It was early November. Snow had been forecast, though it had yet to materialise. Instead, the low clouds were buffeted by a bitter wind that sent loose tin cans hurtling along the pavements of the little town of Wrenwick and tore carrier bags from the grasps of shoppers. It was hardly a magical sight.
Nina’s gaze was on the miserable weather beyond the windows as she folded a coat into a carrier bag and smiled at the old lady standing on the other side of the counter. It had buttons missing and a tear at the pocket, but the old lady didn’t seem to mind, even when Nina pointed it out to her, just to be certain.
‘It’ll mend,’ she said sagely. ‘That’s the trouble with young people today – they don’t have the make-do-and-mend mentality that my generation has.’
At thirty-five, Nina hardly considered herself a young person, but she smiled and said nothing.
‘The best bargains need a little work,’ the lady continued. ‘I mean, that coat will be lovely and warm when I’ve sewn new buttons on. I have a whole tin of buttons, you know.’
‘Really?’ Nina asked vaguely.
‘Oh yes. When something is really worn out and I can’t repair it any more I take all the buttons off and keep them. So when something needs buttons I have lots to choose from.’
‘Wow,’ Nina said. ‘I wouldn’t even think of that.’
‘Exactly,’ the lady replied with a triumphant nod.
Nina folded more items into the bag with the coat – a cotton blouse with a mad sixties floral pattern, a heavy skirt in green wool with patch pockets and a pair of fur-lined boots with heels worn more on the outside than in. ‘You’ve done well today,’ she said, handing the bag over.
‘Well, there’s so much on sale today. It’s even cheaper than usual. I suppose it’s because you’re closing down?’
‘Yes,’ Nina said.
‘What’s coming in its place?’
‘A restaurant chain wants to buy the building as far as I know.’
‘So it won’t be a charity shop any more?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Oh… where will I shop now?’
‘There are lots of others in Wrenwick.’
‘Not like this one,’ the lady said. ‘This one’s the best.’
‘Well, it’s a shame more people don’t think that and then maybe we wouldn’t be closing.’
‘Where will you be going when the shop closes?’ the lady asked, dropping the change Nina had just given her into a purse.
‘I have no idea.’ Nina forced a smile. She was as unhappy about the shop closing as her customer was, though she was trying to maintain a cheery welcome for everyone – even today when she felt like crying. ‘I expect there’ll be other volunteering opportunities in Wrenwick.’
‘I expect so,’ the lady agreed with another sage nod. ‘Then again,’ she continued, ‘perhaps you’ll be able to get a proper job, eh?’
Nina’s smile faltered, but she pushed it back across her face again. She was used to people thinking that the only reason she worked in the Sacred Heart Hospice Shop was that she couldn’t get anything else, so why let the latest in a long line of thoughtless comments bother her?
‘Good luck anyway!’ the old lady added cheerfully. She waddled out of the shop, letting the door slam behind her with a violent slap of the old bell.
‘Proper job?’
Robyn’s voice came from the back room behind the till. Nina turned to find her with two mugs of tea. She offered one.
‘Daft old trout,’ she said as Nina took the cup from her. ‘She’s the one who comes in here week in, week out, buying her old tat. What does she think we do in here all day if it doesn’t constitute a job? She wouldn’t have been happy having to serve herself, would she?’
‘I don’t suppose she means anything by it,’ Nina said. ‘I suppose she’s talking about paid work.’
‘I’d like to know when the last time she did paid work was,’ Robyn huffed. ‘About 1945, I expect.’
‘I must admit, I have thought about getting a paid job.’ Nina took a sip of her tea. It was strong and sweet – just the way she liked it. She’d miss Robyn’s tea when the shop closed. She’d miss a lot of things about her shifts with Robyn – they had so much in common and got on so well. Robyn, who understood like no one else what Nina was going through, had been a rock after Gray’s death. In fact, she’d been more than a rock – she’d been a real part of the healing process. At forty-five, she was ten years older than Nina, but Nina often thought she looked almost the same age, if not younger. She certainly didn’t look forty-five anyway. She had a young, carefree attitude too, and always knew how to inject a bit of devil-may-care humour into any situation. ‘I probably ought to have made more of an effort when all the seasonal work was being advertised.’
‘It’s not too late to get Christmas work – there are a few weeks to go yet.’
‘I would imagine most shops who want extra help for Christmas will have taken it on by now. It’s my own fault for procrastinating, I suppose.’
