One More Chance

by Liz Ryan

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

Two very different women, from two very different backgrounds, leave Ireland for France to make their dreams come true. Shona Fitzpatrick is bright and beautiful. Yet everything she touches seems to turn to dust. Her job is under threat and her boyfriend rejects her hopes for their life together. A future that once looked rosy now looks rocky. Aileen Hegarty has, according to her decent but dull husband Joe, been watching too much television. That must be why she wants to uproot their family for a new life in an unknown country. But Aileen sees far more than fun and sun on her horizons: she sees a chance to heal her family of the wound that has been throbbing under its skin for sixteen years. Shona and Aileen both need new lives. But can they help each other to get them? 'Liz Ryan understands not only a woman's heart but a woman's mind' Terry Keane Sunday Times

Release date: July 18, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 480

Sample

There are days in all our lives we wish we could undo. Days destined to change the shape of everything, in ways we fear will annihilate all we love, all we value, all that
makes us who we are.

Shona Fitzpatrick’s day was Friday, November 16, 2001. After a long lunch, her boss returned to the tourism office, spent half an hour in it and then, sauntering over to her, affably asked
her to work late.

On Monday, her life would be lying in fragments at her feet, like a heap of building bricks knocked over by a careless child. But she didn’t know that yet. Even if she had known,
she’d still have done what she did.

Pleasantly – because Terry O’Hagan wielded power – she nodded up at him from her desk, his hand resting paternally on her shoulder as he stood over her – or was it his
paw? Terry O’Hagan was a large creature, tall, bearded and big-boned with shaggy fair hair and curiously sharp teeth; when she thought of him she always visualised a bespectacled, yellowing
old polar bear.

‘Sure’ she agreed evenly, ‘what’s the story?’

‘Hotel grants’ he replied, ‘while the meeting on Monday is about grading criteria, the budget issue is bound to come up. You’re not busy or anything this evening, are
you?’

Of course you’re not, his tone conveyed, a thirty-six-year-old worker bee like you couldn’t have anything more important than your career to think about. And you do want that
promotion, don’t you? Let’s not play footsie here, Shona, you’re after my job and I know it. Well then, go get it. If you can. I’ve got the upper hand, because I’m the
one who recommends you for it. Or not.

‘Actually’ she smiled, not letting him bait her, ‘I’m meeting Brendan for dinner tonight. But I’ll call him and let him know you need me until – what? –
let’s say eight?’

‘Let’s say nine’ he countered as she knew he would, which was why she hadn’t said nine herself, in which case it would have been ten. ‘You don’t mind, do
you?’

Mind? Oh, no, why should I mind? Another late date, another evening ruined, our table gone, Brendan giving me grief again – why would I mind?

I hate you, Terry O’Hagan. Everyone in this office absolutely loathes you with seething passion, and I personally would like to club you senseless with some prehistoric implement, you
shambling, sexist old dinosaur.

‘Ah, anything for you, Terry. I know the grants report is a bit behind.’

He frowned briefly but sharply at her, reading her meaning: you’ve got behind with it, haven’t you? Innocently, she spooled him out another smile. He loved women staff to
smile at him, the more playfully the better. Everyone reckoned his marriage was in tatters.

‘Good, then I’ll leave you to get on with what you’re doing now, and see you later.’

Hoisting his tweed jacket off its peg, he slung it over his shoulder, and she glanced at her watch: four thirty. Terry O’Hagan always went to the pub at four thirty on Friday evenings,
where he knocked back six or seven pints before returning to the office around seven to collect his briefcase, which would undoubtedly be stolen if he took it with him to the rowdy, crowded pub.
How he could embark on pints now, after a lunch which had certainly encompassed claret and probably brandy as well, was beyond her, but that wasn’t her problem.

For the moment, her only concern was to get through this grading report and make sure Mrs O’Brien’s B & B out in Connemara got into next year’s Charming Country
Houses guide.

Poor, valiant old Emily O’Brien! She’d run her Georgian mansion as a B & B for over thirty years, gamely slogging on even after her husband fell off his ladder while shearing
some ivy that had got entangled in the gutters. Fell off and, as she put it, ‘went and died’. It was now seven months since Séan had gone and died, and Shona was determined that,
come January, Emily’s rambly old mansion would have its coveted listing in the new edition of Charming Country Houses. American tourists, in particular, toted their copies like
bibles, quoting ‘log fires’ and ‘home-made porridge’ and ‘rose gardens’ as if from the gospel. Emily’s house had all that stuff, but – more
importantly – it had Emily herself, a sixty-year-old bundle of genuine Galway charm.

