chapter 54

millie

‘You wouldn’t even know the woman existed if I hadn’t tracked her down,’ Harper says. ‘If you’re going to see her, I’m coming with you.’

‘You’re supposed to be convalescing, Harper. You should be in bed, resting. Or better yet, go home to your family. I’m sure your husband and children are missing you.’

‘You said it wasn’t safe to go home.’

‘Well, after a week living with you, it’s a chance I’m willing to take.’

‘You’d send me back to that tiny flat just days after open heart surgery with two little boys and a husband I haven’t shared a bed with in nearly a month, a husband with needs—’

Harper is like a psychotic savant: she knows exactly which buttons to press. ‘Fine,’ I sigh.

She grabs her white leather bomber jacket and follows me out to the car. ‘It’s not that I don’t love Kyle,’ she says. ‘But we’ve been together since I was fifteen. That’s, like, almost half my life. I mean, you can have eggs for breakfast every day, you can really love eggs, eggs can be totally your thing, but sometimes you just don’t want to see another egg in your life, you know?’

‘Please stop.’

‘I’m not ready to go back home,’ she says.

‘That much is obvious,’ I observe. ‘But you can’t stay with me forever, Harper.’

‘I know.’

She struggles with her seatbelt, and I lean across to help her with it. ‘Your incision is still healing,’ I say. ‘You really should be resting.’

She puts her hand on mine as I click the belt home. ‘It’s not really about Kyle,’ she says.

The intensity of her tone gives me pause. ‘Then what is it about?’

‘I’d give my life for my boys,’ she says fiercely. ‘I love them to death, they’re my world, but sometimes I just feel like I can’t breathe. They need me so much. Not just to do stuff for them, the cooking and things, I can live with all that, but I don’t just have to keep them safe, do I?’ She releases my hand suddenly. ‘I have to keep me safe too, and the responsibility of that – ever since the accident it’s like there’s been this tight band round my chest and I can’t seem to get any air. I feel like I’m drowning. Loving them is … it’s killing me.’