A Road Not Taken

By Sue Hassett

The day my past walks into the bookshop, my life goes into fast rewind like an old video tape. Back to the time when everything could have been different, when at the spin of a coin, I could have taken another path.

On the night that comes flooding back to me, I was seventeen. It was the night of my sister’s accident; the night the boy that I loved ran away to London without me and I never heard from him again.

It’s thirty years now since I saw Rob Bradshaw and I don’t immediately recognise him. When a tall, silver haired man with heavy framed glasses comes in through the street door, I look up and smile my usual bookshop welcome.

I volunteer in the shop, attached to the museum, every Friday. I love all the books. We stock everything from philosophy to paperback fiction. The books are donated and the profits support the museum.

Tourists and locals alike come in to browse, so there’s always someone to talk to. And it’s a change from being at home. Peter doesn’t like me to work. He’s a bit of a control freak and believes a man should support his wife. And running the family law firm which is both successful and lucrative, he’s well able to do so.

I write stories for women’s magazines, but apart from that I haven’t gone out to work since the children were born. If I’m honest, it suited me at the time to fall in with his archaic views. I never enjoyed teaching and was happy to give it up. I love my day in the bookshop though.

There’s something familiar about the man now. The way he stands, the slender hand reaching up to examine a gaudy art book. I know those hands. I’m sure I do. I watched them strumming a guitar a million times. My heart leaps like an Olympic high jumper. It can’t be Rob, surely?

The man turns to look at me with a puzzled expression. He isn’t quite sure either. You’re mad, I tell myself. Why would Rob Bradshaw wander into this little bookshop in a small Suffolk town? What’s that iconic line? ‘Of all the bookshops in all the world’. Well it isn’t bookshops is it, but you know what I mean.

“You didn’t used to be Charlie Hammond, did you?...... It is. It’s Charlie, isn’t it?”

I laugh. No one has called me Charlie for years. Peter never has. To him, I’ve always been Charlotte.

Looking more closely now at Rob, I see the prematurely silver hair is misleading. Those intensely blue eyes I used to love so dearly are still the same. His smile is the same too.

“I can’t believe it’s you. What brings you to this part of the world?”

I’m feeling slightly dizzy with shock and my skin is tingling. I also feel a sudden rush of anger which surprises me. It’s been a long time. Why should I still feel upset by the events of that night?

“I have a gallery in Woodbridge,” Rob tells me now. “My God, Charlie, it’s fantastic to see you. You’ve hardly changed.”

At seventeen, Rob and I were Romeo and Juliet, and almost as ill-fated as it turned out. I adored him. He was handsome, artistic and played a guitar. What more could I want? And he loved me too. We planned to be together for ever. So I willingly agreed to go with him when he decided to flee to London.

Rob wanted to study art but his dad, a small time builder, had other plans. “You can forget all that arty farty rubbish, lad. You won’t be needing that working for me.”

The night we planned to execute our naïve and ill thought out plan, the weather was appalling, wind howling like a banshee, raindrops like golf balls. It was partly the weather that caused Maggie’s accident. Rushing across the street, hood pulled down over her face, she never even saw the green van.

She was in intensive care for three days. My parents were in bits. How could I possibly vanish into the night with Rob? I scribbled a quick note of explanation and asked Rob’s best mate, Marty, to pass it on.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” I ask Rob now. It shouldn’t matter after all these years, but it does. My younger self is still furious.

“I did wait. I waited for hours. Then Marty turned up and told me you’d changed your mind. You weren’t coming.”

So that’s what happened. I tell Rob now about the note and about my sister. I watch the whole thing fall into place behind his eyes.

“Good grief, Charlie. Surely you knew that Marty fancied the pants off you. He was never going to give me your note.”

I hadn’t known. More youthful folly.

“So, what have you been doing for thirty years?” He grins at the stupidity of his question.

I tell him how I met Peter at university and about my two girls. “Grown up and gone now,” I add. “My elder daughter, Amber works in New York. And Jasmine’s a student in Edinburgh.”

I don’t mention how Peter has alienated them both. How that final row at Christmas last year sent Amber rushing to America like a refugee from tyranny. My daughter now is no more to me than an image on a screen.

“What about you? Are you married?” I ask.

A shadow passes across his familiar features. “My wife, Caroline died of cancer six years ago. We never had kids.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. And I am. I’m sorry too about the path together that we never got to take. I’ve often wondered how it might have been. We were just kids I know, so it may well have burned itself out in a matter of weeks or months. But then, who knows?

There are other customers in the shop now. A woman in a puce anorak is waiting to pay for a couple of paperbacks.

“You’re busy,” he says. “And I must go. I have a meeting in Woodbridge later. Look, Charlie I would really like to catch up properly.” He brings a business card from his wallet and hands it to me. “Will you give me a call? Let’s have a drink? Or dinner? I’d really love to see you.”

I take the card and smile. “Maybe,” I say.

With a grin and a wave he’s gone. And I feel bereft. But I won’t call him. A stern voice inside my head tells me it would be stupid. Why dig up the past?

And why risk jeopardising my marriage? My security? It would be foolish. And wrong. But then another softer, gentler voice from somewhere in the centre of my chest tells me, why not? What have I got to lose?

A quiver of excitement grips my stomach. Possibility? Hope? How can I resist calling? Why would I even try?

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I used to teach English to students from around the world, but began writing stories for fun. Over time I've written stories, articles and more recently poetry and my work has appeared in numerous publications. I belong to a local writing group which continues to inspire me.

I live in Suffolk, England with my husband Roger.