could hear her? She leaned in close to him. ‘Patrick? Can you hear me? Just squeeze my hand if you can, or blink.’
She waited, but there was nothing. So she reached into her bag, pulling out the book Patrick had been reading. It was a self-help book about becoming the ‘best person you can be’. Patrick loved books like that and was halfway through this one, studiously reading it every night in bed with his black-rimmed reading glasses on.
‘I brought the book you’ve been reading,’ she said to him now. ‘Who knows, maybe I’ll learn a little something myself,’ she added with a laugh. ‘You always tell me I should try these books. Well, now you have your way.’
As she read to him, she examined his face. He was so handsome, even like this. It reminded her of the way he looked the night she was brought to his house. He must have heard all the commotion and came downstairs in his pyjamas, his brown eyes registering alarm when he saw Melissa standing in his kitchen in her nightdress.
‘Go back to sleep, darling,’ Rosemary had said to him, pulling Melissa’s trembling body close to her. ‘We’ll explain in the morning.’
He’d taken one last look at Melissa, smiling slightly, then he’d walked back upstairs.
The next morning, they had all sat around the kitchen table – Melissa and her mum, Patrick with his parents and sister. It was a Sunday morning and Rosemary had laid out a feast of a breakfast with pancakes and bacon, muffins and eggs. Melissa’s mum barely ate, instead just stared out into the forest. Melissa didn’t eat at first either but as she watched the Byatts go about their breakfast, tucking in, laughing and arguing, acting like it was just a normal Sunday morning in the Byatt household, she started joining in, Patrick catching her eye and smiling. After they’d eaten, Bill had explained that Melissa and her mum would be staying with them for a bit, ‘until they get back on their feet’.
It was the start of the summer holidays and the weather was perfect that first week, so Melissa was able to immerse herself in hanging out in the garden with Patrick and his sister, sunbathing and listening to music, pretending she was just a normal girl from a normal family. She tried to ignore the hushed talks between Patrick’s parents and her mother. The glimpses of her mother crying at the kitchen table.
Melissa felt tears slide down her face now, imagining what that young teenage girl would think about the fact that the boy she loved would be lying in a coma over twenty-five years later . . . a coma caused by one of their children.
Melissa’s phone buzzed in her pocket. Melissa wiped a tear away and pulled it out to see it was the school. She put the phone to her ear. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Mrs Byatt? It’s Miss Milton, Lewis’s football coach. I’m afraid Lewis had a little outburst on the pitch. I wonder if you could pop by and pick him up? It would be good to have a quick chat too.’
Melissa pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Of course, I’ll be right there.’ She peered at the clock on the wall. It was only half an hour until the end of the school day. She might as well hang around and wait for Lilly too.
Melissa leaned over Patrick. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, giving him a kiss. ‘Your mum and dad will be here in an hour or so.’
Then she headed out, dreading what she was going to discover when she got to school.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tuesday 23rd April, 2019
2.30 p.m.
As Melissa drove to the school from the hospital, her mind ran over what Lewis could have done. He’d been so good lately. Should it really come as a surprise, though? She’d had a few calls like this over the years.
It infuriated Patrick. ‘Why can’t the boy control himself?’ he’d say. What Patrick didn’t seem to realise was that Lewis was just like him. Though Patrick gave off a calm exterior to the world, he was quick to lose his temper, swearing and throwing hammers in frustration when he got something wrong with his DIY efforts, or the times when Melissa would hear him late at night, yanking paper from the printer and kicking the door in anger.
In fact, father and son had locked horns more lately as Lewis grew more confident. Like the time a few weeks ago when Grace spilt some