Happy Ever After Read online

  Grinning, Ella crossed the yard, her feet leaving deep imprints in the snow, and hugged her. ‘Don’t be daft! We’re just delighted that you’re fully recovered. There’s so much to talk about and so much I want you to see. Oh, Jess – I do wish you lived here. Why don’t you think about moving?’

  ‘That’s what Ritchie said. Is it some sort of conspiracy?’

  ‘Maybe… Ritchie knows how blissfully happy I am with Al and all this – but he also knows how much I’ve missed you. I’ve probably bored him to death talking about you. Actually, he’s here at the moment with a patient.’

  ‘What?’ Jess’s breath billowed in smoky plumes. ‘Another one? Do you make a habit of providing him with poorly women to tend to?’

  ‘Of course not! I think – oh, hi Ritchie! How’s Polly?’

  Ritchie, scrunched across the snow-covered yard towards them, blowing on his hands and looking, Jess thought, even more devastating than she’d imagined.

  ‘She’s fine – clearly, just like my other patient,’ his eyes crinkled in Jess’s direction. ‘Didn’t I tell you you’d be on top of the world this morning?’

  Jess nodded. ‘Thank you so much. And I’m glad - um - Polly is on the mend, too.’

  ‘Polly’ll be able to return home in a few weeks. The stitches are out and she’s just got to find her feet then she’ll be back in the deer park…’

  ‘Deer park?’ Jess blinked. ‘Polly’s a deer? You mean you’re not a doctor – you’re a vet?’

  Jess could see Ella trying not to giggle.

  ‘Guilty,’ just managing to keep a straight face, Ritchie nodded. ‘But even I can take human temperatures and pulses and diagnose the effects of a virus.’

  ‘You didn’t give me animal pills, did you?’ Suddenly, Ritchie was having a very strange effect on Jess’s temperature and pulse rate all over again.

  ‘No! Just honest to goodness pain killers. And now I’ve finished my rounds, are you up to the grand tour of this amazing sanctuary? As your medical practitioner, I prescribe a lot of fresh air and exercise – not to mention your agreement last night to discuss the little matter of your unhealthy city lifestyle…’

  ‘But that was when I thought you were a medical adviser to humans – not animals.’

  ‘Very little difference, really,’ Ritchie grinned. ‘All it takes is time and gentle understanding. Who knows, by the end of the week you might even be convinced that vets know best.’

  Jess caught the mischievous look that flashed between him and Ella, and laughed.

  ‘Why do I get the feeling that all this is some sort of set-up and might have been discussed in my absence during last night’s storm?’

  ‘I really can’t imagine,’ Ritchie eyes were widely innocent as he fell into step beside her, their boots scrunching through the icy snow.

  Jess giggled, feeling young and free and relaxed for the first time in – ooh, for the first time in years… ‘Still, arriving here in the middle of the storm with a raging temperature and taking to my bed on the first night wasn’t that great, was it?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Ritchie took Jess’s hand as she slithered across the snow and didn’t release it. ‘But you know what they say about an ill wind, don’t you…

  LITTLE SHOP OF MEMORIES

  The wind blew icily from the north-east and the sky was leaden. Huddled in her warmest coat over her jeans and thick sweater, her feet encased in her fur-lined boots, Millie felt the desolate weather was exactly right for today’s destruction.

  The masses of zigzagged black and yellow warning tapes flapped and slapped in front of her, and the burly men in their hard-hats leapt in and out of their monster trucks, blowing on their hands, their faces reddened by the cold.

  A crowd jostled, four or five deep, chattering and laughing, occasionally pointing at the machines and offering opinions. Practically the whole of Shenton had turned out to see the end of their local Big Sava supermarket.

  Millie, acknowledging several friends in the crush round the safety barriers, snuggled deeper into her coat and shoved her hands more firmly into her pockets. The shop looked awful now: part-boarded up, its large plate glass windows disfigured by graffiti, rubbish and debris piled into its doorways, the aisles, just visible, once so bright and busy, now dirty and deserted.

