Читать книгу Runaway Bride: A laugh out loud funny and feel good rom com - Mary Baker Jayne - Страница 11

A week after I’d come to, the throbbing in my temples had subsided to a dull ache and I was eating again, although I was still weak. One afternoon, I decided I was ready.

Jack was at the hob, cooking us pasta for lunch. He’d got me on meals heavy in carbs till my strength was up again. I could just imagine my mum’s expression if she could see my calorific staple diet right now. The thought of it created a half-guilty, half-exciting fizz of rebellion.

‘Jack, can I borrow your phone?’ I asked.

‘Why, who do you need to ring?’

‘Couple of people at home.’ I flinched. ‘I mean, where I used to live.’

‘Oh. Okay. Yeah, it’s somewhere here…’

He started rooting through the overhead compartments, pulling out bits and pieces and throwing them down on the passenger seat as he hunted out his mobile.

I smiled. ‘I’m thinking you don’t make too many calls?’

‘No, I keep it switched off mostly. The only people I ever need to ring are my agent, my parents and the odd friend. There’s no one else I want to talk to.’

‘Thanks.’ I caught the little old-fashioned Nokia he chucked me with one hand. ‘Um, could you… you know?’

‘You want some privacy?’

‘If that’s okay.’

‘No problem.’ He turned off his pasta and whistled to Sandy. ‘Come on, girl. Let’s take you for a waddle and a widdle while Aunty Kitty makes her calls.’

When they’d gone, I tapped in the number for directory enquiries. I could just about remember Nan’s landline, but without my own mobile, I had no access to anyone else’s contact details.

‘Hello?’ Laurel said when she answered. ‘If this is another sales call, then no, I haven’t had an accident at work and you can sod off.’

‘Hiya.’

‘Jesus, Kitty, is it you?’ she gasped. ‘Oh my God, oh my… where the hell are you? I’ve been scared out of my wits about you!’

I trusted Laurel – she was the closest friend I had – but she was still family. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I didn’t dare confide where I was to her. No matter how much she tried to keep it secret, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t get back to my mum. Or to Ethan via her husband Andy, who was a mate of his.

‘I can’t say,’ I told her. ‘I’m safe though, promise.’

‘But where have you been? Your mum and Ethan have been scouring the globe! Everyone’s been worried sick you’d turn up on the news dead in a ditch or something.’

‘Sorry, Laur. I would’ve rung sooner but I’ve been ill. I was barely conscious for a couple of days.’

‘Shit! Have you been in hospital?’

‘Briefly. I’m staying with someone now, a friend. He’s looking after me.’

‘He?’ She sounded suspicious. ‘Who is he? Someone I know?’

I didn’t want to mention his name. Laurel’s boys loved Jack’s books, and once I told her who my mystery rescuer was, it’d be an easy way for them to track me down.

‘No, someone I met hitch-hiking. He’s been very kind to me.’

‘You’re kidding! You’re staying with a stranger you met hitch-hiking?’

‘I didn’t have any choice. I had nowhere else to go.’

‘Christ, Kitty! What the hell are you playing at, putting yourself in danger like that?’ she exploded. ‘He could be a sex offender for all you know.’

‘He isn’t. Just a nice lad who wants to help.’

‘Yeah? And what’s in it for him? Did he try it on with you?’

‘Course not.’

‘He will. No one does anything unless they expect to get a return somewhere down the line.’ She sounded like my mum.

‘Not this guy,’ I said firmly. ‘He isn’t like that.’

‘Why did you run off, Kit?’

‘I couldn’t stay, after… it’s Ethan.’ I steeled myself. I was going to have to say it sooner or later. ‘He… he cheated on me, Laur. At the reception. Maybe not for the first time, I don’t know.’

‘No! He wouldn’t do that,’ she said, her voice all amazement. ‘Not Ethan, surely. He loves you to pieces, everybody knows it.’

‘He would because he bloody did. I saw him at it.’ The image rose up again in my mind; even more vivid, more painful in my memory than it had been to watch. ‘If I hadn’t, I never would’ve believed it.’