First, though, better call Brendan. Picking up her mobile, tucking her hair behind her ear, Shona dialled his number, which rang twice. ‘Bren? Hi, Shona here—’

‘Let me guess.’ Even now when it didn’t sound quite so flip as usual – why? – his Aussie accent did what it always did to her, something tingly, sensual. She could
see him raking back his rusty-red fringe, flicking his eyes over his watch. ‘Old Slobberchops wants you to work late again? Ring the restaurant, tell them to try and hold
our—?’

She groaned. ‘Oh, God, Bren, I’m sorry. I really am.’

‘Yeah. I know.You always are.’ Untypically, his tone was flat as a tomb.

‘It’s only an hour … I’ll go straight from the office and be there by nine fifteen.’

‘Right. Or nine thirty. Ten at the latest.’ Did he actually sound a little bitter?

‘No! I said nine fifteen and I mean it! Come on, don’t start me on a guilt trip. I have to humour Terry until I get moved into hotels, you know I’ve had nine years of B &
Bs and there are only so many cooked Oirish breakfasts a girl can eat.’

She was relieved when he laughed reluctantly, ‘Oh … okay. I’ll see if they’ll keep the table. But Jaysus, Shona, I’ve had it with this stuff. I really have. And then
when you get your ruddy promotion it’ll be dinners, won’t it, pub crawls with Italian delegations and Bunratty banquets with Herr Honcho from Hamburg, champagne with François
from France, anything and everything to get their tourists into your hotels … when am I ever going to get a look-in? Huh?’

Fair question, Bren. Fair question, and I can’t blame you for asking it.

‘Tonight! Later! I promise!’ Resolutely, she injected a girly laugh into her voice. Girly and, she hoped, alluring. Brendan was a good guy and she was getting very fond him …
plus, he’d lasted way longer than any of the others. Nearly a year, now. She’d begun to feel they might actually be getting somewhere, had the sensation of an angler on a riverbank,
playing a golden, gleaming salmon. With just a little more patience, she was sure she could land him.

‘All right. See you later – not a minute later than nine fifteen.’

‘Yessir.’ Grateful for his tolerance – it was the third time in five weeks – she hung up and went back to her paperwork. She wouldn’t have time, now, to go home to
change into the red dress he particularly liked, but she knew he wouldn’t mind that. God bless Brendan Wright; blast and bugger Terry O’Hagan.

Everyone else had long gone home, it was well dark and Shona was alone in the office when, shortly after seven, Terry returned from the pub. Not that his shambling steps
deceived her when she heard them in the lobby; he wasn’t head of the hotel division for nothing, his genial mode could switch to sharp-as-tacks when need arose. As her friend Crys had more
than once remarked, he was a guy who ‘wanted watching’, even in his fatherly fifties.

Oh, God! Just occasionally, Shona wondered how on earth she kept on smiling at everybody in this business. Smiling nonstop, even on rainy winter nights like this one, even when you were
shattered after an eleven-hour day of phone calls from Kimberly in Kansas wanting to know whether Mrs Murphy’s B & B had really once accommodated James Joyce – oh,
wow! – of documents from Dublin containing news of yet more budget cuts, of journalists enquiring whether the food-poisoning rumour was for real … but that was the tourism
industry for you. Even when she hated it, she loved it: how could you not, with so many weird and wonderful people parading through it?

But it certainly was hard work. Although she was only in charge of the welfare, promotion and supervision of two hundred B & Bs in one small westerly chunk of small westerly Ireland, Shona
sometimes felt responsible for the entire country, entire planet, entire galaxy. ‘Hello, you must be the aliens, welcome to Shannon airport, here’s your coach, we’ll be stopping
off for Irish coffees at Durty Nelly’s en route … here are your press packs … oh, Jim’s luggage is missing, oh dear, well let me just see what I can do to fix that …’ Smile, smile, smile. And now, one for old Slobberchops as well, because she wanted to manage hotel marketing, forsake poor old Emily O’Brien for more money, more status, more
perks?

