw assorted tools, gloves and clothes into piles on the dry earth floor and dragged their sandwich boxes and chairs to the table. ‘Put the kettle on, will you love?’ Wayne smirked at the others. Mary did not miss the intent, but quietly filled the kettle from the standpipe, plugged it in and when it boiled she made the tea.

She was glad for the chance to rest. Her muscles and joints were so far keeping up with the demands, but only just. A hot bath tonight for her middle-aged body was already beginning to have the same appeal as major pain-killing drugs.

When he finished eating his sandwiches, a bag of crisps and a chocolate biscuit, Sean snapped the lid down on his lunch box, pulled his cap over his eyes, leaned back and appeared to go to sleep. ‘Always does that.’ Sam assured her, nodding at Sean. ‘So he doesn’t have to play bridge with us.’ The others snorted with laughter. Mary made small talk with them for half an hour or so, before they one by one disappeared to their patch of hedge. She gathered up courage out of necessity and went to the windbreak.

Precisely an hour after downing tools, Sean sat up, pulled up his hat and went back to his bricks. The others followed and Mary spent the rest of the afternoon, deeper in the mud, but shadowing Sean as closely as she dared without getting in the way. She watched the neat rhythm and crisp movements with which he cut and spread the mortar; how he laid the bricks, tamped them and trimmed the joints. He was a neat craftsman and she admired the skill that a man could achieve over a lifetime of repetitive work. It was as if it were innate, a skill he’d been born with, but it was practice that made it so easy – years and years of it. She learned how to hand him the bricks and how he cut them with the grinder or by a smart whack with the edge of the big trowel when he needed only a part of one. The bricks were big and heavy with rough edges. Reclaimed bricks, Sean informed her, and hand made. He showed her the lines from the wire that had cut the excess clay off the mould. On one she saw small finger prints.

‘Woman’s or child’s?’ she asked Sean. He just grunted and shrugged. But he let her clean some of them by knocking off old mortar with a wide chisel and hammer and put them to soak in a tub of water until they were needed. She wondered who had made them, how and when. As she watched the bubbles rising from the bricks, she thought about real people – the ones whose hands had made them. It was something she knew she would never feel with a new commercially made brick in her hand.

In spite of being hot, sticky, wet and muddy, she enjoyed her day. When they finished work, all the new brickwork was covered up with wet sacks and plastic for the night.

Mary’s knees had just enough strength to drive home. Was this really a good idea?

Chapter 2 Tim's mother

Speaking to Mary smoothed the rough layer of insecurity in Tim’s mind a little – a very little. He went upstairs to his computer with a bit more man-made purpose in his heart. He worked his way through the trade magazine and on-line business directories and prepared a list of companies in the Welsh Marches that had engineering staff. It was a short list. After a mid-day sandwich, he searched the internet job sites for vacancies in structural engineering within commuting distance and highlighted two that were worth looking into. Should he have gone to the job centre? Was it where a professional like him went? He’d never been unemployed in his life. Accepting Job Seeker’s Allowance seemed patronising and gave him a status he didn’t feel comfortable with just yet.

He picked up his cold tea mug and put it back down again. He didn’t know how he should be feeling about the nothingness in front of him. Panic, desperation, defeat? Was this something that was his fault, well it was, but …A fault in his attitude to work? Or his ability to do the job? His confidence? Confidence was not the biggest characteristic in his armoury. Was this going to beat it down further still? He leaned back on the small chair in the little bedroom of his empty Victorian cottage and looked at the bright screen. Then he registered with several on-line employment agencies and up-loaded his CV. There must be a job strategy that he could formulate, but he had no idea how to go about it. Was it just a waiting game? Surely there was more to it than that.

The telephone rang and the shock of its noise in the quiet house almost knocked him off his chair. He grabbed it and, without thinking, answered. Shit and damn it all to hell! As soon as he heard his mother’s voice he wished to all the gods he could name that he’d let the answering service take the call. How was he going to explain why he was home - in the middle of the afternoon - and on Tuesday?

