Emily opened her mouth to protest, but then her mother reached for the plastic water jug on the table next to her and hurled it at Emily’s head. She didn’t duck fast enough, and it hit her cheek as water splattered over her hair and face. Within seconds the door was unlocked and a nurse bustled in.
“I’m sorry, Naomi, but we can’t have that kind of behaviour here.”
“Make her leave,” Naomi demanded. “Make her leave!”
The nurse gave Emily an apologetic look and, tucking her wet hair behind her ears, Emily headed for the door.
“I’m going,” she said quietly. “I’ll see you again, Mum—”
“No, you won’t. I don’t want you here.”
Pressure made Emily’s chest feel tight and heavy and she just nodded and left the room. What else could she do? She’d been here before, had faced her mother’s incandescent wrath. The nurse would sedate her, and then she’d wake up hopefully calmer, and eventually she’d want to see Emily again. And when she did, Emily would be there. She had to be.
“Why don’t you ring tomorrow?” the nurse suggested after she’d left Naomi. “See how she is? Visits are important.” She gave a quick, sympathetic smile. “I know they’re hard.”
“Yes, I’ll ring.”
Emily ducked into a bathroom to try to repair the worst of the wet, but her hair was sopping on one side and there wasn’t much she could do about it. It didn’t matter, anyway.
She took a deep breath, willing the force of her emotion back, always back. She knew her mum didn’t mean the things she said. It was the mental illness talking. It was something she’d had to repeat to herself many times since she was seven, when a nurse had said it kindly to her. It was meant to help, but in the moment it didn’t, at least not much.
As Emily was buzzed out of the ward, she realised it wasn’t even eleven o’clock. She could be back at her desk a little after noon, working on the latest plans for the fundraiser, which included booking with a carnival company that provided high-brow arcade amusements. Another steadying breath, and she forced herself to focus. Onwards.
Then she saw Owen.
He rose from his chair, coming towards her with a kindly smile, forehead crinkled, eyebrows drawn together. “Emily…”
She stared at him stupidly. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to wait.”
And yet she’d told him to go. Emily just stared at him and Owen frowned, looking uncharacteristically and rather endearingly uncertain. “Is that…is that okay?”
“Yes.” The single word wobbled and then, to her horror, Emily felt her face start to crumple. Before she could haul it all back, Owen’s arms were around her and she was, amazingly, absurdly, sobbing into the steady warmth of his shoulder.
She didn’t do stuff like this. And yet somehow she was, and even more bizarrely, it felt good. It was what she’d needed, the pressure valve on her emotions blown right off, everything she’d held so closely to herself scattered to the winds.
Owen held her in his arms and patted her back and let her cry, all the while murmuring things she couldn’t understand—she had a feeling he was speaking Welsh—but sounded lovely and soothing anyway.
And then, after what could have been thirty seconds or five minutes, Emily came to and stiffened in his arms. She’d been making a spectacle of herself. There was snot on Owen’s shirt. And she had to look a frightful mess.
She raised her head from his shoulder and then stepped out of his arms. He let her go, his forehead still crinkled as he watched her uncertainly. “Emily…”
“Let’s go. I want to go.” She spoke abruptly, every instinct for self-preservation kicking in hard and fast. “I want to go right now.”
“All right.” Easy as always, Owen grabbed his jacket and then they headed outside, back to the van, while Emily wiped her wet cheeks and tried desperately to reassemble the shattered pieces of herself.
“I’m sorry about that,” she managed once they were in the van.
“You don’t have to be sorry. You’re going through something very tough.” A pause where she struggled with how to respond. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
The gentleness in Owen’s voice threatened to undo her all over again. She hadn’t told anyone about “it” in nineteen years. Her mother’s illness was the big, hulking secret she carried around always, lugging behind her, letting it control every choice she made. Whether it was kindly teachers, concerned neighbours, fledgling friends…nobody got to know.
Because if they did, bad things might happen. That was what Emily had believed as a child—she’d be taken away from her mummy, or her mummy would be put in a bad place. We’re all right, aren’t we, darling? We’ll always be all right as long as we have each other.
Except when they didn’t have each other, because her mum, her lovely mum, was in the middle of a psychotic episode, and Emily had to deal with it all alone.
Emily wiped her cheeks again; she realised she was still crying, tears silently slipping down her face as if they had a will of their own. Perhaps they did.
“I don’t know if I can,” she said.
“Try.” Owen smiled at her, his face so full of gentleness Emily let out a choked noise that sounded far too close to a sob.
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” He reached across with one work-roughened hand and with the pad of his thumb he wiped a tear from her cheek. “I care about you, Emily David.”
Her heart contracted and expanded all at once. Everything felt impossible, so she just shook her head. Owen didn’t seem bothered by that.
He dropped his hand from her cheek and started the van. “We’d better get going before I get a ticket. You talk when you’re ready.”
Which would be never, and yet some desperate part of her wanted to talk. Wanted to tell someone
