Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets

Now come on, let’s get out of here. I’m bringing you out to dinner somewhere posh tonight and we’ve got to walk the dogs first.’

She had stopped crying by the time he parked outside the cottage an hour later.

‘I’m coming in to make you some hot tea,’ he said.

‘Better make it hot whiskey,’ Leonie snuffled through her bunged-up nose.

‘That’s a deal.’

Good as his word, Doug boiled the kettle and made her a strong hot whiskey. When she was finished drinking it, he got up.

‘Leonie, I’m not letting you sit here moping all day. Get your walking gear on and I’ll be back in ten minutes with Jasper and Alfie. We’re going to walk some of the Wicklow Way and when you’re too knackered to walk any more, we’re going to dinner in the Hungry Monk.’

‘You’re so bossy,’ she grumbled.

His stern face softened into a smile. ‘It’s working, though, isn’t it?’

It was a glorious day. As they walked past acres of the sulphur yellow gorse that covered the Wicklow hills, Leonie brooded. She answered Doug in monosyllables until he got fed up with her moping.

‘I’m only going to say this once, Leo. You’re a great mother. Those kids love you. They’re growing up, that’s all, with all the pain growing up involves. So stop moping and pull yourself together.’

‘Well why do I feel like such a bloody awful mother, then?’ she demanded angrily. ‘I feel so fucking furious.’

Hugh would have been shocked if he’d heard her swear, but Doug wasn’t in the least put out.

‘Why?’

‘Why? That’s a stupid bloody question, Doug,’ she hissed.

‘You’re not God,’ he said calmly. ‘Things happen that are outside your control and you’ve got to learn to deal with them. I’ve had to. Do you think I wanted to get burned in a fire and have the woman I loved dump me because she couldn’t cope with a disfigured shell of a man who was no longer the darling of the art gallery scene?’

Leonie was too astonished to say anything. Doug had never spoken about his past before. She’d discovered that he was a famous, critically acclaimed artist but they never talked about that. He sometimes showed her his paintings and Leonie loved them all, especially the wild, fierce landscapes that leapt from the canvas into your heart.

‘I had no control over that,’ Doug said solemnly. ‘I had to deal with it. You must too, or you’ll be eaten up with bitterness and resentment. I’m not letting that happen to you, Leo. Now come on, we’ve still got three miles to go.’

Doug marched on resolutely, leaving even Leonie, with her long legs, hurrying to keep up.

Three hours later, they sat in a dark corner of the Hungry Monk in Greystones, tearing into the bread rolls and drinking gin and tonics.

‘I’m ravenous,’ Leonie said. Her limbs ached pleasurably from their six-mile hike and she felt relaxed for the first time since she’d found those awful laxatives under Abby’s bed. ‘Exercise is definitely better than booze for making you relax.’

Doug, with his head in the wine list, laughed. ‘Exercise and booze are the best yet.’

They ate amazing fat mussels, corn-fed chicken and sinful potatoes laced with cheese and cream. After a bottle of red wine, they moved on to an Australian dessert wine with the apple dessert they shared, happy to sit and listen to the chatter of the other diners. Feeling reckless, Leonie decided she’d have an Irish coffee to round things off.

‘You’ll regret it in the morning,’ Doug warned. ‘Mixing your drinks like that will give you a murderous hangover.’

‘No it won’t, silly,’ she said, happy now that she was physically tired and mentally a bit dopey thanks to alcohol. If she had one more drink, she’d sleep like a baby and wouldn’t spend the night worrying about her beloved twins.

Languorously tipsy, Leonie found the courage to ask Doug about what he’d said earlier.

‘I never ask you about your past,’ she said, ‘but you did bring it up. Tell me. After all,’ she added, ‘you know everything there is to know about me and mine.’

Doug fiddled with the stem of his wine glass. ‘I don’t like talking about it,’ he said gloomily.

‘It’s only me,’ Leonie protested.

‘Well, seeing as it’s you,’ he said. ‘This is not a story with a happy ending, you know.’

