Page 1 of Take My Hand

Prologue

Will

As the wind whipped around the people who walked slowly away from the graveside, I couldn’t help but think about the warm bed and body that I’d left to come to the funeral of someone I hadn’t seen in ages. It wasn’t like Andy and I had been in touch over the last year, not since she’d ended things between us. I wasn’t heartbroken by it, in fact she did me a favour. I’d been wanting to end things for a while. Two weeks of dating someone was usually my limit, but Andy and I had been together for almost two months. My feet were itching, and then she told me that it was over.

“Will?” A tall woman with hair greying at her parting cleared her throat. “You’re Will Newman?”

I nodded, and instantly I saw she had Andy’s eyes—startling blue with tiny flecks of grey. She had a kind smile, just like Andy’s.

“I’m Andrea’s aunt, Miriam.” She held her hand out to me. “I’m the one who sent you the message and the... I suppose you’d call it an invite.” She shrugged.

I blinked. “Ah, okay. Thank you for letting me know.” I took her hand and shook it. “I’m sorry for your loss.” And I was. Andy was a nice girl, and it had been a shock to hear she’d been killed in a car accident.

“Thank you, thank you.” Miriam looked down at the ground and sniffed.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, although not in these circumstances.” I made to leave, but she grabbed my arm.

“Will, I think we need to talk.”

I frowned at her. “We do?”

She looked around and then nodded. When I followed her gaze, I saw a guy in a black wool coat, buttoned up, with a grey-and-black-check scarf around his neck. The guy mouthed ‘okay’ and then left.

“That’s my neighbour,” Miriam explained. “Eric. He gave me a lift here. There didn’t seem much point in having a limo for two of us.”

I nodded, as if it mattered to me how the aunt of my ex-girlfriend got to her funeral. I wasn’t even sure why I was there. I mean, I’d had the message or invite, whatever you wanted to call it, but I didn’t need to go. I wasn’t sure what had made me, especially when Nicole was lying naked in my bed.

“Are you coming back to the pub for the wake?” Miriam asked.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I replied, looking back to the where her neighbour had been standing. “I have work later. I actually workina pub.”

“Ah, okay. Well, if you change your mind, I’m sure we’ll still be going late into the night. You know what these funerals are like when the family has Irish roots.”

I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. “Sure. So, I’d better get going.”

“Oh, we still need to talk.” She chewed on her lip. “Do you have a few minutes?”

I looked down at my watch, because I was the old-fashioned sort of guy who still wore one. I had a couple of hours before I had to open up. It would take me half an hour to get home, fifteen minutes to get to the pub. That would leave me just enough time to fuck Nicole one last time—we’d been seeing each other for two weeks, so her time was pretty much up.

“I have a couple of minutes,” I replied.

Miriam nodded and pointed. “There’s a bench there. Perhaps we could sit?”

“Yes sure.”

I followed her to the bench, and then we both sat. Miriam didn’t say anything, and I was beginning to wonder whether she was a little crazy from her grief. I knew she and Andy were close because Andy had mentioned her a few times. It had been something about how Miriam had taken Andy in when she was seventeen, after her mum killed herself.

“So, when was the last time you saw my niece?” she finally asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know, maybe a year ago. We didn’t really have any contact after she ended things.”

Miriam rolled her eyes. “Yes, that was my Andy. Once you were out of her life you were out of her life.”

I smiled, not sure what to say. I hadn’t cared that Andy cut me totally out of her life, but maybe Miriam would like to think everyone loved her niece as much as she did.

I pulled my coat closer around me as the wind picked up. “What was it that you wanted to talk to me about?” I wanted her to get on with it because Nicole was silently calling me like some sort of siren of the sea.

Miriam grimaced. “I’m not sure how to tell you this, so I guess I’ll just come straight out with it.”

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