Watch Over Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

guilt thinking that Tom had probably told them of my disappearance the night before and that she must have been so worried.
    ‘Eilidh! Where are you?’
    ‘Hi Mum. In Glen Avich with Aunt Peggy. I’m fine. I left Tom.’
    ‘I know, he told me. I asked him why and he didn’t answer. I think I can imagine it, his silence sounded guilty. We are furious. My poor wee girl …’ Mum’s Scottish accent and expressions always come back when she is upset or emotional and override the Southport one. ‘Are you sure you are ok? Do you want us to come and get you? Or at least can we come and see you?’
    ‘Please don’t. I need some time by myself. Some time to think.’
    A short silence followed.
    ‘You won’t do anything stupid?’ she said in a small voice. Poor Mum, what I must be putting her through.
    ‘Absolutely not. No way.’ I meant it. I am not saying that for about three weeks after the miscarriage I hadn’t thought that ending it all would have been preferable to all that pain, but then I had come to my senses. Probably my aforementioned stubbornness. I wasn’t going to give up.
    ‘Ok. Ok. Keep in touch … If you need anything …’
    ‘Thank you.’ My eyes welled up. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘Give Peggy a hug from me. Oh, Eilidh, we didn’t sleep a wink here. I am so relieved you are home.’
    Home. I smiled to myself. Scotland is not a country you can ever tear out of your heart. My mum had spent the last thirty-five years in England, apart from the short while she had separated from my dad, but she still called Scotland home. I put the phone down and took a deep breath, drying my eyes.
    I threw on my jacket and scarf and I stepped out of the house. I started walking to the shop that Flora and Peggy had minded since they were young women. It sells just about everything: food, newspapers, toys, bits and pieces of camping and hill-walking equipment, souvenirs for tourists. It even sells babies’ clothes, knitted locally by the now eighty-years-old Boyle sisters.
    The shop had suffered since more and more people could drive to the small supermarket in Kinnear, and especially since the big Tesco had opened on the outskirts of Aberdeen, forty-five minutes away. But it still did good business. It’s not only a place to shop, it’s a place to catch up on everybody’s lives. Flora and Peggy loved a good blether and people knew that they could rely on them for a daily chat. But they didn’t allow any nasty gossip, only good-natured conversation, and they especially took great pleasure in following the young ones’ love lives. Having both been happily married, they loved matchmaking, and I know for sure that they had played a role in a few marriages in the small community of Glen Avich.
    Neither of them thought that Tom was right for me. They were too delicate to say it to my face, but I knew. I suppose they were right.
    I walked down the street and across the tiny play park where I had so often played as a child. I turned onto the main street, past the chemist, past the church, past the tiny hairdresser’s and up to the shop.
    I stopped at the window. It looked lovely, clean and well kept. Peggy was nearly seventy now but she was still working very hard.
    ‘Oh, hello Eilidh, did you sleep well?’ Her face lit up when she saw me. She was neatly dressed, as ever, with a light blue shirt, a navy cardigan and a brown woollen skirt. Her dark grey hair was short and tidy, and her eyes a clear, light, startling blue, like Flora’s, like mine.
    ‘I did, thank you. Thank you for letting me stay. And for breakfast. I phoned my mum, I hope you don’t mind.’
    ‘Not at all. How is she?’
    We were skirting around the edges. It was a formal dance before I’d have to give her an explanation of my turning up there alone and quite in a state.
    ‘She’s ok. She was worried for me. But she was happy to hear I’m here with you.’
    ‘Did she not know, pet? Did she not know you were coming here?’
    Pet. How I had