Apple of My Eye

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In the silence of the morning at the edge of the lake, not a person around to disturb me, I try not to feel hurt by the speed of his departure. I mentally try not to file it into the big paranoia folder in my head.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#ulink_699133dd-4cba-5ac2-b960-db8c99c328d7)

Louise (#ulink_699133dd-4cba-5ac2-b960-db8c99c328d7)

I’ve thought about her husband a lot. That handsome man who hugged her in the café. Who joked with her and made her smile, even though she’d looked so lost before he arrived.

I knew his name. It ran through my head on a loop. I’d say it just to see how it sounded. I wrote it down then scribbled it out. I couldn’t risk leaving any connection, but I did feel a connection. He’d be the father of my child, after all.

I wanted to know as much about him as I could. What he did. What he liked. How he spent his free time. What books he read and what movies he watched. Was he excited about the baby his wife was carrying? The baby who’d be mine. Would he have been a hands-on kind of dad? Was he one of those ‘new men’ types – not afraid to change a nappy or push a pram?

I thought I might ask her a little about him when I next saw her. Slip it into the conversation casually. ‘Your husband must be excited?’ I’d ask. It’s possible she’d offer me something to go on. A little insight into his life and his personality.

He’d looked like a good man. Peter had been a good man. He’d been a good husband to me. He’d have made a brilliant father to our children, if life hadn’t been so cruel.

God never gives you any more than you can handle, I reminded myself. He must have thought I could handle an awful lot. Peter – he wasn’t up to God’s test.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#ulink_ce308d0b-06e7-5c71-a881-849940a1f079)

Eli (#ulink_ce308d0b-06e7-5c71-a881-849940a1f079)

My mother reacts just as I’d expect when I tell her Martin’s going back to London. She looks at me as if I’ve lost the plot, even though all along she’s been assuring me she doesn’t think there’s any truth in those horrible notes.

‘Are you sure you don’t want him to stay?’ she says. ‘Did he say something to you to influence you to let him go?’

‘No, Mum,’ I say. ‘I just realise if I trust him I have to prove that I trust him and this is one way to do that.’

‘Hmm.’ She eyes me. ‘He should be the one proving things to you, though.’

‘I think we both need to work on that and let the police work on finding out the truth of what’s going on.’

‘And being here, without him, while all this is going on? Are you not scared?’

I am, of course I am, but I don’t want to let whoever’s behind this win. I don’t want them to know they’re scaring me.

‘Sure, but I have you,’ I say with a forced smile. ‘Haven’t you always kept me safe? Haven’t you always told me that a mama bear protects her baby bears? You’ll stay with me, won’t you?’