I frowned, then laughed when I realised what he meant. ‘Oh my God, Greg! We’re not together.’
He ran his hand through his hair and wrinkled his nose. ‘Sorry. He spoke so highly of you and he couldn’t take his eyes off you, so I just assumed…’
Fortunately for Greg, his mum saved him from digging the hole deeper by bringing over a relative to say goodbye. ‘I’ll speak to you later, Callie,’ he said. ‘Sorry again.’
My glass of wine was empty, so I headed for the bar and ordered another. I rummaged in my purse while the barman poured, praying I had enough money for a large one.
‘And a pint of Coke, please,’ said a voice.
‘Mi… Rhys.’
‘I’ll get that for you.’ He handed over a tenner.
‘I should be the one getting you a drink,’ I said. ‘I owe you an apology.’ I hoped he wouldn’t take me up on that because I definitely didn’t have enough money for two drinks.
‘You can get me one next time,’ he said. ‘Besides, I’d like to buy you it to say thank you for taking such good care of my nanna. She adores you, you know.’
I smiled. ‘The feeling’s mutual. She’s a very special lady.’
‘Yes, she is. I’m really glad I found her.’ He indicated towards a small table with three chairs near the bar. ‘Shall we?’
I glanced around the function room but Ruby and the other residents seemed to be having plenty of fun without me. There was no space left on their table either, so I nodded and sat beside him.
‘What did you mean when you said you were glad you found her?’ I asked.
‘My dad was adopted, but his adoptive parents died when I was quite young, although he wasn’t exactly close to them. When my only remaining grandparent on my mum’s side of the family died four years ago, I found myself wondering whether I had any biological grandparents left. Dad had never wanted to find his real parents but said I could do what I liked, so I decided to go for it, and I managed to find Nanna.’
‘Ruby’s told me loads about her life, but she’s never talked about being pregnant.’
Rhys nodded. ‘I think she finds it difficult to talk about. She fell pregnant towards the end of her dancing days and had an opportunity to take up acting. It would mean constantly being on the road so she decided to give up the baby to do that. Nanna jokes that she’d have been too selfish to be a mum, but I think that’s a self-preservation thing. I don’t really know anything about my granddad. From what I can gather, he was married.’
‘From the way she talks about you, she loves being a grandparent. I bet she’d have been a great mum.’
‘I think so too.’ Rhys took a sip of his Coke. ‘Anyway, it was sheer coincidence that our family had settled in York and Ruby had settled in Whitsborough Bay. When I traced her, it made it so much easier to arrange to visit. I wanted to set up a landscape gardening business and discovered that Whitsborough Bay had very little competition, so I moved over here.’
Her ears must have been burning because Ruby appeared and sat down in the spare seat beside me. She wagged her finger at him. ‘Yes, but then you moved away, didn’t you?’
Rhys laughed. ‘She’s never forgiven me for that. I had a chance to work on a huge project back in York so I got one of my team to keep my business ticking over here and moved back to York for a year.’
‘But you’re back for good, now?’ I asked.
‘Hopefully. It makes it easier to see Megan.’
My stomach unexpectedly plummeted at the mention of a girl’s name. ‘Your girlfriend?’ I asked tentatively.
‘No. My daughter. Izzy and I had already split up and I’d started the contract in York when she discovered she was pregnant. Megan’s seven months old now.’
‘Show her a photo,’ Ruby said.
‘I’m sure Callie isn’t interested.’
‘No. I’d love to see a photo.’
Rhys blushed. ‘If you’re sure…’ He scrolled through his phone to show me several images of a cute baby with dark curly hair.
‘She’s gorgeous. She’s got your hair and eyes.’ I looked up at Ruby. ‘You never mentioned a great-granddaughter.’
‘You thought I was making Rhys up,’ she said. ‘If I’d thrown a fictional great-granddaughter into the mix, you might have had me carted off.’ She smiled and winked, showing that she didn’t mind, but how guilty did I feel?