‘I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself. It’s more difficult than people realise to get back into the job market when you’ve been missing from it for a long time,’ Robyn said, sipping her own tea. ‘And it’s not like it used to be – shops close down around here almost every week now. I’ve struggled to get a sniff of an interview too. Thank God I’ve got Eric’s death-in-service pension to fall back on. Sometimes I curse him but at least he always made sure to take care of things like that.’
‘I’ll probably be OK too – I have enough money from Gray’s will to last a good while, if I’m careful, and of course the mortgage was settled in full when he died. Every time I think about that I thank God we took that policy out when we first moved in. I suppose now I’m getting back on my feet emotionally it would be good to have a bit extra for a few little luxuries, though. It’d be nice to have a little job somewhere just for that.’
‘I’m sure Gray wouldn’t have wanted you going without,’ Robyn said, nodding agreement. ‘It’s all very well getting first dibs on the donations coming through here but a girl wants something more than second-hand underpants sometimes.’
Nina laughed. ‘I’m not saying we don’t get some good stuff. Though I’m glad I haven’t sunk to second-hand underpants just yet. More generally I was thinking about the odd holiday, a slap-up meal or a weekend away where I didn’t have to worry about how much it was going to set me back.’
Robyn shot her a sideways look. ‘You’re saying my caravan in Abergele isn’t your idea of a holiday?’
‘It’s lovely, but I was thinking of somewhere with guaranteed sun.’
Robyn looked unconvinced. The last time they’d been up to her caravan for a sneaky weekend away it had rained and the wind had howled and the roof had started to leak. That was the previous July when it was supposed to be warm and sunny, not the kind of temperature that an Inuit would complain about. They’d ended up huddled under a duvet on the sofa watching television together for most of the weekend. Still, Nina had enjoyed the time away, even if it had meant looking out of the window at the churning sea rather than dipping her toes in it.
‘Ah. In that case,’ Robyn said wryly, ‘I’ll take my offence back then. You certainly aren’t going to get any of that today.’
‘We didn’t get any of that last time we were there either.’
‘True. I don’t know why I keep the bloody thing if I’m honest – more trouble than it’s worth.’
‘I suppose, in the end, my predicament is all my fault for not ever having any ambition before I met Gray. All I’ve ever done is shop work and I’m not fit for anything else now.’
Nina’s gaze went to the windows. Someone had lost their hat in the wind and was chasing it down the street. But then her eyes ran over the interior of the Sacred Heart Hospice charity shop where she and Robyn were safe and warm. It had once been a swanky estate agent office, but the company had fallen on hard times and had long since gone. But the art deco windows and period detail remained, and although it was a faded grandeur now, half-obscured by racks of old dresses, shelves of vinyl records by artists that nobody remembered and boxes of toys, there was a sort of melancholy beauty to the building.
Perhaps that was why the restaurant chain due to take ownership had been so taken by it. Nina had no doubt it would look wonderful restored to its former glory, and be a real boon to the town, but she’d miss it. Sacred Heart had been her lifeline when she was nursing Gray in his final months. While he was still able to stay at home they’d sent her help that she wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise, and later, when his motor neurone disease became too much for either of them to cope with, they’d provided the best comfort and round-the-clock care in their bright and welcoming hospice.
When Gray had finally lost the battle and Nina found herself alone, having long since given up work to nurse him, she hadn’t known how to fill her days and the aching void of loss that Gray’s death had brought. Sacred Heart had been there for her again, offering her support and something to occupy her mind in the form of her voluntary job at the shop. Without that, she was quite sure she would never have set foot outside the house again, choosing to wither away quietly curled up on the sofa. Without Sacred Heart’s help and support, she’d have never met Robyn either, the kind of sweet, loyal friend she’d always longed for. Sacred Heart had been there for Robyn too after her husband had died, in just the same way it had been for Nina, and perhaps bringing Robyn into her life had been the single biggest blessing the organisation could have bestowed on her, even if it had been inadvertent.
