Read Online In Too Deep by Samantha Hayes - Free Book Online

I know she’s been drinking more these last few months.
    Though the drinking that goes on at university actually makes Mum’s few glasses of wine each night seem lightweight. Before I went, she and Dad lectured me about alcohol, drugs, sex, all the kinds of things parents get hung up over. I convinced them I’d never touch drugs and wouldn’t get wasted on booze. The rest I left to their imagination, which probably isn’t the cleverest thing I’ve ever done. It’s all about reassurance with parents, making them think the best when they’re hardwired to believe the worst.
    ‘What shall we do now?’ I say, looking around the deserted bar as she stands there expectantly. ‘There’s no one here to
mingle
with.’ I say it in a silly way, hoping it will make her smile.
    ‘Susan definitely said guests gather for drinks,’ she says for the third time.
    She seems nervous, distracted, as if she’s searching for something, her eyes darting around the old panelled room. Even though it’s still light outside, the bar is dim and sombre, filled with the musty smell of log fires lingering from the winter, though it’s brightened by vases of daffodils dotted around the room.
    ‘How about a walk down to the village?’ I suggest. ‘Or I could show you the spa area.’ Anything but another drink. I want her to last the evening without crying or falling asleep by nine o’clock.
    Mum glances at her watch just as my phone vibrates again. I stare at the screen. The sight of his name makes me tense up. I shove my phone back in my pocket without reading the message. I wish he’d just take no for an answer and get on with his life. Let me get on with mine. What’s left of it.
    That was pretty much what I told him last time I saw him. He’d hounded me for days after I broke up with him – after that terrible evening in his room. Yet another reason to screw up my eyes, block my ears, hoping it will all just go away.
    ‘Or we could stay here and wait?’ Mum suggests, planting herself on a velvet-topped bar stool. ‘See if anyone turns up.’
    Then her face lights up as the bartender comes out from a back room.
    ‘May I have a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, please?’ she says, watching as he pours. Resignedly I sit down beside her and ask for a bag of nuts. I’m starving.
    ‘Who’s texting?’ Mum says, trying to sound interested.
    For a moment I consider telling her. She and Dad pretty much guessed I had a boyfriend last term, figured out that things had got into a mess when I came back from uni early before Christmas. It didn’t take a mind-reader.
    But it’s no easier to tell her now than it was then.
    Harder, in fact.
    I fully intended on going back for the last week or so of term after I’d got my head round things, got someanswers and decided what to do, but then it all kicked off with Dad, and since then everything’s been horrid. Even more horrid.
    ‘Just someone from uni,’ I say. I ask for some water. The nuts are salty.
    ‘A boy?’
    ‘Yeah, actually.’
    Keeping it all inside is hard work. Then I’m thinking of James whoever-he-was in the pub last week. It was risky and stupid, but it felt good to get some stuff off my chest, even though it’s left me paranoid.
    Mum gives a slightly boozy wink. ‘That’s nice, love.’
    No. No, it’s not nice at all
, I want to tell her, but don’t get the chance as someone comes up behind us, interrupting the moment, making Mum shudder and gasp as a friendly hand comes down on her shoulder. As she turns round, I see her eyes close briefly, a look of pathetic hope pulling at her features as she prays it’s Dad standing there, about to cradle her in his arms.
    Forgive and forget
. . .
    But of course it’s not. It’s Susan, smiling, eyeing each of us in turn.
    ‘How are you both settling in?’ she asks.
    Then she tells us about a local craft fair we might be interested in as she mindlessly toys with a pen between her strong, slender fingers.
    I’m not really