Trust Me - Sheryl Browne Page 0,31

Emily’s heart leapt as her daughter turned to yank the front door open. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Anna’s. I’m staying over.’ She headed down the drive without looking back.

‘Millie, come back!’ Emily called desperately after her. ‘It’s late. You can’t—’

‘No way!’ Millie shouted. ‘Do you really think I want to listen to that crap?’

‘Millie!’ Watching her daughter flee angrily into the night, Emily felt her heart splinter. She’d done this. Forced her to do exactly what she’d forbidden her to do. What she herself had done when her teenage home had felt like an alien place. She’d never imagined that she and Jake would put their children through the kind of trauma they’d both suffered at their parents’ hands. Jake had been blameless when his world had disintegrated. She hadn’t. She’d carried her guilt all her life. And now she would be carrying the guilt of her actions all over again.

‘Going up. Got some stuff to do for uni,’ Ben muttered as she stepped back into the hall.

‘Ben?’ Emily wanted to go to him, reassure him, but he was already halfway up the stairs, her boy growing fast into a man, growing more distant from her; from Jake, too, as their personalities clashed. He and Ben were so different in nature. Ben was sensitive; he could be laid-back and easy-going sometimes, but there was also a moodiness about him, as evidenced by his challenging Jake – after being escorted home by the police, for goodness’ sake. He hadn’t just been moody that time, he’d bordered on aggressive. Jake had told her not to worry too much about it. He’d put it down to the large amount of alcohol Ben had obviously consumed, but Emily did worry about it, constantly.

Watching him disappear along the landing, she swiped the tears from her eyes and grabbed her jacket from the peg, rifling through her pockets for her car keys. They weren’t there. Where were they? Her memory was like a sieve lately. She was searching hopelessly for her bag when Jake came out of the kitchen.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked him, cold apprehension slicing through her as she noticed his car keys in his hand.

‘After our daughter.’ He shot her a furious glance as he strode past her. ‘There’s no way I’m going to allow her to walk around on her own at night, upset. I’ll drop her at Anna’s, assuming I can’t persuade her to come back.’

Bewildered, Emily simply nodded and watched him go. He didn’t bang the door behind him as she’d half expected he might, but still the sound of it closing was like a death knell. A terrifying thought occurred. Might he be right? Might she really be going mad? Her paranoia, as Jake termed it, blowing things horribly out of proportion?

Her thoughts a petrified jumble in her head, she was walking shakily back to the kitchen when her phone beeped from the lounge. Hoping it might be Millie, she dashed to fetch it.

I’m watching you was all the text said. It came from an unknown number.

Emily gulped back a sharp knot of fear. She wasn’t going out of her mind. Someone was trying to drive her there.

Ten

Jake

Jake felt desperately sorry for Zoe, who was weeping quietly in his surgery. Having seen her and Dean together at the fair, he’d been astounded by what she’d just told him. He’d bumped into Dean a few weeks back in the pub one lunchtime while waiting for Emily – before their lives had started falling apart. Dean had been over the moon about his expected baby, beaming all over his face. Zoe and Dean were both in their early twenties, only married a few months and renting a small property because they couldn’t afford to buy. The pregnancy hadn’t been planned, but they hadn’t been daunted by the prospect of parenthood. Far from it, they’d been excited about it. And now this. Life really did have a habit of kicking you in the teeth when you least expected it.

Unable to sit there and do nothing, he went around his desk, offered Zoe the box of tissues he kept there for this sort of occasion, and then, throwing protocol out of the window, placed an arm gently around her shoulders.

‘I’ll try to hurry the appointment up,’ he said softly, as she tried to compose herself. ‘Try not to worry. There will be other opportunities.’ He cursed himself then, realising how hollow that sounded. ‘I can organise some counselling for you if you’d like?’

Zoe