Read Online Missing You by Louise Douglas - Free Book Online

straight and tall, and pushes the hair and water out of his face with his two hands.
    Fen holds her breath.
    Then he turns, he turns towards the door, and she knows he cannot see her – there is a streaming, steamy shower curtain between them and she is just a shadow in the gap between the door and its frame; and he does not know she is there, she should be at work – yet she feels he looks right into her.
    She sees the shape of his chest and the slightness of his hips and the dark, dark hair that trickles from his navel to his groin and the paler shape between his thighs, and she wants to groan like he has groaned, but she suppresses it.
    He leans down, picks up a bottle of shampoo, her shampoo Fen notices with pleasure, and it is only then that she remembers she should not be here. She turns away and puts her back to the door frame, then slides down it until she is resting on her heels. She leans her head back and exhales, and it is as if she has been holding her breath forever. In a way, she supposes, she has.
    ‘God,’ she whispers. ‘My God.’

 
ten
     
    Amy falls asleep in her car seat on the way back to Bath after Sean stops at the off-licence and buys beer and whisky. Back at Lilyvale, he sees Fen has left the downstairs lights on for him and her bedroom light is on. Sean carries Amy upstairs and puts her to sleep in his bed. Then he takes his guitar and goes down into the living room. He shuts the door, turns on a small lamp and opens a can of beer. He fingers the strings of the guitar and makes up a song, which he knows he will have forgotten by the morning. The song is called ‘Membury Blues’.
    When he goes back upstairs, some hours, some beer and some whisky later, he finds Amy awake in the bed, watching Poltergeist on the television. The duvet is pulled up to her eyes, which are wide and round, terrified. Sean can’t remember the exact plot of the film but he knows it has something to do with a child of about Amy’s age being sucked into the mouth of hell, or something equally disturbing.
    ‘There are ghosts in the television, Daddy,’ she whispers, too scared almost to breathe. He switches off the set and scoops his daughter up in his arms. She is shivering and doesn’t seem to realize, thankfully, that she has wet herself and the bed. She would be mortified if she knew. Soon, the lap of Sean’s jeans is also damp. He holds Amy very close, wraps her into his big body and kisses her head. He strokes her hair over and over, smoothing it against her warm little skull with the flat of his hand, feeling the delicate shell-shape of her ear, and he tells her that there are no ghosts, that it was just a scary story.
    ‘I saw the ghosts,’ she insists, whispering, trembling in his arms.
    ‘Those were just pretend ghosts.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Because I know the man who made the film and he told me.’
    Amy shifts her position and looks up at her father, wanting to believe him, but still suspicious. Her eyelashes are sticky with tears that catch the light from the landing and reflect in her dark pupils.
    ‘It’s true,’ he says. ‘Shall I phone him up now and you can ask him yourself?’
    ‘Your words don’t smell very nice,’ says Amy, pulling her face away from his. ‘I think you should brush your teeth, Daddy.’
    The next day, they sleep in late, and Sean wakes to find his little daughter clinging to him like ivy to a tree. He unwinds her and wakes her, and she is hot and strange, an alien Amy. She behaves nothing like the quiet, eager-to-please daughter he knows and loves. She won’t let him comb her hair and refuses to brush her teeth or eat any breakfast. She says she does not want to go to Royal Victoria Park, she hates the park, she hates Bath, she wants her mummy, she wants to be at home. She works herself up into a desperate crying fit, sobbing as if her heart is breaking. Sean cannot touch her. She can’t hear what he says so he sits on the bed and waits for her to work