Christmas at Lilac Cottage - Holly Martin Page 0,39

her with him.

‘Where’s the pub?’ Henry asked someone from the crowd and they must have told him because he started to head that way, not relinquishing his hold on her.

The crowd surged around her, helping to push her up the ramp as her legs seemed unwilling to walk on their own, but every movement from her and every touch from someone else caused her wet clothes to touch her skin, making her even colder.

She was vaguely aware that Henry was only in his socks too, having clearly ditched his skates at some point.

The Pilchard loomed over them and she tried to pull back but Henry and the rest of the crowd were having none of it. The warmth of the pub swallowed them and Penny just hoped with everything she had that Chris was not going to be amongst the regulars tonight. People jostled around her and there was lots of shouts of confusion and calls for everyone to get out the way as Henry dragged her towards the fire.

Where was Sam, surely they would have brought him in here too? Penny looked around as she was shoved into a seat right in front of the flames and locked eyes with Chris’s mum, Kathleen, as she pushed her way through the crowd to see what the fuss was about.

To her credit Kathleen only hesitated for half a second when she saw who it was that was causing all the attention before she moved into action.

‘Come on, Penny, let’s get you into some dry clothes.’ Kathleen grabbed her hand and pulled her through the door that led to their living quarters.

Through the cold and exhaustion, Penny noticed that nothing had changed since she had frequented these corridors and rooms almost every day when she had been going out with Chris. The dark wood panelling, the tiled floor, the photos on the walls, everything was exactly as it was.

Even Kathleen hadn’t changed; maybe she had a few more lines around the eyes and a few more flecks of grey in her hair, but she had remained relatively the same. She was even wearing one of her favourite shirts that Penny had seen her wearing many times when she had been dating Chris.

The scents of various cleaning solutions and the ever-present odour of alcohol was prevalent as it always had been, mixed with the smells of food from the kitchens.

She didn’t need these memories; she had spent eight years carefully keeping them locked up. She had been here the night she had miscarried and everything about that night came flooding back to her now. Panic, fear and the devastating loss slammed through her, coupled with the memories of how badly Chris had treated her afterwards.

Kathleen pulled her upstairs towards the bedrooms and she must have felt how awkward this reunion was too.

‘Would you like a shower or a bath to warm yourself up?’

Penny shook her head, wanting to be out of there as quickly as possible and Kathleen nodded with understanding.

Kathleen laid out some clean clothes and a towel on her bed and then hovered awkwardly for a moment.

‘Thank you for this,’ Penny muttered.

Kathleen smiled weakly before leaving her alone in the room.

With fumbling cold fingers she managed to get out of her wet clothes, dried herself off and dressed in the warm, dry clothes of her ex-boyfriend’s mum in record time. She needed to get out of here, her chest was tight, her throat was raw with suppressed emotion.

She looked around for a plastic bag to put her wet clothes in and saw one propped up against a chest of drawers. She picked it up and carefully removed the contents and laid them on the bed, but her heart missed a beat when she saw the abundance of tiny baby clothes and a bear that had the word ‘Grandson’ emblazoned across its chest. As Chris was an only child it was obvious this was for him, or rather, his son. She ran her fingers across the softness of the bear, feeling numb and it wasn’t anything to do with the cold any more. She had heard, through the grapevine, that Chris had got married but she’d had no idea that he’d had a son, the grapevine had spared her that. She closed her eyes and prayed that the little boy who received this bear would be loved and adored by his dad and not hated as her child would have been years before. She hoped with everything she had that Chris had