By the end of the week, I was still clueless. I’d spent more time replaying that night than was healthy or constructive.
Every time my mind wandered back to Sam it was like the thoughts ignited a sparkler in my stomach, sending nervous longing fizzing and whizzing through my insides. On the one hand, I admonished myself for being embarrassingly pathetic. An uncommonly kind and attractive man had been nice to me, in aprofessional capacity, and my imagination had ramped up to maximum.
But then again… I wasn’t a total romantic novice. Every other time I’d seen that look in a man’s eyes he’d been about to kiss me.
Sam might have been about to kiss me.
As I twisted myself up in my duvet one night, hot and bothered and increasingly irritated about the whole situation, I concluded that Sam owed me a kiss.
And if the opportunity ever happened again, even if he was only interested in a one-time, casual thing, I was going to make sure I was ready for it.
I had two items left on the Dream List, and more than enough motivation to get cracking.
Only, then came a terrified knock on my kitchen door and suddenly Dream Lists and uncollected kisses were roughly shoved to the side by real life.
19
I’d spent most of the Saturday after the camping trip with Joan. Leanne had picked up an old oven going free on the Bigley Facebook group, so they were now able to cook, but I’d still been coming up with excuses to send a meal round as often as possible. Leanne knew what I was up to, but she swallowed her pride for her daughter’s sake. They also made use of my shower two or three times a week. I had suggested that if they walked over to mine carrying a towel and a bottle of shampoo, Ebenezer might erect an outdoor shower in the garden, but Leanne replied curtly that she still had some pride left. Her stooped shoulders and air of exhaustion suggested that if she did, it was the tiniest shred.
After a ramble in the woods and a subsequent dog bath, thanks to Nesbit finding a swampy pool to investigate, I’d snuck a load of Joan’s laundry into my washer and helped her do a quick tidy and clean of New Cottage.
She’d been reluctant to talk about much beyond Nesbit and her newfound obsession for Terry Pratchett novels, which she fed using my adult library card when Irene was distracted elsewhere – something that was happening more and more, thanks to the rather inexplicable popularity of the Library Lady.
By mid-afternoon I’d left her to it, planning on catching up on some of my own to-do list, and I was upstairs changing my beautiful new duvet cover when I heard the knock. Even from that distance I could sense the urgency .
Dropping the bedding, I half ran, half tumbled down the stairs and raced into the kitchen, flinging open the door to find Joan, her tear-streaked face the colour of cold ashes.
‘Mum!’
Forgoing the seconds required to put on a pair of shoes, I sprinted across to New Cottage, praying that this was an emergency where speed could make a difference, rather than a tragedy where it was too late for swift action.
I found her on the bedroom floor.
For a heart-splintering moment, I thought she was dead.
Shoving aside the swirling horror, I knelt down in the mess of crumpled clothes and tried to remember the emergency first aid training I’d undertaken when Mum first fell ill.
Leaning in close to find out if she was breathing, I saw Joan appear at the bedroom door.
‘Have you called an ambulance?’
She gave her head a frantic shake.
‘Okay, that’s fine. But can you call 999 and ask for an ambulance while I check if Mum’s all right?’
Mum was clearly not all right. She was breathing, just, but when I rolled her into the recovery position it felt like manoeuvring a bag of sand. I couldn’t see anything to suggest she was injured, but while Joan squeaked her answers to the emergency operator, I didn’t feel a twitch or hear the tiniest murmur to give me hope that this was anything but deadly serious.
‘Come on, Leanne, stay with us,’ I muttered, leaning close as I wiped the hair off her clammy forehead and straightened her T-shirt, my fear ramping up as I felt the bones jutting through her scant flesh.
From what I had managed to take in of Joan’s conversation, Leanne had come home early from work because she’d not been well. I knew how bad she must have felt to abandon a shift.
The woman on the end of the phone asked Joan if her mum was on any medication.
‘Just headache tablets.’ Joan looked at me for reassurance. I scanned the room but found no evidence of anything but a life drowning in wretched chaos.
* * *
I’d been twenty-one, the first time I spent the night huddled in a plastic hospital chair, waiting to hear what had happened to my mother. Aunty Irene had sat beside me, holding my hand and passing me tissues and Steph had messaged me faithfully throughout those endless, anxious hours.
