Rachel lay in her hospital bed, unable to sleep with the pain still ever-present along her jaw. For some reason, she found herself thinking about how it had all started, the day they first met Wendy.
Ironically, Rachel was the one who’d caused it to happen, who brought them together in the first place. If only she hadn’t been such a brat about wanting a special bakery birthday cake, like her two best friends, then everything might have been different. But no, Julia Dobbs had had a cake in the shape of a rabbit with marshmallow teeth for her recent birthday party, and Lorraine Browning a Kermit cake with amazing lurid green fondant icing – and Rachel was desperate to keep up. ‘Please,’ she had begged her father, putting her palms together in a little prayer. ‘Please, Dad, can I?’
Terry was hopeless in the kitchen (somehow the two of them had survived on Fray Bentos meatballs and powdery Angel Delight this far), and Rachel knew he was always trying to make it up to her on the Not Having a Mum front, so he wasn’t too hard to persuade once she turned the tears on. So off they went to the All You Knead bakery on the high street, breathing in the heavenly scents of cake, gingerbread and sausage rolls, neither of them suspecting that everything was about to change.
‘We’d like a cake in the shape of ballet shoes, please,’ Dad had said to the bakery lady. ‘For next Friday. It’s my daughter’s tenth birthday.’
The lady behind the counter had a cloud of curly auburn hair and a smudge of flour on her cheek. Even now, Rachel could remember the way she had smiled at Terry’s words. ‘Your birthday? Well, fancy that,’ she said. ‘It’s my birthday on Friday too.’ Her nose gave a funny little crinkle as she directed her gaze at Rachel. ‘I love the way people always set off fireworks on our birthday, don’t you?’
It was as simple as that. A coincidence, a shared bonfirenight birthday, a cake order, a glint in Terry’s eye. The lady had tried to talk to Rachel – ‘So you’re a ballet dancer, are you? Go on, give us a twirl!’ – but she had felt shy, leaning her head against Terry’s waist, not wanting to dance there on the bakery floor. If she had known what was to happen, of course, she’d have dragged him right out of the shop. She’d have said, Do you know what, I’m happy with an ordinary cake after all, Dad, one from the Co-op is fine. Come on, let’s go.
Too late for that, though. Terry put down a deposit and the lady – Wendy – gave him a written receipt. ‘It’ll be ready to collect on Friday morning,’ she had said, with a twinkly smile.
‘Friday morning,’ Terry replied shyly. ‘Well, I’ll be sure to come back then.’ He had cleared his throat, sounding unusually awkward. ‘Will you . . . I don’t suppose you’ll be working yourself that day, seeing as it’s your birthday too?’
Wendy blushed, her cheeks turning as pink as her frosted lipstick. ‘Oh, I’ll be here,’ she said. ‘I’ll look forward to seeing you then.’
And so the wheels were put in motion. Terry said no more about it to Rachel, but as she went up to bed that night she heard him talking to Pete, his friend, who’d dropped by. ‘She was a very attractive woman,’ he’d said, cracking open a can of Guinness. ‘And it’s been a while.’
A shiver went down Rachel’s spine as she crept into bed a few minutes later, and she tucked her knees up tight inside her nightie, a sixth sense twanging a warning. Danger, danger. But there was no turning back. The date was set, their paths converging. A very attractive woman.
By dint of further eavesdropping on her dad and Pete that weekend, Rachel learned that Terry had taken a bunch of flowers along when he went to collect the cake, and suggested he and Wendy meet up for coffee sometime. The following week, Sonia, the lady next door, was roped in to babysit while Dad and Wendy went out for scampi and chips and a knickerbocker glory at the Harvester. And then, almost before Rachel knew it, the happy little Me-and-Dad twosome was no more, and she was being fitted for a bridesmaid dress in apple-green taffeta (she had hated the colour ever since). ‘And guess what?’ Dad had told her, beaming. ‘Wendy’s got a little girl too – Rebecca – so you’re going to have a sister!’
‘Oh,’ Rachel had said uncertainly. Her friend Julia had a little sister – Tracey, who was always whingeing and telling tales and interrupting their games. She wasn’t sure she wanted a new sister, or a stepmother. Why couldn’t things just stay as they were?
Everyone made such a fuss at the wedding – a new mummy! Wasn’t it exciting? What a lucky girl she was! – and to be fair, Rachel enjoyed the dancing and the buffet and being given a special silver bangle as a bridesmaid present. But then all of a sudden there was a big clamour and Dad and Wendy were setting off on their honeymoon, without her. It felt wrong to be standing in the crush of people, hardly able to see as the two of them drove away in Dad’s car. Someone had tied tin cans to the back, and everyone was laughing as they rattled along the street. ‘Don’t worry, chick,’ Sonia Next Door had said, putting an arm around her. ‘You stick with me. They’ll be back in no time.’
As it happened, Sonia’s words turned out to be true. Dad and Wendy were back sooner than expected – the very next day, in fact. Unfortunately for Rachel, though, their early return was for all the wrong reasons.
‘Hello there, is everything okay?’ a nurse said just then, drawing back the curtains around Rachel’s bed and seeing that she was still awake. Rachel hadn’t even realized she’d been crying again until the nurse leaned over her and gently dabbed the tears away with a tissue. ‘Can I get you anything? Some water? Are you in pain?’
This nurse was older and more matronly than the others she’d seen, with short, silver-flecked hair and kind, brown eyes. Somebody’s mum, Rachel guessed as the woman carried out her checks and topped up Rachel’s pain relief; somebody’s grandma, even. How she wished she had a mum to lean against right now! A mum to smooth back her hair and hold a glass of water to her lips, who would promise that everything would be okay!
‘Try to sleep,’ the nurse said, straightening the bed covers and giving Rachel’s shoulder a friendly pat. ‘That’s it, eyes closed. You’ve had a rough time of it, haven’t you, love? But it’ll all seem better in the morning. These things always do.’
‘Thank you,’ Rachel mumbled. She lay still until she heard the curtain being swished back and the nurse move on to her next patient. It’ll all seem better in the morning, she repeated to herself. She really hoped so.