Chapter 21: The Spare Bed

Rafe's POV

I resigned from the board of Ashworth Capital on Tuesday morning, from a kitchen chair in Whitstable, with a pen that belonged to Bridie.

The old chairman had rung the night before with an offer.

Come back, he said, and the whole unpleasantness could be filed away by Friday.

"The seat is yours if you want it," he said. "Nobody on the board holds a child against a man."

"I do," I said.

I wrote the letter in one go, and posted it with my own hands at the box on the corner.

Then I took my bag up the narrow stairs to the spare room.

It had a single iron bed, a window onto the beans and a rug that Bridie had made out of other people's jumpers.

"It's not the Ritz," she said from the landing.

"It's more than I deserve."

"I'm aware," said Bridie. "Breakfast is at seven. You wash up."

For six days I washed up.

I learned that Tilly liked her toast cut in triangles and that Rhiannon took her tea very strong.

I learned that Bridie's kettle screamed at a pitch that made Tilly drop her spoon and then, for the first time, laugh.

On the seventh night, the burns nurse came to change Tilly's dressing.

It had to be done every other day, and Tilly sat on Rhiannon's lap at the kitchen table with her arm out on a towel.

Rhiannon had told me I could watch if I did not speak.

I sat on a chair near the door with my hands between my knees.

The nurse peeled back the old dressing.

Tilly made no sound at all.

She shut her eyes, and her lips went tight and white, and I saw her small free hand come up and press itself across her own mouth.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Saved Her Child, Abandoned Ours from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.