Torn Read Online Free Page B

You can put up your own shelves.’
    Though Jess laughed, she couldn’t join wholeheartedly with Sheila’s condemnation.
    â€˜I rather like men, really. Some of them, anyway. And there’s got to be someone out there, somewhere, who’s kind and sensitive.’
    Sheila grunted dismissively. ‘If there is he’s bound to be gay.’
    â€˜You’re such a cynic,’ Jess said. ‘All I ask, expect in a relationship, is to be treated as an equal.’
    â€˜Equal? We’re their superiors. Anyway, kind and sensitive ain’t sexy … apparently.’
    â€˜There was Ben!’
    â€˜And what happened to Ben?’
    â€˜Ran off with a long-legged blonde.’
    â€˜And was that kind? Was that sensitive?’
    Despite the brevity of their affair Jess still considered her relationship with Ben the nearest to love she’d ever been. He was the one who’d made the earth move. But Sheila was right of course, he’d been a bastard too, like the others who’d gone before him, and the rebound one-night stands who’d come after. Then she’d found herself pregnant with Rory and it had been Sean who offered stability. At last it seemed she had found a good man, someone uninterested in raking over the past, who was willing to take on Rory and to provide the emotional support she needed at that critical time. But it became clear – but not soon enough to get out easily – that even he had another side.
    â€˜But I’m certainly not in the market for any kind of new relationship. Not for a long while yet. Anyway, chance would be a fine thing. I don’t come on my own any more. There’s not many men interested in lumbering themselves with a single mother. Good thing too. It’ll keep temptation out of my way. I plan to concentrate on being a mum and making Rory’s life safe and secure.’
    Though she tried to shrug off her fears, Jessica remained anxious about the walk home at lunchtime. Sean’s almost supernatural reappearance the previous Friday night had upset and undermined her even more than she cared to admit. The possibility that he might appear again like a genie, from behind a tree or wall, was impossible to discount. But she refused to be cowed by such illogical fancies and she’d deliberately walked Rory to the nursery, challenging the morning shadows. Now, with his mittened hand tucked trustingly into hers, they set off for home. He was blithely unaware of her edginess, or that the man he called Rawn might be anywhere in the vicinity. Indeed, despite Sean’s increasingly impatient and dictatorial behaviour with her child, Jess knew that Rory would have been delighted to see him.
    Much of her history with Sean, and her reasons for running out on the relationship, had been explained to Sheila, and none of it had surprised the older woman. Despite setting up the nursery, Sheila had no children of her own, nor had she ever been in a long-term relationship, “let alone married” she’d told Jessica. At an age somewhere in the late thirties, she was tall and strongly boned. Her eyes were an arresting golden green, her face strikingly sculptural. Her hair was almost certainly henna’d. Yet Jess had never seen her in make-up and, given the odd assemblage of clothes she wore, she appeared to be a woman uninterested in the impression she made. While this was an attitude she found it hard to identify with, Sheila’s strong anti-male viewpoint was an endorsement and a comfort.
    Still feeling vulnerable and defensive over her decision to leave Sean, Jess knew he was the only father her son had ever known, and though it was too late now to change her mind, her emotions were still in dispute with her intellect. She tried to convince herself that leaving him was the lesser evil, allowing the situation to drag on would have put her child at greater risk of emotional damage. Rory was only three; there was