Free The Story of Us by Dani Atkins Page B

fairly colourful language when you sent me away.’
    Caroline got out of her seat and crawled on to Nick’s lap, and his arms went around her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into his neck, and suddenly I felt like Richard and I were intruding. I might have dragged Caroline back from the edge of an abyss, but it was Nick she needed now for the strength to get up on to her feet once again.
    â€˜Shall I call them tomorrow?’ I suggested, and Caroline gave a small nod of thanks, as a task she hadn’t felt strong enough to face was lifted from her shoulders. ‘Where are they staying?’
    Nick gave me both the name of a hotel in town and an extremely grateful smile. We left a short while later, and I was grateful for Richard’s supporting arm around me as we walked to the car. Apparently there’s a very good reason why they tell you not to drink while on medication.

CHAPTER 4
    As soon as I gave their name at the reception desk of the country house hotel, I sensed a shift in attitude. The professional demeanour of the black-suited receptionist softened, and a look of empathy replaced the diamond-hard glaze in her eyes. ‘They’re in our Garden Suite,’ she said, and I noticed that even the tone of her voice had softened when she realised that I was a player in the tragic drama being enacted in their establishment. ‘Are they expecting you?’ I saw her glance down at a pad on the desk and run a perfectly manicured fingernail down a list of names. My own sat in the middle, below that of one of the town’s undertaker firms and above a local florist.
    â€˜Yes, they are. Emma Marshall. That’s me.’
    Their suite was on the ground floor, in a wing which overlooked the impressively kept hotel grounds. I didn’t suppose either of Amy’s parents had so much as glanced out of a window since their arrival. Although I’d known them for almost my entire life, Caroline was actually closer to Amy’s family than I was, so it was startling to be enveloped in an all-encompassing embrace by Amy’s father the moment the door had opened. He had always seemed a rather distant and aloof figure, and Amy had never fully explained what he did for a living, other than to say it was ‘something in the City’. It was obviously time-consuming and demanding, as he had frequently been absent from school events and even from some of her birthday parties. Consequently, I’d always thought of him as a rather cold and remote individual. So it was a shock to see the tears running down his face when Donald Travis eventually relinquished his hold on me. That was what did it. To see his open and unashamed heartbreak, and know there was nothing I could ever do or say that could possibly lessen his pain, was like a stiletto stab wound in my chest. He gripped my hands so hard it hurt, and still his tears kept falling, and he did nothing to brush them away. A torrent like that was going to have to run its course, and it was nowhere near spent yet. I found myself thinking of all those times when teenage Amy would berate her absent father, who she claimed always prioritised his job over his family.
Can you see him now, Amy? Can you see how he’s grieving?
I really, really hoped that she could.
    Linda Travis was in pieces. She was one of those women who always looked as though she had just stepped out of the beauty salon or the hairdressers. Among the jeans- and trainers-wearing mothers at the school gates, she had stood out like a diamond in a jumble sale, with her immaculate clothes and designer heels. Amy was the child who had always appeared to have it all: the big house, the fancy cars and the glamorous parents. But beneath the TV-advert-perfect mum was a woman who had clearly doted on her only child. It was hard to recognise her in the dishevelled woman curled up on the chintz-covered settee of the suite. For a start she looked about thirty years too old to be