Trust Me - Sheryl Browne Page 0,63

to Millie’s eyes. ‘I’m me. I can’t be bloody perfect just because you want me to be. I will make mistakes, loads of mistakes probably, but they’ll be my mistakes. I can’t breathe around you sometimes, trying to be everything you want me to be, to study hard, get good grades, not be distracted. I have a life, Mum. I want a life.’

Emily felt her head swim. Suddenly the overhead lights were too bright, yet everything around her seemed ill-defined and blurred. She felt as if she was swimming underwater. As if she couldn’t breathe. A slow, cold awareness was seeping into her that no matter how many times she reached out a hand to her daughter, she only moved further away.

‘I can’t be like you,’ Millie continued, as Emily tried grimly to hang on, sure that this time she might not surface. She wasn’t well. Something was dreadfully wrong with her. She needed to talk to Jake, tell him about her symptoms, which were getting worse. But how could she when they were barely speaking unless to argue? Unbidden, her mind flew back to her mother, who’d instilled in her as a teenager the same angry frustration she could now sense in her daughter. She could feel her mother’s seething fury when she’d smelled marijuana in her hair. Why can’t you be more like your sister? she’d growled, eyeballing her with equal measures of despair and disdain. Kara had modelled herself on their mother, working so hard to please her. Terrifyingly, Emily saw her sister now, not an ethereal image, floating on the periphery of her consciousness as she tried to wrench herself from her nightmares, but real. Solid. Here, standing right behind Millie. Her heart skittering like a terrified bird in her chest, Emily drew her eyes back to her daughter.

‘I don’t want to feel guilty all the time,’ Millie was shouting tearfully. ‘I don’t want to feel like a disappointment. I—’

‘Millie, stop.’ Willing herself to focus, to banish the apparition conjured up by her own guilt, Emily moved towards her daughter, desperate to make her listen. ‘Please, calm down and listen to me. You weren’t a mistake. From the second I realised I was pregnant, I wanted you. I wanted Ben, with every fibre of my being.’ She had. She would kill to protect her children. Surely Millie must know how much she loved her.

She took another step towards her. Millie took another step away.

‘Please sit down,’ Emily begged her. ‘Please let’s just talk calmly.’

Tears streaming down her face, Millie shook her head. ‘You need to sort out your own fucked-up relationship,’ she said pointedly, hurtfully, ‘not meddle in mine.’

Emily’s heart banged. ‘I wasn’t meaning to. I …’ Moving again towards her daughter, she faltered, her legs trembling beneath her. ‘Millie, where are you going?’ Cold fear constricted her stomach as Millie spun around and headed for the door.

‘Out,’ she retorted, over her shoulder.

No. She couldn’t, not like this. ‘Don’t you dare walk out, Millie,’ Emily warned her.

Millie hesitated. Breathing in deeply, she looked back at her. ‘I thought you told me not to let anyone dictate what I did?’ she spat, and walked on.

‘Millie!’ Emily went after her. ‘Millie, come back here. Now!’ she shouted, her own tears exploding with anger and frustration as Millie flew to the front door and yanked it open.

‘Where are you going?’ Clutching the door frame for support, Emily called frantically after her as Millie raced from the house.

‘To see Louis!’ Millie shouted back. ‘At least he bloody well wants me.’

Shaken to the core of her bones, Emily froze.

‘Mum?’ Ben called behind her. ‘What’s happening?’

Trying to assimilate, failing, Emily turned to look up to where he stood at the top of the stairs, his earphones in his hand, his expression wary.

‘Nothing. It’s fine. Millie … she was a bit upset,’ she stammered. ‘She’s gone to her boyfriend’s. You wouldn’t know where he lives, Ben, would you?’

Ben shook his head. ‘Not a clue. She doesn’t talk to me much about that sort of stuff.’

No, Emily didn’t suppose she would, particularly if it was someone she was nervous about people meeting. Or possibly nervous of. Recalling Millie’s defensiveness, her reluctance to divulge information about him, Emily felt as if her world had stopped on its axis. As if it were slowly grinding backwards.

Twenty-Five

Jake

Reading the results of the blood test that had been languishing in his in tray throughout the chaotic day, Jake struggled to digest the information. Reeling, he read them again. She