I rolled my eyes. ‘Oh, please.’ I looked at Craig as he sipped his coffee and eyed up Barbie. ‘And by the way, do you have any empathy?’

Craig looked at me and then looked over at Barbie, keeping his creepy gaze firmly upon her rear end.

‘I guess not,’ I said, and turned and walked away.

It was all I needed to hear to set me back again. I looked tatty, I was tired, my skin looked rough. At this stage of pregnancy I was supposed to be blooming, preparing for a new life. A life that was relying on me to be strong. But I was a mess, I had already made so many mistakes and caused so much pain and now I was losing everything all over again. I felt hopeless and lost. My car was parked at Patrick’s flat where I had left it before the funeral. I thought about the tablets Annie gave me so freely and how they made me feel nothing. I wanted to feel nothing. I thought about where I needed to be. I hurried back to my car and drove towards the sanctuary of Annie’s beach house.

27

ANNIE

Knowing someone else was in the house was a comfort, especially now Ben was gone. I enjoyed the notion of cooking for someone other than myself. I didn’t want to become one of those women who lived off a single cod fillet in parsley sauce with a boil in the bag rice; it was too depressing to even contemplate. It had always been the same. I overcompensated every time, with the amount of food I bought and the amount I cooked. I threw masses away every day, I just couldn’t help myself. There was an innate need to cook for a family.

The notion that Daisy was going to be staying around for longer than initially anticipated should have perturbed me. The girl had always been a threat in my eyes; the enemy. She was, after all, the reason Ben was no longer here. What I knew about her made my stomach turn and she was never going to win any moral awards in my books, yet somewhere within me the thought of having someone around the house bore a comforting feeling. And I had a job as a grandparent to make sure that baby was born safely. I had no interest in the girl. The way she carried herself, even in her grief-stricken state, she still had an air of superiority about her that resonated deeply with me. But I could overcome that, look beyond her slim tall frame that glided around with her golden hair cascading down her back behind her which emphasised her effortless beauty. The words made me want to spit, but I couldn’t stop them being true.

I had missed Ben terribly after he left to be with her. So I couldn’t help myself if a smidgen of life about the house, however repulsed I was by it, was in some small way a comfort to me. Besides, now there was another reason I was needed. The baby Daisy was carrying was my grandchild. I had a purpose again. So however alarming and alien I had felt her presence initially it was better than being alone. I was never any good at being alone. It makes me slightly mad, I feel unhinged, and then who knows what I’m capable of?