Read Online Missing You by Louise Douglas - Free Book Online Page A

the excess emotion out of her system. He has never seen Amy like this. It’s as if she has been broken.
    He thinks: Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Is this my life?
    Over his daughter’s wails, he hears Fen tactfully clatter Connor’s pushchair up the steps in the front garden. He hears her collecting the boy, hurrying him along, pretending she has somewhere to be so that Sean and Amy have the house to themselves. He is grateful.
    When Amy’s crying has subsided into huge, swallowing, gulping sobs, he takes her downstairs and gives her little sips of sugared tea from a spoon, like a baby. He turns on the television out of habit, and Amy screams that the ghosts will come. She kicks the guitar that he left propped beside the settee. Amy knows that kicking his guitar is about the worst crime she can commit in her father’s presence. She is never naughty. She is, by nature, the least controversial child. Once she has kicked the guitar, her hand flies to her mouth and she looks up at her father with wide, startled eyes, as if she cannot believe what she has just done. Sean doesn’t care. He is tired and hung-over. He rubs his stubbly chin, rubs his eyes. He hitches up his jeans; he needs to buy a belt.
    ‘Come on,’ he says to his daughter. ‘We’re going into Bath.’
    ‘I don’t want to go into Bath.’
    ‘There’s a fairy shop,’ says Sean, ‘and it’s full of nice things. Really, Ames, I think you’ll like it.’
    He noticed the shop some weeks back and has been saving it for an emergency.
    They catch the bus down into the city centre and make their way through the Saturday crowds to the fairy shop, which is down one of the narrow little side streets that remind Sean of film sets; they are too authentic, too quaint to be real, he thinks. Amy holds his hand very tightly. She has gone quiet now. Occasionally she sniffs. The shop is tiny, a shrine to pink and glitter, fairy dust, wands, sequins, tinsel and fairy lights, all sparkly corners and mirrors and pink plastic.
    Amy’s mouth falls open.
    ‘Oh!’ she says, a little bubble-gasp of pleasure between her lips, and she is off.
    Sean looks at his watch. He leans up against a shelf of tiaras and wishes he had brought something to read. He plugs his iPod into his ears, crosses his arms, closes his eyes and fills his head with the Pixies, only moving when Amy shakes his sleeve to show him some new wonder. After an inordinately long time, bored almost to tears, he persuades her out of the shop by buying her a fairy outfit, wings, wand, glitter dust, the whole shooting match. It’s the sort of stuff he and Belle have always tried to steer Amy away from, hoping to nurture less stereotypical interests. Today he doesn’t care. He’ll do whatever it takes to make Amy happy.
    They eat lunch in a cafe upstairs at the Podium. Amy, her hair messy beneath the tiara, picks at a bowl of chips, delicately dipping each one in mayonnaise and nibbling off its end, before discarding it at the side of her plate. From time to time she spoons marshmallow balls from a mug of hot chocolate, making a sticky mess on the table which she makes worse by painting patterns with her finger. She is talking to herself, her lips moving constantly, maintaining a private running commentary. She does not realize she is making a mess. Sean can’t be bothered to stop her. He wolfs down a bacon burger and drinks a pint of Stella as the hair of the dog. The waitress, a pretty girl with a nice wide mouth and an Alice band, makes a fuss of Amy and flirts with Sean. He has no inclination to join in. He wipes the froth from his upper lip with the back of his hand and tries to keep his mind on his daughter. There is still a whole afternoon to fill in. There are five hundred or more weekends to be endured before Amy will be old enough to go to concerts with Sean, by which time she’ll be too old for him to impose his musical tastes on her. He prays that the child will grow to like rugby