Free Another Mother's Life by Rowan Coleman Page A

looking at the window, the curtain a little askew.

    “Have you had the window open?” she asked Catherine.

    “Sorry,” Catherine said.

    “No windows open at night. Any madman could get in.”

    Her mother shut the door behind her, snapping the light switch off as she went. Catherine remembered lying back in her bed, stretching from the ends of her fingers to the tips of her toes, knowing that at last she had something to dream about.

    Things would have been so different, Catherine thought as she finished her glass of wine, if Marc just hadn’t turned up the next day.

    She had told her mother she was going to study at the library, taking a big net bag of books and several pens to prove it.

    Catherine remembered she deliberately walked along the canal toward the park in a bid to avoid meeting anyone she might know, including Alison, on High Street. The spot in the park where Marc had found her was out of the way, beyond the swings and climbing frame, under the canal bridge toward the back of the field where the park met the railway embankment and the grass was long. Catherine felt confident that once she was there she would not be spotted by Alison, her mother, or anyone.

    Which was reassuring, because she hadn’t expected Marc tobe there at all. She’d prepared herself for disappointment, relieved that she hadn’t told Alison about him.

    But as she made her way under the bridge she could see that Marc was already there waiting for her, leaning against the trunk of the tree they had met under, the August sun painting his bare chest with patches of gold as it danced through the tree’s canopy.

    Catherine stopped in her tracks and looked at him. She was seventeen, the most inexperienced girl in her class, if not the whole school. She was thin and flat-chested, with long, bony fingers and feet. What did Marc want with her? Because he could not want her like that . He couldn’t look at her the way other boys looked at Alison and actually want her. Besides, he wasn’t a mere boy. He was a man, more than three years older than her. His waiting there under the tree didn’t make any kind of sense.

    Instinctively Catherine knew that now was the time she should turn back, it was her chance to heed the warning he had given her yesterday and leave. But even as in her mind’s eye she was rotating on her heel and scurrying away to the shelter of the library, her treacherous body carried her right to his side.

    “I saw you watching me,” he said, smiling up at her, blinking against the bright sunlight. “Having second thoughts?”

    “No,” Catherine said. He reached out, catching her hand, and pulled her down onto the grass. “It’s just, I look at you and I … I don’t know what you want with me.”

    Marc laughed. “Whatever it is, it must be something pretty strong, because after we said good-bye yesterday I swore blind to myself I wasn’t coming here today. But here I am. And now that you’re here I feel happy. I hardly ever feel happy. I brought you something.” Easing himself up, Marc reached into his back pocket and produced a creased and dog-eared postcard. He handed it to her. “You were right, it is meant to be that character you said andI think that’s the name of the artist you told me. It’s not much of a gift, but I thought you’d like it.”

    For a moment Catherine gazed down at the painting of Elizabeth Siddall floating in water, wearing a silver embroidered dress, her body wreathed in flowers as she portrayed the doomed Ophelia, and she smiled. “Thank you,” she said, impossibly touched by the worn reproduction.

    “Read the back,” Marc urged her.

    Holding her breath, Catherine turned the card over. Written on the back in large and loose handwriting were the words “To Catherine, more beautiful than Ophelia.”

    The two of them watched each other and the anticipation that he might kiss her again made Catherine’s insides burn.

    “So what do you want to do today?”