But all that was about to change. The local authority had put up the shop rent and it just wasn’t viable any more. Many suspected dodgy dealings instigated by interest from the restaurant chain in the first place, but the town council had always denied it. Nobody but the people involved would know for sure, and Nina certainly wasn’t privy to that sort of information. Neither had she been invited to the board meeting that had been chaired and populated by people who’d never used the charity, who – unlike many of the staff – were paid a real salary, ran it like a business and had decided the fate of a band of people they’d never met without a single consultation. In their opinion, more efficient fundraising opportunities lay elsewhere, in more corporate settings, and there was no room or need for people like Nina and Robyn in the organisation. The only voluntary posts now were in the hospice itself, and the memories of Gray’s final months in there were simply too raw and painful for Nina to cope with such powerful reminders of his suffering everywhere she looked every day.
‘Still want to sign up for the Wrenwick 10K?’ Robyn asked absently. ‘The deadline for applications is this weekend.’
Nina raised her eyebrows. ‘It wasn’t me who said she wanted to sign up for that. I’ll happily cheer you from the sidelines but that’s my limit.’
‘Awww, come on. I thought you said you’d do it.’
‘I think you dreamt that.’
‘I’m pretty sure I didn’t.’
‘Seriously? Have you seen me run? And when I say “run”, I’m using the term very loosely here. I look like a wounded ostrich.’
Robyn laughed, but she had a look on her face that Nina knew only too well – she wasn’t taking no for an answer.
‘We can train after Christmas,’ she said. ‘The weather will be warming up then and it’ll get us out. You won’t be the only wounded ostrich; I’m a shit runner too. Anyway, Tracy says loads of people walk the course so we don’t need to be the world’s best runners.’ Robyn nudged her. ‘Come on… It’s for a good cause.’
‘What cause?’ Nina asked. ‘Sacred Heart?’
‘For anything you like. We could run it for Sacred Heart but we could run it for any charity. It’ll be a laugh.’
‘It would be for the spectators when I come steaming towards them looking like I need a poo.’
‘That’s the spirit!’ Robyn said, now deciding that she’d take Nina’s lack of an outright refusal as her agreement. ‘I’ll put us both down then. We have to pay twenty quid to enter but we could easily cover that from the sponsorship.’
Nina shook her head. ‘If I must do it then I’ll pay my entrance fee. I can’t ask someone else to fund my ultimate demise – think of the guilt they’d be saddled with for the rest of their lives.’
‘Goody two-shoes,’ Robyn said with a smirk. ‘Honestly, you make me sick.’
Nina grinned. But then it faded into a sad smile. ‘What am I going to do without you?’
‘Who says you’ll be without me? Just because we won’t be working together doesn’t mean we can’t still see each other from time to time. I mean, we’ll be training for the run for a start.’
‘I know…’ Nina put her cup down and leant on the counter, chin resting on her fists. ‘But it won’t be the same, will it? I mean, socialising sometimes will be lovely but you’ll get busy doing other things, and eventually I expect I’ll get busy too, and before we know it we’ve hardly got any time to see each other at all.’
‘Then we’ll just have to make the time no matter what else happens. You might be a lazy cow when it comes to keeping your friends but I’m not.’
Nina smiled up at her now and, despite her misgivings, her smile was brighter.
‘Here…’ Robyn moved towards her with a look of great concentration. ‘You’ve got a big blob of fluff in your hair…’ She teased it from Nina’s dark curls.
‘I bet you’d find all sorts in there if you looked hard enough,’ Nina said, taking the fluff from Robyn’s stubby fingers. ‘Pens, crisps… the occasional sofa…’
‘It is thick,’ Robyn said.
‘Like my head.’ Nina raised her eyebrows and Robyn laughed.
‘Nothing’s that thick.’
‘Oi!’ Nina squeaked. ‘Cheeky!’
The bell on the shop door tinkled and a middle-aged man lugged a large plastic bag in.
‘Is that a donation?’ Robyn called over. ‘Only we’re not taking any, sorry.’
‘What?’ The man frowned, looking sorely put out. ‘But I’ve dragged this lot all the way from the car park on Price Street! Are you sure you can’t take it?’
‘Cancer Research will,’ Robyn said patiently, though Nina knew that her friend was dying to let loose some razor-sharp sarcasm. ‘It’s not that much further along.’
The man wiped a sleeve across his sweaty forehead. ‘So you don’t want it?’
‘It’s not that we don’t want it or that we wouldn’t ordinarily take it,’ Nina said. ‘It’s just that we can’t.’
‘Why not? You’re a charity shop, aren’t you?’
Robyn was unable to hold in the sigh of exasperation this time. ‘A soon-to-be-closed charity shop if you read the signs in the window. We can’t sell that stuff if we’re closed.’