  Big Sava was the last building to go in the local council’s long-planned regeneration of the village centre. To be honest, most of the villagers – the ones who lived in Shenton proper – had felt that the last thing the village needed was regeneration. They’d been more than happy with the handful of individual shops where you could buy anything you wanted and have a chat at the same time; the quiet leafy lanes leading down to the market place; the community hall which doubled as a cinema; and the air of Shenton sleepily languishing in the last century.

  But of course, the housing estates had sprung up all around, expanding the population hundreds of times over until Shenton could hardly claim village status any longer, and the newcomers wanted shops and more shops and acres of parking spaces and leisure facilities.

  Big Sava, Millie thought sadly as the wind rattled empty crisp packets round her boots, simply hadn’t stood a chance. Not once the council got the bit between their teeth and decide to turn Shenton into yet another clone-community. And the big out-of-town superstores that had started to emerge outside Shenton hadn’t helped, either. They had drained the lifeblood from the small individual shops and even Big Sava – which had catered for Shenton’s needs so well for over forty years – was doomed.

  Glancing at the familiar faces around her, Millie wondered if anyone else felt as she did. Were they here simply because it was something to do? Were they actually pleased to see Big Sava go, knowing that a new “shopping experience” was going to rise phoenix-like from the rubble, and it may not be anywhere as bad as they’d feared? Maybe most of them were actually looking forward to the joys of the consumer-age reaching Shenton at last.

  A pedestrianised precinct, they’d been promised, with masses of High Street stores and boulevard-type coffee shops and a multiplex cinema. Shenton, the place she’d lived all her life, Millie thought sadly, would never be the same again.

  Not that she was a dinosaur – far from it – and modernisation was fine in the right place. Even, maybe, in moderation, in sleepy Shenton. But this – the final blow – meant more to Millie than she’d ever imagined. To her, the supermarket hadn’t just been a place to buy the weekly groceries – it was also a place to meet friends and exchange gossip. And even more than that, Millie realised now, watching its final moments. It was a storehouse of memories.

  She’d been nearly 18 and taking her A levels at the local grammar school when Big Sava, the first self-service supermarket for miles around, had opened. There had been a bit of a hoo-ha in the village even then about the supermarket taking trade from the grocers, fish mongers, and the fruit and veg stall in the High Street, but the fears hadn’t been realised and Big Sava and the independent traders had lived side-by-side in comparative harmony.

  Millie and her mum had been among the first through Big Sava’s doors – genuinely delighting in pushing a creaking lop-sided trolley along the aisles, helping themselves from the excitingly full shelves, and queuing at the check-out with everyone else, marvelling over the low prices, the fantastic selection, chatting and laughing. Then, because they didn’t have a car, Millie and her mum thought nothing of hefting four carrier bags apiece back home.

  It had become a Saturday morning routine, Millie thought with a pang of sadness. Her and her mum, making their list, walking through the village with others on the same pilgrimage…

  She watched now as the burly men broke from their huddle and moved towards the big diggers and dumpers.

  ‘Won’t be long now,’ Sally Murphy, one of Millie’s closest friends, squeezed in beside her. ‘Can’t wait. Can you imagine what it’ll be like – sleepy old Shenton having a proper shopping precinct? Dragged into the 21st century at last.’

>   Millie smiled but said nothing. Sally didn’t have a sentimental bone in her body. Sally wouldn’t possibly understand why Millie wanted to cry.

  As the machines roared and chugged, Millie was no longer standing in the freezing grey bleakness of a demolition site – she was back in the late 1960s, laughing with her mum again as they trawled Big Sava’s shelves for their favourite biscuits, her dad’s special ginger cake, the tins of food that the cat liked best, something special for Sunday dinner.