‘Shit, I mean… what, like a drunken snog or – you know, the full works?’

‘What’s the difference? He did it. After ten years, on our fucking wedding day, he…’ I could barely hold back a sob. ‘I never want to see that bastard again. Never.’

‘When are you coming home?’

I took a deep breath. This was going to be the hard bit.

‘I’m not. I haven’t got a home there, not now.’

‘Course you have,’ she said, gentling her voice. ‘You don’t have to go back to Ethan. There’s your mum. Or I can make space for you. Come home, Kit, to your family.’

‘I can’t. I just… can’t. I’m not strong enough right now. Physically or emotionally.’

‘Strong enough for what?’

‘For any of it. Mum. Ethan. If I see him, he’ll… I don’t know how I’d react. It just feels like—’ I could hear the panic lacing my voice. ‘It’s too much, Laur; too much. You can’t make me go back.’

‘But it’s a breakdown, can’t you see that?’ She sounded scared. ‘You’re not acting rationally. Please. Tell me where you are and let me come get you. You don’t have to face anyone, just come on home where I can take care of you.’

‘Sorry, Laur. I love you, but… no. I’m staying here, just until I find somewhere I can start again. You can advertise my job whenever you want.’

‘Never mind your bloody job. You’re not safe, Kitty. You need to get home.’

‘I am safe, I swear. And if you care about me, you’ll respect the fact this is where I need to be right now. Tell the boys I miss them, okay? I’ll ring you when I can.’

‘But—’

I hung up.

Nan was next. I made sure to withhold my number before I called.

‘Hello?’

‘Hiya Nana. It’s Kitty.’

‘Oh, hello, love,’ she said, sounding pleased to hear from me but not at all surprised. In the early stages of Alzheimer’s, she tended to get a little confused about anything too recent. My sudden disappearance might already have slipped from her memory.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked gently.

‘Can’t complain, can’t complain. Just the old pain in my leg, but it’s bearable. Oh, did I tell you I saw Rita yesterday? She was asking for you.’

‘Who’s Rita?’

She tutted. ‘You know. Rita, her with the fancy man. She used to mind you sometimes when you were a baby, don’t you remember?’

I couldn’t help smiling. ‘Oh. That Rita. Er, yeah, course.’

‘When are you coming to see me, Kitty? I haven’t seen you or your dad for ages.’

I winced. ‘Dad’s… not here, Nan. Remember? He died last year.’

‘Oh. Yes,’ she said vaguely. ‘Yes, he did, didn’t he? We had corned beef sandwiches at the wake…’

This had been happening more and more recently. And it hurt like hell, every time. Nan forgetting Dad was dead almost made me forget, and then the grief hit me all over again, fresh as the day I’d lost him.

God, I missed him. If he was here, there was no way I’d be forced to rely on the kindness of strangers in campervans. Ethan might’ve been the golden boy in most people’s eyes, but Dad had never trusted him; never liked the possessive way he’d behaved around me.

‘I just rang to tell you I’m on holiday,’ I said to Nana, my voice choked. ‘I’ll be gone a little while. I’ll call whenever I can, okay? Love you very much.’

‘Love you too, my chicken. Don’t forget to send us a postcard, will you?’ Nan had a massive collection of postcards, everywhere from Bridlington to Brisbane, insisting on one from every friend or relative who’d been away in the last fifty years.

‘I’ll do my best. The post isn’t very good here.’

‘Where are you, love?’

‘Um… Iceland,’ I fabricated wildly.

The sound of her musical doorbell trilled in the background.

‘Who’s that then?’ I heard her levering herself to her feet, and a minute later the front door opened with a click. ‘Oh, Petra! Now guess who I’ve got here on the phone? She tells me she’s in Iceland.’

Mum! Of all the times she could’ve called round. I hurriedly hit the End Call button.

My heart was still pounding when Jack arrived back from his walk with Sandy.

‘Something wrong?’ he asked, noticing my pale face.

‘Just a bit of a scare. Nearly had to talk to my mum.’

