Page 20 of One for the Road
He slammed the brakes, but it was too late.
Boy had already reached the other side, but Isla wouldn’t be quick enough. She was about to die rescuing a dog that didn’t even need saving.
Glass shattered around my feet. Whisky running between the cracks of the cobbles as I propelled myself forward, desperate to reach her in time.
This woman is going to irritate me to deathhad been my first thought when I found her on the other side of that door four months ago.
I hadn’t expected my estimation to be quite so accurate.
5
Isla
Online bank balance: £126.34
“What do you mean, you can’t see Teddy on Saturday? Cameron! She was really looking forward to it.” I tried to keep my voice low as I hurried up the slight slope of Kinleith’s high street, the cobblestones beneath my thin-soled shoes still slick from last night’s rain.
I’d had the morning from hell. Teddy had been restless last night, crawling into my bed at two a.m. With both of us operating on little sleep, she’d been more grouchy than usual this morning, point blank refusing to eat breakfast. My mood had quickly followed hers when Daisy wouldn’t start, the engine making an angryclank, clank, splutterthat sounded like loose parts rattling inside a tin can.
Luckily, I’d managed to catch Heather in time. She’d dropped Teddy off at day camp while I’d ridden my old bike into the village. Turned out, I was deathly out of shape. Thirty minutes later, I was sweaty, exhausted and late for my shift at Brown’s.
So, so late.
Jess was going to kill me.
Cameron sighed on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, all right? It’s the busiest time of year at the restaurant and you know Annie just opened the bakery last month, she’s run off her feet.”
How could I forget? I had the pleasure of staring at Queen’s Cakes from the window of Brown’s all day, every day. An unavoidable reminder that not only was she sleeping in my bed, but she was living out my professional dreams too.
“Teddy’s going to be devastated. She hasn’t seen you in over two weeks.” Tears welled in my eyes and I stopped walking, slumping against the window of the jewellery shop.
I’d always been a crier. Sad songs, movies where the dog dies, online videos of grooms crying while their bride walks down the aisle.My little empath,my mum endearingly called me as a kid. Until my parents’ relationship hit a new rough patch and I realised the intensity of my emotions could feel like a burden to the people around me.
Everyone but my grandmother.The world isn’t always kind to people who wear their heart for all to see, she’d told me once when I’d been upset about some mean kids at school.It makes you an easy mark, a target for the world’s sorrows. Protect your heart, sunshine; keep it close, but never bury it. Feeling deeply is a superpower.
“Kids are resilient. She’ll be fine,” Cameron replied while I swallowed around the empty, Grandma-shaped hole in my chest. “How about next Tuesday? I have a late start.”
“I’m working, and Teddy has camp. I don’t want to ruin her routine, not when she’s finally getting settled.”
I heard Cameron sigh again, a noise synonymous with the last months of our relationship. Everything I’d done was wrong. Little had I known, while I was wracking my brainto figure out how I could make our home life better, he was sleeping with his beautiful, shiny-haired ex-girlfriend. “I don’t know what you want me to do here, everything I say you’ll find fault with.”
I want you to make your daughter a priority,I wanted to scream, but settled for, “Cameron, you don’t understand. She’s been having nightmares; she’s moody all the time. Her teacher mentioned she’s stopped playing with the other kids at breaktime – I’m really worried about her, could you just ask to switch—”
“You’re blowing this way out of proportion,” he interrupted, his pragmatic tone spiking my temper. “She’s always been a quiet kid; it’s not like that’s new information.”
“This is more than that.” I squeezed my hand tighter around the phone, as if the extra pressure would make him understand that his actions had sucked all the joy out of our little girl. That it was breaking my heart.
He didn’t say anything. I heard a familiar female voice murmur in the background.
Annabelle. The sound of her voice burned through me. A white-hot poker to the stomach.
The woman he’d told me not to worry about. And I hadn’t. Because I’d trusted him implicitly. Because he’d never given me a reasonnotto trust him. I felt foolish every time I thought of her . . . sleeping on my side of the bed. Eating breakfast in the kitchen where I’d cooked her dinner time and time again.
“These are gorgeous marble counters,” she’d once complimented, brushing her hand over the dove-grey surface. Had she been sleeping with him then? Picturing herself living in my home?
“Sure, baby,” Cameron replied. Not to me. “Isla, I gotta go. Can we pick this conversation up next week?”
“Wait. I needed – you haven’t—”Slow down, I orderedmyself.Slow down and just say it.It was always this way when I was nervous. My thoughts stalled. Words tangled on the tip of my tongue. “I still haven’t received this month’s child support.”
