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I couldn’t help hating her a little. Why couldn’t she believe in him? Why did she always have to jump to the worst conclusion?
He was going to come back to London and pick up on her doubt, I could tell. I’d seen the way he’d reacted when she challenged him about all the new things in his flat. How would he feel if she started questioning him over something like this?
I was going to lose him and it would all be her fault.
I was reading To Kill A Mockingbird, had just got to the bit where Judge Taylor talks about people seeing what they look for.
Wasn’t that exactly what my mother was doing? Seeing the bad in Matty all the time because that’s what she was looking for?
‘What’s wrong with you?’ I demanded, gusting into the living room like Storm Beryl which had ruined hundreds of lives the year before. ‘Why do you have to ruin the one good thing that’s ever happened to us?’
‘You want to listen to that daughter of yours, Amelia R,’ Linda said.
There’s a twisted pleasure in nursing resentment. Wiping up the spilled oregano, I sent my mother sidelong glances hoping she’d notice I was upset and ask what was wrong, only to feel doubly resentful when she didn’t. A bit like that day when Matty had ignored me when I’d wanted to watch Jim’ll Fix It.
A rather dull storyline on the radio about a calf being born was interrupted by a news flash. My mother turned the volume up.
You’ll think I’m remembering it wrong, but a shudder passed through me. A prickling sensation, a hundred needle points on my neck. Déjà vu. Though how could I have possibly known what was coming?
Police believe the Shadow may be operating in Ireland too. . .
My mother whispered something.
‘What?’ I think she said. But it could just as easily have been, ‘Why?’
The body of an eight-year-old girl last seen talking to a well-dressed man claiming to be looking for his lost dog has been discovered near the river in Brownstone, County Wicklow.
My mother’s face drained white. The pan crashed to the floor, red sauce splashing over the wall. Like blood spatter.
