Free Starting Over by Sue Moorcroft Page A

up.
    Maybe. Perhaps Simeon had cursed like that when Tess’s knee found its mark ...? But she thought not.
    Anyway, it paled into insignificance beside the latest humiliation. She shuddered and began to sketch Nigel balancing an entire chicken over a barbecue. A week ago, suffering – really suffering – from a flooding, debilitating period, she’d rung Angel with an SOS to ransack Crowther’s shop for sanitary pads, knowing not to trust her own watery legs to walk that far. When she felt so appallingly drained she knew how easily she passed out. Some months were like this, when all she could do was slump in bed and wait for it to be over.
    But, in a dire development, instead of Angel, he’d run up the stairs and swung into her bedroom like an intimate girlfriend. ‘Angel has a problem with a pukey Jenna so I’m ... Christ, you look like crap.’
    Oh, God-God, he’d gone into the shop and bought them for her ! And, by his frown, hadn’t particularly enjoyed the experience. Eyes down, what blood she had left staining her cheeks, muttering, ‘Oh God, oh God,’ she snatched the mortifying carrier bag ungratefully, paused on the bedside, plait dangling, to let her ears stop ringing, shuffled off to the bathroom in her Wee Willie Winkie nightshirt. Felt faint. Sick.
    Would’ve have stayed closeted forever if she’d realised; realised that when she returned Ratty would’ve stripped the bed of, to her horror, bloodstained sheets.
    ‘You need a clean nightie,’ he suggested, without looking at her.
    Oh no-o-o! She hid her eyes with both hands. ‘Oh, please! Don’t ! Just leave me to die! I’ll cope; you can’t do this, I can’t bear it!’
    As he ignored her outburst and went to search the landing cupboard for fresh bedclothes, she’d no choice but to shuffle back to the bathroom to change. He glanced up when she returned. ‘How do you bleed like this without dying?’ Bed remade, efficient and matter-of-fact, he gathered up the soiled linen. Reached for the nightclothes from Tess, who sat with her head in her hands, in the chair.
    This was the worst day of her life, worse than when Olly sent his e-mail. She was going to melt away from mortification. ‘Go away!’ she begged, voice muffled. ‘You can’t do my gory washing.’
    ‘Shut up,’ he suggested, fairly kindly. Following her very reluctant instructions he ran cold water in the bath, added a heap of salt and dumped everything in to soak. She slid under the fresh bedclothes, face averted. He fetched her a cup of tea.
    ‘Thanks,’ she managed, eyes determinedly closed. Never again, this would never happen again. Never. In future she’d stockpile sanitary towels in towers. Honeybun Cottage would become the official European tampon mountain. Oh, the indignity!
    He perched familiarly on the bed, tugging her plait. ‘Do I call a doctor?’
    She shook her head. ‘Another day or so and I’ll get over it.’
    ‘Sure?’
    ‘Go away !’
    ‘Stop it! What else can I get you? C’mon, sit up, drink.’
    Grudgingly, she dragged herself up against the headboard aware of wearing nothing underneath her nightshirt, her frayed rope of hair and a pallor to rival the sheet. ‘Paracetamol would be good, and a jug of water and a glass. Please.’
    ‘I’ll come back later and load the washing machine.’  He snipped off her protest with, ‘ Just leave it, OK ?’ And he’d continued to look after her for a further two days. Abrupt, embarrassingly forthright about her needs, her mess and her condition.
    She curled up with mortification whenever she thought of it. How would she ever look him in the eye again?
    But then. It was comfortable, stretched on the warm grass by Angel’s foxgloves that were busy with bumbling bees, roughing Nigel surfing, snorkelling, sunbathing. Toby played with two friends and a box of cars and Jenna toddled after them. Angel managed a well-earned doze.
    And suddenly Pete and Ratty were wheeling out the barbecue and McLaren,