Impossible to Forget(74)

And she couldn’t complain that he had someone new when she hadn’t wanted him anyway. It had been her decision not to keep in touch. She had been the one who had let the tenuous links between them fall away. That surely told her something. Whatever the two of them had had, it had broken when she became pregnant. Their relationship just hadn’t been strong enough to withstand the storm that an unplanned baby brought with it.

So, he had been in York all this time, she thought, yet she had never seen him. It wasn’t that surprising. York was a city and she’d hardly been keeping an eye open for him. Also, she was vegan now, so she wasn’t likely to be frequenting the kind of fine dining establishment that Jax ran, or even mix in the same circles as him. Hope’s circles. She had seen who they were at the party tonight and if it needed confirming, then that had done it – she and Hope were like chalk and cheese socially.

They were quite alike in other ways, though, Angie thought, she and Hope. Was that what had attracted Jax to her in the first place? Had he seen something of Angie in her and been drawn to it, maybe without even realising that it was happening?

She was being ridiculous now. Apart from anything else, Hope was beautiful and bound to attract men, regardless of her personality. But there was, Angie supposed, a possibility that she was the reason that Jax was in York. Well, not her exactly, but Romany, his daughter. Maybe he had moved to York to be near his child and had hoped that he would bump into her one day.

But how would he even recognise her? The thought of Jax walking the streets of York and staring at every girl of approximately the right age struck her as unbearably sad. Poor Jax, deprived of the chance to contact his own flesh and blood simply because Angie had decided that she did not want to send a forwarding address.

Angie uncurled herself and sat up. The low murmur of the television had stopped and there was no longer a line of light underneath her bedroom door. Romany must have gone to bed. Her baby, untroubled by the fact that her parents had been in the same room together that very night.

So, what should she do now? It would be easy enough to get hold of him. All she had to do was ask Hope. But what would she say? Hi Hope. Would it be okay if I arranged to have coffee with Daniel because, guess what! He’s the father of my teenage daughter! How weird is that!

No. She couldn’t do that. She could track him down herself. A chef named Daniel Jackson with a part-share in a restaurant in York couldn’t be that difficult to find.

But why would she? She didn’t want him. She didn’t want to do anything to spoil what Hope had with him. And, most importantly of all, Romany had made it very clear that she did not want to see him either.

No. Angie should leave things as they were. But at least now, if anything were to happen, she would know how to get hold of him. Suddenly she felt slightly less alone.





38





2017


It was bitterly cold and Angie pulled her coat round her and worked on the zip. Her fingers were icy-stiff, and the coat was a snugger fit than it had been the previous winter. She really was going to have to lose some weight. It hardly seemed fair when she ate like a bird anyway and led an active lifestyle, but it was, she supposed, one of the very many calling cards of the menopause. She wasn’t very impressed with any of them so far. She was suddenly more tired than she had ever been and her back ached despite her lifelong yoga practice. If she let herself, she could become ground down by the injustice of it all. But she wasn’t going to. Going through the menopause was a perfectly natural process that happened to every woman lucky enough to reach their middle age. Her downbeat response to it was all about mindset, and hers just needed a little bit of work. She made a mental note to write her feelings on the subject in her journal when she got home.

Today, however, was not a day for getting down in the dumps. Today she was going to see Tiger for the first time in over three years and she was insanely excited. This was the longest that they had ever gone without seeing one another, she calculated as she crossed the bridge and made her way along the city wall to the railway station to meet him. It had been far too long.

There were bright yellow daffodils all over, exploding from every grassy bank and trumpeting the arrival of a change in the season. Not that it felt like anything was changing just yet. There was definitely snow in the air, she could smell it, and the cruel wind whipping up off the river bit through to her marrow.

Once in the station, she settled herself on the circular bench in the forecourt to wait. She enjoyed watching the tourists mixing in with the locals, each easy to spot by the way they behaved as they left the station. The locals set forth confidently, clear on where they were going, the tourists emerging through the ticket barriers and then stopping, agog, as they found their bearings, phones and guidebooks at the ready to take them on a whistle-stop tour of York’s top spots before coming back here to be whisked away by the train again.

Another twinge in her lower back forced her to shift on the uncomfortable wooden seat. Maybe she should go and see an osteopath or get Kate to give her some acupuncture. That might help. And she could have another look at her diet books. As well as helping her lose her newly rounded tummy, they might have something to say about what to eat to help with painful joints. Ginger was good, she knew, and broccoli.

And then there he was, strolling towards her, rucksack on his back. His rich mahogany tan made him stand out a mile from the pale, insipid people surrounding him. He seemed to glow, his shaggy blond hair forming a halo around his head.