My Husband's Girlfriend - Sheryl Browne Page 0,105

saw him bury his head in his hands. She wanted to go to him. He needed her, but … her baby.

‘Laura!’ She flew after her, and stopped.

Laura was in the lounge, Ollie still in her arms. She looked past him to Sarah, her green eyes wide, those of a frightened kitten. ‘I had to sssave him,’ she said, handing him carefully to his mother.

Epilogue

Sarah

Her heart bleeding for the little boy who’d finally been laid to rest, Sarah read the inscription on the simple white heart Laura had chosen.

My Love Will Find You Wherever You Are

Night, Night, Little One

It was right, appropriate, she thought, profound in its simplicity. Jacob wasn’t a lost little boy any more. Laura’s love for him had found him. She’d never given up searching for him. Sarah would never fully understand all that had happened, what had driven Sherry Caldwell to such callous evil, but she did understand now why Laura had sought out children who looked like Jacob. Through Ollie, and Liam before him, she had been able to feel close to him, reach out and touch him, keep the essence of her child alive until she was able to bring his tiny body home.

Watching Laura reach tremblingly out to trace the delicately chiselled inscription with her fingertips, Sarah wiped away a tear and lowered herself to the grass beside her. ‘Okay?’ she asked her, even though she knew she never could be with part of her heart missing; her child stolen cruelly away from her. She hoped, though, that she might now be able to move forward in some way, forge a relationship with Steve based on a future together, whilst never forgetting the life that was so fundamentally part of who she was. Steve would help her to do that, she was sure, help her to stop blaming herself for something that had been beyond her power to prevent.

Squeezing the hand Sarah offered her, Laura nodded and brushed her own tears away. ‘He didn’t like people to be sad,’ she said, leaning to arrange the soft toy she’d brought against the stone. A lop-eared fluffy white rabbit, it was remarkably similar to the snuggle toy that had been Ollie’s favourite. She’d been tempted to give it to Ollie after Bunny had been damaged, she’d told Sarah as they’d driven here, but couldn’t bring herself to. She’d held onto it since Jacob had gone missing apparently, taken it out occasionally. Sarah’s heart had constricted as she’d pictured her, a mother who was as lost inside as her child, pressing the toy to her face, breathing in the special smell of him. She knew that was exactly what she herself would have done.

‘He never would go to bed without it,’ Laura confided with a heart-wrenching smile.

Sarah guessed that her fervent desire had been to reunite Jacob with the toy. She guessed also that despite not being able to recall what had happened to him, she’d known he was dead. Her constant search for him was what had kept her going, her mind driving her to keep looking, even in her sleep.

‘Sleep tight, my precious baby,’ Laura whispered above the soft rustle of the leaves in the trees overlooking the tranquil place she’d finally laid her baby to rest. ‘Mummy’s heart will always be with you.’

She’d almost broken when the police had told her they would be exhuming his tiny body from the grave Sherry had buried him in. Laura had always known she had buried him. She’d never known where, until now, hence her endless search for him. Her own heart feeling as if it might fracture inside her, Sarah had held her while the sobs had racked her. Laura had known they would have to exhume him, why they would. It hadn’t made it any less painful. She hadn’t wanted him to stay there, she’d told Sarah, once her sobs had slowed; buried in the family plot that Sherry had occasionally visited, pretending to care about the mother she’d lost. ‘I doubt she ever did care about her. I don’t think she was capable of caring for anyone,’ she said cynically. ‘She was probably only visiting to check the ground hadn’t been disturbed.’

Sarah supposed that love had many guises. Sherry Caldwell had loved Grant, a twisted, obsessive, unrequited love, clearly. Her solicitor had claimed it had driven her to madness, resulting in her ‘criminal act of despair’.

‘It wasn’t an act of despair,’ Laura had fumed in the toilets when the court had taken a break.