The Broken Ones Read Free Page A

always been a difficult woman, but I suppose I found ways of dealing with it early on. I fell into a book or into my studies.
    Mum never wanted me to go to university. She wanted me at home. I think she was afraid of being alone. We compromised, and I lived at home and travelled into Derby to study there. I managed to find a work placement on the outskirts of Derby, and then a position opened at the local primary school. Everything fit perfectly, and I got to stay close to her. That’s how it’s always been. The two of us.
    Until Jamie came along. We met in the pub one Friday night at the end of term piss-up with the other teachers. You could say I was a late starter in life. I managed to get through university without any hook-ups and without many messy nights out. I’m ashamed to admit I was twenty-five before I was intimate with a man. Jamie was the first guy who was interested in me, and I grew to like him after a few weeks of him pursuing me.
    He was the brother of one of the teachers at school, and worked as an electrician for a local firm. At first I wasn’t interested. He was quiet, and short, and there was nothing remarkable about him. He had milky-blond hair and small blue eyes. He offered to buy me a drink and I said yes because I was drunk. Later that night we were kissing, but I went home alone after giving him my phone number.
    Alisha, my colleague at the primary school and best friend, was determined that I should go out with him, but I avoided his calls for a few days until he turned up to the pub again and insisted on buying me a drink. After getting a little drunk, I finally agreed to go out with him to dinner and a movie.
    Jamie never gave up. There were flowers and chocolates and bottles of wine. Mum told me that all he was interested in was a quick shag, and once I’d put out, I’d never hear from him again. But that didn’t happen. He stuck around for seven years, and I finally began to love him. But Mum drove him away with her snide remarks and backhanded compliments. Every argument we ever had revolved around Mum: about the things she said to put us down, about how I wouldn’t move out of her house, and when I did move out of her house, the arguments became about how we spent too much time with her. Jamie wanted to get married and have children, but there was always something holding me back. Now, I think it might have been Mum’s influence. Her little comments might have planted the seeds of doubt, but I let them grow until they became tangled weeds strangling the life out of our relationship.
    “If you marry him, you can’t get out of it. Marriage is for life,” she’d say. “Do you honestly want that lump for the rest of your life? What if there’s someone better out there? Jamie couldn’t find two brain cells to rub together. Is that the man you want to spend the rest of your life with?”
    Somewhere buried under all her insults was a nugget of truth that wore away at me. I didn’t want to marry Jamie. I did worry that there was someone else out there for me. After seven years we finally called it a day. I still blame my mother, but perhaps that isn’t fair. While I rarely ever disobey her, I think I would have if Jamie had been right for me.
    At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
    One thing I do know is that Peter is not the guy, either.
    At 7am on the dot, Erin steps into the house and waves cheerfully at us both. I’m sat next to Mum making sure she eats her cereal, with a cooling mug of tea clutched in both hands. Mum eyes Erin and frowns.
    “You again,” she says. “You’d best not feed me poison this time.”
    “Mum, this is Erin—”
    “I know who this is,” she snaps. “I’m not a child.”
    I roll my eyes for Erin’s benefit.
    “Good morning to you, Mrs. Howland. You’re looking well today,” Erin says, knowing that compliments work best with my mother.
    “She almost got my hair right,” Mum says.
    I can’t help but smile. That’s about as good