They drove through the London streets full of traffic, the sky heavy and grey above. It was almost mid-April but it still felt chilly and unforgiving outside, spring a fragile hope more than a reality.
Emily watched the streets blur by as exhaustion crashed over her. She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes, thinking she could fall asleep right there.
And perhaps she did, lulled by the movement of the van, the warmth from the heater, because her eyes fluttered open and she jerked upright, to see they were now on the motorway, heading back towards Wychwood. She glanced at Owen, who smiled at her. Again. He was full of smiles, this man.
“You snore,” he said, and Emily let out another choked noise, this one closer to a laugh.
“I don’t.”
“Just a little snuffle. Quite cute, actually. Like a kitten.”
A kitten. “Oh no,” she said, and Owen raised his eyebrows in inquiry. “I have a kitten. I hope he—or she—will be all right. I texted Alice last night…” She reached for her phone, only to remember the battery was dead. “I did text her…”
“I’m sure it will be fine. Cats are amazingly self-reliant creatures. I didn’t peg you as a cat person, though.”
“I’m not. It’s just this kitten was abandoned in my garden by its mmm—mother…” She trailed off, near tears again, and Owen didn’t reply. Emily drew a clogged breath. “I’m a mess,” she said miserably, and he reached over and placed one hand on her knee, a comforting touch she realised she craved.
“We all are.”
“Are you?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
Except he didn’t seem like a mess, and yet somehow she believed him. She blinked rapidly, drew another clogged breath. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you.”
Chapter Twelve
Owen waited, holding on to his smile, as Emily took another deep breath and readied herself to say—what? He didn’t know exactly, only that he needed to listen. That he needed to seem steady and safe and reassuring, and not freaked out like he actually was.
Because he’d been here before, and it hadn’t worked. Someone had trusted him with their pain and heartache and the mess of their lives, and he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing. His mother. His father. His sisters. Just about everybody he cared about, really.
Perhaps that was, at least in part, why he was here now, why this mattered so much to him. Why Emily did. Because here was another broken person, another mess, and maybe, finally, he could help.
Maybe he couldn’t.
Either way he was here and he was going to listen, because he cared about Emily.
“I don’t actually know where to start,” she confessed in a shaky voice.
“How about when you realised your mum was ill?” Owen suggested gently.
“I don’t actually know when that was. I don’t think I can point to a single moment when I realised that this—my mum, my life—wasn’t normal.” She paused, her head turned towards the window, her gaze pensive. Owen stayed silent, knowing he just needed to let her speak. “I must have at some point, though, because I know that I learned to—to hide it.”
“Hide it?” he prompted after a few minutes had slipped by without her saying anything more.
“My parents divorced when I was seven. There was a custody battle that my father lost. Well, he walked away from it, basically. He wasn’t willing to have a big fight about it, which he said for my sake. And it probably was… Courts usually side with mothers, anyway.”
Even mentally ill ones? Owen waited for more.
“When he left, that was, I think, when life lost all sense of normality. I never knew what was going to happen next. What mood my mother would be in, what…what she might be capable of.”
Owen’s hands tightened on the wheel. That didn’t sound good at all.
“And yet sometimes she was so much fun. Imagine having a mum who wakes you up at midnight to make ice cream sundaes. Or takes you out of school to go to the zoo, just because. Or hugs you and tells you she loves you more than anything, and you really do believe her?” Emily gave him a trembling, heart-breaking smile that threatened to slide off her face. “My mum did all those things and more.”
“But the other times?” Owen asked after a moment.
“She was—is—bipolar. Severely bipolar, with psychotic episodes.” She let out a shuddering breath. “I know that’s a mouthful.”
It was a hell of a lot more than that. Owen pictured a seven-year-old Emily dealing with that on her own, and something in him wanted to rage.
“But she was treated for it?” he asked.
“Not for a long time. She didn’t want to be treated. She loved the highs, and sometimes they lasted a long time. And I think, when I was a little, maybe it wasn’t so bad. At least…my dad used to say that’s just how Mum was. Spirited. Emotional.” She let out a shuddery sort of sigh. “I suppose we didn’t have an awareness of mental health twenty years ago that we do now, and the truth is, she could be a lot of fun. She had all this energy…”
Even so. Owen stared straight ahead, his mouth set in a grim line. Hearing this was even harder than he’d expected. How could a father let his seven-year-old daughter deal with that on her own? “How long did that go on?” he asked after a moment. Emily shrugged.
“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes it’s all a blur in my mind. After the divorce, we moved a lot. I went to different schools. I became very good at pretending things were normal, which I suppose means I must have known they weren’t, but it’s hard to remember how I really was at the time, instead of looking back as an adult. At some point I must have realised—and I don’t know when—that I had to shield
