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Once Upon A Time There Was…
Agnetha (nee Sanders) McMaster, 45 – owner of The Ginger Sponge, a coffee shop in the Merchant City area of Glasgow, divorcee with twin daughters, Isla and Skye.
Skye McMaster, 20 – Focused and driven, studying law at the University of Glasgow.
Isla McMaster, 20 – Working with her mum in The Ginger Sponge until she decides what she wants to do with her life.
Mitchell McMaster, 46 – Agnetha’s ex-husband, a lawyer whose negotiation skills come in handy when co-parenting their daughters.
Celeste Morrow-McMaster, 45 – Mitchell’s second wife and stepmother to the twins, a successful event planner who was formerly Agnetha’s best friend.
Yvie Danton, 31 – Agnetha’s friend, confidante and a nurse on the geriatric ward of Glasgow Central Hospital, founder of bereavement group, The Wednesday Club.
Val Murray, 60-something (she refuses to confirm) – Another of Agnetha’s pals. Also a member of The Wednesday Club, and a gregarious gem who takes all newcomers under her wing.
Will Hamilton, 48 – A bereaved dad who bonded with Agnetha over loss and sorrow, but who is now giving her a reason to smile again.
Hope McTeer, 22 – An adoptee who has decided to search for her biological parents, planning to be a doctor, in her fourth year of studying medicine, while moonlighting as a health care assistant at a Glasgow hospital.
Maisie McTeer, 24 – Hope’s adoptive sister, drama queen and jobbing actress.
Dora McTeer – 56 – Adopted Hope and Maisie as babies, an English teacher who is always on hand with support and calm reason.
Aaron Ward, 48 – Divorced father of two who had a wild holiday romance with Agnetha in LA in 1997.
Zac Stone, 48 – Aaron’s best friend and flatmate back in 1997; Celeste’s lover on the same nineties holiday.
The rest of the Wednesday Club:
Marge and Myra (septuagenarian sisters), Jonathan and Colin – bereaved survivors who come together every week to support each other as they navigate the loss of their loved ones.
Prologue
I remember her so clearly.
There’s an image in my mind of her standing on the observation deck at the top of the Empire State Building in New York. She was about twenty-one and it was a cold day, but she didn’t care that the wind made her long red hair fly and her eyes glisten as she threw her arms out wide. The sheer joy she was feeling radiated from every pore, her smile wide and irrepressible. Like it would never fade.
Another memory. Maybe a year later. Sitting on the end of a cold Scottish pier in the early hours of the morning with a man she was madly in love with. She said he was the third love of her life. Or was it the fourth? It was a standing joke with her friends that her romantic history was like a constant repetition of death defying leaps. She’d fall from a great height into the abyss, but, as if on a bungee cord, she’d snap right back out again at warp speed a day, a week, a month later, leaving a few cases of whiplash along the way.
Another flashback, to the following summer. On a beach in Malibu, watching the surfers at dawn, making lines in the sand with her toes. I knew the whole holiday had been put on a brand new credit card and the expense sent it straight to its limit, but she gave that no thought at all. All that mattered was that moment. That experience. Life is for living. Her mantra. A cliché, but, yep, life is for living, she’d say.
Along the way, she’d met him. The one who made her forget everyone else. Dizzy with love and optimism, she said yes to the happy-ever-after dream, and prepared to waltz up the aisle with him. But they didn’t make it. Life took her on another path and into the arms of someone else.
It was just a detour. A blip.
Still, she would dance, she would throw back shots and bounce the glass on the bar, she would start a party in an empty room and watch as people flocked to join the fun.
She would talk about how there were no limits to how great her life could be, and you couldn’t listen to the enthusiasm and certainty in her voice and not believe her.
At twenty-three, she thought nothing could stop her, that she was indestructible, that there was absolutely nothing she couldn’t do or achieve if she wanted to.
Perhaps it was the naivety of youth, but she didn’t even see the perfect storm coming.
Marriage. Children. Ailing parents. A mind-blowing betrayal. A chain of events that would hijack her world, changing her until the person she was no longer existed.
Yep, life is for living, she would say.
Until she became nothing more than a battle-weary survivor, who set aside her own life just to get through the days.
I remember that young, carefree woman so clearly.
Because she was me.
1
Agnetha McMaster
It was like the sound they played to warn of imminent tornadoes in disaster movies. Agnetha McMaster – ‘Aggs’ to her pals – banged the button on her phone, silencing the alarm that was wailing like a foghorn about twelve inches from her ear. Thankfully, there was no tornado. And, also thankfully, the mug that she knocked off the pale grey chest of drawers beside her bed was empty. This wasn’t her first ‘tea dregs flying across the room first thing in the morning’ rodeo, so she’d been sure to drain the cup before switching off Grey’s Anatomy, snuggling down alone and falling asleep.
Pushing herself up in bed, she stretched her arms to the top of the silver velvet headboard. Redecorating this room had been her twins, Skye and Isla’s, idea and they’d all spent last weekend sanding, painting and then scouring the aisles of Dunelm for new furniture and accessories to replace ones that had been in residence here since Aggs was a teenager. They’d come home with a thick white duvet, a grey and pink tartan throw and scatter cushions that she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with. She didn’t mind. All that mattered was that she was glad she’d given in to the pressure from her daughters to treat herself, and now, on the morning of her forty-fifth birthday, and ten years after she’d sold up her house and moved back into her parents’ flat above their family’s cafe, it no longer felt like her childhood bedroom. It still felt like her home, though; the one she’d had for most of her life. She’d grown up in this very room, with her parents in the next bedroom, and her grandparents at the end of the hall. She’d moved out when she got married, then moved back in with her girls after her divorce, finding comfort in the aromas that drifted upstairs from the café that had passed from her grandparents, to her parents and then to Aggs.
She pulled on her specs, gathered her long red messy mane up into a ponytail and picked up her phone, grinning as she saw that Skye had already sent a ‘Happy Birthday’ gif to the WhatsApp group she shared with her daughters.
She checked the time: 8 a.m.. The doors of The Ginger Sponge would be opening downstairs, but Isla had insisted that she didn’t come down until at least noon. It was her first lazy morning in years and she intended to milk it – at least until 8.30, when she’d inevitably succumb to the guilt that would no doubt get the better of her, and she’d make some excuse to go down and get to work. Café owners – especially this one – didn’t