LITMIR.BIZ

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aware of my mother’s footsteps on the oak stairs.

      ‘I don’t know if I can believe you,’ I say, and it’s out there in a way that I can’t take back. The trust between us dented.

      ‘Don’t you shout at my daughter.’ My mother’s voice cuts through. Steely. Ice-like. The voice she uses when it’s clear she’ll countenance no nonsense whatsoever. ‘She’s pregnant and exhausted and all this stress doesn’t help.’

      He blinks at her. He’s not used to my mother telling him what to do.

      ‘I didn’t cheat on her, Angela,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how to get that through to her. To you both.’

      ‘You have to understand how this looks,’ she says, her voice softer now. ‘If it were reversed, wouldn’t you feel vulnerable? You weren’t here and what happened last night was terrifying.’ She shudders.

      He sags again. ‘You’ve no idea how much I regret not being here last night, regret that you both went through that. But I don’t know how to prove that I’m telling the truth.’ He turns to me. ‘You can go through my things if you want, Eli. My phone, my computer, my bank statements and credit card statements. You can do whatever you need to reassure yourself that I’m telling the truth.’

      For a moment I contemplate it, but it would just damage us more, wouldn’t it? It would show a complete lack of faith in him and us. I shake my head wearily.

      I can see the exhaustion on Martin’s face, can feel what little energy I have left drain from my body. I sit on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands. A wave of nausea washes over me.

      A hand is on my knee. I’m aware of someone in front of me. I don’t know if it’s my mum or Martin. I don’t know who I want it to be. I just want to get through the next minute without being sick.

      ‘Eli.’ His voice. Soft. Breaking. ‘I wish I could explain all this to you. But all I can do is tell you, and tell you again and again and as many times as you need to hear it, that this is all some sick fabrication.’

      ‘Are you okay, Eli?’ My mother’s voice cuts in.

      I raise a hand to signal that I am, although of course I’m not. If I just have a little lie-down, maybe I’ll feel better. I pull myself back on the bed, rest my head on the pillow.

      ‘Just a moment,’ I say, ‘until the sickness passes.’

      ‘Have you taken your tablet?’ Martin asks.

      I nod, my eyes closed. Concentrating on trying to feel well.

      ‘She gets sick if she’s stressed,’ I hear him say to my mother.

      ‘I know. None of this is good for her,’ my mother says as if I’m not in the room.

      In that second I wish she wasn’t here. I wish that Martin would lie down on the bed beside me and we could talk about what’s really going on.

      But maybe it’s all gone beyond that now. Things have been said. I’ve admitted I doubt him. I’ve admitted I’m struggling with this pregnancy. It’s all out of control.

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

       Louise

      Once I found my focus, it proved relatively easy to track them both down. That was the thing with living in that part of the world. Everyone knows everyone’s business and while that had been a curse to me as everything was falling apart, I could see that, as I put everything back together again, it was also a blessing.

      It wasn’t hard to find out where they worked and, more importantly, where they lived. The leafy suburbs, of course. I should’ve known. They’d that look about them. Well-groomed, professional people. In a nice house, with loads of greenery nearby. Fields to run through. Streams to wade through. Trees to climb. I was sure they already had plans to build a tree house. I imagined they’d have a swing in that big garden. The perfect childhood awaited their perfect baby.

      But money can’t buy love. There was nothing to say that just because they had a nice house in a nice area they’d be good parents. I watched them, you see. I saw how early he went to work. How he came back late.

      She worked long hours, too. And they weren’t swamped with visitors. If I didn’t take this baby, who’d end up watching her? Would she just spend her days amusing herself on her state-of-the-art swing, with no one to push her? No one to feed her imagination. To have teddy bears’ picnics in the tree house with.

      The house looked too well kept for finger-painting and messy play. Their routine too regimented. I saw it all. I saw her bring home takeaway dinners. Children need fresh, home-prepared food. It didn’t have to cost the earth. A lot of people make that mistake.

      A child needs love and attention and to be nurtured and nourished. I had all the love in the world to give and so much more. Cruelty would’ve been leaving this baby with those people who’d never be home for her.

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

       Eli

      Although the heating is on full blast, the atmosphere downstairs is frosty.

      My mother carries a plate of mashed potato and gravy to the dining table, which she’s served for me, then she nods to Martin that he can help himself. She looks at me as he retreats to plate up his dinner and tilts her head to one side – international sign language for ‘Are you okay?’ I nod, shrug my shoulders and look at the food in front of me. I still don’t feel like eating.

      ‘Are you not eating, Mum?’ I ask as I sit down.

      ‘I’ll eat later,’ she says. ‘I think the stress of the last twenty-four hours is catching up with me. I feel done in.’

      She does look tired. Pale even. She’s not elderly. She’s only sixty-two, but at times her vulnerability shows. I realise it’s been exceptionally selfish of me to leave her here all day to deal with SOCO and the glaziers on her own, even if she insisted she was more than okay to do so.

      ‘Oh, Mum, you’ve gone to all this effort.’

      ‘I can have some tomorrow for sure,’ she says. ‘Look, I’m going to take a cup of tea up to bed with me, if that’s okay. Give you young ones space to talk.’

      ‘You don’t have to go on our account,’ Martin says. ‘Look, Angela, I’m so sorry you’ve been caught up in all this. And I understand that your loyalty 100 per cent has to be to Eli, but I promised you a long time ago that I’d never hurt her and you have to believe me when I say that’s still true. I’ve decided I won’t go away again. Not while this is happening. Someone else can take over at work for a bit.’

      I’m taken aback. This project is his. He won the bid, worked on it from the ground up. It’s nearly there and I know he wants to see it through to completion.

      ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to prove I’m all in,’ he says.

      My mother nods, pulls her cardigan a little tighter around her.

      ‘This is between you two,’ she says. ‘I like to think I’m a good judge of character, Martin, and I’d very much like to believe you’re telling both of us the truth. Eli deserves only good things, and so does this baby. I know you young ones face different pressures these days, but the key is to keep working at it.’

      ‘We will,’ he says earnestly. ‘And I’ll be on to the police again and again until they find out who’s responsible. I won’t go

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