That he even needed to ask told her how little he knew and understood her. The fact she hadn’t even considered returning to the little starter home they’d shared for the past five years only served to reinforce to her she was doing the right thing. Seizing the handles of her suitcases, she turned away. ‘I’m going back to Lavender Bay.’
‘I won’t run after you.’ Good, she didn’t want him to. ‘Eliza? Jesus Christ!’ His frustrated shout faded beneath the rapid beat of her shoes striking on the tiled floor of the airport. Refusing to look back, Eliza kept walking until she’d cleared the automatic doors and joined the end of the queue of travellers waiting for a taxi.
Staring at her shoes, she watched as a tear splashed on the shiny red patent and rolled off. With a sniffle, she fought back the tears and clicked her heels together three times as she whispered. ‘There’s no place like home.’
The screaming had become so much a part of Jack’s life over the past month that he was out of bed and halfway across the landing before he was even properly awake. He’d just flipped on the light when the door to his mum’s room opened, and she appeared next to him with one arm hooked in the sleeve of her dressing gown, the rest of it trailing behind her. A section of her short grey hair was flattened against her scalp, the other side standing up in a lopsided wave, showing how she’d tossed and turned in her sleep. The circles beneath her eyes stood out like bruises against her pale skin. She looked terrible—at least ten years older than the fifty-seven she was due to turn in a couple of weeks. She was a ghostly shadow of the vibrant, robust woman who’d filled his life with laughter since the day he was born.
When was the last time he’d heard her laugh? The stray thought was shattered by another gut-wrenching scream. Jack shuddered, then braced his shoulders. ‘I’ll see to him, Mum. Go back to bed.’
Tears filled her eyes. ‘Poor little lamb, I wish there was something we could do.’
‘Me too, we just have to give him time. We have to give all of us time.’ Jack turned the handle and slipped into his nephew’s room. The night-light Jack’s brother Jason had purchased for his son when Noah had been tiny cast soft blue stars and moons onto the wall and ceiling. Having been declared ‘too-babyish’ just six months previously, it had been retrieved from the cupboard when the nightmares had started the night Jason died.
Ducking down next to the figure huddled beneath a Star Wars duvet, Jack touched a gentle hand to the rigid shoulder. ‘Noah? Shh, now. Uncle Jack’s here, everything will be okay.’ The lie curdled on his tongue. Nothing could ever be right for the poor kid, not since that terrible early-April morning when all their lives had been turned upside down and shattered by the terrible car accident. One bitter twist of fate had robbed Jack of his elder brother and made him into a surrogate father overnight. The fact that Jason had entrusted his son to his keeping was a weight he didn’t know if he could carry—and an honour he would spend the rest of his days trying to be worthy of.
It feels daft to be writing this, Jack, but the solicitor told me I needed to make my wishes clear should the worst happen, so here goes. In the event of my death, I want you to be the one responsible for Noah’s well-being and upbringing. You’re the only person I can trust to give him the life he deserves, to raise him how I would. A normal life. Give him the choices we never had, Jack…
The words of Jason’s letter to him, left with the solicitor for safekeeping together with his will, were etched into Jack’s memory in indelible ink. He knew they’d hurt their mum with their not-so-implied criticism of the way she and their dad had raised them. Jack had been not much older than Noah when his parents had decided to escape from the rat-race and start a new life in the country. It had been one big adventure to his ten-year-old self. At fourteen, Jason had been devastated to leave his friends and life in London behind to move to an old farm in the back of beyond, and he’d never quite recovered from that initial resentment, though it’d been almost twenty years ago. And now he’d never be able to heal the rift with their mother.
Growing up on the farm it had been the Gilberts against the world, an isolated existence thanks to his parents home-schooling their sons. Jack had loved the cosy security and been perfectly content with it just being the four of them most days. Jason had chafed against it, especially when his plans to escape off to a job in the city after finishing at university had been thwarted by their father’s early passing. Jason had given up a promising position with a trading house to help manage the farm. Though he’d never said so, it was clear he’d rather be anywhere else and every free moment he could manage, Jason disappeared somewhere. He’d never talked about what he got up to, and never invited Jack along either which had hurt more than he’d ever admitted.
Pain sliced through him, and Jack rubbed his chest to ease the phantom ache. It was ridiculous to be upset over something that had happened a dozen years or more ago, but he’d have followed Jason into the bowels of hell given the chance. Things changed abruptly when his brother had returned at the end of one trip with a visibly pregnant woman in tow. The pain vanished at the mere thought of Lydia. God, Jack had hated her pouting face on first sight.
Those mysterious weekends became a thing of the past, and Jason seemed to grow up overnight. He started taking things at the farm more seriously, started making all these plans for the future, but Lydia was having none of it. Country life was boring. Everything was boring, especially being tied down with a baby. She’d lasted all of three months after Noah was born before packing her things and leaving Jason literally holding the baby. The last they’d heard of her, she’d moved to New York with her new, obscenely wealthy, older husband.
Though he’d resigned himself to remaining at the farm Jason had been determined to give Noah a very different upbringing to theirs, making sure he was properly socialised through nursery attendance then enrolment in the local primary school.
Noah whimpered, but didn’t wake. Smoothing his hand in slow circles over the boy’s back, Jack kept up a litany of soft whispers. Sometimes it would work, and his nephew would settle again, sometimes not. There was nothing he could do but wait and see. The ache in his knees spoke of another long day on the farm, and Jack stifled a groan as he shifted position to sit on the floor.
It might have been the change in pressure against his back, or some dark terror conjured by his mind that disturbed Noah. Whatever it was, the boy turned over suddenly and opened his eyes. ‘Uncle Jack?’
Jack brushed the sweaty strands of hair off Noah’s forehead. ‘I’m here, buddy.’
Noah’s face crumpled. ‘I couldn’t find Daddy. I looked everywhere, but he wasn’t there.’ The last word came out in a strangled whisper.
‘Ah, buddy, come here.’ Jack opened his arms and his nephew slid from beneath the sheets to crawl into his lap. Thin arms wrapped around his neck, and Noah burrowed his damp face into Jack’s chest. Bitter, painful experience told him the best thing to do was to let Noah cry it out of his system, so Jack set his jaw and let the boy soak the front of his T-shirt as he rocked him gently.
The back of his own eyes burned, but the tears remained unshed as they had since the moment the police had knocked on the front door and told him Jason was dead. Anger kept them at bay. At the driver of the heavy goods vehicle which had jack-knifed on a dry, clear day causing a horrendous pileup on the motorway. Jason had been in the middle lane preparing to overtake—according to the eye-witness accounts the police had related to the family—and had stood no chance.
Jack