But I’m thirty-six, she reminded herself briskly. I can’t wet-nurse the old dears in their country cottages for ever. If I don’t get promoted – soon –I’ll be
an old dear myself, plumping up my cushions, flopping down on the butt that never did get itself in gear. In top gear: Shona Fitzpatrick, Head of Hotels Divison, see, it says here on my embossed
card, let me give you one! Much as I love my dear ladies, tourism is showbiz, sooner or later you want top billing. I do, anyway. A company car and an expense account, a detached house on a full
acre, three foreign holidays a year when someone else will have to smile at me. Okay, Terry, you got that? I want my promotion and I want it bad, that’s why I am about to be sweet
and kind to you when I could cheerfully embed a hatchet in your head.

Swivelling on her chair, she beamed at him, smelling the alcohol fumes as they wafted across to her. ‘Hi. Hope the hospitality went well?’

That was what they always called his absences in the pub: ‘hospitality’, the pretence that he’d been entertaining some crucial ‘clients’ or ‘contacts’
who might direct seventy zillion tourists his way if he poured enough Guinness into them. Curtly, he nodded, but didn’t answer as he removed his jacket and loosened his tie. Watching him,
Shona swiftly divined the reason for his silence: with half a dozen pints under his belt, on top of whatever he’d had at lunch, he was literally too drunk to speak.

Good. He wouldn’t be able to do much work, so, on the hotel budgets, she could get away and meet Brendan earlier after all. Still smiling, she faced him with perky enthusiasm.

‘Right then, let’s get started then, shall we? I have the file ready right here.’

She indicated it on the computer, and he frowned at her, as if trying to recollect who she was and why they were both here at this hour on a wet November night. And then, suddenly, he lurched
back to the door without the remotest warning or reason, shut it and clicked down the snip on the lock.

Ping! That tiny sound had her on her feet immediately, every nerve in her body and every wit in her head abruptly bristling with anticipation, intuition, the utter certainty that Terry
O’Hagan was about to do something nasty, dangerous or possibly even lethal. Languidly, her friend Crys’s voice rose from the sofa where she’d first said it while idly polishing
her nails: ‘That fella wants watching, Shona. Just wants watching, is all.’

Oh Christ, not now, not with the entire building empty and Dave, the security man, gone home! Clenching her fists, distantly noting that they were sweaty, she forced herself to face the drunken,
ominously belligerent-looking bear in front of her, his beard damp with raindrops.

‘Terry? What’s the matter? Why are you locking the door?’

‘Am …’ he mumbled. ‘Am … ambitious little bitch, aren’t you, Shona Fitzpatrick?’

Only he couldn’t enunciate it clearly; what she heard was ‘ambish’ little bish, aren’tch, Shona Fishparrick?’ Feigning fearlessness, she stood her ground.

‘What do you mean?’

His eyes narrowed as he moved closer to her, forcing her to back up against her desk. ‘You know whash I mean, misshy, you want my job, don’tch? Well, maybe shome day you’ll get
it, but not before you pay for it. There’sh a price for everything, y’know.’

Menacingly, he leered at her, and then suddenly his hand shot out, grabbing the front of her shirt as he hauled her into his alcoholic orbit, eyeball-to-eyeball, up against his huge hefty
body.

She didn’t even think. There wasn’t time. Instead she yanked back her arm, steadied it and propelled it forward, hitting him such a resounding wallop across the face that he yelped,
reeled backwards up against the wall with a slam. Then, in slow motion, he slid down it like a hurled ice-cream, melting into a messy puddle on the floor.

Grabbing her coat and briefcase, she unlocked the door and ran, resisting the temptation to kick his ribs for good measure as she went.

She hadn’t driven much more than a mile when her pulse began to slow, her breathing come down from its Olympic high. After all, nothing had actually happened,
Terry had not got to do whatever it was he’d had in mind. It wasn’t the first time he’d come on to her – twice on ‘familiarisation’ trips abroad, he’d
followed her down hotel corridors to her room, which she’d had to hastily lock – and although she was shaken she was physically intact.

The damage, it horrifically began to dawn on her, was not to her at all; it was to him. His king-size ego would be badly dented, when he examined it tomorrow morning in the cold light of
sobriety. And he was, notoriously, a man who knew how to hold a grudge. He would make her pay for his attempted misdeed, twist it to look as if she were the one who’d assaulted him.

Well, she had hit him. But what choice did you have, with a six-foot drunken lech? Experience had taught virtually every woman in the office that there was no point in trying to reason with him,
all you could do was save your skin, fast, and leg it out of his space. The only one who thought otherwise was Brendan, who when he’d heard about the chase down the Edinburgh hotel corridor
had had to be restrained from tackling Terry ‘in a way he’d remember, permanently’. For precisely that reason, Shona began to decide against telling Bren what had happened
tonight. This time, she reckoned, he wouldn’t listen to any amount of reason; he’d stalk into the office first thing on Monday, seize Terry and lay him out cold. Which would definitely
be the end of her promotion hopes, if they weren’t toasted already.

