When Love Knocks Twice (A Contemporary Love Story) Read Free Page A

an apology, to which she
returned the smile.
    “ Is
there anything we can do for you?” Gail asked.
    “ No.
No thank you, I was just reminiscing,” replied Tom.
    “ Reminiscing?
Then you've been here before?”
    “ Boy
and youth I was part of the congregation some, oh, forty years ago.”
    Gail
did some hasty mental arithmetic. “Well, forty years ago, I
would have been here.”
    There
was a pause. Tom gave in to the feeling that he knew this person. The
shape of the face, the eyes, something triggered a memory...
    “ Is
it, Gail Butler?” he ventured hesitantly.
    “ Well,
yes. Now Gail Fisher though.” Gail was taken aback, suddenly
finding herself on the back foot, but played for time by looking more
closely over the man in front of her.
    “ So,
who are you.....is it Tom? Not Tom Drysdale?” she offered
tentatively. His smile confirmed it so she continued. “My
goodness, how long has it been?”
    “ Must
be close to forty years I suppose,” he admitted.
    “ Forty
years. Heavens, we were young then.”
    “ Twenty
one we were, when I left to go south for work.”
    “ I
remember you going,” confessed Gail. “You sneaked off
very quietly, no long farewells.”
    “ Well,
we'd all drifted a bit by then hadn't we? Not the tight knit group we
had once been.”
    “ No,
I suppose not. Did you never come back to visit?”
    “ Occasionally
in the early days, for a weekend. But it was never long enough to see
friends. And then the parents moved south so there wasn't the need.”
    “Shame.”
    “ So
you've stayed here,” suggested Tom, “you stayed in the
area.”
    “ Yes
and no,” replied Gail obliquely. She glanced down at her filthy
hands. “Look, I'm in need of a drink. Come and have a coffee.
It would be good to catch up on some of those forty years.”
    She
disappeared briefly into a side room before reappearing with clean
hands.
    “ Good.
Come on then,” she instructed briskly, and with her leading,
they left the church.

    The
town centre had changed dramatically. Buildings had gone, replaced by
smart clean-lined developments, built around the old cross-roads. But
in one corner of the cross-roads the junior school stood faithfully
still, and Tom looked out at it from their window seat in the new
coffee shop.
    “ So,”
started Tom, continuing their previous conversation. “You
haven’t always lived around here?”
    “ No.
I married here shortly after I qualified as a pharmacist but five
years later Gordon, my husband, an engineer, was moved to Birmingham,
and we lived there for ten years.”
    “ And
then?”
    “ Then
Gordon was transferred back here. Back here for another thirty
years.”
    Something
in her voice gave it away.
    “ Gordon's
not around any more?” probed Tom gently.
    “ Pancreatic
cancer, five years ago.”
    “ I'm
so sorry. You still miss him?”
    “ Oh
yes,” Gail exclaimed emphatically, “Especially now the
kids have gone.”
    “ Kids?”
    “ One
girl, one boy, Emily and Jas. Jas is married with two gorgeous little
ones.”
    “ What,”
exclaimed Tom, “You? A granny?”
    “ Sssh,”
whispered Gail. “You make me sound like a hundred and ten.”
    There
was a moment's quiet, broken by Gail.
    “ So
what about you? What has life thrown at you since you left?”
    Tom
considered for a moment. “A lot of happiness. A lovely wife.
Two sons, both now grown, married, and left.” He paused. “And
widowhood. Or is it widowerhood?”
    “ Oh
Tom, not you as well. How long ago did your wife die?”
    “ Just
over a year.”
    “ I
have to say, it does get better in time, though it never goes away.
Was it sudden?”
    “ Heart
attack, out of the blue.”
    “ I
never know whether that's worse than a drawn out illness.”
    “ Swings
and roundabouts I guess.”
    “ So
what brings you back?”
    “ Walk
down memory lane I suppose,” conceded Tom. “I retired
recently, and what with Abbie gone, I was at far too much of a loose
end, so the boys said 'take a road trip', so