Read Online Forget Me Not by Luana Lewis - Free Book Online Page A

look after. My mother said she would support me. I think she was quite excited, even, about having a baby in her house. My father died of a heart attack when he was in his thirties, and she was lonely. So I ended up sending Vivien to live with my mother when she was three months old, and I went to Southampton as planned. Vivien stayed with my mum until she was four. She was more of a mother than I was.’
    It’s a relief to say this out loud.
    ‘I paid a price for those lost years. We both did. Vivien came back to live with me when she was starting school but even then she spent more time at the childminder’s than she did with me. I was lucky because Jane – the childminder – was an amazing woman. I felt she was doing a better job than I was anyway, and she was happy to have Vivien to stay overnight if I was working a night shift. In the end, I didn’t even have Vivien with me for that long. She was really gifted at ballet, and when she was sixteen, she asked if I’d send her to ballet school, as a boarder. And once again I was relieved. It wasn’t easy running a neonatal unit and dealing with a teenage daughter.’
    I roll down my window, I want to breathe in some fresh, cold air. Instead I taste the bitterness of this polluted city. Isaac is concentrating on the oncoming traffic as he pulls into the lay-by outside Cambridge Court. It’s almost dark.
    I close the window and look at my bruised hand as it rests on soft pink cashmere. Isaac turns off the engine, and we sit for a few moments without speaking. Then he reaches over and places his hand over mine.
    ‘I was not a good mother,’ I say. ‘I was just going through the motions, and I never found it particularly rewarding. I had to bring up my daughter alone, in a damp-infested council flat. I gave up any social life I might have had. But more than that – I love my job and I always found being on the ward much more enjoyable than being at home. I often thought it would have been better for me not to have gone through with the pregnancy. And now that she’s died, it feels like my fault. I feel so guilty. As though I’m responsible because I wished her away.’
    Isaac squeezes my hand. He doesn’t try to make me feel better, or to deny this horrible, irreversible truth.
    ‘There’s only one way I can redeem myself,’ I say. ‘And that’s to watch over Lexi.’
    I feel he understands me. His hand is warm over mine, his eyes are kind and wise. Or perhaps I’m imagining what I want to see; conjuring up the kind of friend I need.
     
    I unlock the front door of Cambridge Court and Isaac follows me into the lobby and waits by my side for the lift to arrive. Once inside, under the bright light, we stand with our backs against the mirror, staring straight ahead.
    I stop at the threshold of my flat, holding my keys. Isaac is next to me, his hands tucked into the pockets of his long coat. I wonder if he notices the smell that bothers me so. The sourness of Vivien’s childhood.
    ‘I had a word with Ben,’ Isaac says. ‘He’s not comfortable with you fetching Alexandra from school. Not yet. He’s trying to keep her routine as much the same as possible, and he thinks it will be too disruptive to have a different person pick her up.’
    I turn and brace my back against my front door, stiffening my spine against the surge of disappointment. ‘What if I come over to the house, to meet her when she gets home?’
    ‘It’s too soon, that’s all.’ Isaac looks embarrassed.
    ‘I imagine Ben had a few choice words to say about me.’
    Isaac says nothing. There is a scuffling from underneath the door across the hall. We’ve disturbed Mrs Shenkar’s two Pomeranians. My neighbour is morbidly obese and she is always home, usually in her dressing gown. Sometimes she’ll open her door and peer out.
    ‘I can help Lexi,’ I say. ‘I should be seeing her every day. This is cruel. Ben is punishing both of us. I know I’ve screwed up, but does it count for