Prologue

Will

A s the wind whipped around the people who walked slowly away from the graveside, I couldn't help but think about the warm bed and body that I'd left to come to the funeral of someone I hadn't seen in ages. It wasn't like Andy and I had been in touch over the last year, not since she'd ended things between us. I wasn't heartbroken by it, in fact she did me a favour. I'd been wanting to end things for a while. Two weeks of dating someone was usually my limit, but Andy and I had been together for almost two months. My feet were itching, and then she told me that it was over.

"Will?" A tall woman with hair greying at her parting cleared her throat. "You're Will Newman?"

I nodded, and instantly I saw she had Andy's eyes—startling blue with tiny flecks of grey. She had a kind smile, just like Andy's.

"I'm Andrea's aunt, Miriam." She held her hand out to me. "I'm the one who sent you the message and the... I suppose you'd call it an invite." She shrugged.

I blinked. "Ah, okay. Thank you for letting me know." I took her hand and shook it. "I'm sorry for your loss." And I was. Andy was a nice girl, and it had been a shock to hear she'd been killed in a car accident.

"Thank you, thank you." Miriam looked down at the ground and sniffed.

"Well, it was nice to meet you, although not in these circumstances." I made to leave, but she grabbed my arm.

"Will, I think we need to talk."

I frowned at her. "We do?"

She looked around and then nodded. When I followed her gaze, I saw a guy in a black wool coat, buttoned up, with a grey-and-black-check scarf around his neck. The guy mouthed ‘okay' and then left.

"That's my neighbour," Miriam explained. "Eric. He gave me a lift here. There didn't seem much point in having a limo for two of us."

I nodded, as if it mattered to me how the aunt of my ex-girlfriend got to her funeral. I wasn't even sure why I was there. I mean, I'd had the message or invite, whatever you wanted to call it, but I didn't need to go. I wasn't sure what had made me, especially when Nicole was lying naked in my bed.

"Are you coming back to the pub for the wake?" Miriam asked.

"I wasn't planning on it," I replied, looking back to the where her neighbour had been standing. "I have work later. I actually work in a pub."

"Ah, okay. Well, if you change your mind, I'm sure we'll still be going late into the night. You know what these funerals are like when the family has Irish roots."

I didn't, but I nodded anyway. "Sure. So, I'd better get going."

"Oh, we still need to talk." She chewed on her lip. "Do you have a few minutes?"

I looked down at my watch, because I was the old-fashioned sort of guy who still wore one. I had a couple of hours before I had to open up. It would take me half an hour to get home, fifteen minutes to get to the pub. That would leave me just enough time to fuck Nicole one last time—we'd been seeing each other for two weeks, so her time was pretty much up.

"I have a couple of minutes," I replied.

Miriam nodded and pointed. "There's a bench there. Perhaps we could sit?"

"Yes sure."

I followed her to the bench, and then we both sat. Miriam didn't say anything, and I was beginning to wonder whether she was a little crazy from her grief. I knew she and Andy were close because Andy had mentioned her a few times. It had been something about how Miriam had taken Andy in when she was seventeen, after her mum killed herself.

"So, when was the last time you saw my niece?" she finally asked.

I shook my head. "I don't know, maybe a year ago. We didn't really have any contact after she ended things."

Miriam rolled her eyes. "Yes, that was my Andy. Once you were out of her life you were out of her life."

I smiled, not sure what to say. I hadn't cared that Andy cut me totally out of her life, but maybe Miriam would like to think everyone loved her niece as much as she did.

I pulled my coat closer around me as the wind picked up. "What was it that you wanted to talk to me about?" I wanted her to get on with it because Nicole was silently calling me like some sort of siren of the sea.

Miriam grimaced. "I'm not sure how to tell you this, so I guess I'll just come straight out with it."

My brows knitted together. "Okay."

"The thing is, Will… well, however I tell you this, it's going to sound… God, I could kill Andy." She gasped and closed her eyes. "Oh, bloody hell."

"It's okay." I tried to hide my smile. That sort of inappropriate shit made me laugh. "Just say what it is that you have to say."

"Okay well the thing is, Will, I'm just going to come out and say it. You have a daughter."

At that moment, I knew how it felt for the arse to drop out of your world. My chest felt tight, as if it was too small for my heart. Sweat formed on my top lip, and I thought that I might puke. I was twenty years old—I couldn't have a kid. I was just a kid myself.

"W-what?" I leaned forward and pinned my gaze to her lips so I could see the words as they came out of her mouth. "Say it again."

"You have a child."

Yep, I heard and saw it right. Miriam opened her bag, pulled out an envelope, and passed it to me.

"These are some pictures of her. Sorry, she's a girl, or did I already say that. I said you had a daughter, didn't I?"

I nodded and looked down at the white envelope in my shaking hand.

"Her name is Maddy and she's adorable. She's just five months old." Miriam took the envelope from me and opened it. She pulled out a picture and held it up in front of me.

I looked at it but barely took it in. A dark haired, chubby kid was all I saw. I didn't notice whether she looked like me or her mother. I wasn't aware of whether she was cute or not, or what she was wearing. The image swam in front of my eyes.

"What do you… shit." I rubbed a hand down my face. "I mean, I don't want to speak ill of Andy but is the kid… fuck."