Were they? Could it actually be that, because of this alcoholic old oaf, she was doomed to babysit her B & B ladies for the rest of her life, never get an inch beyond where she was now?
Until she was forty, fifty, for ever and ever, amen? Oh, sweet God! Rage and frustration, coupled with residual fright, made her swerve sharply into a parking space outside the restaurant
where she was to meet Bren, whereupon she remembered that he wouldn’t be here yet; instead of being late she was an hour early. Cutting the engine, she pulled her mobile from her bag and
called him again.

‘Bren?’ She could hear her own breathlessness. ‘I – something’s happened – I mean, changed – I got away early after all, I’m here at Kyver’s
and I – I’m just dying to see you …’

She actually was. Without telling him why, she wanted him with her here and now, scooping her up into a hug, putting everything right in that cheery, comforting way of his, grinning as he pushed
her nose with his forefinger and told her what ‘an ace sheila’ she was.

But his voice, when it came after a short silence, didn’t sound cheery at all. It sounded irritated and exasperated. ‘You’re at Kyver’s? Now? But you said nine fifteen,
so I’ve dropped in to visit Dad, we’re here having a chat and a coffee – for God’s sake, Shona, I’ve only just got here, I can’t up and leave right
away!’

Oh. No. Of course not. Drawing a deep breath, she forced herself to see his point. His dad was a widower who worshipped his son, the only one not in Australia, and he was perfectly entitled to
enjoy Bren’s visit without interruption. As Bren was equally entitled to enjoy it. She couldn’t expect him to keep changing his plans every hour on the hour, to suit her volatile
requirements.

‘Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realise. It doesn’t matter. I’ll go in and wait for you in the bar, read the newspaper. Take your time and say hi to your dad for me.’

‘Right.’ He sounded calmer, but she sensed she’d made a tactical error. He’d rush things now with his poor father, abandon him earlier than planned and arrive here out of
breath and out of sorts. She wished she hadn’t called him at all.

‘See you later, then.’

They hung up, and she sat bleakly in the car, feeling the evening changing in tone, in mood, in everything a night out with your lovely, adorable boyfriend was supposed to be.

Shona had read all of the news pages and was into features before she registered Brendan’s car swinging into a space outside the restaurant, and smiled as she glanced at
her watch: nine fifteen. Neither punishing her by being late nor indulging her by arriving early, he was being his inimitable rugby-playing self; fair. ‘Fair do’s, mate’ was one
of his habitual expressions, one of the traits that drew her to him. In an often unfair world, he was rock-reliable, and for this as well as much else she was slowly, oh so sweetly, falling in love
with him. She’d fallen for him immediately they’d met, last Easter over porcelain teacups at Emily O’Brien’s house, of all the ridiculous settings, where his
arrival had caused her cup to clatter audibly in its saucer. Introducing him, Emily had beamed.

‘My artificial insemination advisor’ she announced gleefully, and Shona had gaped at the grinning little sixty-year-old. ‘Your what?!?’

But that, it turned out, was exactly what Brendan was. Trained in Australia as some kind of cattle cross-breeding expert (the technicalities were more than she cared to explore) he’d
packed up his widowed father five years before and swept them both back to Ireland, ‘the land of our ancestors’ as he explained with a grin, where now he worked for the Department of
Agriculture. On this particular day, he’d been visiting the prize bull with which Emily supplemented her income, and been invited to partake of tea afterwards along with Shona, clutching her
clipboard on her annual B & B inspection visit. After forty-five minutes of Barry’s tea and Mr Kipling’s ‘exceedingly good cakes’, he’d asked her out on a date,
within full earshot of the delighted Emily. Sometimes Shona wondered whether Emily had hatched the whole thing, and was very grateful to her if she had. After eight months with Bren, she sometimes
still couldn’t believe she’d found an eligible man of her own age – not just eligible, but fun, articulate, interesting and chunkily attractive into the bargain. Although they
still didn’t live together, because that was the one point on which Brendan was curiously old-fashioned, she felt now that their relationship was gradually reaching some kind of pivotal
stage, one that was causing her to lose an increasing amount of sleep.

