Page 21 of The Plan
“Angie’s sister wants one for her grandson based on some kids’ TV show I’ve never heard of, and a friend of Angie’s daughter—her dad’s fifty soon and she wants a golfing cake.”
Aunt Addy walks off to hang her coat up and put her stuff away in her workshop, leaving me to freak out. Could this actually work? Could I make money doing something I love?
“See, I told you it would all be fine, didn’t I?” she says with a smile when she comes back to the kitchen and finds me grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“You did.”
After dishing up dinner, I sit and listen to Aunt Addy tell me about the costumes she’s been making for the local theatre group for their performance of Macbeth. She tells me she was given two tickets to their opening night in a few weeks’ time and invites to me to with her.
“Oh, I forgot to ask. What was that all about on the phone last night?” Her question reminds me of the less exciting part of my life.
“Ugh, some problem with the place I wanted to rent. I’m pretty sure it’s a mistake on their end, but I’m taking it as a sign it wasn’t meant to be. Blake made me see that maybe I was rushing into things.”
“I told you: stay here as long as you want. I can have a shuffle around in my workshop and we can get you another bed.”
“No, no no, that’s what I don’t want, you changing your life for me. As soon as everything’s sorted with the divorce and I have some decent money, I’ll find the right place. I’ve got the best solicitors working on it so it should be pretty quick. Edward hasn’t really got a leg to stand on as I caught him red-handed.”
“Just don’t rush anything because of me, okay? I like having someone else in the house again.”
Her words bring up an image of a smiling Kayleigh as a child with bright blonde hair and ice blue eyes. “How are things now? You seem to be coping okay.”
“Some days are harder than others,” she admits. “I miss her every second but I try to focus on all the joy she brought to my life while she was here. It’s no use dwelling on the sad stuff. And, she gave me Sinead. That girl is so precious and does her mum proud every day.”
“She seems like a good kid.”
“She is. I just wish she’d had longer to get to know how incredible Kayleigh was.”
Kayleigh’s death was a shock to everyone three years ago. I was in London so only heard what happened from Aunt Addy, but it seemed that she was fine one minute and then gone the next. They found out after she died that she had some rare condition that when mixed with the contraceptive pill that she’d recently changed to she developed a blood clot, which caused a pulmonary embolism. Both Aunt Addy and Sinead have been tested to see if they carry the gene but thankfully both of them are fine. Unfortunately though, that means it’s on Kayleigh’s dad’s side and Aunt Addy hasn’t seen sight nor sound of any of them for years. She tried hunting them down to let them know but without much luck.
I can only imagine what it must have been like for them all, but I know Kayleigh would be so happy to see them now getting on with their lives and smiling as much as they can.
“Enough of that,” Aunt Addy chastises when she sees the morose look on my face. “Have you heard from that mother of yours lately?”
“Ugh, not for a while. You?”
“I had a postcard from…Atlanta I think, a while ago, but nothing other than that. It said that she was happy and enjoying life.”
“Yeah, I bet, she’s spending all toy boy Tim’s money,” I say with a laugh.
When my stepdad died from a stroke, Mum played the grieving widow card for all of about a month before she found Tim. I’ve only seen the odd photo of him but I wouldn’t be surprise to hear we share the same birth year. His model worthy looks and hefty bank balance are more important to my mother. They’ve been swanning around America for the past six months. Every now and then I’ll get a selfie of them on a beach somewhere with some elaborate cocktail between them, but that’s about as far as contact between us goes. She doesn’t know my marriage has gone down the pan or that I’m even in Ireland—not that she’d care. She never made a secret of the fact she hated this place, and once she left she made it very clear she had no intention of returning.
“Toy boy Tim,” Aunt Addy repeats with a laugh. “That’s perfect!”
“I can’t believe it’s lasted this long. I thought he would have been bored of her by now.”
“Maybe there’s more to him than his looks and money,” Aunt Addy muses, but when she catches my eye we both start laughing. “Or not.” They were friends for years; she’s well aware of what my mum’s like.
