‘I’ve done it again, haven’t I?’ Sighing heavily, he glanced at the ceiling.
Sarah didn’t answer. She didn’t feel she needed to.
‘Do you want me to go?’ He looked pig-sick as he gazed back at her.
She didn’t know. Could they ever have a conversation about Laura that didn’t include her being on the defensive? Would they ever be able to spend time together without the topic of Laura coming up? Mr bloody Whale wasn’t the intruder.Shewas. ‘Do you—’ she began, just as the hall phone rang.
God, it would wake Ollie. Tearing her gaze away from Joe, who now looked utterly dejected, she turned to the hall, and then stopped dead as the answerphone picked up.
‘Sarah, it’s Laura. I couldn’t get you on your mobile. I’ve sent you a text, but just in case, I put Ollie’s safety scissors in his bag and completely forgot to mention it. I’ve put his scissor skills workbook in there too. Hope you had a lovely meal. Speak soon.’
Twenty-One
Joe hadn’t gone home, but the evening had ended far differently to the way Sarah had hoped it would. As they’d lain in bed together, he had tentatively wrapped an arm around her, but she’d felt his tension. Any other night she would have snuggled into him. With the issue of Laura wedged between them, though, she hadn’t known how to. It was all she could do not to cry. It was her instigating the arguments between them, not Laura magically manipulating them from a distance. If Joe hadn’t acknowledged her attempt to bridge the divide and squeezed her close as he normally did, she couldn’t have borne it. After being everything he had accused her of, seemingly obsessed with her ex’s girlfriend, reacting apparently unreasonably to something that clearly had been a miscommunication – or lack of communication, anyway – she’d felt bitchy and petty. In short, not very good about herself.
Joe had had an early training meeting. As an authorised firearms officer, he qualified to apply for a role at the West Mercia operational policing unit, and had decided to go for it. She’d been worried to death when he’d told her that. She would always worry about him, even if they weren’t together. She felt the tears rising, her throat tightening at that thought. She’d hoped he might wake her, or leave a note. He hadn’t. She couldn’t blame him. No doubt he’d been mulling things over while he’d tossed and turned in the night and was probably desperate to put as much distance between them as he could. He hadn’t signed up for this. He was single, child-free. Why would he want this kind of hassle in his life?
Exhausted after lying awake herself most of the night, she forced herself out of bed and dragged herself through the morning routine, smiling for Ollie’s sake, chatting to him on the way to nursery about his trip to the zoo and his flipping scissor skills workbook. She’d broached the subject of Bunny, delicately. Ollie had looked upset and said he’d lost him and that he’d asked his invisible superhero friend to help find him. Sarah really didn’t think he had cut Bunny’s ear off. She was sure he would mention it if he knew anything about it. Someone had, though. It hadn’t just dropped off, had it? Then there were the secrets he’d been convinced he should keep from her. No matter how plausible Laura’s explanations had been, she still couldn’t understand why Ollie would have imagined he shouldn’t share information with her unless someone had categorically told him not to.
Laura’s relationship with her mother was also bothering her. She wasn’t sure why. It just seemed odd. Everything about Laura seemed … off, unless it was her own instincts that were, totally. The fact was, shewasbothered, out of concern for her son. Perhaps she had been looking for reasons not to like Laura – she was only human, after all, and it was normal, surely, to compare yourself to the new woman in your ex’s life and wonder what it was you were lacking. She might have charged in unthinkingly initially. She might have upset Laura, but only inadvertently. In her heart, she didn’t think she was any of the things that Joe thought she was, that Steve did: a vindictive, jealous person.
Driving dejectedly to work after dropping Ollie off, she went over it again and again. Try as she might, she simply couldn’t ignore the niggling feeling in the pit of her stomach that something about Laura was off kilter. By the time she’d got through her morning ‘Welcome to Dog School’ training session, she’d decided on a plan. She would be the epitome of friendliness, and would certainly keep any thoughts about the woman to herself, for now. Meanwhile, she would do a little digging. She’d taken Laura at face value. Steve had too. Joe had been won over, smiling readily at her when they’d picked Ollie up; Sarah supposed most people would be, with that air of vulnerability she had about her. Laura had stammered when she’d spoken to him, she recalled. Why would that be? Because she was nervous because he was a policeman? Or because she’d been attracted to him?
She acknowledged that the green-eyed monster might now be rearing its head, but decided not to beat herself up about that either. She wouldn’t apologise for being human. Nor would she apologise for wanting to protect her child. She needed to find out all she could about Laura. Some indication of what had caused the rift between her and her mother, for a start. Also whether there was any truth to what Laura had told her about her previous controlling relationship. There was bound to be some hint of who she really was online. And if there wasn’t, why not? Everyone had an online profile of some sort, a trail of life events left behind them. Even Steve, who wasn’t much into Facebook other than to set up his business page, had an online presence.
After invigilating a meet-and-greet session, where, sadly, the prospective new owners of a Labrador cross were completely overwhelmed by his boisterousness, she went to check on the puppy-farm Jack Russell rescue, who’d been brought in half starved and riddled with ticks, worms and fleas.