  Those Saturdays mornings always seemed to be sunny as she and her mum shopped and chatted about how Millie’s studies were going, and what she and her friends would be doing that night, and what she’d do after A levels, and gossiped about the neighbours. Oh, how she’d thought her life would always stay like that – the family always together, happy, carefree days that never ended…

  The diggers bucked and rocked. Millie swallowed. Her mum and dad were dead, her A levels were a distant memory – three okay passes leading to a job in the local bank – and the Saturday nights out with friends, dancing to live bands or watching corny films in the village hall, now seemed as though they belonged to someone else’s life…

  ‘Shame Big Sava wasn’t a multi-storey,’ Sally interrupted Millie’s thoughts. ‘Then they’d have to bring in one of those wrecking balls – or even better, dynamite… The kids would have loved to see that!’

  Millie sketched a smile then winced as the first jagged-toothed monster crunched into the side of the supermarket. A roar went up from the crowd. Millie closed her eyes, remembering.

  That summer – Big Sava’s first summer – after her A levels, she and Sally and several other girls from school, had been allowed to go on holiday alone for the first time. They were renting a cottage in Cornwall for two weeks. It had been considered very daring – especially as Jennifer Goode was driving them down there. Jenny had passed her test just after her seventeenth birthday and her parents, better off than most, had bought her a second hand Ford Anglia.

  They’d piled into Big Sava, five excited teenagers, about to experience total freedom for the first time in their lives, heaping their baskets with the sort of unsuitable food they weren’t served at home or school and were intending to live on in Cornwall.

  Millie sighed. How innocent it had all been. How funny today’s eighteen year olds would find it – the daring they felt, the overwhelming sense of doing something slightly wicked…

  They’d bought lots of sweets and cakes and biscuits and crisps, and bottles of fizzy drinks. They’d sworn there’d be no boiled cabbage or mashed potatoes or anything even slightly good for them for the entire two weeks.

  And of course, the day before they’d left for Cornwall, Millie had met Steve.

  The JCB suddenly choked and coughed and spluttered and lumbered towards Big Sava’s taped-up glass-plated frontage.

  Sally clapped her hands over her ears. ‘This’ll make a noise!’ she yelled.

  Millie, miles away, nodded and watched as the windows caved in, subsiding almost gracefully beneath the onslaught. The crowd cheered lustily.

  They’d all gone to the dance at the village hall the night before their Cornish adventure, feeling so grown up, and danced in front of the group on the tiny stage to the music of Otis Redding and Sam and Dave.

  And Steve had been playing guitar and smiled at Millie. At first she’d thought he’d been smiling at Jenny because everyone did. Jenny was stunningly pretty, tall, with long blonde hair, and wore the latest clothes – not the cheaper copies from the market as Millie and the others did.

  But it had been Millie he’d smiled at, and in the break, he’d jumped off the stage, walked across to her, smiled again and asked if she’d like a drink.

  It had been a cream soda, Millie remembered – the village hall didn’t have a licence – and none of them would have expected to drink alcohol anyway. How well-behaved and young they were in those days…

  And Millie had been in a dream. Steve was tall, dark and handsome – an apprentice electrician in the day, a guitarist in the evening – and had made her laugh and then, much later when the dance ended, she’d waited while the group packed up and he’d walked her home and gently kissed her goodnight.

  Oh, how she’d wished she hadn’t been going to Cornwall… Steve was bound to meet someone else while she was away... Two weeks! How would she survive two weeks without him?

  But she had, sending him a postcard every day, sitting on beautiful beaches while Sally and Jen and the others flirted with the local boys, thinking of nothing and no-one but Steve.

  The bulldozer was revving up now, trundling forward, flattening everything in its path. There were only three walls and the sagging roof left, all torn and broken, damaged bits and pieces flapping sadly in the cruel wind. The thunderous noise was harsh and jarring.

  Millie stamped her feet and pulled her coat closer round her. She had returned from Cornwall and Steve had been waiting and they’d shopped in Big Sava, too. Holding hands, buying the ingredients for the pasta dishes they both loved and thought were the last word in sophistication, and sometimes even a daring bottle of red wine. And Steve had always sneaked off to the buckets of blowsy flowers and bought her a bunch of vibrantly coloured carnations…

  ‘Crikey!’ Sally shouted. ‘There goes the roof!’

