Page 72 of You, As You Are

Iain pulled out, turned, and parked up in the first on-street spot he saw available.

It’d gone dark already, and the sporadic streetlights didn’t fill him with confidence that Ms Vera would get to wherever she was going with two bags of shopping without tripping on a crack in the uneven pavement and breaking her other wrist.

He jumped out of his car and grabbed Ted from the boot. “Vera!”

She twisted until she spotted him across the road. “Oh, Iain, hello. Back for more are we?”

“Vera.”He said her name flatly, him and Ted jogging across the road to catch up to her. “Nothing happened. Maisie fell.”

“Right into your lap.”

Iain pushed down a groan. He knew what she was insinuating beneath that rain bonnet.

“I am only looking out for my granddaughter, dear.”

“I understand.” To a degree. That kind of familial support had been absent in Iain’s life for too long to remember what acomfort it was having someone watching over you for the right reasons.

He dropped his focus to Vera’s shopping bags laden with groceries that Ted attempted to dig his nose into, then took them from her. “Are you having another party, Vera?”

“No, no. Maisie is sick. Didn’t she tell you?”

His brows pulled down.Sick?He’d seen her only yesterday and she’d been fine. Had she hurt herself in her tumble?

“I haven’t spoken to her today,” he said.

“Oh …” He didn’t need Vera to analyse why that might’ve been. “Well, her cold developed overnight,” she said. “You might want to take your vitamins and make sure you haven’t caught it from her.”

A cold.Now that he thought about it, Maisiehadbeen a little sniffly on Sunday.

He glanced again into the shopping bags. “You were bringing her food?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t I take it up?” he offered. “You don’t need to catch Maisie’s cold.”

Vera’s eyes turned round. “Would you? I just … I worry about her, Iain.”

As far as he was aware, the worry was the other way around. He cocked his head for her to continue like he knew she would.

Vera rubbed the back of her bad hand. “She doesn’t go out anywhere, Iain. She hovers around me ...”

Because she’s worried about you. But Iain couldn’t say that. It was Maisie’s business and her family’s – he didn’t need to get involved.

But he was. He had been since he first stepped foot on a hike with Vera.

“I think she wants to make sure you don’t hurt yourself any more than you already have done,” he said lightly, skirtingaround Vera’s concerns with a point of his brow at her purple cast beneath her coat sleeve.

“Pfft, I’m as tough as nails.”

It wasn’t his place to say that Maisie worried for something more.

Lifting the two bags, he said, “I’ll take these to her.”

“Diolch yn fawr iawn,Iain.?*”

Iain passed what he hoped was a smile at her thanks.

He got one step away when Vera said, “I’m glad she’s decided on being withyou, Iain.”

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