All the Little Things Sarah Lawton (red white royal blue TXT) 📖

can’t imagine she’ll be awake for much longer. He points to the back of the garden, then goes and climbs into the hammock. He’s a lot better at it than Mum is – she always falls out the other side at least twice. I watch it swinging gently for a minute, nursing the small excitement inside, before switching off the light and climbing into bed. I hear Mum coming up the stairs and the door of my room swings open quietly – I oil it so it doesn’t creak – and she shuffles in. I force myself to relax and breathe deeply and not react when she reaches out and smoothes my hair, her hitching wine breath swarming all over me. Eventually she shuffles back out and stumbles around the bathroom and into her own bedroom.

When she finally goes to sleep – goes quiet, at least – I creep out of the house. I skip the second-to-bottom step that creaks and walk the edge of the hallway for the same reason. It’s exhilarating after the depression of the day, sneaking out. He must like me. He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t really like me. He’d avoid me, people always avoid grieving people. Misery is catching, it seeps everywhere, sticks to everything, makes it dull.

The hammock is swinging slightly and the ropes are rasping on the branches. I can make it out because the moon is so bright tonight, it catches the shapes of the garden, plays tricks with them. I run to the hammock before I freak out completely, even though I know perfectly well there isn’t anything there except us, shadows and heat.

Alex smiles up at me as I reach him, his face silver.

‘I think there’s room for a little one.’ He reaches up and steadies me as I clamber in next to him. There’s not a lot of room but I’m not going to complain about being pressed up against him, half on top of him. My body fits perfectly along his, my shoulder under his, my head nestled into his neck. I’ve never felt comfortable being near anyone, but this is different, somehow, I can cope with this. Maybe because I want to do this. After the endlessly horrible, miserable day, to finish it here, with Alex, looking at the stars, it’s perfect. He takes my hand in his, threads our fingers together. They look like pearls in the moonlight.

Rachel

Vivian decided to go into school the day after Tristan’s accident, though I wanted to keep her at home. I think she’d had enough of my concern. The shock of the accident seeped into me, it froze my bones. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Maureen must be feeling. What if it had been Vivian, in that car? I saw her, over and over, crushed, bleeding. I couldn’t stop. I kept picking at those images, deliberately hurting myself with them.

I knew from sorry experience that Tristan’s family had suffered a horrible trauma losing someone so close to them, and that it was going to change everything for them for ever. I’ve always known that life is cruel, and fragile. I was seven years old when my dad went out to meet friends one night and never came back. I was cross, sulking he was going out without me and leaving me and Mum by ourselves, and I refused to say goodbye or give him a kiss, and then he never came back. I remember the policemen on the doorstep, deep voices. Mum slowly crumpling to the floor as they asked her if they could come in. I was sitting on the stairs, looking out through the door at the lashing rain, neon light on puddles hurting my eyes. He’d been hit by a speeding car on a crossing in town. I had delayed him. I had kicked off, made him late, sulked, cried. If I had just let him go, he wouldn’t have been there, at that moment, on that road. I had killed him as surely as the car had.

It’s taken me most of my life to try and forgive myself for ruining those last moments I had with him, to try and stop blaming myself for the horrific accident. I know my mum never blamed me, but it’s always there, that lumpen guilt, that pain. Sometimes I think that’s why I stayed with Ciaran for so long, that I thought I deserved everything I was getting, that I was being justly punished. I still don’t think I’m capable of having normal relationships with people. Our therapist in London, the one who recommended a fresh start, I knew she thought it was all my fault, what happened with Vivian. That I had neglected her somehow. I just didn’t want to smother her like I had been smothered, in a cage made of my mother’s fear of losing me like she had lost my father. My disinterest in the minutiae of my daughter’s life had allowed what happened to happen – I always thought it was more my fault than hers.

I was quite literally saved from that spiral of dark thoughts by the bell. Well, the tone on my phone, which trilled and told me that someone was thinking about me. Alex, as it turned out, wanting another lesson, that day if I could manage it. If I was okay. I wasn’t in a good place, but I knew company would force me back to a safer one. It always did. I wondered if he knew that, sensed that I was vulnerable. Maybe. It was enough to get me up, washed, dressed, anyway.

‘Rachel?’ He stood in the doorway of my studio, taller again than I remembered every time I saw him. His hair was still damp from his shower and it curled slightly, flopping into his eyes. I had to resist walking up to him and brushing it away. He was puppy-like in his enthusiasm to get started again on his foxes; he’d sketched out