Chapter Twenty

‘ O h, sweetheart. Are you sure you'll be okay if I go to my bridge club meeting? I can stay and look after you.' Florrie wrapped the yellow blanket tighter around Debbie's shoulders.

Sinking back a little further against the sofa cushions, Debbie nodded. ‘I'll be fine, thanks.'

‘I don't know. I hate seeing you like this. Do you want a little more chicken soup before I go? Shall I shut the window? A little fresh air will do you the world of good, but if you're chilly I can close it?'

‘No, thanks. I just want to sleep, that's all.' Debbie leaned her head on the arm of the sofa and closed her eyes. From the moment she'd turned up on her nan's doorstep at eight in the morning, she'd been checking on her every five minutes, piling her with blankets and cooking chicken soup from scratch. Just as she had when Debbie had been poorly as a child. But this time all the warmth, comfort and chicken soup couldn't make Debbie feel better.

She listened as the front door clicked shut before gripping hold of the hem of the yellow woolen blanket covering her, lifting it to her face and taking a deep breath, the floral scent of her nan's fabric softener a reminder of her childhood. Opening her eyes, she ran her fingers along the frayed edge of the blanket. This had been the same blanket she and her dad used to snuggle under during their movie nights.

Rooting around beneath the blanket, she pulled her mobile out from the gap between the sofa cushions and checked it. No messages, no missed calls. Nothing.

She'd been right then. Her decision to finish things with Richie had been the right one. It hurt now. Hurt so much, but it was better to feel this than to fall deeper before the inevitable happened.

Laying her head back on the sofa arm, she closed her eyes again. The one thing she so desperately wanted - sleep - seemed to be evading her. Every time she tried to drift off, the conversation she'd had with Richie echoed in her mind. Had she explained her decision properly? Had he understood why she'd had to end things? Did he know she was only trying to look out for them both, that she had his interests at heart too?

Debbie opened her eyes wide and threw her head back against the back of the sofa. It was no good. She couldn't escape what had happened, she couldn't escape how she felt and what she'd done.

Sleep wasn't the answer.

She blinked against the low autumn sun as it hit a crystal photo frame on the windowsill, casting a stream of rainbow infused light across the carpet. It flickered there, the rainbow light dancing as her nan's net curtains blew in the light breeze, coming between the sunlight and the photo frame.

Standing up, she walked across to the window and pulled the net curtains aside before shutting the window. Looking down, she noticed the colours of the rainbow were on her jumper now. She picked up the crystal frame, ready to move it elsewhere before the image caught her attention. It was her and her dad on the beach. She smiled as she remembered that day. She'd begged her parents to stay a little longer before they left to head home for work, leaving her in the bay so her nan could look after her during the holidays. They'd given into her demands and her nan had sent them down to the beach whilst she cooked a supper for them. She'd said the fresh air would do them good before the long journey home.

She smiled. Her nan thought fresh air could fix anything. And in that instance, it had. It had given her the extra time she'd wanted with her parents.

As soon as they'd arrived at the beach, the three of them had sprung into action, the fresh air invigorating them, and had built a series of sandcastles leading from the edge of the water to what she remembered as being halfway up the beach. Thinking back, it probably hadn't been. They'd probably only built nine or ten and not hundreds as she'd believed. With a stroke of genius, her dad had dug a trench leading from the sea and continued it around the sandcastle village they had created. With the tide coming in, the trench had filled with water, forming a swirling river between the castles.

Putting the frame down, she looked around. There were other pictures from that day. Her dad had taken some of her with her mum, and someone walking by had seen the camera and offered to take one of all three of them. Where was that one?

Walking across to the oak sideboard sitting beside the fireplace, Debbie opened the cupboard doors. Her nan had always kept an old square biscuit tin full of photographs in there. She lifted magazines and moved piles of knitting patterns as balls of wool dropped to the floor, leaving a snake of wool as they unravelled to make their escape.

It wasn't there anymore. Where would her nan have put them? Why would she have moved them?

Debbie moved into the kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers before checking the bedrooms, under the beds and above the freestanding pine wardrobes. Nothing.

She needed to find the photos. She suddenly needed to look back through them, remember her childhood, look at images of her dad.

Walking out of the spare room, she sank to the top step of the staircase. Her nan wouldn't have got rid of them. Not even if she found them too painful to look through them. She would have kept them for her. But where could she have put them? She glanced above her head, her eyes resting on the loft hatch.

There, that's where they'd be. That's where she'd put something she treasured if she couldn't bear for it to be close. In the loft.

Jumping up, she ran down the stairs and retrieved the small stepladder from the shed before carrying it back up. She positioned it beneath the loft hatch and climbed up, pushing at the hatch. After the third attempt, it budged, and she could slide it back, opening it.

She balanced on the top rung of the stepladder and placed her hands on either side of the dark hole into the loft before using all the strength she had to pull herself up. Once up, she twisted her body around and sat on the edge of the hatch, her legs dangling down.

After letting her eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, Debbie reached forward and flicked on the light switch, flooding the small, low loft area with a dazzling brightness. Shifting her weight onto one of the wooden boards running between the beams, she dragged herself across to a mound of boxes and gently manoeuvred them.

Each box had her nan's writing on, but there was no chance she'd have been able to have taken them up here herself. Bertie must have helped. She read the carefully labelled boxes as she shifted them – wool, blankets, spare crockery. And, yes, there they were – photographs.

Pulling the box free, she tore back the tape securing the lid before opening it. A pile of loose photographs lay on top, school photos of her and Bertie mainly, but there it was, the square biscuit tin.