‘Though we do appreciate you thinking of us,’ Nina added. ‘And I’m sure the Cancer Research shop would be very grateful for it.’
‘That’s bloody miles away!’ the man muttered. He looked as if he might launch another complaint, but then seemed to think better of it. He dragged his bag out instead, the door slamming behind him.
‘Miles away…’ Robyn said with a huff. ‘It’s two doors down!’ She drained her cup of the last drops of tea. ‘I’ll bet that bag was full of shit anyway – he looked the type. Some people think we’re just here to dispose of what the municipal tip won’t take.’
‘Well, Cancer Research will get the pleasure of rooting through it now,’ Nina said, finishing her tea too and handing the cup to Robyn, who was edging towards the doorway to the staff kitchen. ‘I suppose we’d better get the rest of this stock boxed up for when the van comes to get it.’
Robyn nodded. ‘I’ll just wash these and I’ll be with you.’
Nina watched her go. And then she turned her attention to a rack of children’s clothes with a sigh. Packing up this shop felt like finally packing up her last solid connection to Gray and she didn’t want to do it. But some choices in life were never yours to make and some things were taken from you before you were ready. Nina knew that by now, better than anyone. She could rage all she wanted but it wouldn’t change a thing, and she knew that well enough too. She’d learned over the last couple of years that if she could turn all her rage and grief into a force for good, it hurt a lot less than if she let it grow into thorns around her heart. So while her last day at the Sacred Heart Hospice Shop had been heavy and hectic, at least heavy and hectic had kept her mind off the fact that it was the last day.
With that thought, she began to pull the clothes from the rails and fold them into neat piles.
A manager they’d never met before arrived during the last hour of trading with instructions for the removal of the stock they hadn’t been able to sell, and had left with a vapid handshake and a half-hearted thanks for Nina and Robyn’s hard work before taking the keys from Robyn and locking the door for the final time. Nina and Robyn had stood outside on the pavement and watched him drive off, then they’d headed to the nearest Wetherspoons for chips and a beer. The last supper, Robyn had called it, but really neither of them could quite believe that it was all over. Neither could they quite bring themselves to let go; chips and beer was just another way of prolonging the goodbye, stretching it just that bit further.
But, as the skies darkened beyond the windows of the pub and the lights went on in the sleepy northern town of Wrenwick, Nina’s thoughtful gaze went to the windows. The yellow streetlights illuminated the municipal buildings of grey stone and reflected off wet roof slates; they shone onto the old Victorian swimming baths where the date of its opening stood proudly etched into the brickwork over the entrance, and they gave a yellow glow to the mix of Edwardian and art deco shops that made up the high street – some restored to their former glory, others crying out for a little tender loving care to make them beautiful again. Wrenwick was a town that had seen a rollercoaster of fortunes over the years, a fact reflected in its eclectic town centre, but one thing was always constant – the friendliness and community spirit of its residents.
And then their supper had been cut short by the arrival of Robyn’s teenage son, Toby, looking for his bus fare home.
‘God knows what he does with all the bus money I give him at the start of every week,’ Robyn had said, ignoring a scowling Toby as she scrabbled in her purse to find very little spare change in there.
Robyn had ended up leaving early to drive Toby home instead, so that even their extended goodbye had been taken away from Nina in the end.
Nina had headed back to her own little terraced house on Sparrow Street. The houses here had once been pokey worker’s cottages, back in the days when there had been a booming textile industry in these parts, belonging to a factory that looked down from a hill where the landscape almost all belonged to the owner. The old factory was now a museum, and the houses of Sparrow Street were all double-glazed with loft conversions, extensions and conservatories, satellite dishes and hanging baskets adorning the fronts, the grime of Wrenwick’s industrial past sandblasted from their red-brick façades.
Beyond the town boundaries there were moors of green and black that Nina could see from her bedroom window. On a clear day she’d watch kestrels hover high above them and on stormy days she’d see grey clouds settle on the highest points. Once she’d looked at them with Gray, loving the perfect spot they’d managed to find for their first house. After his death, though the memories pained her, she hadn’t wanted to give up this perfect spot and looking up at the moors was a bittersweet pleasure.
