Page 8 of Daydreams & Doughnut Cake

Reading the words, I turned away slightly and rested my flushed cheek on my hand, hoping to hide my awkward reaction.

I saw him yesterday.

He walked right past me but he didn’t see me. My heart was beating so fast I thought I might actually faint.

I want to tell him but I’m scared he’ll laugh...

‘Oh, dear,’ I murmured, knowing Maddy was waiting for my response. ‘It... well, it sounds like someone’s in an emotional place.’

‘It does, doesn’t it? There’s a phone number scribbled on the other side. What on earth do we do with it?’

‘I’m . . . not sure.’

‘Whoever wrote it won’t want to think other people have read it.’

‘That’s true.’

‘I think I’d feel bad, though, just throwing it away. It’s so very personal.’

I nodded. ‘It would seem heartless to destroy it after someone’s poured their feelings out like that.’ I held up the paper. ‘I’ll go and empty the dishwasher and I’ll leave this in the kitchen for now, okay?’

Maddy nodded and went off to serve a customer, and I found myself hoping she would forget all about the sad little note.

I was alone in the kitchen.

Before bending to the dishwasher, I carefully folded the piece of paper and slipped it into my pocket.

CHAPTER FOUR

I woke slowly next morning from a dream in which Mark was alive and we were at the beach on a bright spring day.

I was barefoot, daring to paddle even though the lace-tipped waves rushing in felt like ice against my toes, and I was teasing Mark for not being brave enough to join me.

When I complained that my feet were actually numb, he made me sit on the sand while he dried them with his hoodie, laughingly telling me what an idiot I was.

‘But you’remyidiot,’ he murmured, discarding the hoodie on the sand and throwing himself down next to me. He wrapped his arms around me to warm me up and I snuggled happily into him, loving how safe and secure andcompleteI always felt in Mark’s warm embrace.

It was one of those perfect, precious moments that you’d like to stay in forever...

But my smile, as I stretched lazily and then reached for Mark in the bed next to me, was swiftly followed by that crushing hollow feeling as cold reality intruded and I realised it had been just a delicious dream.

I lay there as thoughts past and present tumbled around inside my head.

It was hard to believe that more than a year had passed since Mark died. How was I still living while the love of my life was gone? None of it made sense, even now...

If things had been different, I’d still have our old friends around me. I’d still be living in the Brighton house Mark and I were sharing when we’d found to our complete delight that we were having a baby.

But that was a whole other existence.

Our life – Amelie’s and mine – was here now, in Surrey, in a little village I’d chosen partly because it was near where I’d grown up and I desperately needed the familiarity of it. But mainly it was because I’d heard from Mum – who knew I was desperate to move back to Surrey – that Maeve and John, old family friends, were looking for a new tenant. They’d rented out their little house in Risley Common to the same woman for years, but she’d bought a place with her boyfriend.

‘Maeve was saying they really don’t want the hassle of trying to find another suitable tenant and they know you’ll look after the place really well,’ Mum had told me.

I said that of course I would, and when Mum mentioned the very reasonable rent they’d be asking, I felt more than ever that this was the right move for us.

I knew Mum was puzzled as to why I wanted to move away from my friends and everything familiar. But I just told her that however much I’d enjoyed my university days in Brighton and the years I’d spent with Mark there afterwards, Surrey would always mean ‘home’ to me, and now that I had Amelie and Mark was gone, it felt right somehow to be moving back there. I knew she couldn’t quite understand the urgency, but the last thing I needed was for Mum to find out the real reason I desperately needed to leave Brighton.

Now, lying in bed, cuddling a pillow for comfort, a tear leaked out as I recalled how happy and carefree I’d been when I’d first arrived in the beachfront city, a fresh-faced student on the brink of a new and exciting adventure...

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