After the One by Cass Lester (novels for students .txt) 📗

there’s anything I can do…’ he called after them, as she and Pam headed back to the estate agent.

‘Thank you!’ called Pam, over her shoulder.

When he saw them coming, the agent tapped at his watch pointedly. ‘Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?’

‘Sorry,’ said Charley. ‘But I needed to have a think… and I’ve decided it’s a no. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’

His mouth literally dropped open. If she’d slapped him round the face with a wet kipper, he couldn’t have looked more shocked.

Pam was also visibly stunned, and Charley studiously avoided making any eye contact with her. Meanwhile the estate agent tried everything he could think of to get Charley to change her mind, but she was adamant.

All along she’d feared she was chasing a dream that was too difficult, too risky, too ambitious for her, and the frank admission from the bike man, about how hard he found it running the shop by himself, had brought her down to earth. Life was tough enough on her own, why was she even thinking about making it even harder? She wasn’t someone who thrived on risks, she liked, no, she needed, the security of things staying the same. She realised now that she’d been foolish to even contemplate taking on such a challenging adventure. It was beyond her. Simple as that.

Compared to the buzz of the drive down to town, there was a flat, uncomfortable silence in the car on the way back. Charley didn’t volunteer any explanation for turning the shop down, and Pam didn’t pry.

‘Nice-looking chap,’ Pam eventually remarked lightly.

‘The estate agent?’ spluttered Charley incredulously, thinking of the sweaty, balding, middle-aged man and how he’d unwisely squeezed himself into a shirt at least two sizes too small, with his beer belly bulging through the buttons.

‘No, the bike shop man!’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘Really?’ Pam fixed her with a gimlet eye.

But Charley met Pam’s gaze, wide-eyed and innocent. The bike man was a nice-enough-looking chap, she admitted to herself, not particularly good-looking, nice enough, but she wasn’t remotely interested in him.

‘I think he noticed you,’ said Pam.

Charley didn’t rise to the bait. She’d had years of managing people who were trying to matchmake her. She wasn’t interested in finding anyone else so, skilfully, she deflected Pam with a joke. ‘Pam! I am not discussing my love life with you! You’re my mother-in-law!’

A mischievous sparkle glittered in Pam’s eyes. ‘Well, you could think of me as your lodger, rather than your mother-in-law!’

‘I’m not discussing my love life with my lodger either! And anyhow, I told you before, I’m not interested in anyone.’

Pam didn’t reply.

Chapter Eighteen

‘Why? Why did you turn it down?’ Tara demanded, storming her way into Charley’s flat. Pam had taken one look at Tara’s dark expression and had turned to Charley, saying ‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ before taking her coat and handbag and fleeing.

Charley felt slightly sick. She hated rows at the best of times, and Tara was the last person in the world she’d want to fight, partly because she was her friend, but mostly because Tara seriously outclassed her as a fighter – outspoken and fearless, with no holds barred, and no territory off limits.

Charley tried to defend herself. ‘I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure about it. So I made the wise decision not to commit myself to something in the heat of the moment, that I couldn’t get out of. Nisha warned me not to make a hasty decision,’ she finished, hoping that wheeling in Nisha would divert Tara’s anger from her.

Tara snorted and rolled her eyes. ‘Huh! You bottled it, Charley. Wimped out.’ Charley opened her mouth to protest, but Tara ploughed on. ‘Call the agent back. Tell him you’ve changed your mind. Go on. Now. Before it’s too late.’

‘No.’

‘YES!’

Charley folded her arms, pointedly leaving her phone in her jeans pocket, which seemed to provoke Tara into losing all patience with her.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Charley. We’ve only got one life. You of all people should know that. Don’t be so pathetic. For once in your sodding life embrace change, take a chance.’

‘I can’t afford to!’ snapped Charley, infuriated by Tara’s self-righteousness. ‘I can’t take the risk. Your husband pays your mortgage – and all the other bills. I have to pay my own.’

Inadvertently, Charley had lit Tara’s blue touchpaper, and she turned on Charley, her voice dangerously quiet.

‘I don’t need a man to support me, Charley. My mum raised me on her own and I could do that for Monnie if I had to.’

‘But you won’t ever have to, will you? Because you’ve got Baz. I haven’t got a husband to support me,’ retorted Charley.

‘Neither did Kim,’ Tara shot back. ‘She didn’t have a Baz or a Josh. She didn’t need a husband, and neither do you.’

Charley gasped and reeled backwards as if she’d been struck. She would never stop needing Josh, not for the rest of her life. Furious tears streamed down her face and her body trembled. ‘How dare you! How dare you tell me I don’t need Josh.’

Charley watched as horror dawned on Tara’s face, her hands reaching out to her in a pleading gesture, and she instinctively veered away, out of reach.

‘Charley… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…’

But Charley wasn’t listening, couldn’t hear what Tara was saying over the hot raw anger burning inside her and making her blood pound in her ears. She lashed out to wound. ‘You have a husband. A good man. A bloody good man and you completely take him for granted. You never do anything with him, or for him. It’s all Monnie, Monnie, Monnie. And poor old Baz just puts up with it, all the while he’s working his bollocks off to support the both of you. Kim might have raised you single-handed – but don’t kid yourself that you could do the same. Because being on your own is a lot damn harder than you realise, so don’t get on your bloody high horse and lecture me about not