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‘Jake, there’s no need to do that now,’ Annabelle said. ‘It won’t take long to pack in the morning. Kate says we don’t have to be out of the house until midday.’
‘I’m leaving now,’ Jake announced.
‘Excuse me?’ Annabelle blinked.
‘You heard,’ he replied rudely. ‘I’m leaving with Dad and you can’t stop me. I suppose you can come with us if you want. Izzie, too,’ he added in a grudging tone.
Wow, she hadn’t seen that coming.
She was about to say that Jake wasn’t going anywhere without his passport, which was safely back in Brighton, but she thought it best not to shove a stick in a hornets’ nest. Jake was wound up like a top already, and there was no point making it worse. She may as well let him carry on packing, because he’d have to do it in the morning anyway.
She was about to leave him to it, when she remembered what she wanted to speak to him about. ‘Jake, I know you told dad where we were staying, but why didn’t you just wait until we got back to Brighton?’
Jake’s jaw jutted out. ‘You know,’ he said.
‘What do I know?’
‘You think I’m stupid. You think that just because I’m a kid, that I don’t know what’s going on. Well, I do, so there. I saw you.’
‘Excuse me, Auntie Annabelle, I think I’m going to watch TV,’ Sam said, slipping out of bed and squeezing past her. The poor boy; what a disagreeable end to his holiday. She’d apologise to Kate and Brett later, the others, too. But first she had her son to deal with.
Annabelle didn’t want to ask, but she had to. ‘Saw me?’
‘You and Ron. The other night.’ Jake shook his head in disgust.
Annabelle was astounded. She thought they’d been quite discreet. She’d made especially sure that Jake and Izzie were sound asleep before she slipped into Ron’s room, and even then she hadn’t stayed long, and she’d certainly not spent the night with him although she would dearly have loved to.
Before she could question Jake further, he said, ‘You thought you were so clever, going out in the middle of the night, but I saw you.
Eh? ‘Jake, when was this?’
‘The day I peed on Sam.’ Her son looked furtive and she guessed the reason. That was the night she’d asked Ron to take her stargazing, the night she’d more or less thrown herself at him, the night he’d pushed her away and told her they couldn’t have a relationship.
Jake’s voice hardened. ‘The day you wouldn’t let me speak to Dad,’ he reminded her.
Annabelle’s blood turned to ice in her veins – the only way Jake could have seen the kiss, was if he had followed them. They’d been in the dunes, possibly a mile away from the house, although she wasn’t quite sure of the distance, so that must have meant that Jake had been outside,on his own, in the middle of the night, when she’d thought he was safely tucked up in bed, fast asleep.
‘Did you follow me?’ she demanded.
He refused to look at her.
‘You do know how dangerous that is, right?’ Retrospective fear clawed at her. Dear God, what if something had happened to him? What if he’d fallen, or someone nefarious had seen him, or— it didn’t bear thinking about. She would have gone back to bed totally oblivious that her son was hurt, or in danger, or worse.
‘Jake!’ The fear was suddenly overtaken by anger. ‘You must promise me you’ll never ever do anything like that again.Anythingcould have happened.’
‘Yeah, so I saw,’ was his sullen and sarcastic reply.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said. ‘I was upset and—’
Jake interrupted her. ‘So was I! You didn’t let me speak to Dad!’
‘That’s no excuse to sneak out in the middle of the night.’
‘Youdid.’
‘I’m a grown-up. And I was with Ron.’
‘Yeah, I know, Isaw.’ His voice was full of scorn, and Annabelle was suddenly very glad indeed, that Ron had refused her advances.