Am I, she wondered now as she looked at him walking towards her, ready for this man? Really ready, on every count? Could I make a commitment to him, if he asked me? If he wanted permanence, and
children, a home and all that goes with it? Could I tailor my life around him, cut down on my workload, on my travels, my time with Crys and the girls, adjust my life to give him the priority
he’d be entitled to expect?

Could I, if the chips were down? Am I ready?

At thirty-six, I certainly should be. But if I am, what about my promotion? What about that extra income and company car and three holidays a year … would they be compatible with marriage,
kids, running a home? Everyone says marriage is all about compromise, and everyone also says I’m not the compromising kind … yet sometimes I think I’d do anything for Brendan
Wright. Anything at all, because I adore him and, at this precise moment, am devoutly glad to see him. He’s everything the likes of that lout Terry O’Hagan never was and never will be.
He is that rarity, a good man.

‘Hi, sweetie.’ She raised her cheek to meet his lips as he swept up and kissed her, his vivid green eyes surveying her in their candid way. ‘Bit hassled, are we?’

‘Oh …’ She thought she’d done a good job in the ladies with lipstick and hairbrush. Evidently she hadn’t. Or else he was even more closely attuned to her than she
thought. ‘I’m fine. They have our table ready for us … are you hungry?’

He usually was, because he spent so much time out on farms, had a rugby-player’s build and been brought up, as he said, ‘on a red-blooded Oz diet’ by his father, Fred. His
mother, Amy, had died when he was twelve, leaving Fred to raise three small sons alone, of which Brendan was the eldest. It was surely this, Shona speculated, that had formed Bren’s firm
views on what he called ‘the value of family life’. Not that she disagreed with ‘family life’, she simply didn’t know how to go about such a project, when there was so
much else to be done. She loved her career, she’d invested heavily in it and it mattered fundamentally to her. Just as fundamentally as any man’s mattered to him. How did you fit it all
in, these days? Germaine Greer had created a monster.

‘Yeah. Ish.’ He smiled a shade ruefully, she thought, as she handed him a menu, but only had time to briefly scan it before a waiter arrived to take them to their table. It was a
nice round one in a corner, with a white linen cloth and a vase of pale yellow flowers, near Lee the pianist who was playing something by Carly Simon. Usually Bren winked at Lee when they arrived,
whereupon Lee segued into one of Shona’s favourite songs, ‘Blue Bayou’ or ‘Summer Breeze’ or ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’; but tonight he seemed vaguely
distracted. Shona felt Lee noting the omission, and smiled a little awkwardly.

A waiter appeared, flourishing pad and pen. Shona ordered prawn mousse and brill, Bren settled on some kind of piquant tomato followed by rare steak, and the waiter recommended a light
Beaujolais as a compromise between their diverse tastes.

Compromise. See, Shona told herself, it’s easy. I’d prefer a Chablis but for Bren’s sake I’m perfectly happy to share a Beaujolais.

She realised he was looking at her, his chin propped on his knuckles, his expression speculative. God, she loved those freckles of his, that wayward fringe, that permanently hovering smile!
Feeling Terry O’Hagan melt away, she reached across the table to him with her mind and heart.

‘How’s your Dad? How was your day?’

Over the first part of their meal he told her about Fred, who was fired up about his recent discovery that you could play chess on the internet, and about his day, which had involved a lot of
laboratory work. Shona smiled: Bren preferred the fieldwork side of his job, but had to juggle both.

‘Well, it was pouring all day, you were better off indoors!’

‘M’mm. I guess so. How was your day? I couldn’t make out what was going on.’

She hesitated. ‘I could hardly make it out myself. Terry wanted me to work late. But then he – we – had a bit of a – disagreement. I think I – I may have blown a
hole in my promotion prospects.’

He frowned into his empty plate. ‘Is that why you’re looking so hassled? Terry chasing you down corridors again? If he is, Shona, then I’ve had enough. I’m going to sort
him out for you. It’s time a stop was put to all this.’

She loved him for saying that. But devoutly did not want him to do it. She could fight her own battles … and besides, Terry O’Hagan had already been hit a resounding wallop. The last
thing she needed was her boyfriend marching in like a Victorian father to ‘sort him out’.

‘No – it was just a disagreement about something.’

‘About what?’

Oh, God. ‘About my future. He’s trying to use his power as a weapon over me, knows I won’t get his job when he moves to Dublin unless he recommends me for it. That was why he
asked me to work late, just because he could. I – I hate him, Bren! He’s making my life a misery!’