  The roof screamed and crashed to the ground – just like Millie’s memories. She and Steve had lasted just over eighteen months… They’d simply drifted apart, arguing over silly things, the way you do at that age. Too much too young, her mum had said, adding there were plenty more fish in the sea… But Millie had been broken-hearted and cried for weeks and weeks, listening to “their” songs on her tiny record player, knowing that her life was over.

  She’d hated going to Big Sava then. She couldn’t eat pasta or even look at the bunches of brilliantly coloured carnations…

  ‘Oh, it’s raining now…’ Sally grumbled. ‘Still, now the roof’s off the rest shouldn’t take long. I can’t wait to see it as a heap of rubble, can you?’

  Steve had moved away from Shenton, taken a job in London, and gradually Millie’s heart had healed. The job at the bank was interesting, she made new friends and met Mark when she was twenty one.

  Married to Mark at twenty three, a mother of two beautiful girls by the time she was twenty seven, she’d worked part-time at the bank while they were young, shopped in Big Sava in her lunch hour – or at weekends with her daughters toddling beside her, their eyes huge as they gazed on the rows and rows of sweets…

  Oh, those days when the girls had been tiny had been wonderful, Millie thought, as the burly men all jumped out of their machines and met in a huddle, clearly making plans for the final push.

  Where had those years gone? Her daughters were grown and flown, with busy lives and careers, in touch with her all the time but only returning to Shenton occasionally. They’d laughed kindly when she’d told them she’d be here today. Big Sava was an anachronism to her daughters who no doubt shopped in hypermarkets or, more probably, online.

  And Mark had always loathed Big Sava. Cheap and nasty he’d called it and refused to be seen in there. There were no memories of Mark left in the remains of the scruffy supermarket. Or in her life now, Millie thought sadly, as the demolition men leapt back into their machines.

  Mark had left her for a younger, prettier, blonder work colleague ten years ago, the divorce had been swift and relatively painless, and Millie had gradually adjusted to life as a middle-aged singleton.

  ‘Any minute now!’ Sally shrieked, holding her umbrella over Millie as the rain lashed down in earnest. ‘Oh, they’re doing a count-down… Come on, Mil – join in!’

  Ten-nine-eight…

  The crowd chanted along as the machines crept towards the remainder of the supermarket, crushing rubble and glass beneath their fat tyres.

  Seven-six-five-four…

  ‘At last – sorry I’m late, Mil, the job took longer to finish than I’d planned. I thought I’d misse
d it…’

  Millie ducked her head from beneath Sally’s umbrella and grinned. ‘No – you’re just in time…’

  Steve, smiling at Sally, squeezed in between them, pulling Millie towards him. ‘It’s freezing, isn’t it? Really bleak… just the right weather for this…’

  Millie nodded. They’d always understood one another. Steve knew how she felt about Big Sava, shared her feelings. As he had all those years ago when they’d loved each other as they did now, but had been far too young…

  ‘You okay?’ he whispered.

  Millie nodded, snuggling against him. ‘I’ve been reliving all the memories – and some of them made me feel a bit sad… but even when Big Sava has gone, the memories will still be there, won’t they?’

  Steve nodded. ‘For ever. No-one can take away our memories, Millie.’

  She stood on tip-toe and kissed him, loving him more than life.

  They’d been together for two years now, meeting again when Steve, also long divorced, had come home to Shenton for his father’s funeral and stayed to comfort his mother. They’d bumped into one another while they were shopping in Big Sava – of course. Steve, a self-employed electrician now, somehow never left Shenton again.

  Three-two-one…

  With a roar and a tumult of metal on brick, Big Sava finally tumbled to the ground, the dust rising like smoke through the torrential rain.

  The crowd cheered and clapped and stamped its collective feet.

  Millie stared at the wide empty space, and sniffed back her tears.

  ‘The end of an era,’ Steve said softly. ‘And the beginning of a new one… As soon as the precinct appears with its posh new supermarket, we’ll come down here and buy pasta and red wine…’

  ‘And carnations?’

  ‘Oh, definitely carnations,’ Steve grinned at her through the slanting rain. ‘Every day, Mil. For the rest of our lives…’