Save Her by Abigail Osborne (novel books to read .txt) 📗

‘evacuation’ leapt out at her, but she was paralysed inside, unable to speak or question anything.

The next thing she knew she was in an operating theatre with doctors and nurses milling around her. It was like she was watching the world through a broken television. She could see and hear the people around her, but the sound wasn’t working properly and everyone was blurry and unfocused. This had happened ever since the proposal. She was a co-pilot in her own body, no longer fully in control.

When she woke up from the operation it felt like only five minutes had passed when Greg helped her get dressed and bundled her back to his house. She stayed in bed for a whole week, unable to function or focus on anything. Greg had decided that now they were engaged they were moving in together and so her stuff appeared around her.

Flora came to visit. Greg had must have come up with a lie as to why she was ill because Flora never mentioned anything. Just brought her soup and stroked her face. She could hear Flora talking but only a few words actually processed. ‘Moving in with Sam’, ‘neighbours’, ‘fever’. But her consciousness was too fragile to process anything, because to engage with the world would mean acknowledging her loss.

She slept fitfully and barely noticed whether it was night or day. Time was no longer a concept she bothered to acknowledge. Her mind was empty and she only moved when Greg or Flora came in to feed or wash her. A strange man entered the room, but Sophie did not attempt to move. She presumed he must be a doctor as he used various instruments to check her temperature and blood pressure. She could hear the buzz of his voice but could distinguish no sounds, like her brain was out of practice and no longer understood the English language.

She was in the hospital. That was the first thing she realised. Someone must have fixed the broken TV that was her mind. The world around her came into focus again and she now recognised words and sounds. Time became a construct she understood and she felt time passing once more. She heard the doctor’s word’s, ‘womb infection’ and ‘damage to the cervix’. She put a pillow over her head to block out the sounds, to try and avoid hearing the rest of the doctor’s words. But the pillow was an ineffective barrier and the word ‘infertile’ struck her like a knife in her heart. She would never have a baby.

The only reason Sophie was able to work through her grief at the future she could have had was because of Flora. Seeing her and Sam thriving together and living next door to her made the pain lessen each day. There were days that she wondered whether she should tell Flora. At the moment, she thought that Sophie had had a nasty infection. Well in a way that was true, she had been infected by the Cavendish family poison.

19

Flora was starting to hope that her life would become normal and drama free. She and Sam were slowly breathing life into the house at Trelawney Close. Before she went over to check on the progress, she decided to have a quick swim. Sophie liked the regiment of a gym but Flora liked her exercise a bit more laidback and less intense.

There were only a few things Flora could remember with clarity when it came to her parents. It was getting difficult to remember the sound of her mother’s voice or the feel of her father’s bear hugs – but one of the few things she did remember was regular trips to the swimming pool. She could hear the echoes of her parents’ laughter as they tried to coerce her into leaving each time. If she concentrated hard enough, she could just about recall her dad’s voice. ‘Come on, Flora. I swear you must have been a fish in a previous life. It’s time to go.’

Now she liked immersing herself in the water and the memories it brought. She had also grown to love the swimming pool politics.

The water caressed her skin, small waves lapped at her, churned by the other swimmers. A cacophony of noise echoed around the space: shrieks of joy, the admonishments of parents and children shouting instructions at each other. The sounds were like a balm to her soul, drowning out any thoughts and allowing her to just be in the moment.

As Flora swam up and down the slow lane, she was particularly enjoying the tuts of displeasure aimed at a busty older lady with winter-white hair, swimming in their lane. Her watery blue eyes didn’t appear to have noticed the signs informing swimmers which direction she should be swimming in the lane. To the disgust of the regular swimmers, this older lady had the audacity to swim in the middle of the lane. Flora smirked as each judgemental middle-aged woman, one after another, aimed a thinly veiled look of disdain at the oblivious elderly lady. Everyone had to swim around her, but she didn’t seem to notice, or simply didn’t care.

Flora was not perturbed as she just slowed her pace and kept behind her. But she laughed inside at the contempt and frustration bubbling in the other swimmers. She could almost hear the diatribe they were longing to launch but couldn’t because of some unwritten English code of conduct that insisted on politeness at all times. Flora bet that if they were any other nationality, the older lady would have most likely been told, unceremoniously, to ‘get the hell out of the way’ or perhaps even pushed out of the way. But that was not the English way.

Being the only pool for miles around and given the fact the lockers, changing rooms and showers and the pool were all in one space, it would feel busy with only a handful of people in it. But Flora preferred it busy, there were