‘It’s Jess,’ she said.

  My heart sank. ‘Is she all right?’ I asked. ‘Is Reef okay?’

  ‘Yes, they’re both fine. They’ve gone to the coast. Reef’s enjoying it.’

  ‘So, what’s the but?’

  ‘She says she met someone. A man, I mean.’

  ‘Okay…’

  ‘Well, she’s gone completely off the deep end. She says they’re going to be together, that he’s asked her to come and live with him at his house the other side of the country.’ Harriet’s shock turned abruptly to anger. ‘I don’t know what goes on in her head. She acts like she doesn’t have a child to think about!’

  ‘When did she meet this man?’

  ‘Friday.’

  ‘So she’s known him two days?’

  ‘It’s classic Jessica! She can’t do things half-heartedly. If she meets someone, they’re the love of her life. I could strangle her sometimes!’

  ‘And this guy…’ I said, trying to calm her down, ‘he really asked her to go and live with him?

  ‘She seems to think so. She says she’s going there with Reef tomorrow.’

  ‘Just the other day Jessica was talking about how she didn’t like the idea of living with someone – having them in your face all the time.’

  Harriet gave a snort of humourless laughter. ‘Was she talking about me?’

  ‘No.’

  Harriet’s brow furrowed. ‘Jessica can be adamant how she feels about something one day, and then feel the total opposite the next. You can’t guess what she’ll do. But this…’ her voice rose again, ‘she’s gone too far this time. I am going to find her and drag her back home.’

  I stared at her helplessly. Her eyes were glittering with anger and she was gripping her cup so hard the ends of her fingers were white. I had to say something to diffuse the situation before Harriet rushed off and destroyed what was left of her relationship with Jessica completely. ‘Well, let’s just think for a moment,’ I said calmly. ‘She can’t go anywhere tomorrow – she needs to sort something out with Reef’s school first.’

  ‘That won’t stop her,’ Harriet said, her face like thunder. ‘And I know what kind of men she picks. She’ll uproot Reef on a stupid whim and it will all end in tears within a month,’ she strode across the room and picked up her car keys. ‘I’m going to get her.’

  ‘Didn’t she meet Reef’s dad on a weekend away to the seaside?’ I asked, which stopped Harriet in her tracks. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘Nothing, just… there really is something about her and the sea, it seems.’

  ‘There’s certainly something about her and dodgy men. This Tyler that she’s met, she says he’s “romantic” and has a “beautiful soul”. What she means is he’s all charm, but deep down he’ll be flaky and unreliable.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I agree you should meet him, but perhaps we should trust her. Even if it’s a mistake, sometimes we have to be allowed to make mistakes. Why don’t I come with you? Perhaps it might help. But I need to grab some breakfast first.’

  ‘Yes,’ Harriet said quickly. ‘Yes, of course you do. Do you want me to make a green smoothie? I’ve got quick at them now, and you must take your vitamin D.’

  ‘I’ll just have toast, Harri, but thank you.’

  I got up to make breakfast and take the pregnancy vitamins she reminded me about daily, and the baby gave me a big kick that made me stop in my tracks.

  ‘What’s up?’ Harriet said, her eyes instantly on me, ‘are you okay?’

  ‘It’s just the baby kicking.’ I paused, and then added, ‘Feel it if you like.’ I could tell she wanted to, but had held herself back from asking. She reached towards me, but let her hand drop. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We don’t have time to lose. You eat, and then we’ll leave straight away. We’ve got to get to her before she does anything rash.’

  ‘Harri?’

  She paused on her way out of the door.

  ‘How do you know where to find her? She didn’t say where she was going, did she?’

  ‘Oh… I found the address of the bed and breakfast in her emails.’

  ‘Does she know that you know her password?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, as though it had never occurred to her to worry about it. ‘It’s not like I go snooping on her all the time. It’s just a precaution. For times like this.’

  She rushed off to get her coat and I stared at the empty doorway where she had just been standing. Could I really blame Jessica for running? If Harriet wanted that much control over her life the house must feel like a prison.

