What Lies Between Us(81)

She turns her back on both of us, leaning on the desk and propping herself up with her hands. Dylan tries to comfort her with an arm around her shoulder and I feel a tinge of envy that he hasn’t done the same to me since I arrived.

‘I didn’t want you to find out like this,’ he tells her. ‘I just wanted to learn more about where I was from.’

‘I’m not upset about that, I’m upset that you didn’t talk to your dad or me first. Do your brothers and sister know about her?’

‘Her?’ I repeat.

Jane glares at me. ‘About Nina.’

‘About his mother.’

‘I am his mother.’

‘Please stop it,’ Dylan interrupts. ‘Nina, I think you should go.’

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Because you’re upsetting Mum.’

‘Dylan—’

Jane turns quickly and yells: ‘His name is Bobby, for God’s sake. Call him by his name!’

The anger rises inside me and suddenly she is the only thing I see in the room. Tearing him from my arms when I didn’t have the strength or knowledge to fight for him wasn’t enough for her; now she wants to keep me from him for a second time. She already has everything – a husband, biological children and a house to die for. Why does she want my son too? Between them, she and Maggie have conspired to destroy me. I hate her. Slowly, Jane becomes surrounded by shades of red and black and I’m overcome by the need to punish her; I want to hurt her so badly. I want to make her understand what she has done; I want her to know that this beautiful young man belongs to me and not her. I want to keep him from her forever. My fists clench, and without meaning to, my arm stretches towards a glass paperweight on a shelf.

‘Nina,’ Dylan says, more assertively this time. His voice is enough to shine light upon my darkness. ‘Just go home, please. For my sake.’

I hesitate for a moment until I am more myself again. ‘But that’s why I’m here – for your sake.’

‘I don’t want to talk to you right now, you’re causing too much damage. You have to leave.’

‘But she needs to know the truth. We all need the truth. Look what happens when lies get in the way. Look what it did to us.’

I watch as Jane shakes her head and as Dylan pulls her into his shoulder, she cries. She loves him unconditionally and I hate her for it. She was supposed to be furious with him for going behind her back and finding me. She was supposed to ask him to leave, and then he would come and live under my roof. Then we could be a proper family. I don’t know how I would have explained Maggie, but there would have been a way; there always is. He would have understood how I’ve punished Maggie because he and I are the same. Instead, he is choosing Jane over me. And it’s killing me.

I watch as he leads her out of the office, up the stairs and out of sight. I know in that moment I will never see him again. The music continues and people pass me by in the corridor but they don’t see me. They don’t know who I really am. I am nothing to them, and without my son, I am nothing to myself.





CHAPTER 69





NINA


‘No, no, no,’ I mutter aloud when I check my phone’s screen. A white flashing symbol of a plug and a wire indicates the battery needs recharging. I’d left it plugged in overnight next to my bed and turned the ringer up to loud; not that I slept much anyway. But I must have forgotten to turn the socket switch on.

I panic as I move briskly around the library, asking each colleague I come into contact with if they have a phone charger on the premises that I can borrow. With each ‘no’ it feels as if a snake is wrapping itself around my chest and neck and is slowly squeezing the life from me.

Finally, Jenna upstairs in the small-business support section hands me a charger from her desk drawer. I don’t even think I offer her a thank you. Instead, I rush into an empty meeting pod and plug the phone into the USB port of a plug socket.

I’ve left a trolley containing today’s delivery of new books hidden at the very back of the library. I’ll get to them later; now, this is my priority. I hover over my phone, waiting ten unbearable minutes before it has received just enough charge to bring it back to life. Then I type in my passcode and wait. Eventually, a text message appears and my heart starts beating wildly. The disappointment is immediate and I want to hurl the phone at the wall – it’s from the surgery about a missed dental appointment, not my son.

It has been exactly eight days since I last saw Dylan at his family home. I have tried calling him, texting him and emailing him and he has ignored every message. I even took a train to Leicester to confront him face to face, only to be told by the newspaper’s receptionist that he’d taken some time off for ‘personal reasons’. I considered paying another visit to his house but talked myself out of it. I couldn’t bear to see the woman who calls herself his mother again.

The silence between us is all her doing, I am sure of it. I can picture her, turning on the waterworks, expensive eyeliner streaking down her Botox-filled face like an expressionless, sinister clown. I can hear her telling him how disappointed in him she is for coming to find me without asking for her blessing. Newsflash, you stupid cow, he doesn’t need your permission! Who the hell does she think she is to question why he wanted to find me? What is unnatural is forcing him to stay with her!