Every Vow You Break by Julia Crouch

Author:Julia Crouch
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780755378074
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2012-03-29T07:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

MARCUS WAS AT REHEARSAL, BELLA AND OLLY WERE OUT, JACK WAS asleep and Lara had some free time to get on with her business plan. Instead, she tidied up. She marvelled at the mess her family could create in just a couple of days. Because she hadn’t yet designated a place for laundry, Bella, Olly and Marcus had gone native, leaving dirty underwear, stinking socks and T-shirts on the bedroom floors, dumped where they had been taken off. She thought there might be enough washing to justify a trip to the launderette, which James had told her was along Main Street, beyond the turning to the theatre.

As she went around the rooms picking things up and putting them in a bag, she tried not to think about Stephen and what was going to happen next. If she put it away to the back of her mind, the issue might resolve itself with no effort from her. But the imprint of him on her body was hard to ignore. Every step she took seemed to have a new significance. She felt his presence in the walls of the room, watching her every gesture, weighing it with his eyes.

She felt this as she lay on her front on Bella’s floor, stretching her arm under the bed to retrieve a pair of knickers. Under his imagined gaze, it was more a dance movement than a domestic manoeuvre. As she dragged the knickers towards her, a piece of paper caught on them. Kneeling up with her find, Lara saw it was an old photograph of a girl, aged about twelve, unsmilingly confronting the camera. She was dressed in what Lara supposed must be nineteen forties’ clothing. Turning it over, she saw someone had written ‘Jane’ on the back.

Lara brushed the dust from the photo and propped it up on Bella’s window frame.

‘Mummy!’ Jack shouted from his bedroom, marking the end of Lara’s time to herself. Now she had a long, hot afternoon stretching ahead, with only Jack for company.

‘How about a trip to the launderette, Jacky?’ she said. ‘I’ll just get changed first.’ She wanted to add Stephen’s shirt to the wash, although her motive for doing so – if it was clean, she would have to take it to him – made her feel slightly ashamed of herself.

She gave Jack a book to look at while she took a shower in the little roll-top tub. As the icy water drew the heat from her body, an unprecedented clarity of thought hit her. She was going to have to tell Stephen to forget about it all and leave her alone. This family she had was more important to her than anything else in the world, and she had to put them first, before any selfish desires of her own.

Everyone – most people – would be happier if things just remained as they were.

She climbed out of the bathtub and towelled herself dry, averting her eyes from her reflection in the cloudy old mirror propped up against the tin-panelled wall opposite.

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