Goodness, Grace and Me by Julie Houston

Author:Julie Houston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Rom com, Women’s Contemporary Fiction, Women’s Humorous Fiction, Contemporary Women’s Fiction, Mum lit, Chic Lit, Wife lit
Publisher: eBookPartnership.com
Published: 2013-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

When Nick’s company first began to crash three years or so ago, I would wake in the night and find that he was no longer in bed. Where his body had lain would be quite cold and I’d know, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, that he’d been up for hours, unable to sleep, wandering from room to room and sometimes even out into the garden, desperately worried about what was going to become of us – the mortgage, the school fees, the bills that seemed to be coming in at an alarming rate.

Once Nick had accepted the inevitable and creditors had been paid, we found that we just managed with my return to teaching and Nick’s new job, and his nocturnal wanderings had eventually ceased as we began to pick up the pieces and get on with our new life.

Waking at three in the morning, I knew instantly, without having to feel, that Nick’s side of the bed was empty. I sat up immediately, praying that he’d just popped to the loo, but knowing in my heart that he’d been gone for a while.

‘Oh dear God, not again,’ I muttered, searching on the floor for my abandoned dressing gown.

I found him at the kitchen table, hunched over the laptop that had been vital to this new venture. A glass of milk lay abandoned and he was frowning at the screen as his hand raked constantly through his thick blonde hair.

‘Nick, do you know what time it is?’ I asked gently, stroking his hair and arresting the fingers that he’d entwined there.

‘There’s just something I need to figure out,’ he said. ‘It’s all so new and I need to know that I’m on the right lines with all this.’

‘Nick, I know you through and through. You wouldn’t be down here worrying if you thought everything was going ok. Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.’

‘No, honestly, Hat. It’ll be fine. Things have moved on so much since Pennine Clothing was up and running. Everything is more cut-throat. Everyone is wanting a bite of the cherry and I can’t afford to miss a trick.’ He sighed, rubbing his hand across his face where a hint of black stubble was just beginning to show.

He looked desperately tired but still managed to exude the allure that had drawn me to him in the first place. It’s not many men that can carry designer stubble – most manage to end up looking like something from ‘Care in the Community’ – but my husband, along with George Michael of course, wears his five o’clock shadow like a true sex god.

‘Are you beginning to regret throwing your lot in with David Henderson?’ I asked, holding my breath in fear of an answer I didn’t want to hear. I needed Nick to be confident about what he’d started. He seemed to me to be on the first step of a roller-coaster ride and I didn’t want to hear him saying that he’d made a mistake; that he was suddenly afraid of heights and needed to get off.

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