‘Do you think you and Izzy will get back together?’ I asked Rhys, then bit my lip. Where had that come from? It was none of my business.
‘Absolutely no chance.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘We’ve got an amicable relationship and I want to support Megan as much as I can, but that little girl is the only thing that Izzy and I have in common. We only went out a handful of times before it petered out.’
‘Is that why you’ve got two jobs?’ Again, it was none of my business, but I found myself wanting to know more about Rhys.
He nodded. ‘I should be able to build the gardening business back up to a good level, but I need the lifeguarding money until I do. Plus, it gives me free access to the pool, and I love to swim so it’s saving me money too. Do you swim often?’
‘Sorry, Callie,’ Ruby said before I had a chance to answer. ‘I didn’t actually come over to eavesdrop on your conversation. Some of the oldies are keen to get home. No staying power. They sent me over to ask if you could call the minibus.’
‘Of course. Is everyone ready to go?’
‘Iris wants to stay with me. Rhys can drop us both off later.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m under strict instructions from the Sh… from Denise to get you all back safely. I know you’ve made separate arrangements, but I need to take responsibility for Iris.’
Ruby pulled a face. ‘But she was at school with Reggie’s brother and they’re getting reacquainted. I think love might be in the air, although I’d better warn him that she cheats at dominoes and cards. Oh, and Scrabble.’
I shook my head and sighed. ‘I’m sure we can work something out. And stop telling people that Iris is a cheat. They’ll start believing you.’
She winked again. ‘And so they should.’
13
Ninety minutes later, I left Reggie’s party for the second time with a rather tipsy Iris in tow. I’d escorted the others back at Bay View in the mini-bus and Rhys had followed in the car he’d borrowed from a friend. We’d returned to the party to find Iris and Reggie’s brother slow-dancing. It seemed Ruby had been right about love being in the air and it warmed my heart.
‘She can’t hold her drink,’ Ruby announced. ‘Believe it or not, she’s only had two G&Ts all afternoon. Mind you, they were triples. Such a lush.’
I helped Iris with her seatbelt. ‘I’m just glad Denise doesn’t work on a weekend or I’d be in serious trouble for bringing her back in this state.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Rhys said.
‘In her eyes, everything’s my fault. Although she’s been more sad than snappy lately and she was nice to me yesterday after we lost Reggie.’
We pulled out of the pub car park. ‘Don’t forget I need to drop those cards off,’ Ruby called from the back seat.
‘I haven’t forgotten, Nanna.’ Rhys turned to me. ‘She wants to hand-deliver some cards to former neighbours. It’ll only be a ten-minute detour. Is that okay?’
‘Fine by me. I’ve got no plans.’
Rhys drove us towards North Bay and a 1930s housing estate nestling between the main coast road and the cliff top. We pulled into a tree-lined street filled with large semis.
‘It’s the one by the red car,’ Ruby said, ‘but it looks like you’ll have to pull up here.’
Rhys stopped the car a few houses from Ruby’s former neighbour. ‘I’ll go with her. Will you be all right for a few minutes?’
Iris was gently snoring. ‘We’ll be fine,’ I said, winding the window down to let some air in and the alcohol fumes out.
Relaxing back into the passenger seat, I listened to the ra
dio turned on low. I liked the style of houses with their large front gardens and big bay windows top and bottom. Very nice. My whole flat could probably fit four or five times over into a property like that.
The front door opened and a man stepped out, squinted, and put on a pair of sunglasses. I stared at him for a moment as he stretched his arms. My heart raced as I instinctively reached for the door handle. It felt like I was swimming in treacle as I stepped out of the car and glided across the pavement towards the end of the drive.
‘Tony?’
His arms dropped from his stretch and his face fell. Removing his sunglasses, he squinted at me. ‘What are you doing here?’ He stepped off the doorstep and took a couple of paces towards me, then stopped as a woman’s voice called his name from inside the house. His panicked look back towards the property told me everything I needed to know. Ruby had been right about recognising him. He lived on her old street. Which meant… A lump caught in my throat and my eyes stung with tears. ‘Your wife?’ I whispered.