‘Tim! What are you doing at home in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday - and what did that silly woman at Conmac mean when she said that you didn’t work there anymore?’

Tim put his forehead down on his little desk, his brain flicking through the probable, possible and impossible excuses that he could use – real or not.

‘Hi Mum. What are you doing calling in the middle of the afternoon?’ Maybe if he teased her it would give him a minute to think.

‘You know perfectly well what I do in the middle of the afternoon on Tuesday and it’s not likely to be bridge. Now answer my question.’

Tim was trapped. As usual, it had to be the truth. ‘We – ah well, we came to a parting of the ways a couple of weeks ago and ...’

‘Weeks! And you didn’t tell us! Tim. What’s going on?’

Damn it, he thought to himself, I’m thirty-eight years old and I’ve still got to explain myself to my mother. When am I going to be allowed to grow up? And how old do I have to be before she stops scaring the shit out of me. She’ll do her usual rant and rave act if she knows I left because I discovered that the racket the Directors were running was illegal in the extreme and I reported them all. I’ll be stuck here for an hour listening to her moralising go on and on and…

‘Nothing much.’ He felt the tension rising in his stomach, sharp bile churning. ‘I just felt that Conmac wasn’t the place for me. It wasn’t working out. So I left and have spent the last week or so - well - sorting things out.’ How banal and illogical that sounded, even to him.

‘Tim,’ her voice was sharp and still gritty, ‘you can’t just leave a good job like that. What are you doing now – for money I mean - and have you found something else yet?’

Tim had to smile. Things for his mother could always be explained simply. Work meant income, without either one, a person was immediately and necessarily destitute. Certainly one as incompetent as she seemed to think he was.

‘Mum, I’m fine. Don’t worry. There will be another job; I’m not panicking yet.’ The settlement from Conmac to get him out and shut him up had been more than generous. ‘Besides I feel like I need a rest.’ He bit that off – it was the wrong thing to say.

‘A rest? From what? You’ve only been there a few months!’

‘Yeah, well…’

As usual she had control of the conversation. Her tone softened a little. ‘Are you sure dear? Please don’t get yourself into a state. You’ve only just bought that house for goodness sake. Do be careful.’

‘Don’t worry Mum. It will be all right. I promise. Now what did you really telephone for?’ He knew he was pleading and at the same time, praying he could divert her.

‘Well, you rather put me off with that piece of news, but I wondered if you would like to come down to London for the weekend, either this or next, but since you now have a bit of time on your hands, well perhaps it could be sooner – and maybe even for longer. What do you think?’

I know exactly where this is leading, thought Tim, his palms sticky with panic. She’s going to try to patch things up between Macie and me again. I can see this one coming from a long way over the hill! He gathered some of the shocked shards of his brain together.

‘Actually, Mum, that would be quite nice if I can arrange it, because there is something else you should know.’ Was this really the right thing to say? Should he ask Mary first?

There was an insecure intake of breath at the other end. ‘Oh yes, and what‘s that?’

He took an insecure breath of his own and let the words fall out. ‘Well, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’ He beamed to himself. That would put the cat among the pigeons now wouldn’t it?

There was stunned silence at the other end of the telephone with the approximate duration of a molecular collision. ‘Another woman? But how, I mean when, and what about…?’

‘Mum, her name is Mary and if she can get away I am sure she’d love to come and meet you.’ Tim, old boy, you really are a genius; you slid that in like a party hostess. ‘I’ll ask her when she gets home from work and let you know. We can come later on Friday, if it’s all right with Mary. Will that be OK with you?’

It took another molecular second for his mother to reply. ‘Of course dear.’

Tim hung up and wiped the sweat from under his nose.

Mary‘s knees hurt when she got out of the car. They co-operated with nature long enough to