Читать книгу Apple of My Eye - Claire Allan, Claire Allan - Страница 23

Although the heating is on full blast, the atmosphere downstairs is frosty.

My mother carries a plate of mashed potato and gravy to the dining table, which she’s served for me, then she nods to Martin that he can help himself. She looks at me as he retreats to plate up his dinner and tilts her head to one side – international sign language for ‘Are you okay?’ I nod, shrug my shoulders and look at the food in front of me. I still don’t feel like eating.

‘Are you not eating, Mum?’ I ask as I sit down.

‘I’ll eat later,’ she says. ‘I think the stress of the last twenty-four hours is catching up with me. I feel done in.’

She does look tired. Pale even. She’s not elderly. She’s only sixty-two, but at times her vulnerability shows. I realise it’s been exceptionally selfish of me to leave her here all day to deal with SOCO and the glaziers on her own, even if she insisted she was more than okay to do so.

‘Oh, Mum, you’ve gone to all this effort.’

‘I can have some tomorrow for sure,’ she says. ‘Look, I’m going to take a cup of tea up to bed with me, if that’s okay. Give you young ones space to talk.’

‘You don’t have to go on our account,’ Martin says. ‘Look, Angela, I’m so sorry you’ve been caught up in all this. And I understand that your loyalty 100 per cent has to be to Eli, but I promised you a long time ago that I’d never hurt her and you have to believe me when I say that’s still true. I’ve decided I won’t go away again. Not while this is happening. Someone else can take over at work for a bit.’

I’m taken aback. This project is his. He won the bid, worked on it from the ground up. It’s nearly there and I know he wants to see it through to completion.

‘I’ll do whatever it takes to prove I’m all in,’ he says.

My mother nods, pulls her cardigan a little tighter around her.

‘This is between you two,’ she says. ‘I like to think I’m a good judge of character, Martin, and I’d very much like to believe you’re telling both of us the truth. Eli deserves only good things, and so does this baby. I know you young ones face different pressures these days, but the key is to keep working at it.’

‘We will,’ he says earnestly. ‘And I’ll be on to the police again and again until they find out who’s responsible. I won’t go away until all this is sorted. I won’t leave her vulnerable here alone again.’

She gives him one of her smiles. It’s a start.