Never Alone by Elizabeth Haynes Read Free Book Online Page A

conversation, even if it’s not going to earn you nearly as much. You need help to do this. Sarah Carpenter can help you. She doesn’t know this yet.
    You have realised that acting all the time is incredibly difficult, and downright exhausting.
    You tell yourself that if you act it long enough, it will become a habit and then it will be easy. One day at a time. It’s the only way you can do this.
    You put on a sweatshirt and head out into the darkness to see if the fresh air might help. It’s insanely dark here at night; the nearest street-lights are down in the valley, pinpricks of orange light. Up here there is nothing but the lights shining from Sarah’s upstairs windows.
    You follow the path round to the garden, up a steep, grassy slope, hoping for some sort of a view of the valley; but when you reach the dry stone wall you nearly fall over it. Looking back, there is nothing but the darkness, the lights in the valley, and the black outline of the house, hunkering down into the hillside.
    You are not going to fuck Sarah Carpenter again. It was a mistake; you lost control. That cannot happen. You need her as a friend. You can’t expect her to help you if you’re going to dick around with her feelings the way you did last time.
    A light comes on in one of the windows and you watch as Sarah runs a bath. You stay still, watching, even as she undresses.
    You watch her from the darkness of the garden under her window, and you realise that, if the opportunity does arise to fuck her again, you are probably not going to be able to stop yourself.

Sarah
    Sarah sees Aiden’s car parked outside the cottage when she takes the dogs out, first thing. The curtains are closed, the lights are off, but it’s still early, not quite seven. All the way up the hill she thinks about whether to knock on the door later, about nine maybe, offer him a coffee. She’s got a dentist’s appointment at ten, which gives her the perfect excuse to make it quick. Just a little chat to smooth things over, yes?
    Look, she can say, I’d had a bit to drink. Let’s pretend it never happened, shall we?
    She practises saying it in her head, brightly, with a smile, because this is what she thinks he probably wants to hear. He regrets it, he must do, otherwise why would he leave her while she was asleep? Why would he not come round the following day, or call or text? It’s the sort of fucked-up way men behave, she thinks, or maybe not all men but certainly Aiden – that’s how he operates. Why on earth should she have thought he might have grown up a bit in the last twentysomething years?
    Tess and Basil have disappeared over the top of the hill. When she gets there the sun bursts through the clouds, bathing the valley in a rich golden light that is so unexpected it takes her breath away. She can see everything, the whole world laid before her: tiny houses, fields, the snaking road with miniature vans and cars and Matchbox-sized lorries trundling away towards York.
    I don’t need him, she thinks. I was doing fine before he got here.
    But then, there is the not insignificant matter of the money that was deposited into her bank account the day he arrived: one thousand, six hundred pounds. Needless to say, it has fallen into the pit of her unauthorised overdraft, but it has at least filled it almost to the brim. Next month, she might be able to start paying back some of the money she owes on credit cards.
    And it’s nice to feel that someone is there, just in case. She promised him that she wouldn’t ask him to fix the septic tank, but it’s not that she worries about. Sometimes it feels like a long way from the nearest human being, up here. If she screamed, nobody would hear.
    This thought makes her laugh; over in the cottage, Aiden probably wouldn’t be able to hear her if she screamed anyway.
    Best not to start screaming, then; it won’t do any good.
    Basil is running up the track towards her, something hanging out of the side of his mouth. Tess