‘Pish posh,’ said Leonie dismissively. ‘Spill the beans, Mansell. I know you too well for this coyness.’

‘Did you ever think of investigative journalism as a career?’ he enquired.

Leonie giggled. ‘You have to learn to ask leading questions when you’ve got three kids, otherwise you’d never know who their friends are or what they were up to.’

For once, Doug didn’t grin back. He looked sombre as he started his story: ‘I was going to be married to a woman I’d been seeing for three years. I’d lived with a few people over the years,’ he explained, ‘but I’d never wanted to marry anyone until I met Caitlin. She was a sculptor and it seemed like the marriage made in heaven. I’d have my studio and she’d have hers right beside it.’ He took a gulp of wine, his eyes opaque. ‘One night we were out late and we decided to stay in town with a friend of mine who lived over his gallery in this second-floor flat. An electric heater caught fire downstairs. I woke up and couldn’t find Caitlin. There was smoke everywhere, I thought maybe she’d gone down to try and get out that way, even though there was a fire escape. I got burned down there.’

‘What happened to her?’ Leonie asked, horrified.

Doug shrugged wryly. ‘She’d decided to go home to her own place earlier. Left me a note, she said, because she hated sleeping in the flat and had to get up early, so she went home at about three. You don’t notice notes on the pillow when the room is filled with smoke,’ he said with heavy irony. ‘Afterwards, she couldn’t cope. It was a mixture of guilt that I’d been burned because of her and the fact that she loves beautiful things.’ The old bitterness that Leonie hadn’t seen on his face for a long time returned, twisting his mouth into a grim shape. ‘I wasn’t beautiful any more. Caitlin loved touching things; she’d run her hands over my face with her eyes closed as if she was reading Braille. As a sculptor, she saw with her fingers. She didn’t like what she saw any more.’

How horribly cruel, Leonie thought. This Caitlin couldn’t have loved Doug very much if she left him over that.

‘That’s when you moved in here,’ Leonie prompted.

‘I’d planned a reclusive life of painting and then this local woman fell over outside my house and that was it: so much for privacy,’ he joked. ‘I can’t get rid of her, actually.’

He pretended to consider this. ‘Ah no, that’s not true. If she wasn’t around, I’d miss her. She drives me mad but she’s great fun.’

Leonie blushed.

Doug waved at a waitress. ‘Could you order us a taxi, please?’ he asked.

In the taxi home, Leonie drifted off to sleep. She woke up as the car pulled up outside the cottage and found herself leaning comfortably against Doug’s bony shoulder.

‘Wake up, sleepy head,’ he said, gently shaking her.

‘God, sorry,’ she muttered sleepily.

Doug got out of the taxi and helped her out. ‘You all right?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘See you tomorrow.’ And then she reached up and did something she’d never done before: kissed him. His beard felt funny against her lips, funny but nice. Doug was nice too. Happy in her alcohol haze, she patted his cheek lovingly before turning to meander up the drive.

The sound of Penny barking woke her the following morning. It sounded like the Rank Organization man with the gong was in her bedroom, banging it for all he was worth.

‘Stop it, Penny,’ moaned Leonie, pulling a pillow over her head. Her head ached and her mouth felt dry. The night before drifted in and out of her mind. The Hungry Monk, lovely food, Doug being sweet to her, his story about the fire and…oh no. She sat up abruptly. She’d kissed him goodnight. How awful. He’d hate that, he’d think she was coming on to him. Ohmigod no! And she had a man in her life, too. She had Hugh. It wasn’t as if she was desperate for a man. No, but she still had to act like some middle-aged slapper who threw herself at her friends because she was drunk.

After a while, thirst got her out of bed. Struggling into her towelling dressing gown, she shuffled along to the kitchen, her slippers slapping against her heels. Danny was listening to the radio at top blast, making toasted sandwiches and creating a mess of crumbs, squelches of dropped mayonnaise and melted cheese.