‘Callie, I…’ But what could he say?
‘Tony!’ called the voice again. ‘Are you going to help with this buggy or what?’
‘Please don’t…’ He pleaded with his eyes.
‘Tony!’
‘I’m coming, angel.’
Angel. My stomach lurched at the use of my pet name on someone else. Was that how it worked? Give me the same pet name as his wife and there’d be no danger of him saying the wrong name at a key moment?
Tony stepped back into the hallway and emerged with a double buggy. He placed it on the drive and applied the brake, then looked up at me again. I was completely rooted to the spot. My heart was thumping so fast that I could hear it, my fists kept flexing, and my breathing was rapid, yet I felt I couldn’t get enough air into my body. I felt sick and dizzy. Was this what an anxiety attack felt like?
With another panicked look towards me, Tony stepped back inside the house and emerged moments later with a baby dressed in a pink coat in one arm, holding the hand of a boy aged about four. A girl of about six followed them and started skipping round the front garden. Three kids? Just like Ruby had said. Oh. My. God! It took every ounce of control not to scream.
Tony fastened the baby into the buggy then turned to me again. ‘Angel…’
I shook my head slowly. ‘You lied to me,’ I hissed.
He glanced back towards the house. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I even asked you about fidelity and you still lied to me.’
‘Right! I think that’s everything.’ A woman in her mid-thirties emerged from the house, holding a toddler dressed in blue. Make that four kids. Two boys, two girls. How absolutely perfect. And the woman was fairly perfect too. Tall, slim, long dark hair pulled back from her face with a simple cream headband, flowery maxi-dress swishing as she moved. She fastened the toddler into the buggy then turned round and jumped as she spotted me at the end of the drive, watching. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’
I shook my head, taking in the four children, the beautiful wife and the absolute git who’d lied and cheated for a year. Much as I wanted to make his life hell, I couldn’t do it to his poor family. They’d done nothing wrong. ‘I’m fine,’ I said to his wife, somehow managing to keep my voice steady. ‘I was just waiting for a friend in the car there.’ I pointed to where the door to Rhys’s borrowed vehicle was still wide open. ‘And I thought I knew your husband, so I got out to say hello, but…’ I gulped as I stared meaningfully at Tony. ‘But it turns out that he’s not the person I thought he was.’
She let out a girly laugh. ‘He gets that all the time. I think he must have a stack of doubles living in Whitsborough Bay. Come on, kids. Let’s go.’
I stepped away from the end of the drive to let them pass. ‘Enjoy your walk.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
They walked down the road, the woman holding hands with the two older children and Tony pushing the buggy. He turned to me and mouthed, ‘Thank you.’ I stuck two fingers up at him. I know it was childish, but it was the only thing I could think of. Thank you? THANK YOU? Did he really think I’d done it for him? Was he that bloody clueless? I wanted to run after him and scream the truth, but what was the point? Tony and I were over, but there were another five lives that would fall apart if I confronted him, and I had no right to inflict that pain on them.
Feeling like I was in a dream, I returned to the car. Iris was still asleep so I left the door open and sank onto the grass with my back against the tree, my thoughts whirring. I angrily plucked at blades of grass and chucked them aside. I should have known or at least suspected. For months, I’d been questioning why we never went out and it had never entered my thick skull that the reason was that he might bump into his wife, or his in-laws, or some friends because he actually lived in the same bloody town as me. All those times he’d called or texted me from his grotty flat in Sheffield, he’d actually been less than a mile away from me. He must have been wetting himself laughing that I was such a mug. And all those times when he’d not stayed the night because he’d said he had a long journey to make that evening, he’d obviously climbed straight out of my bed and into his wife’s.
A warm, fat tear rolled down my cheek, swiftly followed by another, then another. A baby. They had a baby. She must have been pregnant for most of the time we were together. With a pregnant wife then a new baby in the house, he probably hadn’t been getting much bedroom action at home and I, like the stupid naïve idiot that I was, had been the willing replacement. I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapped my arms around them, and sobbed.