  …

  Standing at the door of an old-fashioned bed and breakfast, I glanced at Harriet, whose face had regained the furious expression she’d had earlier that morning. ‘Look, are you sure about this–’ I started to say as Harriet reached for the door, but the decision was taken away from us when it burst open and Jessica nearly collided with us. Behind her Reef paused and gave us a smile, a red bucket and spade dangling loosely from his hand. ‘Harriet?’ Jessica said. ‘Poppy? What are you doing here?’

  ‘What do you think we’re doing here!’ Harriet said, her face reddening. ‘Your message this morning! You didn’t really think I was going to ignore that, did you?’

  The door opened again and a man stepped out, pausing beside Jessica. He looked from us to Jessica questioningly, before running a hand through his dishevelled brown hair and giving a wide grin. ‘What can we do for you ladies?’ he said.

  ‘Is this him?’ Harriet asked.

  When Jessica didn’t answer Harriet turned to Tyler. ‘I’m Jessica’s sister. And I’ve come to take her home.’

  ‘Harri!’ Jessica cried. ‘Why do you always have to do this? Why do you always try to ruin things for me?’

  Alarmed by his mother’s outburst, Reef looked up at her in confusion, and I took the little boy’s hand. ‘Why don’t I take him down to the beach?’ I said. It was only the other side of the road, down some steps in the steep sea wall. Harriet nodded, and Reef and I made our way across the road, until finally the sounds of Jessica and Harriet’s argument were whipped away in the breeze.

  ‘What are they shouting about?’ Reef asked me.

  ‘They’re not shouting,’ I said automatically. Then I paused. ‘Well, I suppose they are shouting a little. Sometimes grownups disagree with each other. They shouldn’t be shouting, but they just need to talk it through, then they’ll be friends again. Do you ever get cross with your friends?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Reef conceded.

  ‘It feels bad for a little while, doesn’t it? But you make up again and everything’s okay,’ I reassured him. ‘Like it will be with Mummy and Auntie Harri.’

  ‘Is it because of Tyler?’ Reef asked.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Your Auntie Harri doesn’t know him yet.’

  ‘He’s nice. I like him,’ Reef told me. ‘He said he’d teach me how to throw stones really far into the sea.’

  I gazed out to the ocean, the surface of which was ruffled by choppy waves, seagulls circling above it. Why couldn’t life just be simple? Everyone was always so tied up in knots, trapped by their pasts and scared of their future. I was no different.

  ‘Were you going to throw stones this morning?’ I asked Reef.

  ‘Yeah. Before we go away.’

  ‘Well, I can try to teach you. Although I’m probably not as good as Tyler is.’

  ‘Auntie Harri doesn’t like Mummy having new friends,’ he said, as we slipped and slid our way down a bank of shingle to get closer to the ocean. ‘They always have fights about it. But it’s nice to have friends.’

  ‘I think Auntie Harri just wants to make sure your mummy makes good friends,’ I said, though his statement made my skin prickle. What on earth was going on between the sisters? Why didn’t Jessica tell Harriet to get stuffed? In her position, that’s what I would do. But to my surprise, when Jessica and Harriet finally came down to the beach where Reef had started skimming pebbles – without a huge amount of success – Tyler was nowhere to be seen, and Jessica’s eyes were puffy with tears.

  ‘I’m not saying never,’ Harriet said, ‘you can stay in touch with him, see how things go.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s going to like that.’

  ‘Then he isn’t really right for you,’ Harriet said. ‘He shouldn’t make you rush things. If he’s serious–’

  ‘He was serious!’ Jessica said. ‘We were both serious! I can’t believe you’ve done this to me again! You’ve scared him off – no one wants anything to do with me after they’ve met you!’

  Jessica stopped talking as she reached Reef, and her face softened.

  ‘Is Tyler going to come and throw the stones?’ Reef asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Jessica said. ‘Not today.’

  Reef ran over to Harriet, and abruptly hit her in the side with one of his little hands. ‘Why do you have to make everyone go away?’ he shouted in his little, angry voice. ‘Why are you so mean to everybody?’

