The Marriage K.L. Slater (classic romance novels TXT) 📖

thought to my feelings for her. I felt surprised at the depth of the hollowness in my chest.

If I didn’t admit that something good had come out of Coral’s demise, I’d be lying to myself. Her threat of keeping Ellis away from me, the influence of those do-gooders at school who had been trying to convince her it was the right thing to do. All the worry of that had evaporated with her death. Still, it was an enormous price to pay and my heart cracked when I thought about how on earth Ellis was going to recover from this crushing double blow. His dad, and now his mum, gone forever.

Whoever was responsible for this had to pay.

When we first got into the car, Tom was quiet and distracted. I would make sure the three of us were happy as a new family. Once Tom had come clean about why he’d lied about going back to the gym.

I would talk to Ellis at a point in the future when things weren’t quite as raw, persuade him to give Tom a chance. He’d have more counselling sessions and I’d definitely take him out of Mansfield Academy now I knew how unsupportive they’d been of my new situation. It would do him good to start afresh somewhere else.

I parked up outside Coral’s small house and we walked around the back. I unlocked the kitchen door and we went inside. It was a small, tidy room with white units and a black and white ceramic-tiled floor.

‘I’ll start with Ellis’s bedroom,’ I said, heading for the stairs. ‘I’ll put his clothes on the bed and you can take them to the car.’

Tom followed me upstairs and together we emptied out Ellis’s wardrobe. I piled his underwear, T-shirts and jumpers on the bed. Fortunately, Coral was a bit of a clean freak, always organising her drawers and cupboards.

‘They keep shoes under the stairs,’ I told Tom, standing up straight and wincing as I rubbed at the bottom of my back. ‘I’ll sort those out in a minute, but you can start taking all this out to the car.’

Tom scooped up a big armful of hangers, grimacing when he caught his sore hand, before dutifully taking them downstairs.

When he returned, he looked doubtfully at the large pile still left. ‘Maybe we should have hired a small van,’ he said. ‘The back seat of the Merc is almost full.’

‘I’m sure we’ll manage.’ I gathered up a heap of clothing and followed him down. ‘We’ll bundle them in.’

Tom deposited his pile into the car and went back into the house. A few minutes later, I followed him back upstairs and saw he was in Coral’s bedroom.

‘What are you doing in here?’ I asked, a strange feeling coming over me as he visibly jumped.

‘I’m checking to see if there’s any stuff to go from this room,’ he said easily.

I glanced down at the mess of paperwork in front of him on the floor.

‘Did you do that?’

‘No. It was like that already,’ he said without looking at me.

I bent down and started to sort through it. It was only old bills, a tenancy agreement for the house, stuff like that, and I waved him away. ‘It’s fine. You carry on taking Ellis’s stuff down to the car. I’ll sort this out.’

I happened to look up as Tom’s hand slid furtively into his pocket. ‘What have you got there?’

‘What?’

‘Did you put something in your pocket?’

He looked at me as if he didn’t know what I was talking about, but his face had turned pale, two little rosy spots blooming on his cheeks.

‘Let me see.’

‘See what? I’m not a bloody kid, Bridget, leave it out!’

‘I saw you put your hand in your pocket, as if you’d taken something.’ I had to know.

‘Christ! Here, this is all I have. Is that OK?’ He pulled out his phone and held it up. ‘You’re paranoid.’

‘Sorry. I … I’m a bit nervy, that’s all. Let’s get out of here before the police call round.’

Fifteen minutes later, we were back in the car and on our way home. I had Ellis’s clothes. It was done.

I looked over at Tom and reached for his hand. He didn’t squeeze back, but stared straight ahead like his mind was elsewhere.

‘Everything OK?’ I wished I hadn’t been quite so snappy with him now.

‘Yeah, everything’s fine,’ he replied, but his expression said something different. I hadn’t seen him like this before. It felt like he’d frozen me out.

Forty-Seven Audrey

Audrey parked down the road and checked to see the coast was clear before getting out of the car. When she’d left the shop, she’d driven out of town and parked up by the water to think things through. After much deliberation, she’d made a call and then headed here.

Soon, she would have to explain to Jill everything that had happened. She hoped that their bond, although not as unbreakable as it used to be, would see them through, and that Jill would find it in her heart to forgive her.

She and Jill had been friends for so long, it was difficult to remember what life had been like before she knew her. Although they had always been there for each other, their relationship had changed over the years, as relationships often did. They had grown a little further apart, saw each other less outside work.

Ten years ago, when Tom first went to prison, Jill had suffered terribly. Being a naturally quite insular person, she had seemed to fade quickly until she was a mere shell of her former self. Audrey had done her best to offer support, had tried repeatedly to get Jill to take some interest in life again, but in the end, she’d had to give up because it was sapping her own energy.

She’d tried to make Jill see that even though Tom had been incarcerated for a lengthy sentence, it might have been so much worse.

‘He wasn’t the one who died,’ she’d told her for months after