Trust Me - Sheryl Browne Page 0,70

her vitamins, and paracetamol for the headaches that followed the endless sleepless nights. She couldn’t understand why he would think she’d taken anything else. As in, stolen from the surgery. She didn’t doubt he’d meant that.

She’d screamed at him in the end to just stop, her hands clamped over her ears, until he’d eventually backed from the room. She couldn’t take any more. She’d felt like running into the night, like going to the surgery and stuffing whatever damn drugs she could lay her hands on down her throat, anything to shut it all out. Until she’d remembered poor Jenny and how desperate she must have been to do what she had.

She’d finally been lulled to sleep by the sound of the dawn chorus, only to wake with a choking jerk, images of her sister’s lifeless body floating through her mind. Kara’s eyes had snapped open. She’d seen it too: the face of the man on the bridge. The man who’d watched Emily struggling to save her. The man who’d pushed her. The recollection when it finally surfaced was stark in its clarity, where up to now it had been jagged and incomplete. It wasn’t her. She’d been there, she had followed Kara, but she hadn’t pushed her. Relief mixed with acrid grief crashed through her as her mind had flown back there. She’d been on the canal bank, paralysed with fear for an instant. And then she’d run, her heart hammering, choking screams rising inside her. She’d waded into the water, tried to reach her, tried desperately to pull her out. She herself had eventually been dragged from the water hysterical but still breathing. Kara had never drawn breath again.

Perhaps her mind racing so feverishly that she felt she was going insane had its advantages. She was seeing things clearly now. Wasn’t she? Reminded that she was also seeing things during the day that belonged in her nightmares, cold fear settled like an icicle in her chest. Was she going mad?

When she went downstairs, she’d realised Jake had slipped off early. He hadn’t woken her, but he’d left her a note. Her heart had stopped beating when she’d found it propped against the kettle. And then squeezed painfully when she’d dared to read it: I’m sorry. I love you, was all it said.

Even having read those last three poignant words, she wondered now as she walked to work, late and not really caring, what it was that he was sorry for. How much would it suit him if he could claim that he couldn’t cope with any more? That it was her, his mad wife, who’d driven him away? He’d get to keep his reputation intact then, wouldn’t he? If there was one thing she knew about Jake, it was that he couldn’t bear the thought of being likened to his father.

Approaching the village shop, she wondered again how Millie was. She’d sent a short text – Back later – which was at least something, but Emily knew that, in seeming to be interrogating her daughter, she’d destroyed any chance she might have had of getting her to open up. She was jolted from her thoughts as she heard two women chatting outside the shop.

‘I mean, all marriages have secrets, don’t they?’ Ally Jones, the owner of Evolution hairdresser’s, was saying.

‘Definitely.’ Leah Connolly, whom Emily knew to be in a bad marriage, sounded worried.

‘I’ve heard tales from my customers that would make your hair stand on end,’ Ally went on. ‘More than one or two of them are living in fear of the letter box flapping, I can tell you. They need to catch whoever is doing this before someone is seriously—’ She stopped, her gaze snapping to Emily as she approached.

Emily noted the nervous apprehension on Leah’s face as she too glanced in her direction. They were frightened, and had every reason to be. But … was it her they were frightened of? Her stomach tightening, she mustered a smile and pushed on towards them, but both women hurriedly averted their gazes. Realising she would have to speak to them in order to access the shop, Emily lost her nerve, walking on instead to call into the grocery store for milk for the surgery.

Paying for the milk, she tried to engage Fred Jackson – who ran the store, and who was also looking at her warily – in conversation. ‘Will you be coming to Edward’s party?’ she asked him with forced jollity.

‘I’ll be there,’ he assured her, searching