Watch Over Me Read Free Page A

wasn’t going to disappear and cease to exist.
    Maybe life was giving me a second chance.

2
A LOST MOTHER
     
Jamie
     
    I knew she was gone when I saw that the painting was missing from the living room wall. All her things – the canvases, the paints, the paintbrushes, the bottles of white spirits, her cloths and aprons – it was all still there. But the painting was gone.
    She wasn’t coming back.
    It was the picture of a young girl, wrapped in winter clothes, her cheeks red from the cold, skating on a frozen lake. Janet had somehow managed to convey it all: the sense of joy on the girl’s face, the apprehension of skating on thin ice, the defiance that said,‘I dare.’ The cold and crisp air, the magic of the winter scene, with the icicle-covered branches, the pink-yellow sky, and the black silhouette of the winter trees in the distance …
    That painting showed all of Janet’s talent, her promise as an artist. It was part of her final exhibition when she had graduated from Slade in London. Everybody knew that Janet Phillips was one to watch, the one that would make it.
    And sure enough, she did.
    Three years after graduating, she was in great demand, owned a flat in an upmarket area of London and was swamped with work. Her work was true and honest and amazing.
    Her art meant everything to her; she would paint through the night and fall asleep at dawn on the sofa in her studio, among her canvases. When she was working on something, she couldn’t think of anything else, she couldn’t see anything else.
    But after three years of this life, she started to feel the strain. Although happy, she was exhausted and physically drained. Her twin sister, Anne, convinced her to take a holiday in Scotland with a group of friends.
    And that’s when we met and both our lives were turned upside down.
    I walked into the pub one night after work. They were sitting at the counter, all wrapped up in the high-tech fleeces, water-proof trousers and walking boots that seem to be the uniform of people coming here from down south, several whisky glasses in front of them.
    You know that thing about love at first sight? People debating whether it exists or not?
    Well, it does.
    I swear, it took me about a second to fall in love. And I’m not even the romantic type. You know, quiet and all that. Shy. Brought up to hide my emotions as deep as I could, in the best Scottish male tradition. I wasn’t even that interested in having a relationship, back then.
    And still, there she was, there I was, everything changed in that second and it was never the same again.
    We started talking and three hours later we were still together. Anne and their friends went back to their hotel, we went for a walk on the beach, among knowing smiles and innuendoes from the girls. We didn’t care. I didn’t even care about the people in the pub, most of whom had known me since I was born, and how tongues would start wagging. I didn’t care about anything, except not leaving her side.
    I watched her blonde hair on my pillow. It was the colour of ripe corn, of golden fields in the summer. I watched her face as she was sleeping, I watched over her all night.
    She went back to London a few days later, leaving me in a grey world, in a lifeless world where I wandered in a daze, not knowing what I was doing, where I was going.
    I burnt my hand very badly. I am a blacksmith, like my father, and in my line of work, you better watch what you are doing or you end up hurt.
    As she was bandaging my arm, Dr Nicholson smiled. The whole village knew about Janet and me. That is how things work in Glen Avich.
    ‘You are not the first and you won’t be the last,’ she said.
    I looked at her.
    ‘To do something silly like that. You know, the day I met John, about thirty years ago, I missed my stop on the train back from university and ended up on the coast. My dad had to drive two-and-a-half hours to come and get me. There, this will heal in no time.’
    A few stunned weeks