When I Wasn't Watching Read Online Free PDF

spoken to the press and avoided discussing her business with either strangers or friends, those two words, together like that, had never come from her mouth.
    Now they lingered in the air between them, weighed down with eight years of guilt and grief.
    Ethan winced.
    â€˜About Terry Prince then. About this mess.’ Such an understatement. He spread his arms, belying the word. Lucy folded hers, not in anger now but as a way of holding herself upright on suddenly weak legs.
    â€˜I’m going to have my solicitor release a statement to the press detailing how sickened we are. There must be something we can do, surely?’
    She didn’t like this side of Ethan. He had always been in control, always taken care of everything. Now he sounded lost, was sitting here in her kitchen looking at her like there was something she could do; as if she had all the answers and he was waiting for her to enlighten him.
    â€˜They won’t lock him back up now they’ve let him go,’ she said, turning her body away from his, ‘not unless he re-offends.’
    Her head was really pounding now and she wanted him to go if only so she could take some painkillers and lie down. She had phoned in sick at work this morning and now she genuinely did feel ill, a psychosomatic response perhaps. Also, she wanted to phone Ricky and check he had got to school before his first class began. He would moan at her for mollycoddling him, but the memory of those brief minutes when she had taken her eyes off her youngest son and lost him forever haunted her every time Ricky went out of the door, even now.
    Ethan stood up and pushed in his chair, straightening himself even as Lucy crumpled, leaning back against the kitchen side with her head in her hands, trying to fold into herself. Her head whipped back up though when Ethan approached her.
    â€˜Just go, please. You shouldn’t be here.’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ he said, without quite knowing what he was apologising for, ‘but if you do want to talk; if there’s anything I, or we, can do…’ His voice trailed off as she turned her face away, dismissing him, and he gave up and walked towards the door. Before he opened it he heard her speak, hissing like a cat under her breath, so that he had to strain to hear her.
    â€˜
Find out where he is
.’
    But when Ethan looked over at her she had turned fully away with her back to him and so he left, closing the door quietly behind him.
    Those last words, uttered in that low angry hissing that sounded wholly unlike any side of Lucy he had ever known, resounded through his head all day, until he felt he was going crazy.
    An hour later Lucy herself wondered if she would go crazy. Two aspirin had dulled the pain in her head but failed to get rid of it completely, and the constant shrill ringing of the telephone had threatened to render them completely useless until she had given in and unplugged it. The first call, moments after Ethan had left, had been from Ricky, for once pre-empting his mother’s worrying and letting her know he was safe at school. Then two calls from reporters and one inviting her to talk on the radio, all of which Lucy hung up on without saying anything further. Then her mother, then Susan, wearing her out with well-meaning but pointless questions. Of course she wasn’t okay. No, there was absolutely nothing they could do to help. The only thing she wanted was an answer to her last question to Ethan, and she knew that was impossible.
    Finally, after a call from a shrill-voiced female journalist from the
Telegraph
, who Lucy had none too gently slammed the phone down on, she went and lay on her bed, overwhelmed and feeling completely alone. Perhaps she shouldn’t have rebuffed Ethan’s attempts to connect but really, what was the point? They could cry on each other’s shoulders and even start campaign plans but none of it would be any use, and at the end of it all Ethan would go