Ooops. She’d already said too much. But, surprisingly, he didn’t immediately answer. Instead he took his napkin from his lap and started screwing it into tight, weird shapes, gazing
alternately at her and into the log fire burning in the wall to his left.

‘I see.’

He saw? Nonplussed, Shona didn’t know what to say next. Usually, Brendan was good at sensing things, but tonight there seemed to be some awkwardness in the air, something not
falling into shape. Had he woes of his own, was that it, that he wasn’t telling her about? She was relieved when, after a pause, he reached for her hand and took it, examining it slowly
before kissing it, very lightly, on the fingertips.

‘Shona … you know … I’ve got very fond of you these past few months.’ As if to confirm it, he surveyed her appreciatively, his gaze taking in the face that was not
unlike his own, fresh and freckled, only her eyes were heather blue and her hair was a deeper shade of copper, smooth almost down to her shoulders. Leaning forward, she tightened her hand in his,
murmuring over the candle between them.

‘And I of you, Bren. I feel …’ What did she feel? Pausing to get it exactly right, she weighed her words: happy with you? Safe? Loved? Yes. All of those things. But before she
could utter any of them, he put his finger to her lips.

‘Shh. I don’t want you to say anything, Shona. I want you to listen.’

Oh? Blinking slightly, she sat back in her chair, wondering what he wanted to say, what was making him look so suddenly serious. It dawned on her that he looked like a man who had made some kind
of decision, and her stomach somersaulted – surely – not – he wasn’t going to propose to her, was he? Here and now, on this wet winter’s night out of the blue
… could it be … here it comes? Crunch, Shona!

‘I’m listening, Bren.’ Her voice hung like a little puff on the air, her body tensed in a collision of terror, anticipation and rapidly rising euphoria. This was one of those
moments every woman remembered all her life, and already she was savouring it, sealing the flowers and fire and candle into her mind, catching Lee’s eye across the piano and trying to ignore
his wicked wink, trying to look demure when she wanted to—

‘Well … I don’t quite know how to put this … but I’ve been thinking … about us …’

‘Yes’ she murmured, ‘so have I. More and more …’

Twisting her hand in his, he didn’t appear to hear her as he shifted on his chair, looking into her eyes in that frank way of his, that aura of fairness somehow mantling his shoulders.

‘And I’ve come to the conclusion that …’

Yes! Something inside her made the decision for her, her heart outstripping her mind, her every concern about the job which, at this moment, might have been on Mars. He was going to ask her to
marry him, and she was going to say yes. Yes, Brendan, I love you, I am suddenly sure of it, I want to be your wife and have your children and that, now, is all that matters to me. I will
compromise if need arises, as it surely will, I will give you total priority and arrange the rest of my life around—

‘That we’re not … really … suited, Shona.’

From somewhere above the room, or outside the restaurant, or possibly a hundred miles away, she heard Lee starting to play it, undoubtedly inspired by the visible intimacy between them:
‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’. Never again, she knew, would she hear it without remembering the day her life detonated. The day it all blew up in her face, her career, her stillborn
marriage, her lovely, lovely Bren. Her whole future, her whole being.

She knew the colour was emptying from her face, without the faintest inkling how pale she was turning. All she registered was the sudden concern in his face, the music slowing and wavering,
uncertainly, before changing into something else. He was gazing at her, pouring a glass of water.

‘Oh, God, Shona – I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it this way, I’ve been too brusque, a pig … come on, let’s go outside and get you a
breath of air.’ As he spoke he was standing up, coming round to her side of the table, his arms around her shoulders as he lifted her to her feet. Tottering out of the room in his embrace,
she heard some aside to the waiter about ‘not feeling well’. The understatement of it was like a stalagmite alone in Alaska.

Outside, she collapsed onto a low wall, and he sat beside her, dismally chafing her hand until finally she turned to him, chilled to the bone, scarcely able to speak.

‘Are you going to give me a reason?’

‘Yes. Of course.’ With a sigh, he stared bleakly across the car park. ‘It’s … it’s your drive, Shona.’

‘My what?’

‘Your job. Your commitment to it. You hate your boss but you love your work, you are already married to it and I am selfishly afraid that I would always come a very poor second to it. As
would any children we might have.’

Children. She’d never yearned to have them, but now it hit her that she was thirty-six. Children were not going to be an option open to her for very much longer. Brendan was taking more
away wi