about fulfilling his wife’s wish to send their daughter to college, even when Sarah had fought tooth and nail against the idea and pleaded to work for her father straight from school. In the end she’d given in, but had taken a Business Studies course instead of her original intention to study art and design. And after classes and at weekends she’d worked with the construction crew and pulled her weight.
To please her father she’d socialised with girls from college occasionally, but had felt happier in the company of the bricklayers and carpenters, electricians and plumbers she’d known all her life. The old hands had treated her like one of the boys, but when nature had finally added curves to her shape, some of the newer, younger ones had begun treating her very much as a girl. It was a new phase which had added considerably to her father’s worries, as Sarah had gone out several nights a week with one young man or another.
‘It’s all right, Dad, safety in numbers,’ she’d assured him when he had commented on it. ‘I’m having fun, nothing heavy. They’re just friends.’
‘They’re also men,’ he’d warned her. ‘So watch your step.’
But once she’d left college to manage the firm’s offices, it had been Sarah’s turn to worry when Sam Carver had grown older and greyer before her eyes, losing contracts to bigger outfits. She had put her social life on hold to stay home to cook proper meals every evening, and to share them with her father to make sure he ate them. Eventually, it had been during one of those meals that Sam had faced Sarah across the table and told her he’d had an offer from Barclay Homes for the firm.
‘No! You’re selling it?’ she said, appalled.
‘Yes, I am, Sarah,’ he said heavily. ‘At least this way we’ll salvage something out of it.’
Horrified, Sarah argued that they should carry on, must carry on, but Sam was unshakeable.
‘I’ve made up my mind, pet. I had a chat with the Barclay Homes manager, and there’s a job for you in their local branch if you want it. Though if you don’t you should find a job anywhere now, with your experience in the building trade. But I’m jacking it in.’
She swallowed her tears and clutched him tightly. ‘But, Dad, what will you do?’
‘Retire,’ he said, patting her. ‘I’ve been running on empty for a while now, my darling, I need a rest.’
‘But I don’t want to work for someone else,’ she cried, then, shamed by her whining, managed a smile. ‘But of course I will. And a job with Barclay Homes means I can live at home with my dad.’ And look after him.
Within days the contract was signed and Sarah was given an interview with the manager of Barclay Homes. The night before her start in the new job she made a special dinner to share with her father, and tried not to worry when he ate so little. Afterwards she drank coffee with him in the garden in the warm twilight, relieved to see him looking relaxed for the first time in months as he stretched out in a deckchair.
‘I’ll be able to get your mother’s garden in proper shape now,’ he said later, yawning. ‘You should have an early night, pet, to make sure you’re on top form in the morning. I think I’ll stay out here in the cool for a while.’
Knowing it was where he felt closest to her mother, Sarah bent and kissed him, told him not to be too late, then went up to bed. When she woke in the night and found his bed hadn’t been slept in Sarah ran downstairs, panicking, and raced barefoot into the garden to find Sam Carver still in his deckchair, fast asleep. Scolding, she hurried to shake him awake, then let out a cry of raw anguish when she realised he would never wake again.
The following period remained a blur in Sarah’s mind. The only thing constant had been the solid presence of her mother’s cousin, Oliver Moore. Like a rock in her sea of grief, he had seen to all the arrangements, and supported her through the well-attended funeral. Sam Carver had been a popular employer, and it had seemed to Sarah that anyone who had ever worked for her father had turned up to pay their respects. Financially Sarah was well provided for. Her mother had left a sum of money in trust for her, and this security,