Carefully, she lifted it out, crossed her legs, and placed it on the floor in front of her before taking the lid off. Just as she remembered, the tin was crammed full of photographs, some black and white, others coloured, all with the same grainy appearance of age.

Picking up a small stack in her hand, Debbie began sifting through them. A picture of her and Bertie sitting either side of her nan, the yellow blanket she'd been using earlier draped over their knees as they enjoyed a story together. Next was a photo of her dad giving her a piggyback ride on the beach, her short arms outstretched like an aeroplane, gripping hold of an ice cream in one hand and her red spade in the other. Next was an image taken on Christmas Day. She, her parents, Bertie and his parents were standing in front of their nan's Christmas tree, her and Bertie clutching shiny wrapped gifts whilst their parents held glasses of Baileys aloft.

Still, she hadn't found the photos of the day on the beach, the pictures that had been taken at the same time as the one in the frame on the windowsill. Replacing the ones she'd been looking through, she carefully routed around in the tin, moving aside pictures she remembered being taken and photos from her dad's childhood, from her nan's past.

Here, the sandcastles. They were just as she had pictured them in her mind's eye; the sandcastles zigzagging across the beach with the narrow river her dad had dug meandering between. She picked up another and stifled a cry of surprise. She'd forgotten about this. Holding the photo up, she smiled at the image of her dad sitting in a hole they'd dug in the sand. It had been a car, a car they'd sculpted in the sand. They'd even dug a seat to sit on and stuck her red spade at an angle for the steering wheel.

She looked at photo after photo, remembering the fun they'd had, memorising the images. She'd been lucky, she'd had the perfect childhood. Until thirteen, her life had been full of happy times.

As she replaced the photographs, she felt a few slip through her fingers. Reaching down, she picked them up and looked at each one before she laid them carefully back in the tin. Her dad again, blowing out the candles on a cake her nan had baked. Debbie standing with Bertie outside Elsie's bakery, each showing off their beautifully decorated cupcakes. She put that one to the side, she'd take it into the bakery tomorrow and show Elsie. She still felt awful for not going in today, but after getting next to no sleep after her and Richie's talk on the beach, she'd known she'd have been no help, anyway.

Ah, a rare picture of both her parents, her nan and herself. They were sitting on the promenade wall, their legs dangling over the edge, ice creams in hand.

She revealed the next picture and paused. Richie stared back at her, a young Richie. He was hanging from the branch of a tree in the nature reserve. His mum had taken him and his sisters and invited Debbie along too. They'd spent the day searching for conkers on the long amble around the reserve. Before coming back to the bay, his mum had told them all to run off any remaining energy, and both she and Richie had both headed for the climbing tree. Every park or nature reserve had one, didn't they? The flawlessly shaped tree sporting thick branches spaced the perfect distance apart for climbing.

In the picture they were both hanging from the branches, their swinging legs caught forever in one position, their grinning faces preserved for eternity.

Lowering the photo onto the wooden board, she pinched the top of her nose. They'd had something special, and she'd blown it. She had allowed herself to be consumed by the fear of events repeating themselves. She'd let the mistakes she and Ben had made shadow her decision, allowed one failed relationship to impact the one she could have had with Richie.

Gripping the photograph between her fingers, she watched as a single tear landed on its shiny surface. Had she made a mistake? Had she tarnished all men, all relationships with the same brush, so to speak? Richie lived three hours away, but that was closer than if she'd been leaving to go back up to Scotland. Much closer. Maybe she'd been too hasty in making her decision.

Pulling the sleeve of her cardigan over her hand, she carefully wiped the picture dry, wiped away her tears before sinking her head to her knees. Richie was one of the kindest people she'd ever known. He made everything better, made her feel wanted, so why had she picked apart their relationship? Had she seen things which hadn't been there? He'd explained he'd wanted to leave his hometown because of his ex-best-friend, not because of the woman he'd been going to marry, so she needed to just dismiss any idea that he wanted to return because of her.

Then why was he so desperate to go back? To escape Penworth Bay, the place he'd said himself he'd thought of as home? His family, his friends. That's why. She'd been wrong to just assume he'd be able to up sticks and stay on in the bay to see if their relationship worked out. She'd been wrong to think that just because he couldn't, it meant there was something wrong with what they had, something wrong with her.

She wasn't moving to the bay because of him. She'd made the decision before realising how strongly she felt towards him, so she'd been unfair to presume he'd be able to drop everything to follow his heart.

Debbie lifted her head and focused on the picture again. The bond she felt with him was real, and she didn't want it to be over. Not now. Not ever, but certainly not now and because of her. Yes, the whole long-distance thing hadn't worked for her and Ben, but Ben had checked out of their relationship the moment he'd accepted the job in the States. No, that wasn't right. He'd checked out of the relationship when he'd applied for the job behind her back, when he'd first thought about applying and not discussing a possible move with her.

Richie wasn't Ben, and he hadn't been the one to break things off, to tell her it was over. He had done the exact opposite. He'd begged for her to give them a chance. And if they both walked into it one hundred percent committed to making a long-distance relationship work, then who's to say it wouldn't? You only need faith in each other and love to make something work, didn't you?

In that moment she only wanted one thing, and that was to tell Richie she'd made a mistake, to ask for his forgiveness and to beg for them to try to mend things between them.

Crawling to the loft opening, Debbie laid the photograph near the edge and lowered herself to the top rung of the ladder. Just as she shifted her hands closer to the edge of the hatch, she felt the ladder wobble beneath her weight, pulling herself back up at the last moment as the ladder collapsed to the floor.