‘Hey there, little Dot,’ she said, going carefully into the dog’s kennel. It had taken her ages to gain her trust enough to do that. For days after she’d come to them, the poor thing had shaken uncontrollably and cowered in the corner whenever anyone had gone near her. She would need special owners, people with experience of JRs who had lots of time to devote to her and would understand the amount of care she would need. ‘You’ve put on a little weight, haven’t you, gorgeous, hmm?’ She spoke to the dog softly, her heart swelling with love for the tiny animal that had probably never known human kindness.
Approaching her cautiously, she bent to gently pet her and was delighted when she was rewarded with a nervous wag of her tail. ‘You’ll be okay, girl,’ she assured her, as the dog lapped at her hand and then looked up at her, her huge chocolate-brown eyes full of uncertain hope. ‘I’ll make sure you are, I promise.’
Her chest constricting with a mixture of determination and anger at the way little Dot had been treated, she spent another few minutes with her, feeding her nutritious treats. She wasn’t a bad person. She wasnotgetting things out of perspective, wanting to rubbish Laura out of spitefulness, insecurity or jealousy. It just wasn’t who she was. She didn’t need to prove that to herself. She did need to prove it to Steve, though, for their son’s sake. She also needed to trust her instincts. They were too strong to be ignored.
Fetching her lunch and her PC from her car, she went to the small office set aside for form-filling and paperwork. Ten minutes later, having checked Instagram first, she found what she wanted on FB. There were a few people with the name Laura Collins, but the Laura she was looking for was unmistakable, with her long mane of rich auburn hair. Snatching a bite of her sandwich, she scrolled down. The profile hadn’t been updated for over a year. The most recent photos posted were mostly wild flowers and landscapes; impersonal stuff, giving nothing away. Glancing through them, she paused at a photo of an orange sunset dated almost two years ago, with the captionA New Chapter in My Life. There were previous chapters, then? Gulping down a mouthful of food she had no taste for, she wiped her fingers and scrolled on, skipping through random reposts and pictures of cute animals – and then froze.
There was no mistaking that the woman looking back at her was Laura, her hair slightly shorter, a smile dancing in her eyes. No mistaking either that the blonde-haired, blue-eyed child she was crouching beside bore an uncanny resemblance to Ollie. Her heart lurching, Sarah stared hard at the photograph.
Who was this child? Her stomach twisted in confusion as she scanned a plethora of photographs, mostly of the little boy – Liam, she learned: Liam on a slide in the park, Liam at Halloween dressed as a devil, Liam smiling gleefully astride a bike with stabilisers. His first two-wheeled bike? There were photographs of Liam on holiday, planting seashells on a sandcastle, one of him laughing as he chased a ball across a lawn in a back garden, a man close behind him; photos of him taking his first baby steps, Laura hovering nervously as he did. Fear pierced her chest like an icicle as she realised that this could almostbeOllie; that this could be her own child’s life story. These were intimate photographs, capturing milestones; major events in a child’s life that Laura would have had to be there to witness.
Her hands trembling, she went further back, and her blood froze in her veins. For a second, she blinked stupefied at the happy couple in the photograph. The man sliding the wedding band onto the woman’s finger was the same man chasing the little boy across the lawn. The bride … Sarah’s head reeled … was Laura.
The child … this child wastheirchild. Hehadto be.
Laura had told her bare-faced lies. Why would she?Dear God. Where was the child now?
Jumping up too fast, Sarah spilled her food on the floor. She dropped down and scrambled around after it, lest one of the animals come in and eat it. Did Steve know about any of this? Panic clutched at her chest. If she tried to tell him, would he tell her this washerbeing unreasonable? Anger unfurling inside her, she stuffed her uneaten food into the bin. Would he tell her that she was being jealous and vindictive if she pointed out that the woman had a child from a former marriage who appeared to have disappeared from her life?
She had to talk to him. Closing the PC down, she grabbed her phone. First, though, she needed to know more. This boy had to be somewhere. If anyone could find out where, Joe could, assuming he wanted to, that he cared enough to, that he didn’t think she was stuck on her bloody ex. God! Why hadn’t she stood her ground? She’d known something wasn’t right; her every instinct had been screaming at her that something wasn’t right. Yet she’d left her child in the woman’s care. Nausea swilling inside her, she selected Joe’s number.Shit!She cursed when his phone went straight to voicemail, remembering he was on a course.
Flying out of the office, she raced to reception, waving her phone at the staff there and citing an emergency, then ran to her car. Trying Joe again as she drove to the nursery to pick Ollie up, and still getting no answer, she left a message for him to call her. What would she do if he didn’t? Suddenly she felt more alone than she’d ever felt in her life. There was nothing she could do about it if he had decided he’d had enough. She had too. She was bloody pissed off with being told thatshehad a problem, when it was obvious that the one with the problems was the woman Steve had leapt into a relationship with. Serious problems. It was becoming abundantly clear that Steve had been manipulated. Laura hadn’t come into his life by accident, Sarah was sure of it.
She’d chosen him.
Her heart boomed out a warning.
She’d chosen Ollie.
Twenty-Two
