Page 28 of My Summer of Magic Moments

There was nothing quite like a Sunday lunch with the family gathered round. It was like being wrapped in a warm, delicious blanket. Claire listened to the buzz of chatter. The boys talked about their latest Xbox games, the Newcastle score yesterday – at which Mark just groaned – and her mum asked Jack about the football team he played for on the weekends. Ollie was going camping with the Scouts the following weekend, and told how he was really looking forward to that – they were going to be allowed to make a fire from scratch with no matches. Bear Grylls was going to have nothing on them by the sounds of it – and there were general ‘mmms’ and comments on how lovely the food was. Claire felt absolutely full by the end of the meal, travelling from starving to pleasantly stuffed in precisely ten minutes.

After a short sit-down with a cup of tea, Claire offered to do the washing-up. She soon found herself in the kitchen with Mark, who started clearing the surfaces. They both stacked the dishwasher, then Mark began rinsing the messier pans in the sink. Claire took up the tea towel.

‘So, how was your break?’

‘Good, thanks. I loved the beach and the village there. It was really beautiful.’

‘Yeah, went that way a lot when I was a child. We used to have a cottage inland, a bit nearer to Wooler. My parents were into hiking and biking, that kind of thing. I used to wish we could go to Disneyland or somewhere like that instead at the time. But I do remember it being beautiful.’

‘Yes.’ She could picture the long stretch of sandy bay … the dunes … her little cottage beside the sea.

And she wondered if he’d be there now. It was a Sunday, the weekend. Did he get there most weeks?

‘Back to work tomorrow?’ Mark pulled her back from her reverie.

‘Oh … yes. I’m looking forward to it. I needed the break, but now I’ve recharged the batteries, I’m ready to go back.’

‘Working on anything in particular at the moment?’

‘Well yeah, the cancer blog came to a natural end. A happy one, thank God. But whilst I was away I got inspired … Actually, it was something Sally said that got me thinking, so the new column’s going to be about “Magic Moments”. You know, those contented moments in life – often the simplest things – that make you truly happy.’

‘Sounds good. Interesting.’

‘What would yours be? Your magic moment?’ She picked up a baking tray to dry.

He popped some knives and forks into the rack as he took a few seconds to think.

‘Hmm. My family … the boys, the daft things they do and say sometimes that just make you grin. Like the other night when we’d just had our supper, Ollie shot off his seat, ran past and then let out a huge fart that stopped him in his tracks. He turned to us and said, “Sorry, that was my bottom saying thank you for the food.” We tried so hard not to laugh. We couldn’t help it, though – we just cracked up at that.’

Claire grinned. That might be a good comical one for her blog. The things children say and do. It would be lovely to be able to mention plenty of different people’s special moments in her column. She’d have to ask Sally and her mum what theirs would be.

‘And things like an ice-cold beer from the fridge on a hot day,’ he continued. ‘Spending time with Sal, just the two of us, like old times.’

‘You big romantic, you. I’m glad to hear the beer came first.’ Claire gave a wry smile.

‘Don’t let on about that one. Mental slip, that was all.’ He grinned back.

The very first ‘Magic Moments’ article was going to be out tomorrow, in the Monday edition of the Herald. She felt anxious, a butterfly flutter in her stomach, hoping it would go down well. Next week she would hopefully be hearing about her readers’ own magic moments if it had struck a chord with them. The idea could evolve, perhaps into something special. She so hoped her regulars would like it. And her boss. It would be thrown out pretty swiftly otherwise, and she’d have to come up with something else, and quick, if her article didn’t attract much interest.

She’d been away a long while on this holiday, even though it was much needed, and all those on-off times with the treatments she’d had over the past year. She felt she needed to prove herself all over again. Would people still like her stories? The way she wrote? When she got back tomorrow, she’d settle back into the team and really focus on her work. Her boss, David, had been more than patient and understanding so far, but she was all too aware there were other ambitious journalists ready and waiting to jump into her shoes. Her nerves began to bite.

11

‘Magic is believing in yourself. If you can do that, you can make anything happen.’

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

‘Claire, we need to talk. I tried you earlier.’

The phone had started ringing as soon as she got in the door. She recognized the voice on the phone immediately. Paul. For a split second she had hoped it might be Ed, that he’d tracked her down, but there was no soft Scottish lilt, and of course he wouldn’t have her phone number or any idea of where she lived. Silly moo.

‘Oh … okay.’ She supposed they’d have to talk things through. Discuss the practical things you have to when you split up a marriage, a home, a life together, taking it apart piece by piece. The Lego marriage model – the one he’d smashed up that day he’d told her that he’d been seeing someone else, that he had just stayed to support her through the cancer, but now he was moving out. Yes, there were still lots of pieces of that Lego still hanging around, to put back in the box, ready to trip her up. Or maybe they were there ready to make something else with.

‘We’ve got a buyer interested in the house.’ His tone was matter-of-fact.

‘Oh.’ So soon.

‘They looked round while you were away.’