‘Callie! What’s happened?’
Through tear-blurry eyes, I looked into Rhys’s concerned face as he crouched beside me. Ruby was standing next to him, looking equally worried.
I looked past Rhys and fixed my gaze on Ruby. ‘It was Tony. It seems you were right about him, except for one thing. He doesn’t have three kids. He has four now.’
She clasped her hand across her mouth, eyes wide. ‘You’ve seen him? Here?’
‘He came out of his house with his family just now.’ I pointed weakly in the direction of Tony’s house.
‘Oh, darling! I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.’
I wiped my cheeks. ‘It’s not your fault. You’re not the one who betrayed me. You even confronted him about it and I believed him when he said you were mistaken.’
Ruby looked so sad. ‘That first time when you introduced him to me, I really thought he was right and that I was mistaken which is why I didn’t push it. The second time, I knew it was him but he was so adamant that he had no wife and kids and that he lived in Sheffield. I thought it was me. I thought I was losing it.’
‘You weren’t losing it,’ I said, my voice shaky. ‘He’s a very convincing liar.’
Rhys reached out a hand to help me to my feet. ‘I’m so sorry, Callie. That’s such a shitty thing to do to anyone.’
As he pulled me up, I stumbled forward and placed my other hand against his chest, ridiculously aware of how solid he was compared to Tony. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to hurl myself at you.’
‘That’s okay. How are you feeling?’
‘Numb. Used. Stupid.’
‘Let’s get these two back to Bay View, then I’m all yours if you want to talk about it.’
I shook my head. ‘Thank you, but it’s been a hell of a couple of days and I just want to be alone to get my head round things.’
Rhys nodded and pulled a business card out of his pocket. ‘Give me a ring if you change your mind.’
Ruby wrapped her slim arms around me. ‘He didn’t deserve you, my darling. You were far too special for him.’
Far too special? Far too stupid, more like. Far too naïve. Far too much of a mug. Yet again, I’d let an older man into my life, and it had all gone wrong. Horribly wrong.
14
I lay in bed the night of Reggie’s party, staring at the ceiling and re-living my encounter with Tony. Had I done the right thing
in keeping quiet? Had it been fair to his wife to let her continue in blissful ignorance of his infidelity when I’d had the perfect opportunity to expose him? Perhaps she already knew. Perhaps she was one of those wives who turned a blind eye as long as they were provided for and the kids had a dad. Surely not. Surely nobody would put up with that kind of crap. Yet I’d put up with his crap for a year. Granted, I hadn’t known he had a wife and four kids, but I’d pretty much let him use me for sex. I’d known that staying in all the time wasn’t normal or what I desired from a relationship, yet I’d only had the occasional moan or sulk about it. Why hadn’t I properly challenged him? Why hadn’t I demanded to be treated right? Why hadn’t I ended it? Was I really that weak? Or was it that I was needy and I’d rather have someone in my life who didn’t treat me with respect than have nobody at all?
I was meant to be going to Mum’s for Sunday lunch, but I couldn’t face it. I phoned her and said I wasn’t feeling very well. Nick obviously didn’t buy it. He turned up at the flat after lunch and dragged me out for a walk around The Headland.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he said when I’d finished my sad tale. ‘What a tool.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘What happens now?’
We sat on the wall overlooking the sea, staring out at the gentle waves twinkling in the summer sun. ‘I pray that Tony finishes whatever he’s doing at Bay View really quickly so I don’t have to hide from him at work. I’ll steer clear of older men from now on and I’ll never let myself get duped like that again.’
Monday morning dawned and I had a sickly nervous feeling in my stomach. I’d planned to go swimming but I’d barely slept all night so, when the alarm went off at half five, I reset it and turned over, longing for ninety more minutes of unbroken sleep. No such luck. Instead, I lay there worrying about the first time I’d see Tony at work. Would it be today? What would he say? What would I say? Would we ignore each other or would it turn nasty?
Making Wishes at Bay View Page 7