"Yours?" she asked. "Yes, I'm pretty sure she is. Of course, we can arrange a DNA test, but Andy didn't lie, and she told me right from the beginning that Maddy was your daughter. She found out she was pregnant right after she ended things with you. I mean, she might have known before. She was always trying to do everything on her own. You know, losing her mum, I think she just felt that?—"

"I don't know what to say," I said interrupting her. "I mean, I have a job in a pub. I don't know if I can take care of a kid."

Miriam took a deep breath and then took my shaking hands in hers. They were cold and soft, and something about them reminded me of my mum, even though I hadn't held her hand in over ten years.

"Will," she said softly. "I know that this all seems scary to you, but I'm sorry, son, you're going to have to step up."

I shook my head. "No, I can't. That's not possible. Can't she stay with you?" I pulled my hands free from hers and gripped my hair. "I'm twenty, Miriam. I live in a shitty flat above a betting office, and I work nights in a pub. I don't get home until three every morning."

Miriam shrugged. "I don't know what to say, Will, but I'm sorry—you're going to have to deal with it."

"How the hell can I deal with it? What do you suggest that I do?" I leaned forward to take a deep breath, gasping in air because I felt like I might collapse from a heart attack.

"I'm sorry, Will. I know that this is a huge shock."

"You reckon?"

"The thing is, you really need to figure this out soon."

I looked up at her, and she was chewing her lip again. Her blue eyes were brimming with tears, and I knew that what she was about to say wasn't going to be good for me.

"Why?" I asked, swallowing back the scream of fear balled in my throat.

"I'm dying, Will and if you don't take Maddy, then she'll end up in care, and I don't think you want that."

I felt like I'd been punched in the gut—at Miriam's news, but also the mention of my child going into care. I'd been brought up in the system from the age of nine, and it had not been good. It had been fucking hideous. Foster parents who only wanted me for the money they could earn. Being passed over for adoption because I wasn't a cute little baby and had been labelled trouble. All I'd wanted was to be fucking loved. Playing up had been my way of getting attention. It didn't take some prick with a degree to realize that.

"She's a baby. She might get a good family," I replied, hating the vile taste of the words in my mouth.

Miriam took a deep breath. "And she may not. Are you willing to take that chance?"

I stood up and took two paces away from the bench. "You can't just put this on me, Miriam. I had no damn clue. She doesn't know me."

"I know, and I'm sorry, Will, but I have no other choice. I can't let her go into care. Yours isn't the only awful story I've heard. You know Andy went into care for a little while." She shook her head. "Of course, you know. That's where you originally met, wasn't it."

It was true. Andy and I had been in the same kid's home when we were thirteen. Her mum had gone missing, and I'd been sent back by another foster family because I was too much for them. Andy was only there a month or so, and then Miriam came for her. I stayed another two years until Mrs Powell fostered me until I was eighteen. Then, a year later, Andy and I bumped into each other at the pub I was working at, and we got together that same night.

I thought about Mrs Powell and wondered whether she could maybe take the baby. She was almost seventy, and I'd been the last kid she fostered. I still had dinner with her once a week and saw how much her joints hurt and how bent her fingers were getting, so I knew deep down that it wouldn't be fair to ask her. I also knew that to help me, she'd say yes without even thinking about it.

"I am sorry, Will." Miriam's voice was soft and full of emotion, and I realised it must have been hard for her, too.

I stopped pacing and looked at her. "How long do you have?" I asked.

"Not long. Six months at most. It's bowel cancer that I foolishly didn't get checked out. This big coat hides the fact that I'm skin and bone underneath, and then there's the miracle of makeup."

As I looked at her, I could now see how sunken those bright blue eyes were and how pale her skin was beneath the blusher on her cheeks.

"If it helps, I've left everything to Maddy—my house, my car, my money. There's enough for you to be able to take care of her, as well as some going into trust for when she goes to university."

I vaguely recalled Andy telling me that her Aunt Miriam was well off. Her late husband had been some sort of financial wizard who'd made a fortune in investments. When he died of a heart attack at just fifty-four, Miriam had become a wealthy widow.

"Will, I always regret that I couldn't help Andy's mum get off the drink and drugs. I'll always regret that Andy had to spend a single day of her life feeling scared or alone because my sister refused my help or to even talk to me. When I took Andy home from that children's home, I vowed that she'd never suffer ever again, and that now includes Maddy. If I could change anything I would, but when I got my diagnosis just after Andy's death, I knew that you were the only person who I could trust that baby with."

"Even I don't know if you can trust me, Miriam," I cried. "I know nothing about babies."

"You can come and live with me, and I'll show you the ropes. It'll give you some time to adjust before I'm gone. Some time with some support."

I looked up to the sky and wondered what the fuck I'd done to deserve this shit to be landed on me. Then again what had Maddy done to deserve it too?

"When I get ill, you won't need to take care of me. I've organized for a nurse, and if necessary, a place in a hospice."

I looked at her and could see the weight of everything was firmly on her sloping shoulders. If nothing else, I supposed I could do it until she was gone—to give her some peace. Then, maybe, if it was tough, I could think about putting Maddy into care. She was a baby; she'd get a nice family who'd want to love her. Yeah, that's what I'd do—play the game until Miriam was gone, and then get my life back. I could make sure I didn't fall in love with her. I never fell in love. Two weeks was my max, after all.

"Okay," I sighed. "You'd better give me your address, and I'll be around tomorrow."

Miriam sighed, and a serene smile broke out over her face. I knew at least I'd given her some peace for the time that she had left.