Watch Over Me Read Online Free PDF

it was my gran.
    And that deep comfort and peace, the sense of safety, the childhood illusion that they’ll always be with you … all that I had felt again since I had stepped into the house.
    I felt Flora was still there.
    And of course there was Peggy, my dear aunt who had been widowed a few years before, just after Flora’s death. Peggy’s daughters live in Canada and in the space of a few months, Peggy had lost both her husband and her sister and had been left to live alone. Strange, I had never before thought how lonely she must have felt – all this had happened while I was undergoing the first IVF treatments, and after a few years of trying and trying to get pregnant. I was so worn out that I could only see my own predicament, my own quest, and had no energy or time for anybody else.
    I must have been so blind, blinded with the intensity of my desire, with the endless frustration of it never being satisfied.
    I looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table, beside the untouched cup of tea and Tunnock’s wafer that Peggy had left the night before. The biscuit made me smile – Flora was so fond of those wafers, she always put one in my lunchbox and produced them whenever she had visitors. Tunnock’s wafers, custard creams and teacakes were her staples.
    I blinked as I saw the time. And again. I couldn’t believe it. Half-past nine.
    I had slept twelve hours. Non-stop. Without Diazepam and all that anxiety and depression medication I had been prescribed and that wasn’t helping me at all. I had put the lot into a plastic bag before I left, sealed it and dropped it in the bin, banging the lid for good measure, because what good was numbing the pain, numbing my brain, ignoring the storm instead of facing it?
    My struggle’s finished anyway. There’s no hope left.
    When you let go of hope, you have nothing.
    And that’s when there’s a choice to be made.
    You end it all.
    Or you keep going, somehow. You try and try to fill the emptiness with something else and, through trial and error and sheer stubbornness, sooner or later you find the way out of darkness.
    What I know now is that hope doesn’t always spring eternal but there is life after hope.

    That morning, I was going to face the emptiness and see what to do next. I wasn’t scared. It couldn’t possibly get any worse. No babies, no house, no husband, no job, hardly any money – the only way was up.
    I got up to open the curtains and the view took my breath away. The grey, dramatic sky; the drifting clouds galloping like wild horses; the misty hills below, brown and orange and dark green, soft and velvety and moist; the pinewoods, still and silent and solemn.
    I opened the window and let the cold air embrace me, laden with that mixture of damp earth and leaves dissolving on the ground that is the scent of autumn.
    To me, autumn smells of sleep. It was the perfect season because all I knew had gone and died, just like the leaves. It was a good time to be grieving, waiting for spring to bring life back.
    I shivered and put on my dressing gown. The house was freezing. It does have central heating but it’s terribly expensive. Most of the heating is provided by the stove in the kitchen and the fire in the living room.
    I went downstairs and found that Peggy wasn’t there. There was a tray on the table with a teapot, a cup, some bread, a butter dish, a jar of her home-made blackberry jam and a note: ‘I’m at the shop. Help yourself to breakfast and get settled, then you can come up to the shop and we can have a chat.’
    After a cup of tea and two slices of toast and jam, the drowsiness from the long sleep subsided. I had a quick, freezing shower, dried my hair and got dressed in jeans, a jumper and trainers.
    Before I reached Peggy at the shop, I had something to do.
    I picked up the phone, making a mental note of apologizing to Peggy for using it without her permission, and I dialled my parents’ number. My mum answered immediately. I felt a pang of