Page 144 of You, As You Are

Dialling for an ambulance, Maisie fumbled to get the key in the lock, using her whole body to break the latch on the inside. Her shoulder stung like a bitch, but her own pain didn’t phase her in the slightest, didn’t matter to her at all. She’d never been so hysterical as she scrambled inside, rallying off what little information she had to the dispatcher on the phone. “I’m inside,” she said, phone on speaker, then dove for the floor next to Vera.“Nain!”

Careful of the shards of broken glass littered around Vera’s slippered feet, Maisie knelt. A patch of whatever drink had been in the glass had soaked up into the carpet.

She swiped the wet curls out of her eyes. “Nain?Nain, it’s alright. I’m here.”

“Is the patient breathing?” the dispatcher asked for a second time.

Air passed through Vera’s cracked lips to the back of Maisie’s damp hand.

“Yes,” she exhaled and folded in a cry of relief. “Okay—you’re breathing. It’s alright.”

Her hands floated over hernain’sbody without knowing what to do as she tried to sniffle back control of her tears. Listening to the dispatcher’s instructions not to move Vera made sharp pain lance through Maisie’s chest. Her knees, heart, head – everything ached. All she wanted was to wrap Vera up in her arms and see her eyes blink open up at her.

The blaring sound of the ambulance approaching carried on the wind through the broken front door.

“It’s alright.” Chin trembling, Maisie soothed her hand over her grandma’s hair. “I’m here.”

And she wasn’t going to leave again.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

IAIN

The cacophonyof car horns made Iain’s last nerve prickle.

It was ten minutes past the time he’d told Maisie to be ready for. He’d circled the one-way streets around her flat four times already. And now he blocked the single-lane road beneath her window, listening to the dial tone of his car-phone disconnect yet again.

“Why won’t you pick up?” he said through his teeth, planting the heel of his palm on the centre of his steering wheel for another three seconds.

The horn blared.Again.

He was too jumpy for this. It was going to take two hours to drive north through the mountains to get to the farm where he’d struggled through his childhood, and he didn’t want to give the people who called themselves his family any reason to give him shit because he was late.

The car behind him honked, arms gesturing in Iain’s rearview mirror.

“Fuck’s sake.”

He didn’t want to wait any longer. If Maisie wasn’t going to answer her phone or come on time like she’d promised him she would, then he was just going to go by himself.

She’d said that she would be here for him, and she wasn’t. Nor was she the first woman in his life to break her promises.

Iain shifted into gear, put his foot on the accelerator pedal, and drove straight for the turning to take him out of town.

He stopped his car on the gravel driveway, leaving himself enough space to turn back.

Ten years … and nothing had changed. The same fences still stood. The same old barns with the same leaky corrugated roofs. The same green view of the mountains in the valley all around them, white dots grazing on the hillsides. He knew that being here again would swirl nauseating feelings within his gut, but he never expected to feel so numb. Time could heal some wounds but not all of them. Some still oozed and wept every now and then, whilst the others formed jagged, silvery scars.

Underprepared for the shitshow that was to come, Iain put his car into gear and crawled up to the farmhouse. Its brown walls looked just like any other made in the mid-century, with white paint flaking off the window frames.

A welcome committee was the last thing he expected to see. His two brothers stood from the bench under the porch, and Iain parked his silver city car between the dirt-coveredHiluxesandJeeps.

Giving a final, white-knuckled squeeze around the steering wheel, he killed the engine and stepped out into the wind.

“The prodigal son returns.” Rhys, ever the joker, sidled up to him first.

“Cut the crap.”

“You look old,” Lewis said in Welsh.

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