Unintended

After a moment, he shrugged. “Still tired. Though, that might be because my mum was just here.”

“She was?” I asked, looking around as if she might be in the tiny room somewhere and I’d somehow missed her presence.

“She’s gone.”

I nodded. “I guess she needs to find a place to stay for a few days.”

“No. She’s gone. She arrived in the U.K. at seven this morning, had breakfast at the airport, got here at ten, and now she’s going home.”

I glanced down at my watch. It was quarter past eleven. “She’s going home?”

“Yeah. She spared me about an hour of her time, which she pointed out was more than an hour when you added in the time she spent finding a flight over Christmas, getting to the airport in time for the flight, and the flight time. So, yeah. She’s got a flight home this afternoon.”

I couldn’t speak.

Ash was in a hospital bed after his girlfriend had violently attacked him on Christmas Eve, and all she did was fly over just to spend an hour with him? She might as well have stayed at home.

“Yeah,” he said, as if picking up on my thoughts. “She’s quite something. She literally just left. You probably saw her.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Blonde hair, lots of make-up?”

“That’s her.”

“Yeah, she almost flattened me as she shot past. How come she didn’t stay longer?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t want her to stay longer anyway. All she had to say, after she’d gone on about how bad I look, was that she always liked Natalie and maybe we can work this out once I get out of hospital.”

Sounded to me like Mrs McKay was missing a few marbles.

“Work it out?” I asked incredulously. “Did she not look at you?”

Ash let out a sharp laugh. “Not much. If it wasn’t Boxing Day, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d called Natalie and asked to meet her for lunch.”

I could feel bubbles of annoyance rising within me. The only reason Ash’s mum should have wanted to see Natalie was to tear her twisted little head off.

“I don’t even know what to say,” I said, shaking my head, and Ash shrugged again.

“It was what I expected. Any time Mum comes over here, she doesn’t spend much time with me. She makes a big fuss about how much she loves her son, tells everyone on Facebook, but it’s all for show. The fact that she came over here at all is just for everyone else’s benefit. She can say she visited her poor, battered son, and everyone will think she’s great.” He paused. “She’s not a terrible mother, she’s just… she’s a bit self-involved.”

A bit? I wasn’t sure it was possible to be much more selfish. But I wasn’t about to say anything bad about her. I’d never met her, and Ash couldn’t bring himself to let me think too badly of her, so I kept my mouth shut.

“So,

what’s going to happen now?” I asked carefully. “I mean, do you know when you’ll be able to get out of here?”

Ash shook his head. “I heard them say something about me needing an ‘evaluation’ to check if there’s a possibility of me hurting myself.” His eyes glazed over for a second, but then he blinked and looked at me again. “I’m not going to,” he said quietly. “But, maybe the fact that I’ve thought about it might be enough for them to keep me here.”

I nodded, my heart aching for him once again. “Maybe. Whatever they ask you though, Ash, tell the truth. Let them help you.”

“I will,” he said, looking down at his bed covers again. “But when it comes to my injuries, it could just be a few days. If I pass the evaluation, I don’t know where I’ll go. The police also came while my mum was here. Natalie is back at the flat now. Or at least, that’s where she told the police she’ll be. We have to wait for a court date now, and she’ll get some kind of punishment. But I was told that since she’s chosen to plead guilty, I don’t have to go to court.”

I raised an eyebrow. “She admitted to everything?”

“Couldn’t really deny it. The police burst in when she was stomping on my chest. She didn’t try to say that she was doing it in self-defence or anything like that. She confessed to everything.”

That was big of her. I couldn’t claim to know much about the justice system, but I suspected that admitting guilt might mean her punishment could be less than she deserved. As far as I was concerned, she should have rotted in jail, but that wasn’t my call, unfortunately.

“My mum says she’ll put some money in my bank account so I can stay in a cheap B&B for a week or so while I find somewhere to go permanently, but I’ve already been told I can’t work for at least four weeks. Maybe more depending on how I heal.”