Joe said nothing, glancing down instead, which spoke volumes.
Sarah swallowed back her hurt. ‘You’re missing the point here a bit, Joe,’ she went on, working hard to speak calmly. ‘Ollie shouldn’t be carrying scissors around. It’s irresponsible to let him. I wouldn’t. Would you?’
He looked at her uncomfortably. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘No, I wouldn’t.’
She nodded. That was something, at least. Not enough, though, she thought, her heart aching. She was losing him. Because her natural instinct was to protect her son from threat, no matter how small or how insignificant other people thought it might be, she was losing Joe.
‘Whatever her explanation, she shouldn’t have put them in his bag without mentioning it,’ she said, for clarification’s sake. ‘They are safety scissors, yes, but to allow a child Ollie’s age to use them unsupervised …’ She stopped, a tight lump rising in her throat that she couldn’t seem to swallow. She’d said enough. Joe was a policeman, for goodness’ sake. He knew what the consequences could be.
He ran his hand over his neck. ‘I do see what you mean,’ he said awkwardly.
‘Do you, Joe?’ she challenged him. ‘Do you really?’ He was trying to appease her. She didn’t want appeasing. She didn’t need appeasing. She simply wanted him on her side.
‘I’ve done it again, haven’t I?’ Sighing heavily, he glanced at the ceiling.
Sarah didn’t answer. She didn’t feel she needed to.
‘Do you want me to go?’ He looked pig-sick as he gazed back at her.
She didn’t know. Could they ever have a conversation about Laura that didn’t include her being on the defensive? Would they ever be able to spend time together without the topic of Laura coming up? Mr bloody Whale wasn’t the intruder. She was. ‘Do you—’ she began, just as the hall phone rang.
God, it would wake Ollie. Tearing her gaze away from Joe, who now looked utterly dejected, she turned to the hall, and then stopped dead as the answerphone picked up.
‘Sarah, it’s Laura. I couldn’t get you on your mobile. I’ve sent you a text, but just in case, I put Ollie’s safety scissors in his bag and completely forgot to mention it. I’ve put his scissor skills workbook in there too. Hope you had a lovely meal. Speak soon.’
Twenty-One
Joe hadn’t gone home, but the evening had ended far differently to the way Sarah had hoped it would. As they’d lain in bed together, he had tentatively wrapped an arm around her, but she’d felt his tension. Any other night she would have snuggled into him. With the issue of Laura wedged between them, though, she hadn’t known how to. It was all she could do not to cry. It was her instigating the arguments between them, not Laura magically manipulating them from a distance. If Joe hadn’t acknowledged her attempt to bridge the divide and squeezed her close as he normally did, she couldn’t have borne it. After being everything he had accused her of, seemingly obsessed with her ex’s girlfriend, reacting apparently unreasonably to something that clearly had been a miscommunication – or lack of communication, anyway – she’d felt bitchy and petty. In short, not very good about herself.
Joe had had an early training meeting. As an authorised firearms officer, he qualified to apply for a role at the West Mercia operational policing unit, and had decided to go for it. She’d been worried to death when he’d told her that. She would always worry about him, even if they weren’t together. She felt the tears rising, her throat tightening at that thought. She’d hoped he might wake her, or leave a note. He hadn’t. She couldn’t blame him. No doubt he’d been mulling things over while he’d tossed and turned in the night and was probably desperate to put as much distance between them as he could. He hadn’t signed up for this. He was single, child-free. Why would he want this kind of hassle in his life?
Exhausted after lying awake herself most of the night, she forced herself out of bed and dragged herself through the morning routine, smiling for Ollie’s sake, chatting to him on the way to nursery about his trip to the zoo and his flipping scissor skills workbook. She’d broached the subject of Bunny, delicately. Ollie had looked upset and said he’d lost him and that he’d asked his invisible superhero friend to help find him. Sarah really didn’t think he had cut Bunny’s ear off. She was sure he would mention it if he knew anything about it. Someone had, though. It hadn’t just dropped off, had it? Then there were the secrets he’d been convinced he should keep from her. No matter how plausible Laura’s explanations had been, she still couldn’t understand why Ollie would have imagined he shouldn’t share information with her unless someone had categorically told him not to.
Laura’s relationship with her mother was also bothering her. She wasn’t sure why. It just seemed odd. Everything about Laura seemed … off, unless it was her own instincts that were, totally. The fact was, she was bothered, out of concern for her son. Perhaps she had been looking for reasons not to like Laura – she was only human, after all, and it was normal, surely, to compare yourself to the new woman in your ex’s life and wonder what it was you were lacking. She might have charged in unthinkingly initially. She might have upset Laura, but only inadvertently. In her heart, she didn’t think she was any of the things that Joe thought she was, that Steve did: a vindictive, jealous person.
Driving dejectedly to work after dropping Ollie off, she went over it again and again. Try as she might, she simply couldn’t ignore the niggling feeling in the pit of her stomach that something about Laura was off kilter. By the time she’d got through her morning ‘Welcome to Dog School’ training session, she’d decided on a plan. She would be the epitome of friendliness, and would certainly keep any thoughts about the woman to herself, for now. Meanwhile, she would do a little digging. She’d taken Laura at face value. Steve had too. Joe had been won over, smiling readily at her when they’d picked Ollie up; Sarah supposed most people would be, with that air of vulnerability she had about her. Laura had stammered when she’d spoken to him, she recalled. Why would that be? Because she was nervous because he was a policeman? Or because she’d been attracted to him?
She acknowledged that the green-eyed monster might now be rearing its head, but decided not to beat herself up about that either. She wouldn’t apologise for being human. Nor would she apologise for wanting to protect her child. She needed to find out all she could about Laura. Some indication of what had caused the rift between her and her mother, for a start. Also whether there was any truth to what Laura had told her about her previous controlling relationship. There was bound to be some hint of who she really was online. And if there wasn’t, why not? Everyone had an online profile of some sort, a trail of life events left behind them. Even Steve, who wasn’t much into Facebook other than to set up his business page, had an online presence.
After invigilating a meet-and-greet session, where, sadly, the prospective new owners of a Labrador cross were completely overwhelmed by his boisterousness, she went to check on the puppy-farm Jack Russell rescue, who’d been brought in half starved and riddled with ticks, worms and fleas.