Trust Me - Sheryl Browne Page 0,80

back to his. His eyes were narrowed, flint-edged and hard. What did he mean? How would anyone tell him when only they knew?

Louis looked away. ‘Look, just forget it,’ he said, taking another agitated suck on his joint. ‘I’ll work it out. I’ll just have to make myself scarce, leave the area or something. There’s this bloke I know in Manchester who owns property to rent. He might have somewhere he can let me doss. It would have to be somewhere cheap until I can find work, but—’

‘No!’ Millie’s heart leapt. ‘Don’t do that.’

‘What’s up?’ He looked back at her, surprised. ‘You can come with me. I thought that was what you wanted: me and you to get a place of our own.’

‘I do, but …’ Millie faltered. Manchester? What would she do there? She could apply for courses, she supposed, but it seemed like a million miles away. She wouldn’t see her parents. For the first time, it occurred to her that she would want to. That she would miss them, even her mum, for all her banging-on.

‘You don’t want to give up your home comforts and move into a bedsit. I get it. Can’t say I blame you.’ Louis sighed dejectedly. ‘I suppose you wish I was more like your perfect old man, a fully trained doctor who’s so loaded he can keep your mum in any style her heart desires. She fell on her feet when she met him, didn’t she?’

‘No,’ Millie refuted hotly. ‘I love you. I don’t care what you do.’

‘I suppose I could always move back in with the missus,’ he pondered, as she struggled with her guilt and her conscience. ‘She’s keen. Me, not so much, but …’ He trailed off with a shrug.

Closing her eyes, Millie swallowed back her nausea. ‘We’ll have to be quick,’ she said, fetching her bag from the footwell and delving in it for the keys she’d had copied. ‘And you have to be careful not to take too much.’

‘In and out.’ Louis reached for his door. ‘And don’t worry, I only want quantities I can shift easily.’

Avoiding the CCTV camera on the high street, they were making their way down a side street to the back of the practice – Millie thanking God for the cover of dark – when it occurred to her to wonder: how did he know about Nicky? She might have mentioned Sally, but as far as she could recall, she’d never talked to him about Nicky and how fashion-conscious she was.

She couldn’t help wondering about him further when, once he’d taken what he wanted from the safe, he began to mooch around behind reception, despite her imminent heart attack.

‘Louis, we need to go,’ she urged him, close to tears as she kept watch at the front. She was monumentally pissed off with her parents, considering how they’d gone on at her about screwing her life up and then thought nothing of screwing it up for her. If her dad ever found out about this, though, it would kill him.

‘One second,’ Louis said. Then, ‘Shit!’ he cursed, knocking something from one of the desks. Her mum’s vitamin pills, along with her pen holder, Millie realised, scurrying around to retrieve the bottle as it rolled.

‘Well, well. Not that bright, is she, that little receptionist?’ Louis commented from where he was now crouched down peering up at the underside of Nicky’s desk, on which she’d taped her passwords.

Thirty-One

Jake

Jake sat on the drive for a while before going in. He’d thought that he and Emily might be making the tiniest bit of headway towards getting back to some sort of normality, despite the atrocities happening around them. Now he had no idea what to think. What to say to her. He was desperate for them to talk to each other calmly, but after what he’d just found out, he was struggling to see a way forward. Drugs were going missing from the surgery. He hadn’t been sure the first time he’d noticed stocks were low. He was sure now. It could only be her. It was Emily who did the stock check and the ordering of medication to be kept on the premises. Emily who kept the keys to the safe they were locked in. Emily who was taking unprescribed drugs. How the hell was he supposed to talk to her about that?

Running a hand over his neck, he glanced towards the house. He had no choice but to ask her about it. He couldn’t ignore