  ‘You have no idea what I’ve sacrificed for you!’ Harriet yelled. ‘For both of you.’ She faced Jessica. ‘Your son just hit me,’ she said.

  ‘Good!’ Jessica said. ‘Well done Reef.’

  Without another word Harriet turned on her heel and stormed off down the beach, while Jessica knelt beside Reef. ‘You shouldn’t hit people, Reef,’ she said softly. ‘Even if you’re really cross.’

  ‘I am really cross!’ he said.

  Jessica put her arms around him. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I know, Reef. I am too. But Auntie Harriet is usually right about things. We have to listen to her.’

  Reef nodded against her shoulder, a fat tear rolling down his cheek.

  20

  ‘You don’t have to listen to her,’ I told Jessica, once Reef had calmed down and was hunting for shells along the shore, whooping when waves came to lap around his wellies. I didn’t want to cause trouble, but the way Harriet had swooped in and left Jessica and Reef in tears shocked me. After she’d stormed off down the beach we’d seen no sign of her, though presumably she would turn up again eventually.

  Jessica sighed, ‘I do.’

  ‘Why?’

  Jessica started absent-mindedly picking up handfuls of sand and letting it run through her fingers. ‘You should be careful,’ she said eventually, startling me. ‘She’ll want your baby. I can see her plotting already.’

  ‘What?’ Had I heard her right?

  ‘She started looking up how to adopt Reef when he was born,’ Jessica continued, her voice full of spite. ‘She always, always, wants to interfere. She still thinks he’s hers, just because she had to look after him a lot when he was first born and I wasn’t well.’

  I was so astonished that I couldn’t answer straight away, and Jessica quickly snapped out of her dark mood and said, ‘Ignore me, Poppy. I’m just upset. She’s done a lot for us. More than I could ever have expected. I shouldn’t resent her.’

  My eyes slipped towards Reef, who was splatting heaps of sea foam with his spade, delighted as it sprayed all over his wellies and trousers and I smiled, thinking of Dominic when he was that age. My smile quickly faded and I put my hands on my bump. No matter how I tried, I could feel nothing but dread about the new baby. My circumstances were far more precarious now than when I’d had Dominic at sixteen, and it had been challenging enough back then. She’ll want your baby. I can see her plotting already. I shivered, and thought of the green smoothies, the gifts, the unnecessary advice and concern. Jessica was just letting her imagination run away with her, surely. There couldn’t be any truth to it.

  ‘Jess,’ I said at length.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Perhaps I should move out. It’s bound to be putting more pressure on you both.’

  She turned to me, an eyebrow raised. ‘How would you get by?’

  ‘I’ll try and find a job. I know Harriet can’t afford to employ me properly at the shop, but there must be something around–’

  ‘Poppy, you’re getting on for six months pregnant. Now isn’t the time to begin a new job. And I can’t imagine you’re keen to start applying for benefits and having people dig around in your history when you were stealing from your old employer. So what would you do if you moved out? Where would you go, really?’

  I stared at her, stunned to get such a stark reality check from the sister whose head was usually in the clouds. Of course she was right – what would I do if I left? But what she’d said about Harriet and my baby had unsettled me deeply – how could I stay in the house when Jessica had made an accusation like that?

  ‘Can you really not go to Max?’ she said, her voice having lost its bluntness now. ‘It sounds like he tried to help you.’

  ‘No,’ I said flatly.

  ‘Well, then, it doesn’t seem like you’ve got a lot of other options,’ she said. She brushed sand from her legs and stood up abruptly, her upset about Tyler seemingly having been forgotten. ‘Reef, let’s go and get an ice-cream,’ she yelled down to her son. ‘Come on,’ she said, holding her hand out to help me up. ‘I’ll get you one too. You look like you could do with some sugar.’

  ‘Jess,’ I said, once I was on my feet. ‘I’m sorry about Tyler.’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ll do what Harriet said. Keep in touch with him. If it’s meant to be it’s meant to be. Love finds a way.’

