All the Little Lies by Chris Curran

Author:Chris Curran
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008336332
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-01-04T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Eve

When Alex came up Eve was lying awake. He put Ivy’s carrycot beside the bed and kissed Eve’s hand. His brown and gold eyes glimmered. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you and Ivy. It’s not easy for you, I know, and I’m getting a lot of things wrong. I’ve been trying so hard to do it better than with my first children. I was hopeless with them.’

She sat up and went into his arms, but the movement made her knee and ankle throb so she couldn’t hold back a little yelp of pain.

‘Let me see,’ he said. A big bruise was forming on her knee and her ankle looked puffy. Alex went into the bathroom for two flannels soaked with cold water.

She watched as he undressed and found herself feeling more remote from him than she could ever remember. The second Instagram comment had chilled her and her first instinct had been to show it to him. But she hadn’t done it – worried he would pass it off as nothing to worry about.

He climbed in beside her, stroking her hair before turning away and falling quickly asleep. Eve lay awake trying not to think. Trying not to let dark thoughts overwhelm her.

When Ivy began to whimper she crawled out of bed, wincing from the pain in her leg and limping into the room they had so much enjoyed getting ready for their baby. Sitting in the rocking chair she told herself to get a grip. This should be the happiest time in her life. And she was spoiling it. Alex was obviously struggling too, however much he tried to hide it. He had told her he would never forgive himself for being so wrapped up in work that he had left the care of his first two children to his ex-wife. ‘That was why I lost their love,’ he told Eve soon after they met. ‘And it was only what I deserved.’

He was trying so hard this time.

But tonight Eve had felt he thought Ivy might not be safe with her. And he could be right. Why hadn’t she just left her in the bedroom in her carrycot? And how had she managed to trip like that? She had been so sure there was something wrong with the carpet, but it had been her own carelessness. Her stupid panic that someone was trying to break in just because she heard a noise. It must have been a cat or an urban fox getting at the dustbin by the back door. She would never have been frightened by something like that in the past. So maybe Alex was right to be worried. Maybe she should be too. Instead of getting into a state about some random stranger lurking in the garden or a couple of peculiar Instagram comments.

Her thoughts twisted in tortuous circles, and Ivy took ages over her feed, twisting and mewing. By the time she had fallen asleep, Eve was so tired she could have slept there and then in the rocking chair.

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