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Back When I Lost You Save as PDF
Chapters (81)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Dedication
  4. Prologue
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Forty-three
  48. Forty-four
  49. Forty-five
  50. Forty-six
  51. Forty-seven
  52. Forty-eight
  53. Forty-nine
  54. Fifty
  55. Fifty-one
  56. Fifty-two
  57. Fifty-three
  58. Fifty-four
  59. Fifty-five
  60. Fifty-six
  61. Fifty-seven
  62. Fifty-eight
  63. Fifty-nine
  64. Sixty
  65. Sixty-one
  66. Sixty-two
  67. Sixty-three
  68. Sixty-four
  69. Sixty-five
  70. Sixty-six
  71. Sixty-seven
  72. Epilogue
  73. Acknowledgments
  74. Read More
  75. Prologue
  76. One
  77. Two
  78. Three
  79. Four
  80. Follow Merilyn online
  81. Dedication

Carla didn’t think so. Gerry had been meeting someone he didn’t want her to see. But who? And why?

Twelve

Then

It turns out Aoife and I are sharing a room. I sit on my bed and scratch under the edge of the cast on my arm while I watch her unpack. She’s tied her hair back now and I can see she has a black eye and a cracked lip. Her skin is almost translucent; veins, like blue roads on a map, make their way across her arms, neck and face. Her teeth are white, but one is chipped, giving her a jaunty look.

When she’s unpacked what little she brought with her, she flops onto the bed and crosses her legs, facing me.

‘What you in here for?’ Then she sees my plaster cast and rolls her eyes. ‘Nuff said.’ She looks at me, blue eyes serious. ‘No one’s signed it. Wait.’ She jumps up, all legs and arms, and grabs a pen from my desk. Aoife was here. Then she draws the top half of a face looking over a wall, his hands gripping the edges.

‘That’s better.’ She tosses the pen on the floor and flops back onto my bed, legs from the knees down dangling over the edge.

I stare at her, then my arm. Her words are a flurry of lines and they take up the entire length of my arm. Looking at it I feel an emotion I’m not sure of. I test the edges, poke the sides: pride?

Aoife sits back up. ‘Do you speak?’

I open my mouth, then shut it. I feel a burst of something like bubbles in my chest that push their way out into a laugh and once I start I find I can’t stop. There is nothing to laugh about, seeing as I’ve been wrenched from my home with barely ten minutes’ notice, but here I am, unable to breathe, clutching my chest so much I worry I’ll wee.

Tears stream from Aoife’s eyes as we roll on the bed, each releasing whatever it is that caused us to be here. When we come up for air our faces are close; I can feel her breath on my cheek.

‘Shit, isn’t it,’ she says. She smells of peppermint.

‘Do you miss your mum too?’ I ask.

She considers this for a moment. ‘You see this?’ She points to her cracked tooth. ‘Boyfriend number four. And this –’ she lifts her sleeve to reveal a small mark the size of a cigarette butt, ‘– her third.’

I don’t ask what number caused the black eye.

‘I miss what I imagine a mum to be,’ she says. ‘But mine? Not so much.’