  Habmouth

  I woke to the sound of voices outside the door, and I sat bolt upright, terrified, staring at my surroundings in total confusion. My eyes came to rest on the large picture opposite the bed – an abstract scene of blue, purple and green brushstrokes that could depict anything from wild moorland to a peaceful coastal landscape depending how you looked at it. The pieces clicked into place and I sank down gratefully into the soft sheets of the king size bed in Max’s bedroom.

  ‘Is she okay?’ Dominic’s voice came to me clearly through the closed door.

  ‘Yes,’ Max replied. ‘She’s asleep. I’m going to make her some breakfast.’

  ‘But she slept all day yesterday. And the day before.’

  I rubbed my eyes. It was true, since I’d called Max to come and rescue me and Dominic from the flat and we’d fled to his house it was like all the sleep I’d missed out on through the months of stress and fear descended on me at once and I could barely keep my eyes open.

  ‘Your mum’s been through a lot, and she’s in pain from Kevin attacking her. It might take her a few days to get back on her feet. She’s been running on empty for a while, and she’s recovering from everything that happened.’

  There was a brief silence, and I strained to hear Dominic’s next words, said more quietly. ‘Thank you for looking after her,’ he said. ‘If you hadn’t been able to come and get us–’

  ‘You don’t need to thank me. I’m glad I could help.’

  ‘I just wanted him to leave. I know how stupid it was to pull a knife on him but I thought he was going to kill her.’

  Tears sprang to my eyes and I choked back a sob.

  ‘I should have done more,’ Dominic continued, ‘I should have realised sooner what was happening so I could help her with money. I would have given up college and tried to get a job, I would have given her all the money I earned at the garden centre rather than saving it for university–’

  ‘That’s not what your mum wants. And you need to go in to college this morning. You can’t stay here every day.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘I know what you’re worried about. I’ll drive you there and back and I’ll drop you right at the door. If any of Kevin’s people are looking for you they won’t get a chance to go near you. And you’re on revision leave soon, anyway, aren’t you? You won’t even have to go in except for exams and I’ll take you to those.’

  I put my hands over my mouth to stop myself letting out a cry of relief. Thank God we had Max. ‘Your mum will be okay now,’ Max reassured him. ‘You don’t need to stay here worrying about her. She wants you to do your exams.’

  ‘Will you make sure she eats?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll make sure. There’s no reason for her not to now. There’s plenty of food here, and she knows she’ll get more later, she doesn’t have to try and stop herself getting hungry. But you’ll have to be patient with her. She’s been through a lot and she’s not going to get better overnight.’

  My eyes began to close, and I let myself drift away, confident that here, nothing could hurt me.

  …

  Over the next week I grew stronger, the bruises from Kevin’s beating began to settle down, and I told Max I thought I was well enough to go back to work.

  ‘I’m sure Kevin doesn’t know where I work,’ I said, ‘and even if he does, we can go there and back in your car and he won’t get a chance to corner me. As long as he doesn’t figure out where I live. If… if me and Dom can stay here longer?’

  ‘Of course you can. And are you sure about work? You look like you could use more rest to me,’ he said.

  I stretched out my legs luxuriously. Once I’d felt up to getting out of bed I’d spent lots of time on the grey velvet sofa in Max’s living room, snuggled under a fleece blanket watching box sets on TV. Initially I felt that I’d died and gone to heaven, but now it was time to get up and about again. I was far stronger than I had been, colour had returned to my cheeks, and my thoughts were clear and unmuddled.

  ‘Once I’ve paid off all the credit card debts and everything, I don’t want to carry on with… what we’ve been doing,’ I told him. ‘I hate stealing. When my debts are cleared, it needs to stop.’

  ‘You don’t have to decide that now.’

  ‘I do. I’m not a thief, Max. It was only to help me survive.’

  ‘And what about Dominic and his university fees? I’ve seen his student loan paperwork – do you know how much debt he’s going to end up in? Looking at the numbers made my eyes water.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to pay some of the fees for him,’ Max said. ‘I’ll tell him at the weekend, on his eighteenth birthday.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ I said in astonishment. Though, admittedly, it was hardly as if he was spending his own hard-earned money.

 

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