Finding Grace(25)

‘She earned three times my salary and I fully supported her. I knew her career was very important to her,’ Pete had explained to Lucie when she was old enough to properly understand the dynamics of relationships. ‘I trusted her completely, and that was my downfall. She was mixing with people who had very different lifestyles to the one Sue had been used to.’

Susan’s business trips to Germany had become more frequent, increasing from every two or three months to two or even three times each month.

‘Still I didn’t suspect,’ Pete said. ‘I was an idiot. Maybe I could’ve changed her mind if I’d known she’d already met Klaus and fallen in love with him.’

Pete had found out from a chance meeting with one of Susan’s old work colleagues that she had died of a heart attack just two weeks after Lucie had turned eight years old.

Her colleague told a devastated Pete that Klaus was a high-functioning drug addict who lived the party lifestyle. Susan quickly got pulled in to the cocaine-fuelled weekend yacht trips and hedonistic parties at their palatial home on the outskirts of Frankfurt. And it had ended in tragedy.

It was only as Lucie got much older that she realised how difficult it must have been for her dad, losing everything. Everything but her.

He’d always worked at the factory, for as long as she could remember. As she grew up, he made no secret of his ambitions for her.

‘Being stuck in a dead-end job isn’t what I want for you, love,’ he told her repeatedly over the years. ‘The world is your oyster if you get a good education. You’re bright, just like your mum.’

So when she received the offer of a place at university, she knew just how much it meant to her dad, and that in turn meant everything to Lucie. It was like she’d spent her life trying to make her dad proud of her, to somehow pay him back for being such a rock, and now she truly felt she’d achieved the ultimate goal. As far as her father was concerned, anyway.

But the best feeling of all, she had discovered, was her own sense of pride in accomplishing something she’d thought would probably be out of her reach. She had got the required A-level grades and would begin a four-year accountancy degree at Newcastle University in the autumn.

She folded up the letter and handed it back to Pete, smiling as he tucked it back inside the official envelope, stamped with the university’s name and distinctive logo. She knew that it would look rather more dog-eared after he’d proudly shown it to friends and family many, many times. Not in a boastful way – well, maybe, she grinned to herself – but almost in an attempt to validate his own performance as a single father. To him, the letter meant he had achieved a very important goal of his own, in raising a daughter who had risen to a level of academic excellence.

‘So as we agreed, if you can begin sorting through your wardrobe, I can get the first batch of clothing laundered and we’ll be nice and prepared,’ Pete suggested.

Lucie sighed inwardly, resigning herself to the fact that this was how it would be until the day she left for university, in five weeks’ time.

She loved her father more than anything, but he could be a bit of a martinet. A strict roster of tasks was how he’d survived in the years bringing her up alone. So part of Lucie couldn’t wait to finally be in charge of her own life. If she wanted to leave her laundry until she actually felt like doing it, if she wanted to eat crap and watch TV all night long, then so it would be done.

The thought of it filled her with relief.



With just a week to go, everything was organised. Lucie would travel up to Newcastle on the train with just hand luggage and the rest of her belongings would follow, transported by a man-with-a-van her father had found in the local paper.

The day before she was due to travel, Lucie realised with some sadness that she had next to no one to say goodbye to. There was only really her dad.

Lucie didn’t have a solid group of girlfriends who she’d known since her schooldays, like lots of people did.

Maybe it was something to do with growing up so close to her dad. Girls her own age always seemed so silly and giggly, and she quickly tired of their company. Losing her mum so young had taught Lucie that sometimes, terrible things happened in life, and she found she felt safest and most secure at home, in the company of her father.

She’d got on well with a couple of girls at college, but they’d both moved away from the area now, and despite emotional promises from all concerned, they hadn’t kept in touch.

During the two years she’d studied for A levels, Lucie had held down a part-time job three evenings a week and at least one weekend shift at a local coffee shop. She’d become a qualified barista there and enjoyed getting out from under Pete’s feet and being amongst people without getting involved with any of them.

Still, she reminded herself, although it would be nice to make new friends, her real aim was to bag herself an accountancy qualification that would win her employment at a prestigious company back in Nottingham. Ultimately, the plan was to open her own accountancy practice, thus securing her financial independence and a bright future.

The trouble was, Lucie had heard her father suggest that career path so many times, she was no longer sure whether the dream was his or her own. In the event, it didn’t really matter.

Neither of them could possibly have envisaged the terrible consequences that would follow within a year of Lucie leaving home for Newcastle.