Watch Over Me Read Free

around my waist, as if to sustain me.
    ‘Let me get these, Eilidh, darling, there’s a good girl,’ she said as she gently ook the shopping bags from me and led me into the house, her arm still around my waist. I slowly realised that there was something wrong and then I felt something trickling down my legs, and it wasn’t sweat, and I looked and it was blood.

    Had I had a boy, I would have called him Harry. Had I had a girl, I would have called her Grace.
    When I finished crying, three months later, I got up from the sofa, had a long, warm shower, got dressed for the first time in weeks and made myself a cup of tea. I sat at the kitchen table with my phone, a spiral pad and a pen.
    Tom was on a weekend away. Some convention, he said, as if I didn’t know the truth, as if I were stupid.
    I wrote two notes:

        Mum, Dad,
            I’m going away for a while. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.
            I’ll phone as soon as I’m settled.
            Eilidh

        Tom,
            Our marriage is over. I am sure you know why but your girlfriend is not the only reason. It’s been over for years. I’ll be in touch with my parents when I’m settled, they’ll be able to reassure you I’m ok. Don’t look for me.
    Eilidh

    Then I picked up my mobile and texted Harry:

         I’m going away for a bit. Don’t worry about a thing, seriously, I’ll be fine. I’m leaving my phone behind, but I’ll get on the net as soon as I can and e-mail you at once. xxxx E

    I left the notes and the phone on the kitchen table, and packed a few of my belongings carefully, deliberately.
    I felt empty. Like a shell, a dried-up shell with nothing inside, nothing left to give.
    I got into the car and started driving, not having the slightest idea where I was going. I just knew I had to go.
    On the motorway, I started seeing signs that said ‘North’.
    North.
    Suddenly, I realised where I was headed. Where the deepest, most secret part of me wanted to be, so that I could heal. I kept driving, on and on through the afternoon and the early evening.
    The light was lilac and the pinewoods black against the sky when I got to Glen Avich. The sight of the whitewashed cottage and its red door made a million happy memories flood back. Had I been able to feel anything, it would have been relief. But I was numb.
    I knocked at Flora’s door. She wasn’t there anymore, she’d been dead a long time – but my great aunt Peggy still lived there. She opened the door and gasped to see me so pale, so lost, so thin.
    It was twilight, the hour when shapes seem to lose their definition and blur a little, as if they were beginning to vanish into the darkness. I was one of those things that were vanishing. I felt like Peggy could have opened the door and found a little cloud of blue cold air where I should have stood.
    Peggy smiled, hugged me and led me in, made me a cup of hot, sugary tea, and spoke to me in the best accent in the world, the way my gran used to speak. By then, the night had fallen and it was pitch-dark, as we were deep, deep into the heart of the Highlands.
    Peggy took me to my bedroom, the one I had shared with Katrina when I was a girl. I barely had the energy to put my pyjamas on and slip into bed. She brought me a cup of tea and left it on the bedside table. I whispered a thank you but couldn’t move, every bit of me felt like lead. I closed my eyes.
    Slowly, slowly, Scotland started to seep into me. She enveloped me and held me – her sounds and scents comforting me, as they did when I was a child.
    I fell asleep, under clean sheets and a duvet that smelled musty, but in a good way, like grandmothers’ things do.
    I slept for a whole twelve hours, after weeks and weeks of white nights. When I woke up the next morning, at first light, I felt like life was bearable.
    Barely bearable, really, but bearable.
    I felt like maybe, in the nick of time, I had managed to stop the vanishing process. Maybe I