They’d decorated the house together and every panelled door, every patterned wall, every rug reminded Nina of the choices they had made, back when he’d been well enough. Every room was decked in warm, muted tones that, together with the narrow windows and low ceilings gave the place a cosy, cocooning sort of feel, a place where you could shut the world out at the end of a busy day and feel as if you were burrowing into a warm nest like a little mouse. The master bedroom still had the patchwork quilt on the bed that they’d bought together, the colourful rag rug Nina’s aunt and uncle had got them for a moving-in present and the tall anglepoise lamp overlooking the bedside table that Gray had chosen for himself to read by at night before he went to sleep.
At home and safely inside, Nina locked the front door. Then she put the radio on and ran a hot bath, where she stayed until the water had gone cold. It gave her time to think about the things that she hadn’t wanted to think about before, the things that now she had no choice but to consider. The biggest of these things was: what the hell was she supposed to do with her life now?
In the bedroom she got into fluffy pyjamas. Gray smiled down at her from the wedding photo hanging on the wall. By the time of their wedding, he’d already been consigned to his wheelchair. People had never said it, but Nina knew that plenty thought she was mad to be marrying him, given his prognosis. Sometimes the idea of their disapproval made her sad and sometimes it made her angry, but mostly she thought that if that was their attitude, then they must never have felt real love and she was sorry for them. She loved Gray so much that she’d have married him no matter what. She wouldn’t have changed a thing about their time together, only that if the universe had been a bit kinder and miracles possible, Nina could have had him for just a little longer.
As it often did, her mind went back to the first time she’d laid eyes on him. She’d left her umbrella on the bus home from her job at a now closed shoe shop and he’d leapt off miles before his own stop to get it back to her. He was handsome, good-humoured, totally at ease with himself, and the attraction had been instant for both of them. The following night they’d met up in a local pub for their first date. He was five years older than her very young nineteen, but his gregarious and fun-loving nature more than made up for her shyness and inexperience. Whenever she was with him it was like she’d been only half-alive before he’d come into her life, like she was able, finally, to live life to the full through him. He was so confident, so kind and patient, so sure of himself, so capable of opening the world up to her, that it hadn’t taken her long to fall in love, heart and soul, with him and everything he believed in.
Within a year they were living together in a little flat above a florist, and barely a day went by when he didn’t come up the stairs without a bunch of something pretty he’d picked up from the shop on his way through. He’d cook her favourite meals on days when she had to work late and have them waiting on the table for her with wine and a smile and she’d always forget how tired she was. Sundays would see them stay late in bed, sometimes making love, sometimes just talking, until the morning was old and he’d get up to make her coffee.
She worked hard in the shop and he spent his weeks as an insurance underwriter and, while their existence was dull and uneventful in most people’s eyes, they were happy. They saved and made plans for the places they would visit, the house they would one day buy, the wedding they’d have and the children that would follow, but there had never seemed to be any rush for any of those things because in the meantime they had each other. Their love was quiet and constant, and sometimes it was so right and natural, so unburdened by the problems that other couples seemed to have that it felt like a fairy tale, too good to be true. Sometimes Nina was almost scared that she was having it so good that the universe would come and demand its payment for too much happiness.
And then, not long after they’d taken the leap and bought their own little house on Sparrow Street, it happened. It started with a strange twitch in his hands, then the unexplained and sudden episodes of weakness, the dropping things for no reason, and finally, Nina had persuaded him to go to the doctors. There were tests, a few weeks of anxiety, of hope, of sometimes optimism but more often crushing pessimism, and then his disease was diagnosed and reality came crashing in. Nina’s worst fears were realised – she’d had it too good and the universe had come to collect on her debt after all.
It was Nina who’d proposed to Gray in the end. At first he’d refused her, not wanting her to burden herself with that kind of tie to a man who was deteriorating fast, but then she’d reasoned that she was staying with him until the end regardless, so what difference did it make? It was unlikely they’d see any of the places they’d dreamt of or have the children they’d wanted, but the wedding was one thing they could make happen, and eventually he’d agreed. And, despite everything, it had been the most wonderful day of her life.
Leaving the Sacred Heart shop, or rather, Sacred Heart leaving her, brought back memories of Gray more forcefully and painfully than she’d had for a while. If she lay on the bed in the stillness of her room now and closed her eyes, she knew she’d hear his breaths next to her, feel the warmth of his body, sense the touch of a hand resting on her belly as he slept beside her. If she tried hard enough, she could almost believe he was still alive.
But then her e. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
