Page 33 of If I Could Say Goodbye
Ed takes a step back, his hand thrown melodramatically against his chest. ‘It doesn’t matter?’ he repeats, aghast.
‘It’s just chocolate milk.’
‘Mmmmhmmm? Just chocolate milk?’ He leans against the wall and crosses his arms: eyebrows raised, head to one side. ‘Since when has “just chocolate milk” being splattered around our kitchen been “just”?’
I shake my head and pull a ‘what the hell are you going on about’ face. ‘Nessa was drunk, Ed. Like, REALLY drunk. I couldn’t leave Erica there.’
He pulls himself back up straight. ‘And you know this how?’
‘I found the key hidden under a gnome in the garden next door and let myself in.’ Ed’s eyebrows shoot up as he whispers urgently, ‘You can’t just go around messing with other people’s gnomes and letting yourself into houses, Jen!’
‘Shush!’ I poke my head around the kitchen doorway to see Oscar and Erica drinking the rest of their cereal from the edges of their bowls while Hailey watches them with a look of disgust on her face. ‘Everything OK?’ I ask, smiling at Hailey’s nodding head before returning to mine and Ed’s heated debate.
‘We didn’t just let ourselves in, we—’
‘We?’
‘Uh-oh. He’s on to you.’Kerry takes a bite of toast and crunches closely to Ed’s ear.
‘I. I didn’t just let myself in, Erica rang me and told me where the spare key was.’
‘In the middle of the night?’
‘Yes.’
‘On your own?’
‘Yes.’
‘When you had no idea who could be hanging around outside Nessa’s house? An angry man could have found my incredibly attractive wife messing with his gnomes!’
‘You think I’m incredibly attractive?’
‘Of course I think you’re incredibly attractive, but you’re missing the point.’
Kerry rolls her eyes, then grins at me as she makes her way into the kitchen.
‘I love it when you say things like that to me.’
‘Focus, Jen! Where is Nessa now? Shouldn’t she be picking her up and taking her to school?’
‘I said I’d take Erica and look . . .’ We both peer around the doorframe and then go back to our original positions. ‘Look at how well Oscar is getting on with her now. It’s good for him.’
‘Are you forgetting the mark she left on his arm?’
‘No, but . . .’ I think of the gin bottle but push the image to one side, screwing the top back on and popping it away in a kitchen cupboard. ‘She was just so . . . alone. What else could I do?’
He kisses the top of my head. ‘You should have woken me up. You promised, Jen,’ he says quietly into my hair.
‘I know, but I left you a note and I took the spray you gave me when I went to London with Kerry. I couldn’t just leave her on her own, Erica had a nightmare and Ness was sleeping it off.’
‘Then Nessa should have got up and made herself a bloody coffee!’ Ed’s voice rises.
‘Shush! Look, I’m fine, and she’s clean and fed and Oscar is happy and—’
‘Jen?’ He steps back and puts his hands on my shoulders, his face concerned and serious. ‘Don’t you think you’ve got enough on your plate at the moment without . . .’ He sighs. ‘This?’
‘What would you have had me do, Ed? Tell a five-year-old sorry, no I’m not free? Explain to my dead sister’s widow—’
