Missing You

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Book: Missing You by Louise Douglas Read Free Book Online
Authors: Louise Douglas
Tags: Fiction, General, Romance, Love Stories, Domestic Animals, Single mothers
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because otherwise God knows how they’ll manage. What interests Sean bores Amy and vice versa. One or other of them will die of boredom. They’ll grow to dislike and resent one another. The future looks grim.
    After lunch, he shows Amy how the steam from the hot springs, which feed the famous Roman baths, comes up through the drain covers in the old roads around the historic building. She is captivated, putting her hand in the steam which, her father tells her, has come all the way up from the centre of the earth. She is almost back to her old self. She asks lots of questions about hot springs and the Romans who built the baths and what they wore when they were bathing. They walk through streets almost unchanged since Georgian times and lined with grand, tall, sash-windowed houses all in the palest, most elegant stone, houses with straight, high walls that catch the sunlight in geometric slabs and cast beautiful shadows. They go to the balcony that overlooks the Recreation Ground and Sean manages to watch a bit of rugby. Amy, in her fairy tiara, soon attracts several other little girls who want to play with her. Amy is flattered by the attention, but does not know how to take advantage of it. She hangs on to her father’s hand and lets the other girls play with her wand.
    This amenable state of affairs does not last long. Soon Amy is quietly unhappy again. Sean buys a paper and takes his daughter to the Royal Victoria Park. Amy runs off towards the sand pit. The grass is cold and damp, spattered darkly with fallen leaves, so Sean finds a discarded orange Sainsbury’s carrier bag to sit on, and reads the Guardian from cover to cover, and all its supplements, even the Money section. He feels more at home, because he and Amy have already been to the park so many times, and because a lot of men on their own come here with their kids at weekends. Sean has even spoken to a few of them. He’s thrown footballs and cricket balls back to boys. He’s ridden the rope slide with Amy. He has not exactly made friends, but here he feels less of a social pariah.
    With one arm tucked behind his head, Sean is half-sitting, half-lying against a grassy slope, chewing a piece of grass and watching Amy, who is being bossed about by an older girl. Amy is listening intently to instructions. She is slightly knock-kneed and her fairy wings are already bent out of shape. She looks up at the other child, nods and then crawls off through the sand, in search of something or other.
    Sean smiles. He checks his watch and as he does so he is aware of somebody beside him. He looks up and it is his landlady, Fen.
    ‘Hi,’ she says.
    ‘Hi,’ he says, squinting into a metallic, wintery sun. He makes a visor with his hand. ‘Do you come here often?’
    She smiles, looks down. ‘It was such a nice afternoon. I thought I’d come for a walk.’
    The boy is in his buggy, wrapped up in a coat, boots and gloves, and a felt hat with ear-flaps is tucked around his head. He grins widely when he sees Sean and climbs out of the buggy.
    ‘Hey, Connor,’ says Sean.
    Connor salutes Sean as he has been taught and says: ‘How’s it hanging?’
    Fen laughs. ‘Go and play, Con,’ she says, pushing his shoulder gently. ‘Where’s Amy?’
    Sean nods towards the sandpit. ‘I’m sorry about the noise this morning.’
    Fen shrugs.
    ‘I was going to get a cup of tea,’ she says, looking towards the ice-cream van in the corner. ‘Would you like one?’
    ‘I’ll go,’ says Sean. He jumps to his feet and indicates the carrier bag. ‘Have a seat,’ he says, ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
    She doesn’t talk much. She sits quietly beside him, looking out over the park and watching the children, one hand shading her eyes. It’s OK; he doesn’t feel as if he has to make conversation. They have shared the same house long enough now to be comfortable with one another’s silences. And she always seems half lost in thought.
    ‘It’s as if all the children in

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