He came to sit on the bed, stroking my hair to calm me, and I rested my forehead against his chest. ‘Don’t let it get you too upset, eh?’ he said softly. ‘You’ll make yourself ill again.’

‘I’ll try.’ I focused on my breathing, forcing myself calmer, and my heart rate started to slow. Jack’s hand on my hair helped me feel safe.

‘Kitty, can I ask you something personal? I know we said we wouldn’t, but…’

‘Depends what it is.’

‘Why are you so scared your mam might find you? You’re an adult. She can’t make you go back if you don’t want to.’

‘You don’t know her,’ I muttered darkly.

‘You’re afraid of her. Aren’t you?’

His eyes were so soft and understanding. It might be a relief to confide in someone.

‘Not exactly afraid,’ I said. ‘It’s just, Mum… all my life she’s – well, she’d call it looking after me. My dad used to call it managing me. She managed him too, till he’d had enough and left her when I was eleven. After that I got a double helping.’

He frowned. ‘Managed you in what way?’

‘In every way, when I was a kid. Picking out my clothes – all my clothes, even when I was a teenager. I remember once I was allowed to go out shopping with my friends and came home with this dress I’d bought out of the pocket money Dad had given me. It wasn’t revealing or anything: just a nice summer dress for the hot weather. But she made me take it right back. Not because there was anything wrong with it, but because I’d picked it without consulting her.’

‘Sounds like a bully.’

I shook my head. ‘It was more complicated than that. See, with the clothes, it wasn’t that she didn’t want me to pick them. It was that she wanted us to do it together. Be our mum-and-daughter thing. And she was like that with everything, even down to the food I ate. Long after I left home.’

He looked shocked. ‘Seriously, she controlled your food?’

I tried to fight it but I couldn’t help it. I felt embarrassed. Jack was obviously appalled by what I’d just told him, and I knew that really, I should be too. And yet I felt the same way I had all my life: this desperate urge to shrug off behaviour that I knew, deep down, was unacceptable. To make excuses for the very person who for years had made me miserable.

Because she loved me, I’d always told myself, echoing the words she so often said when I challenged her. Everything she did, she did because she loved me. Tough love, right? That was the only real love. To protect someone from pain, you had to hurt them. Over and over and over.

‘Yeah,’ I said to Jack, the affirmative dropping from me with a great effort of will. ‘Whatever fad diet she was following, I had to do it too. I’ve been a vegan, a fruitarian, a macrobiotic… she just had to share every little bit of my life.’ It was a relief to finally let it all out. ‘God, Jack, it was suffocating – I mean, literally, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. A hundred times I wished I could’ve lived with my dad and Bernie. That was his second wife.’ I gave a bleak laugh. ‘But oh no, Mum couldn’t let that happen. And like a coward I never fought it. Just rolled over and surrendered.’

‘And your fiancé, what did he think of it?’

‘Ethan?’ My brow lowered. ‘He was no better. The two of them scrapped like cat and dog over me: who was going to get me on my birthday or Christmas, stuff like that. They were like two spoilt kids trying to share a favourite toy. And then when it came to the wedding… it was hell, Jack. They both wanted complete control over the whole thing, bickering constantly, and there I was in the middle. By the time the wedding day came – I mean, I loved him. But all I really wanted was for it to be over.’

‘Jesus. You do know that’s abuse, right?’

‘No, it…’ I hesitated. ‘I mean, I… I thought they acted like that because they loved me. It was stifling, yeah, but it was kind of flattering. To know you’re wanted that much.’

‘That’s not love, Kitty. Love isn’t obsessive. It heals, it doesn’t break.’

A tear trickled out as I remembered what I’d seen at the wedding. Ethan, handsome, charming Ethan, who I’d loved since I was sixteen years old, who I’d convinced myself was so completely, undentably perfect…

‘I know,’ I whispered.

‘Come here.’ He drew me to him for a hug. ‘It’s behind you now, Kitty. There’s a better future somewhere. As soon as you’re up and about again, we’ll find it.’