Pulling herself from the pillow, Emily took a second to answer. ‘Yes,’ she murmured, the frenetic beating of her heart abating a little as she realised she was inside her home, safe in her bed.
‘Sure?’ he asked her, easing her to him and gently stroking her hair; soothing her as he would once have done their daughter. Millie would often wake crying in the night as a child. Jake had been the only one who could console her. ‘You’ve been dreaming a lot over the last few days. You’re hot, too.’ He felt her forehead. ‘Extremely.’
‘I’m fine, honestly.’ Settling into his embrace, she nodded into his shoulder. She was hot. Burning up. She hadn’t felt well all week. She hoped she wasn’t coming down with something. She was sleeping fitfully, struggling to get to sleep or waking early. And then there were the nightmares. The one she’d just had was so vivid. She wouldn’t easily forget it. She thought of the text she’d received last week. Thinking of you both on your special day, it had said. She had dismissed it as a wrong number. Sent so close to her and Kara’s birthday, though, her thoughts had been on her sister as she drifted off.
It was no wonder Kara haunted her dreams. Emily pictured her twin, identical, yet not. On the inside, they were two completely separate entities. Kara had always been their parents’ favourite, the quieter, prettier, cleverer one, studious and obedient. She’d been destined for Oxford, studying Classics and English. She’d worked hard to please their parents. Emily had decided on an art degree, unleashing her creativity as an antidote to her frustration that she couldn’t possibly compete with her sister. She’d been seen as the wild one, the noisy, rebellious one her parents would have to keep an eye on. It had been Emily who had started smoking and drinking first. She who’d started dating.
The local bad boy had been two years older than her, good-looking, cocky on his Yamaha motorbike. Despite his reputation – or perhaps because of it, to spite her parents for loving her less – Emily had been determined to go out with him. She was hopelessly in love with him and imagined she would be the one to tame him. She’d lived for the days when she would hang out with him, smoke weed on the canal bank, ride pillion into Birmingham, where they would go clubbing together. He’d said he loved her wild side, encouraged her to be who she was, abandoned and carefree, not constrained by conformity. The girl who would rise to the challenge when he dared her, taking what wasn’t hers to fund his habit, terrified he would dump her if she didn’t. How naïve she’d been. How ashamed when she’d woken up to the fact that she’d been so easily manipulated.
She’d been consumed with rage the night she’d found him in bed with Kara, unforgivably vile to her sister. Her heart twisted painfully as she pictured Kara’s stricken face, the mascara she rarely wore wending black tracks down her cheeks, her lipstick smeared sideways. ‘Slag!’ Emily had hissed, throwing her clothes after her as she’d screamed at her to get out of her life. ‘He doesn’t love you. He laughs at you,’ she’d seethed, as Kara backed tearfully along the landing. ‘We both do, little Miss Goody Two-Shoes with her nose always stuck in a book. He loves me!’
She’d been deluded. He hadn’t loved either of them. Kara had loved him, though, she’d come to realise, as painfully as she had herself. She hadn’t known how deeply until she’d read the diary her sister constantly scribbled in. He’d been the first boy she’d had sex with. And the last.
‘Care to share?’ Jake jarred her from her thoughts, his mouth curving into a reassuring smile as she looked up at him.
Emily nestled back into him. ‘I would, but I can’t remember half of it,’ she said, glossing over the dream, though it had stirred up in her the disturbing memory of how Jake had been intimate with another woman, years ago now, when they’d only been going out a few months. At the time she’d withdrawn from him, pushed him away because of her emotional vulnerability. He’d felt rejected, though he swore that he hadn’t slept with the woman, that it hadn’t gone that far. She’d believed him and had felt safe with him since. Secure in his embrace at night, listening to the reassuring thrum of his heartbeat, as if the world and all the bad things in it couldn’t touch them.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, looking up at him. She’d obviously woken him.
‘Fine. A bit tired.’ He gave her another reassuring smile. He had a nice smile, warm and genuine; it always reached his eyes, making them more sparkling blue than ocean green. They grew darker when he was troubled, as they had been in those dreadful weeks leading up to the day she’d seen him with the woman. She hated that she hadn’t been able to be honest about why she’d drawn away from him. She’d known deep down that she could trust him with her emotions. A man who’d been too shy to ask her out, visiting the café where she’d worked umpteen times on the pretext of studying before he’d plucked up the courage; who’d also had to visibly find the courage to confide in her the terrible tragedy in his own life. That tragedy had made him everything she felt he was, kind and sensitive, but she herself felt so naïve and responsible for what had happened to her. She wished to this day she had told him instead of carrying it around like a stone, living in fear that it would surface.
‘Shoot! Also late, unfortunately,’ he added, his gaze flicking past her towards her alarm clock. ‘I need to be gone. I have that pharmaceutical rep coming before my first patient.’ Pressing a hurried kiss to her forehead, he pulled himself off the bed.
Hell. She’d forgotten about that. Throwing back the duvet, she scrambled out after him and, feeling immediately woozy, placed a hand on the dressing table to steady herself. She clearly was coming down with something. Her mind had been like wet cotton wool lately. She must have forgotten to set her alarm. After an emergency call-out last night, Jake had obviously done the same. He would be exhausted. But now that his father had cut back to two surgeries a week, he had to go in, regardless of how tired he was. As did she. The practice wouldn’t run without them.
Grabbing her dressing gown from the door, while Jake headed fast for the en suite, she listened for sounds of the kids as she pushed her arms into it. They were up, she gathered, judging by Ben’s exasperated tones drifting from the hall. Millie, whom Ben dropped off at school on his way to uni, was undoubtedly keeping him waiting.
Turning to the wardrobe, Emily grabbed the first clothes that came to hand, dumped them on the bed and then headed quickly downstairs. Reaching the hall, she bypassed Millie, who was in front of the hall mirror, layering on the mascara, attempting to look half awake after a heavy night studying at her friend Anna’s house. It had definitely been a heavy night, but Emily suspected it wasn’t studying her daughter had been hard at. Millie’s make-up had been less than immaculate when she’d eventually arrived home, her eyes slightly unfocused. Emily guessed she’d been drinking, which Millie had denied, naturally. The worrying question was where? With her own teenage rebellion in mind, Emily was treading carefully. She didn’t want to set ground rules her daughter would immediately challenge, but she didn’t like the idea of her sneaking off to pubs miles away, meaning she might be at risk if she had to find her way home alone.