Save Her by Abigail Osborne (i can read books .txt) 📕

‘I know. I couldn’t believe it either.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me straight away?’

Flora looked down again, her face colouring. ‘I’m sorry. I know I should have said. I just knew you would be upset that we were moving, and I didn’t know how to tell you.’

Sophie’s heart winced. It made her desperately sad that Flora had kept this from her. After everything they had been through, after everything Sophie had done, it was like a knife in the back to find out Flora had been keeping secrets from her. She looked away, it was hard to cleanse her face of frustration and emotion.

‘Flora?’ Sam’s head poked around the door. He was dressed in a blue suit that complemented his eyes. But there was no doubt that Greg was the more handsome out of the two. Sam was too gentle, and it oozed from every pore. Whereas Greg was authoritative and intelligent, you instantly respected him as soon as you saw him.

‘Why are you both sat in the bath?’ He looked bewildered. Sophie and Flora giggled.

‘Hiding.’ Flora chuckled.

‘From who?’ questioned Sam.

‘Why from your delightful mother of course,’ replied Sophie.

The skin around Sam’s eyes tightened. Flora always beat around the bush when complaining about Cecelia to Sam, but Sophie had no qualms with voicing what she thought of his mother, a tendency Sam hated. She couldn’t understand it. Unlike Sam, Greg knew exactly what his mother was like and how she treated Sophie. The difference was he did not actually care. After their first meeting, when Sophie had informed him that his mother was downright rude and disrespectful towards her and she was not having it, Greg had just laughed and told her it was character building. ‘If she’s rude to you, be rude back.’ Although, not exactly supportive, at least he wasn’t an ostrich like Sam.

‘Flora, come on. Get out of the bath. Let’s go and get a drink.’

Flora clambered out of the bath with all the grace of a three-legged donkey. Sophie laughed. Before she had time to get up, Sam had whisked Flora from the room leaving Sophie alone.

With no desire to re-join the party, she wandered around the house. It still marvelled her that it had so many corridors and rooms. It had been named Cavendish Manor because when built it was fancier than a normal house with its Romanesque pillars. But over time, wings had been added until it resembled more of a castle.

Sophie had only been in a handful of the rooms on offer and had a vague idea of where she was going but she had never looked in all of the rooms. One by one, she opened each door as she passed by and glanced in. Most were uniform guest bedrooms, containing a four-poster bed, solid oak wardrobes and the dusty smell of abandonment.

At last she found a room that was different to the rest, it looked like someone’s study. With a thrill of curiosity Sophie wandered in. A framed photograph sat upon a magnificent mahogany desk that gleamed majestically in the sunlight. Sophie picked up the frame to see a picture of a young Cecelia with a baby in her arms and a young boy perched next to her. Cecelia was almost unrecognisable because she was beaming with happiness. It transformed her face, lit her up features and made her look almost motherly. Sophie had never seen her give a genuine smile in over five years. This version of Cecelia looked down at the baby in her arms and radiated love and warmth. What had happened to this Cecelia, the one capable of such beautiful emotion? She was looking at baby Sam with pure adoration, an expression Sophie would have given anything to have seen on her own mother’s face.

Sophie placed the photograph back where she found it, feeling the sting of tears, readjusting it until she thought it was exactly where it had been. She could only imagine the grief she would get if Cecelia realised that she had been snooping.

She moved around to the black leather chair behind the desk. She sat down and let out a groan of satisfaction. Where on earth had Cecelia got this chair from? It was the most comfortable thing she had ever sat on. It caressed her back and gave support in all the right places. Sophie was no stranger to back pain from hunching over her laptop all day, thanks to Alistair dumping unsustainable amounts of work on her desk. She needed this chair.

Sophie looked around the room. It was almost as if it had been engineered to instil a sense of power and importance on the person who sat in it. Is this what a modern-day throne room looked like? What must it be like to sit in a room like this, in a mansion like this, knowing you had the money to do whatever you wanted in the world? She would certainly not be spending her life like Cecelia. She would take Flora and travel the world. To be fair, they had the money to do that now, but it wasn’t hers. As much as she spent it like it was, there was always a boundary. It was always there between her and Greg, never spoken aloud but both of them knowing that it would never be her money. He was the keeper of keys and had the power to take everything away. She did not have the resources to completely change her and Flora’s lifestyle, to never work again and spend her life seeing the world. Poor Cecelia. All she did was throw parties, terrorise her daughters-in-law and worship her sons. What a waste.

Sophie was distracted from her musing by the bookcase. The entire room was meticulously organised and uncluttered, which is why her eyes were drawn to a hardback book that was sticking out in its row. Sophie was about to push it in when she noticed that the book did not fit its dustjacket.