Read Online Close Your Eyes by Michael Robotham - Free Book Online

back to London because I needed the work. Since then I’ve seen less of the girls, but once a month they come to London or I come to Wellow. Occasionally, Julianne has let me sleep on the sofa. Once she let me sleep in her bed. That’s what scares me most about her invitation – the false sense of hope that keeps ballooning in my chest no matter how hard I try to dampen my expectations.
    I am not the same person I was a decade ago. Existence has become infinitely more complex and less joyful. Mr Parkinson has become my cellmate and we’re serving ‘life’ together. Middle age is taking hold. I’m thinner, more stooped and less well dressed without Julianne’s input. Old age is no longer a foreign country that I hope to visit one day. It’s over the horizon but on the itinerary.
    During the past six years we’ve each dated other people and dipped our toes in the shrinking pond of possible partners, but I was never fishing with any bait. I can’t speak for Julianne. She hasn’t moved on. Maybe that’s the best I can hope for.
    Looking at the cottage now, I have a fierce urge to get my old life back. Julianne asked me what I would change if I could go back and do things again. My answer should have been nothing. By changing the smallest detail I might alter how Charlie and Emma have turned out. It would be like going back to prehistoric times and accidentally stepping on a butterfly – setting in train a sequence of events that could subtly alter the present.
    Even so, given a time machine, it would be so tempting to return to that rainy day at Bath University when a policeman asked me to talk a woman down from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. I could say no. He could find someone else. And that seemingly random tragedy of a woman jumping to her death would no longer trigger the series of events that cost me my marriage. And yet … yet … we are the sum total of our experiences. We are who we are because of what happened – Julianne, Charlie, Emma and even me. How could I want to change that?
    There is a small Fiat hatchback parked outside the cottage next to Julianne’s car. Maybe she has a visitor. I should have called. I should have found somewhere else to stay.
    The door of the cottage opens suddenly and Charlie emerges. She’s wearing track pants and a baggy sweater, talking to someone on her mobile. The locks trigger and lights flash on the hatchback. Charlie opens the passenger door and retrieves a folder. I slide down below the level of the steering wheel.
    Charlie is still talking. She laughs. I can’t hear what she’s saying. Her head turns. She stares at me. Crosses the road. Ends her call.
    ‘Hi, Daddy.’
    ‘Hi.’
    ‘What are you doing out here?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘I just arrived – I was about to knock.’
    There are several beats of silence. I can hear crickets chirruping in the grass and water splashing over the weir at the bottom of the hill.
    ‘Does Mummy know you’re coming?’
    ‘I was going to call her.’
    ‘But you’re here already.’
    ‘I know. Does she have a visitor?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Who owns the hatch?’
    ‘Oh, that’s mine.’
    ‘Yours?’
    ‘Mummy bought it for me.’
    ‘Really. Why didn’t you tell me?’
    ‘It was going to be a surprise.’ Charlie is holding the folder against her chest. Her cotton sweater has her name embroidered above the school crest. It was personalised to celebrate her last year at school.
    ‘Are you staying the night?’ she asks.
    ‘No, I mean. I don’t think … I should go … but I have to be here in Somerset tomorrow.’
    ‘Mummy won’t mind. Come on.’
    Charlie opens the car door and drags me through the gate and towards the front door. ‘Look who I found!’ she yells, making me feel as though I’m a treasured artefact uncovered at a jumble sale.
    Julianne is in her dressing gown. She frowns and looks from face to face. ‘Is everything all right? What’s wrong?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    We’re standing in