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Why was he paying for my education? It was a fabulous school—the facilities were amazing, certainly in the art and music departments. But still, in Kent, I had gone to our local free grammar school, and I would have joined the sixth form and not have to wear a uniform.
I sighed loudly to express my irritation.
This was really irritating. More chips stacked against me in the burden stakes.
Surrender yourself.
Dr. Mills’s words echoed in my head. She wanted me to embrace my feelings.
Okay, I will.
“I’m not happy about you paying.”
“Emily,” Dylan warned. “It’s done. I got a deal. Two years, up front.”
“But—”
“No. Stop. We are not having this discussion.” He slowed for a red traffic light.
High-handed Dylan.
I scowled at him, and we sat in hostile silence as he studiously ignored me. He didn’t drive back to his house but to Sainsbury’s supermarket, where he parked and switched off the ignition.
“Are you going to sit here poker-faced for half an hour, or will you come help me with the shopping?” He didn’t bother to conceal his frustration.
I gave him my most sullen deadpan glare, then climbed reluctantly out of the car and followed him into the store where he collected a shopping trolley.
It was the first time I’d been in a supermarket for a while. Dylan had done all the shopping since the accident and that was mostly online, so our groceries were delivered. As we walked through the automatic doors, it came back to me with searing clarity—the pain was swift and sharp.
The last time I’d been out alone with my mother, we’d gone to the supermarket.
It had been an ordinary trip, just the weekly shopping, and it turned out to be our last trip together. The white noise humming in the back of my mind moved to the forefront. Overwhelmed by this precious memory, I shrank, like a child’s balloon, the helium gone.
Dylan stopped beside me, conscious, maybe, of my mood swing. “Do you want to go?” he asked gently. He glanced away. “Fuck!”
I followed the direction of his wide-eyed look.
At the end of the aisle, a middle-aged man in ill-fitting cycling gear collapsed to the floor, clutching his left arm. Dylan took one look at me, then he was running down the aisle toward him. The action became a slow-motion film—Dylan running, Dylan sinking to his knees beside the ashen-faced man, Dylan grasping the cyclist’s shoulder and arm. I could hear him talking to him, asking him questions. He placed his fingers on the cyclist’s neck, and I presumed by the way he checked his watch that he was measuring the man’s pulse.
Abandoning the trolley, I walked toward them, watching with morbid fascination as a shop assistant with dyed-blond hair, several piercings in her ear and one in her nose, ran up to help.
“Yes, I’m a doctor,” Dylan said to the shop assistant. “Where is your pain, Alan?” he asked, his voice calm and authoritative.
“My chest. My arm,” Alan replied breathless. “Really tight.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how much pain are you experiencing, if one is not much and ten is severe?”
“About an eleven, maybe twelve—like a fucking elephant on my chest,” Alan mumbled, looking panic-stricken at Dylan.
“You’re doing really well, Alan,” he said at his most reassuring. “You!” Dylan pointed at a young man in a T-shirt and shorts. “Call 999. We need an ambulance. Now.”
The young man complied.
A crowd of shoppers gathered. Dylan ignored them.
“Are you on any medication?”
Alan shook his head.
